Thursday, December 29, 2016

Four Taxing Years for Roast Pork

Factor in the rush to get to a mobile home park set back from the heart of Las Vegas for a teaching job, my father's teaching job, beginning very soon, from a house-looking condo in Saugus, California, in the Santa Clarita Valley that went for $430,000 when purchased in 2004, and left behind for a little under $200,000 in 2012, just to leave.

Add in that frustrating struggle to apply to be a substitute anything in the Clark County School District, how many months and phone calls and resubmitting documents that were correct the first time, before finally being accepted in January of 2013.

There was that terrible first job at that elementary school closer to the gloomy heart of Las Vegas, that poorer heart than what the Strip lets on.

That vicious elementary school librarian who clearly hated her job and lashed out at anyone with even the slightest notion of being happy in a library, including students, not too different from the full-time job there is now, as an aide to the same kind of elementary school librarian.

Remember to pile on that first apartment in Henderson, a year after the mobile home park in Vegas. The neighbors upstairs who smoked inside, and the neighbors next door who smoked inside, and the smoke that came through the vents, and the front office that claimed they couldn't do anything about it, or wouldn't. People are free to do whatever they want inside their apartments, they said. Who cares about the health of those affected by it? It could have been one of the things that led to the cancer that Dad has now nearly fought off entirely.

Remember the second apartment, going south on Green Valley Parkway, billing itself a "country club" when it was obviously nothing of the sort. That first apartment there with the noisy kids from upstairs screaming around on the grass in front of our windows, who used our car as a scooter ramp and scratched it up. Another front office that wouldn't do anything about it except offer us another unit, a bungalow, almost directly across the street from that current apartment.

The bungalow. Drafty. Terrible that winter. Badly-installed, trash-quality carpet that got too dirty too fast. Leaks all over the place, including from the overhead air-conditioning unit next to the washer and dryer. 11 leaks. All the maintenance guys that trooped through denied that anything was wrong, even the 11th time. And then the air conditioning broke down the night before the hottest day of the year, and it took them hours to fix it enough the next morning, into the afternoon.

The apartment now. The same complex as that secondhand smoke apartment. The front of the complex now, although the back was better because you couldn't hear the Green Valley Parkway traffic at all, only see it from a distance.

It's not much better here now. The upstairs neighbors who stomp around, and we can hear them in surround sound down here. Maybe they're pissed that the apartment we took, the woman upstairs hoped that her granddaughter could move in below her with her great-grandson.

Oh, the great-grandson, the tyke, who the grandmother and others in the family have turned into a little asshole just like them. The most this complex did this time was replace their worn flooring so that less noise could be heard from down here. It only made all that noise much clearer.

The shitty jobs. That first full-time year for me at that elementary school near Tropicana and Boulder with the psychotic principal who would scream at the staff about anything, even the most innocent thing. The same principal who screwed with my dad's payroll after he, a resource room teacher, and I left that school and he moved on to teaching again in high school for the first time in 30 years. People in Las Vegas cause only headaches, strife, and much undue stress.

I was a resource room aide at that elementary school. I'm a library aide at this elementary school here in Henderson, which I always wanted to be. But I burned out of this job back in September, the beginning of my second year there. If I had been working with an infinitely better, vastly more dedicated, highly qualified elementary school librarian, I would have burned out a year or two later, and gracefully.

I can't see hawking Charlotte's Web for the rest of my career. I want to go higher the next time. I know now, completely, what kind of libraries are home.

After all this, with one foot out Nevada's door, pointing to California, were these four years worth it to reach the one thing that was as close to heaven as I will ever get here (The Cosmopolitan, formerly my favorite hotel-casino on the Strip, would have been that, if it had kept the open, welcoming, cool artistic vibe it fostered for five years before it was sold off)?

At #1 Hawaiian Barbecue on South Eastern Avenue, across from Walmart, all next to the back end of McCarran International Airport, I've always been a menu wanderer. BBQ mix one time, with beef, short ribs, and chicken; the Chicken Lover plate another time with chicken katsu, BBQ chicken and mochiko chicken. I did try the Hawaiian BBQ beef plate another time, and I think loco moco was what I had the first time we went there, not that I hadn't had enough of it already with L&L Hawaiian Barbecue near that mobile home park that first year.

I never felt as attached to anything as my mother and sister are to ahi poke, and seaweed salad for Mom. I always went with whatever struck me in the moment.

Yesterday, I zeroed in on roast pork. Compared to how hard they push chicken katsu and and the barbecue offerings, it seemed like an out-of-the-way menu item, and I always like walking quietly past the rush.

Loco moco has gravy all over it, which is fine. That's just one element and there's no element of it that rises above another. The hamburger steak, the eggs, the rice, they all work together.

In Hawaiian culture, it seems, brown gravy goes over roast pork, too. You can use the rice to soak it up, along with any juices from the roast pork. But, to me, not that much gravy is necessary. To me, it feels like an insult to Hawaii to insist that, in much the same way it would be to jump behind the grill at a Benihana and insist to the chefs that "I've got this." This is Hawaii. This is who they are. I respect that. But, I suppose, being in Las Vegas, and hours and thousands of miles by plane from Hawaii, it shouldn't be as much of a factor.

In other words, the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian Barbecue is a revelation. I've since learned that the crust of a roast pork is the crackling, but to me, this wasn't so much crackling. Perhaps because there was so much brown gravy all over it, it softened the crispness of the crackling. Even so, there is a romantic confluence of flavors in the crackling alone that is merely the introduction to beautiful, beautiful pork, beautifully colored, beautifully roasted in the oven, to the exact point where you just have to touch the meat with a fork and it separates into heavenly layers.

I know photos would do it more justice, but I wonder: Having bowed down to the revelatory temple that is this roast pork, was it worth these four years to get to the point where I had this roast pork? Does it make up for the Lundys, who were diagonal from us in the mobile home park, fighting all the time loudly enough for a block of the mobile homes around us to hear it? Does it lessen the sheer number of police that always showed up in the complex of the noisy-kid apartment and the bungalow? Does it make up for The Cosmopolitan truly becoming a shell of its former self? In other words, does it make all the crap that we went through bearable in hindsight, even forgivable?

It doesn't. Not by a mile, not by infinity. This is not a friendly city for anyone. This is where people who can't make it anywhere else go. This is where those who would be fired within a week at any other school district in the country can reign supreme here. This is where various services can be neglectful in their individual missions, and nothing of consequence will come of it. The neighbors you do know in passing you would not want to know any further because they're making so much goddamn noise upstairs, and it seems impossible that they actually sleep. It's where apartment complexes can also be neglectful, and unscrupulous, and lie to your face, and nothing will happen to them either. No real apologies from them. No consequences either.

If it hadn't been here in Las Vegas, I probably would have found this roast pork in another form somewhere else. But I wouldn't have found it like this. I might have eaten it somewhere else, found it good, and then moved on without giving it a second thought. But after four years of these hardships and so much neglect, being knocked around left and right by so much shit in a given week, to find this even after all of that is incredible. To even recognize something as phenomenal as this after four years of shit stew gives me hope that I can recover all of my true self after we leave Las Vegas. And, as Sheryl Crow sings, "And I won't be back. No, no. No I won't be back." I've listened to that song for years, since it's on my favorite album, "Tuesday Night Music Club," but only in the past year have I fully understood it. And related to it.

It's because of The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn that I've become more interested in architecture and interior design. I appreciate that. I loved seeing Jeff Bridges, one of my heroes, live at Santa Fe Station one year. I'll never forget that. I'll also never forget Lied Library at UNLV and the Boulder City Library, two libraries I would live in if I could. And especially not the Pinball Hall of Fame, with its extremely rare Pinball Circus prototype machine, one of only two in the world, the other residing overseas, which is partly an inspiration for a novel I want to write.

But whenever I got home from these experiences, back to the mobile home park, or the secondhand smoke apartment, or the bungalow, I'd think to myself, "This is all there is?" Walking around The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, seeing such inspiring elegance, or walking amongst the stacks of Lied Library and the Boulder City Library, and knowing that that's where I belong for the rest of my life, it was hard to land back at home and feel nothing of any of it then. None of it carried over to my daily life. It was still a grind. The feeling like a balloon blowing up inside me when I was at The Cosmopolitan and The Wynn, and even at Green Valley Ranch (which I call Henderson's only palace), never was there at work, nor even at my local library, where I still volunteer after three years. Was it that I couldn't make it happen in those places like I could at The Cosmopolitan or Lied Library? Or is it that where I lived and worked each day could not possibly compare to those sights?

However, the roast pork from #1 Hawaiian Barbecue stays with me. It's been two days and it's still on my mind, and it will always be on my mind. Not always as big as it is now. There are other things to do in my life after all, including more writing, and definitely more reading, including poems, which I discovered are a tonic for when you're in between books and get frustrated at not every book working from the start after you've finished a really great one. I've discovered that I get cranky afterward.

I want to know all about the different ways of roast pork, how it tastes elsewhere, certainly what recipe would work for me if I decide to make it at home one day. Not here, but after we move. Perhaps the roast pork is a culmination of everything I've loved in Las Vegas, while still loathing the entire city and the entire valley. Maybe it has all led up to this. But what an awful path to get here. Nevertheless, this is what I'll take with me from Las Vegas. Like that slice of pumpkin pie I had at Six Flags Magic Mountain on the day of free admission for the Holiday Toy Drive many years ago that I'm still searching for elsewhere, this will be with me as strongly as that.

It's not all that I'm taking with me of Las Vegas. There's a book of short stories I want to write that's set in Las Vegas proper, and a novel that goes between Henderson and Las Vegas. I'm sketching out the preliminary emotions for all the stories here, as well as research I need, so I can still write it from where I go next, and still be able to recall those feelings, at least the good ones I had in the places I liked. I believe, though, that you can only write about the Las Vegas you lived, either as a tourist or a resident. I'm sick of those journalists who swoop into Las Vegas for two or three nights, make blanket statements and assumptions about the city that are supposed to stretch backwards and forwards, and then leave. Make statements and assumptions in your moments, and only your moments. Don't speak for everyone. Me, anything I write about Las Vegas in the future, all fiction, will be set between 2012 and wherever I stop in 2017. Well, maybe not, because I don't like what Las Vegas is becoming with the corporations on the Strip now charging residents for parking, and how the quality of many places on the Strip have precipitously fallen. So probably 2012 to about August 2016, before The Cosmopolitan as I knew it ended. But that's all. I won't write about Las Vegas in the 1950s, I won't write about Las Vegas a year or two before I got here. Only when I got here, only based on what I experienced, what I knew every day.

Perhaps the roast pork, in the final few times I'll inevitably have it again, and in memory, will be a conduit to all this. Back in California, I can think about that roast pork (which, if we don't go back to #1 Hawaiian Barbecue before my birthday, if we're still here by then, will be my birthday dinner) and immediately be reminded of all the good experiences I did have here, that I can use for my own work.

Over the next weeks, I may delve into those experiences, as it feels like the time for reflection before departure. Even though I'm definitely less happy than when my family and I moved here, I am grateful for the experience I've had at work and volunteering at my local library that has gotten me to the point where I do qualify for at least one library position where we're going next. But what else have I gotten out of these four years that has nothing to do with the continuous problems we deal with here? That's what I really want to examine closely. You know, before relying on masterful roast pork as a gateway to it.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

The Freedom of a Deadline (Sometimes)

I don't miss writing on deadline. Newsrooms, to me, are ulcer farms. I still shudder when I remember being the interim editor of the weekend Escape section at The Signal, Santa Clarita, California's exclusive newspaper. I was ultimately in charge of five issues for five weeks.

I generally began planning each issue on Friday, the day that each one before was published, thinking of ideas for articles I could write in-house (without outside research, since I didn't have a car), starting my next From My Netflix Queue column (reviewing whatever I watched that came from my Netflix queue), studying the AP newswires for entertainment, travel, and other categories, looking for articles interesting enough to me to put on the pages. I'm proud of the work I did for those five weeks, and the extensive work I did as an intern at the paper and then associate editor of the Escape section that led up to that. But if I was offered a chance to do all that again, I would much prefer to spend my days reorganizing thousands of fallen books in a library hit by an earthquake. It's easier.

However, I do miss the atmosphere in which such writing takes place, writing a column or a story on the fly, figuring out right then and there different angles for each just in case you feel like your original idea isn't working. And then, when you're done, adding and taking out and putting back in as you're editing. Would you believe that there's greater freedom in that than how I write right now?

When I took journalism classes at College of the Canyons in Valencia, California (also part of the Santa Clarita Valley) in 2004 or 2005, one of the first classes required was taught by Paul Bond, a reporter for The Hollywood Reporter. Up to that point, I had been an intern at the satellite office of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Weston, and had written countless movie reviews for the Teentime pages in the back of the Sentinel's now-defunct weekend Showtime section. In this class, I loved being taught by someone who, when he was done with the class, dashed off to The Hollywood Reporter offices to get started on his work. What he taught, he lived, side by side.

We sat at banks of computers, the monitors and keyboards under glass tabletops. And he would give us sample news stories to write up, usually set on our campus. One assignment was about a suspicious package found in the M building, the media building, our building. Police were called in. The building was locked down. Write about it.

We were taught the inverted pyramid and the general length of a news article of that kind. It was up to us to determine what details the reader should know first. I don't remember all that I wrote, but I think the article started off with someone like, "A suspicious package found on the third floor of the M building yesterday prompted school officials to..."

Dare I say it, I enjoyed writing that article, taking the facts given to us and incorporating them into a hard news piece. No time for flourishes, or overly descriptive reactions to the scene. Just tell the reader what happened, what they need to know.

These days, I'm burdened with what I want to write. Good burdens, but laced with indecision about what to focus on, the result being that not much gets done. But it will. The ideas keep coming, and I've got to focus on one soon and see it through, for my own continued attempted sanity.

Despite the company of such luminaries as the great John Boston, the soul of The Signal, when I was there, my favorite newsroom was at College of the Canyons, for the Canyon Call newspaper, where I was a staff writer. You were allowed to make mistakes, as long as they were cleaned up by deadline.

To this day, I'm still trying to figure out what "News Feature Story" won me the second place 2006 SoCal Conference Mail-In Award from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges. For a time, the award hung on the wall next to the entrance to the newsroom, but some time after leaving the paper, I decided that it was mine, despite being part of the history of the paper, and took it down and took it away with me. It sits in my closet, where a few issues of the Canyon Call may also sit, but I think that bag mainly has the issues of the Escape section I oversaw.

My favorite article that I wrote was a feature on the men's golf team led by Gary Peterson, also the cinema teacher at College of the Canyons. I walked clear across campus, to where they were practicing, interviewed Peterson (who was also my cinema teacher at the time), and a few members of the team. I think I touched upon their dedication, what they hoped to achieve this season, what they looked to improve upon from last season, you know, your typical sports article. It remains the first and only sports article I wrote. But I liked going out there, taking in that atmosphere, watching their furrowed concentration, and just the peacefulness surrounding them. I wanted to write about nothing but that! Only that! If I could have made a career writing about the peacefulness of certain places, I would have stayed in journalism.

In that newsroom, I had space to explore. I had time to think. Lots of it if I wanted. Oh, I have that today, but it's a different feeling. It's easier when you're in your 20s, mulling over this or that, thinking about how to write something, all the while the sun begins to set through the windows and you realize it's time to get home, but just a few more minutes. Just a few minutes to explore this line of thinking, see where it takes me, see if it works for me, and change it if it doesn't. And then go down that path.

The innocence of writing back then. I didn't know as much as I do now, and even so, it's still not that much. But I know more of who I am as a writer, who I want to be, and it's intimidating. Less so when you're younger. Long before What If They Lived?, my first book, was published, a few fellow writers in the newsroom asked me if I was going to write any books. I told them that I didn't think so. I didn't have any ideas. Well look at me now.

Maybe I should try to recapture that writerly innocence. Not to forget what I already know, but approach it how I did back then, with endless possibilities to explore, and new ways to go if I don't like how it's going. Not to be so intimidated by what I'm writing, but see it as an opportunity to learn more about myself, what I can possibly do. Something like that.

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Libraries Shouldn't Be Hidden

I received a copy of FDR's Funeral Train: A Betrayed Widow, a Soviet Spy, and a Presidency in the Balance in the mail yesterday, wanting to reread it after having read The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence, author Robert Klara's latest.

I ordered it from Better World Books from Mishawaka, Indiana, through abebooks.com. When it finally came after two weeks, I was going to write to them to complain because I thought I had ordered a paperback copy. But in reading time, and having read a few books after I had ordered it, I forgot what copy I had ordered.

It turns out that Better World Books had listed this as a Former Library Book, and I think I ordered this one because it was the cheapest. But looking at this former library copy, while I am happy to have it to read again, I'm also disappointed. For while this library, whichever one it was, left its Dewey Decimal call number at the bottom of the spine, it completely blacked out its name on the title page under the Palgrave Macmillan name with very heavy permanent black marker. The barcode at the top of the back cover was marked up the same way. All that remains as proof that this came from a library besides the Dewey Decimal number is a stamped date of Mar 22 2010 at the bottom of the back flyleaf, the date the library acquired this book, with $27.00 beneath that. True, all this library thought about at the time was bring this book into its collections. It wasn't thinking about bibliophiles who might receive this book in the future, like me.

This library doesn't necessarily have to advertise. It belongs to a city, or a town, and therefore is only accountable to that place. But leaving clear where the book came from when it discarded it and sent it away would have been free advertising for bibliophiles. I wanted to know where this book came from. Perhaps I would have looked for the library's website and visited it. I would live in libraries if I could, and so this is my way of knowing other libraries outside of where I live. The black marker is so thick that I can't make out any possible letters. It could be considered a lost opportunity for this library, or library system, or it could be that they just want to be left alone. They don't want any outsiders to notice them. If so, I wish they didn't have that attitude. I would have been deferential.

Or it could be some new policy of Better World Books to black out library and town names from former library books. But then, what good would that do them? I would think that any bookseller as substantial as Better World Books would want buyers to see that their books come from so many different places. No, I'm chalking this one up to the library.

While I'm sticking to my local library's own books for the foreseeable future, I hope that the next former library book I buy is more open to me. In turn, I will be more open to it.

LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE (5:47 p.m.): I just found this e-mail in my inbox, sent late this morning:

Hello,

Thank you for your email. We work with many libraries who send their overstocked
books or old editions for us to sell. The libraries then select a local charity or
one of our literacy partners (Books for Africa, Room to Read, and The National
Center for Family Literacy) to receive a portion of the proceeds, in addition to
earning funds for their own programs. Your book came from one of those libraries. We
do ask that these libraries not make any changes to the book, apart from something
like a discard stamp, unfortunately, not all libraries follow these guidelines. I
can assure you that this is not a new policy of ours. Thanks for the support!

Sincerely,

Alexa


It's heartening to know that charities benefit from these books, and good to know that Better World Books is not responsible for this. They're as open as I always thought they were.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

I'm Gonna Read Like It's 1999

After every time my editor at BookBrowse, the book review site I write for, e-mails me a .pdf file of how my latest review is going to appear in the next issue, I take stock of my reading life. What can I read to make my book reviews better? Do I fall back on Michael Dirda, one of my favorite book critics, or the books I have of Nick Hornby's reviews for McSweeney's, or both? What fiction should I be reading to make my reviews more informative? There's no guarantee that what I read in between reviews will directly relate to whatever book I'll read next for a review, but something in those books, or in the act of reading those books, could inspire an opening for a review that ties together the particular book I'm reviewing and what I thought of it, perhaps something about how the plot in that book has been done better elsewhere, and then I have an example. Or just getting better at capturing the atmosphere of a book in so few words. After all, I have a minimum of 600 words, though I prefer to go no further than 620 words. If my editor wants me to add more thoughts, it's easier to add to a small review than it is to try to whittle down a much larger one. I learned that very well when I was new to BookBrowse. Even though I had written movie reviews for 13 years up until then, and had written the occasional book review for a Southern California publication called Valley Scene Magazine, writing book reviews regularly was a bigger challenge, coupled with the worry that the owner of BookBrowse and my editor might think I'm not worth the trouble and then would tell me not to write any more reviews for them. Then where would I be for a writing outlet I could possibly enjoy?

Nevertheless, another review has come and gone, this time of Night of the Animals by Bill Broun, which I thought was a quiet masterpiece. I received the .pdf file of the final copy of my review from my editor, and here I sit again, thinking of my reading life. Dirda and Hornby have come and gone. I could fall back on that trope, but sitting in front of me is What Makes This Book So Great: Re-Reading the Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jo Walton. I had never heard of Jo Walton until I bumped into her in the Henderson Libraries catalog and found her book. This collection of essays would be good, because as she writes in her introduction, "Reviews are naturally concerned with new books, and are first reactions. Here I'm mostly talking about older books, and these are my thoughts on reading them again."

That's true. Never, to my knowledge has BookBrowse reviewed reissues of classic or older books. It's always either what has recently been published, or what will be published in the next month or two months. Yes, my reviews are always first reactions, but is there possibly a way that I can make my reviews feel as comfortable, as casual, as knowing as writing about rereading older books? I want to read Walton's collection to find out if there's anything I can learn there.

However, after each of my reviews is put in the pipeline for publication, I'm not only thinking of how to improve my own reviews, I'm thinking sharply about what I'm reading right now, what I want to read, what I possibly should read. What I'm reading right now doesn't matter so much at the moment as what I want to read and what I possibly should read. I'm going to work backwards.

What I possibly should read is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two, which the entire world knows is the rehearsal edition script for the enormous play being performed in London's West End right now. I have it right in front of me, and it's due back at the Green Valley Library on Saturday. I can't renew it because despite there being 20 copies in circulation, there are 84 holds behind me.

I like wandering this wizarding world, but I'm not a devoted fan enough to drop everything right now and read it. I could get to it midweek, since I can read 308 pages in a short time, but I don't think I'd want to rush through it like that. I'd want to take time with it. Plus, despite one book review ready for the next issue of BookBrowse, I'm reading the deeply-felt memoir Please Enjoy Your Happiness by Paul Brinkley-Rodgers, and that review is due on the 20th. Two weeks left. Fortunately, I've written the two opening paragraphs, but I still have to finish reading the book. Besides, what I've liked about BookBrowse from the start is that when I review a book, as opposed to reviewing a movie, it's just me and the book. Sure there's the press release about the book from the publicist, tucked in between the front cover and the flyleaf, but all I have to do with that is take it out and pitch it, or use it as a bookmark. I don't need to know what the book's about because I've already read what it's about when I chose it for review. I don't need to read quotes from other authors and reviewers about the book because I'm looking to form my own opinion about it. Whereas with movies, every critic is hyperaware of the summer movie season and awards season. E-mail inboxes are bombarded with press releases about this awards hopeful or that one, and publicists always eagerly ask you if you want to review this one or that one, and to reply to them if you want to attend one of the screenings. That was one of the reasons I got out of movie reviewing. It started to feel like a hamster wheel. Conversely, I've been reading since I was 2. I never want to get out of this.

What I want to read has come in different stages. There's Murder with Macaroni and Cheese, the second Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery by A.L. Herbert, one of my new favorite authors. I've been waiting for this one since last year, right after I finished reading Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles, the first one. I also have here William Howard Taft: The President Who Became Chief Justice by Bill Severn, published in 1970. One review on Amazon calls it a "decent high-school bio of Taft,".....".... written for advanced junior high or beginning high school students", but I don't care. In my boundless passion for presidential history, William Howard Taft is my favorite president to study and I'll read everything I can find about him.

That that biography is from 1970 brings up something else. I feel like we're in an age now where the latest headlines, the latest trends, the latest Pokemon to catch on one's phone matters more than history, than slowing down for a little more time to think. It bothers me a little, but it also excites me. It means I own certain things. When I saw a few people at breakfast in the lobby of the La Quinta Inn in Ventura, California that we stayed at a little over a month ago tapping away at their phones, it just meant that there was more of the lobby for me. I get more space to explore. I get more trees, more sky, more opportunity to see where air conditioners are placed around my apartment complex in relation to the apartments they blow into. I also realized that in the rush to know the latest and presumably greatest (for five minutes until the next greatest thing comes along), I get more books.

Related to my desire to write better book reviews (my editor said that this latest review is "one of your best....full of insight....well constructed (no waste of words)," but I disagree. It's not one of my favorites, and I spent most of the time worrying if I was making the right connections in the review, if the whole thing read well, if it all made sense), I got a yen to read essays again. I went to the Henderson Libraries website to look up "Best American Essays" (always my starting point for reading essays), and I found that the 2015 edition was checked out (the 2016 edition comes out in October). I then saw that The Best American Essays 1999 was available from the Paseo Verde library, so I put in a request for that. I see now that as technologically irritating as society can be today, I can wander well into the past and have some of it to myself. I'm sure that The Best American Essays 1999 hasn't been checked out in some time. So I have the space to wander through it as I wish.

It's the same with the 1930s, one of my favorite decades to study. I decided two weeks ago that I also want to read novels from that decade. I'm sure that there are others reading those same novels, but not the majority. I am a minority in literature and I like to keep it that way.

Of course, my assumptions could be wildly incorrect, but even so, would that really matter with so many Pokemon still to catch? After all, they have to be caught before the next insta trend roars in. I don't mind. Keep them coming! I'd much prefer to have the option to renew my library books if necessary. Then others can have them, if they happen to notice them.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

San Diego Bound

Just a short post, but a necessary one.

The Saturday after next, my family and I are going to San Diego for four days to see what it's like. This summer has been particularly taxing, and especially wearisome on my mom, who can't handle the kind of extreme hot and bitter cold that Nevada summers and winters specialize in. She's getting older and consistent weather would be better for her. Also, there's the San Diego Zoo, and she's always wanted to live in a city that has a zoo, and this is a zoo that she's been to before.

But for us, it's also reconsidering where we are in this place and in our lives. Las Vegas and Henderson hasn't been the home we hoped for. We figured, wrongly as it turned out, that with so many people coming from so many different cities that there would be a genial openness, that creativity and imagination would abound under such auspices, that we could get to know the Strip and outlying areas and casinos and daily and weekly enjoy it all.

The people, for the most part, are closed off. The tourists, as would be expected, are given the white-glove treatment, while residents barely get any discounts. We live this every day, and they can't even manage a deep discount on residency shows? They'll make the money back three minutes later!

Considering the number of apartments we've lived in, the lies we were told, the air conditioning not fixed properly and broken down before the hottest day of the summer (last year), the leaks in that same apartment, the noise upstairs in our current apartment that's vindictive and nothing has been done about it yet, it's too much for us already. In our first year, at Valley Vista All-Ages Mobile Home Park, we had essentially a metal cargo container, which is what all mobile homes feel like. Understandable. We had to live somewhere to get established. That summer was brutally hot as well for us, unused to such heat, and my mom slept with two fans going in her room, and then the electric bill for that summer was astronomical. Then came where we live again now, that first time a year after Valley Vista, and there were smokers above us and next to us who smoked in our apartments, and the complex said they couldn't do anything about it because people had a right to do what they wanted to do in their apartments, no matter the health hazard. Well, that second year, as my mom said, we had to get used to it because we were here. Maybe it would get better.

It didn't. It hasn't. I especially don't like having to hibernate during the day in summer, being told that it's best to go out either early in the morning or late at night. Get your groceries at 3 a.m. or 10 p.m. I want to get to know my city. I want to see everything that it is and know those streets as well as I know the books in my home library. I want to know its history, but history here disappears in a puff of smoke and debris, as it was last month or so with the demolition of the Riviera hotel tower. Not that it was any great loss at that point because it was a shithole when we went to see that Russian ice skating show in 2007 when we were tourists, and I'm sure it got much worse by the end. Even so, there's no promotion of its history. The Strip doesn't want to know. What money can it make right now? THAT'S what it wants to know. And I'd be ok with that if it offered more in the way of getting to know it. But it doesn't want to be known. It wants to be revered on the surface, but do not go any deeper.

It's not wrong to have hopes about where you're going to live. Why shouldn't we? We look forward to a place and what it possibly offers. We visit it and plan where we want to be, and you bet we visited Las Vegas and Henderson many times before we got there. And I thought it could be home. I wanted it to be home. I was tired of moving. But we've had to move five times in nearly four years, because of various circumstances including the smoking and the neglect we experienced in our previous apartment complex, before returning to our current one. It's not worth it if you have to struggle so much during.

Now, I'm not raising hopes as fervent as I had for Las Vegas and Henderson. I'm being cautious this time. The rents in San Diego do concern me, as it does my mom, but we are a family of four, and I'm sure my dad, my sister and I can find jobs before we get there. I know what I want to do, my sister knows what she wants to do, and my dad is dynamic in the business education field, so he'll have no trouble finding his niche again in San Diego. But we have to see where we want to be first, what works for us, what's feasible for us. I want to know a city, historically and otherwise. I don't want to be trapped inside by merciless summer heat anymore. I want to see my city during the day, too.

So we'll go. We'll see what areas of San Diego interest us and then pursue them. But there's no turning back. We're not staying here in Henderson. My mom can't handle another summer like this one. I don't want another summer like this one. I want to enjoy my home. I want to see everything it offers. I want to study its history. I hope this will work out better. A small hope right now. But still some hope.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

The Stunted Memory of One Book's Origins

I know that I got this copy of The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty from AbeBooks, but I don't know which seller I bought it from. Possibly Better World Books in Mishawaka, Indiana. Or Thrift Books out of Auburn, Washington. One of those, or another entirely.

This copy's not as special to me as my copy of The Remains of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro that I bought at a now-sadly-defunct bookstore in downtown Palm Springs called G.W. Books whose owner looked like he lived there. I wanted to be him so badly.

Nor is it as important to me as my hardcover copy of Subways are for Sleeping by Edmund G. Love which I paid $34 for at the Valencia Library, then part of the County of Los Angeles library system, claiming it lost because I wanted to keep it for myself. It had come from the Norwalk branch of the County, but I had carried it with me so often at College of the Canyons, usually reading it in the cafeteria there instead of doing my math homework, that I felt it was mine more than it was Norwalk's.

Yet, this copy of The Memory of Running, which I think has supplanted The Remains of the Day as my favorite novel, has served me well. I think I've had it as long as we've lived in Nevada, about three years and six months now. I first read The Memory of Running in Valencia, checking it out from the Valencia Library, and maybe I bought a copy for my collection there after I had read it. Maybe not. But my rule of thumb, at least back then, was that if I checked out a book more than three times from the library, then I'd buy a copy for my collection. That happened with The Remains of the Day.

This copy of The Memory of Running is browning a bit, and there is a a thick black discount mark at the bottom of the book, along with a dot next to it, probably telling potential buyers how much it will be. But I think there was a price sticker on the back because some of the backing from that is still over the barcode. There's also some gray marks on the pages if you hold the book closed, and I know that's from when I dropped it somewhere. Not a puddle, fortunately, but some dirt somewhere. Accidentally.

I could get some more use out of this book. The spine hasn't worn out yet and all the pages are still intact. But I worry about my favorite books going out of print. Angelina's Bachelors by Brian O'Reilly, for example, published in August 2011 and discovered by me that October, now goes for $20.72 on Amazon. A Year at the Movies by Kevin Murphy, my copy of which is fraying and which I checked off what movies I've seen, fetches $15.99 on Amazon.

Looking through the listings on AbeBooks for Angelina's Bachelors and A Year at the Movies, I find that I can get a new copy Angelina's Bachelors from a seller in Avenel, New Jersey, another in Lewiston, New York, and I can get a new copy of A Year at the Movies from that same seller in Lewiston, New York, another in Powder Springs, Georgia, and a third in Enumclaw, Washington.

This would be nothing new to me. I have two copies of Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, although they are different editions. However, this would be of the same edition, and why would I need two copies of the same book? For one, these books are among my permanent collection, books that I will keep for the rest of my life, that I will search high and low for replacement copies should I ever need them. These are dear favorites, and Angelina's Bachelors became my mom's favorite book after I got her hooked on it. It seems that she and I share a taste for novels in which people are good to each other, no matter the problems that waylay them.

It doesn't matter where these two books come from if I buy new copies. I have no connection to Washington State, nor to Georgia, though I would love to visit Savannah, Georgia one day. And yet, The Memory of Running is a different case entirely. Deciding that I wanted a new copy to replace my current copy, a cleaner copy that can age more naturally from time and repeated readings, I looked for it on AbeBooks, and stopped dead at one listing I found for it.

It should be known that I desperately want to visit New Orleans one day. I don't think I'll necessarily go into it with wide-eyed idealism, but I feel there are parts of the city that match my soul, the relaxed soul I wish I could have. I look at photos of New Orleans and I feel such a pull toward it. I want to walk those streets. I want to see those balconies. I want to duck into those shops, and some of those bookstores, and have that food which means so much to me, including grits and other things. I want it, and I've read about it, and I've seen some movies that seem to have gotten it right, including Jon Favreau's Chef for the brief time it was there, and I want to fill my soul with it.

So when I found a copy of The Memory of Running residing at Dionysos Books in New Orleans, that was it. That one seller in Lewiston, New York was cheaper, but that didn't matter. I could have a book that spent time in New Orleans! That bookstore operates three miles from the French Quarter, but who cares? It's all New Orleans to me. I can hold it and imagine its place in the city. And maybe one day I'll be able to bring it to New Orleans with me. It's not Walker Percy or John Kennedy Toole or Poppy Z. Brite or Tennessee Williams, but it was there. With it, I can dream.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Listening Through the Static and Hoping

In July 2014, Pulse 96.7, an exclusively dance music station, apparently came on the air in Las Vegas. I thought it had been a few months ago, but according to an interview with programmer Joel Salkowitz, it was July 2014.

From my room in this bungalow at Green Valley Country Club near Green Valley and Wigwam here in Henderson, when I first heard about it a few months ago, I couldn't get it at all. I could hear it in the car, but barely a signal in my room. Hold the antenna up a little, and it was only minutely clearer through the heavy static. Drop the antenna and it dropped too.

Now, a few months later, with the antenna still below, there's dance music through the static. The sound rises and falls back on its own, but I can hear more of it. Not like the crystal clarity of one of the omnipotent Clear Channel stations, but it's there.

This coming Friday, my family and I are signing a lease back at Pacific Islands, past Green Valley and Robindale (which I walk every weekday morning, up Robindale, to get to work at Cox Elementary), near the holy intersection of Green Valley and Warm Springs, just before the train track. At that intersection, you take a right, and you get to the rest of Henderson. A left, and you start on Las Vegas. It's the best crossroads for us and one of the reasons we're moving back, after the cigarette smoke in our apartment from above and next to us chased us out well over a year ago.

At our new apartment, which will be at the front of the complex, we have a dumpster across from our patio, behind the carport parking, the recycling dumpster to our left, next to the smaller second entrance, and the front office directly to our right, which means the mailboxes are right there, and the small gym my sister uses. We're more exposed than where we were last time, but the front of any apartment complex is always taken care of better than the rest. Pacific Islands is also remodeling the apartments with new paint jobs, new appliances, new lighting fixtures. Even the carports have been repainted and new street signs are blue with white lettering. Sure the rent's gone up a bit because of this since the last time we lived there, but one of their new policies is that if they either spot someone who hasn't picked up after their dog, or one of their neighbors tattles on them, they're charged $50. I hope this will lead to a policy about smoking inside the apartments, especially considering the hefty investments they've made in the remodeling. One of our new neighbors, across from our building, smokes on her patio. So be it. She has 11 grandchildren and is quite the formidable matriarch. She's earned it, and it's not that often during the day. Plus, there's significant space between the front door of our new apartment and her patio.

It's in this setting that I hope Pulse 96.7 comes in clearly. I don't go to nightclubs in Las Vegas, I don't attend DJ shows, I've never been to the monstrously profitable Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But I love the music. It expands my imagination. I've loved it since the mid-'90s, listening to Power 96 in South Florida when I was in middle school.

Even putting the transience aside, this town is hard to get used to at times, still after two years, because people aren't that open, maybe because of the transience. But I need some stability now, especially after the year of Green Valley Country Club having to fix the overhead air-conditioning unit 11 times (they're awful about fixing anything here), and it crapping out the evening before the hottest day of the year. We had to fight with them on the phone to get them to come fix it the very next morning, and they did. It took about 4 hours after 9 a.m. hit and they began work. There were a lot of soaked t-shirts in order to keep cool, a lot of spraying our two dogs and two finches with water to keep them cool, and it's why I'm used to summer here now. Not just tolerating it. Used to it. I know even moreso what to expect when those temperatures hit the high 90s and well over 100. I can live with it now, hopefully with better air conditioning this summer. But then, the air conditioning units are far better at Pacific Islands, since they're on the ground and not ridiculously overhead, so I know it'll work, just like it did last time.

Add to that the leaking shower faucet in the bathroom my dad and I use, and having to move from the first-floor unit of a two-floor apartment building across the street here because the upstairs neighbors were very loud, and the kids in the neighborhood used to scream around the grass across from our three windows, and they even used our car as a scooter ramp, scratching it. Thankfully, the insurance covered that, but we couldn't handle it over there. Unfortunately, we traded all that for a drafty unit. Terrible in winter, whereas the previous apartment actually held heat, and when it rained, you couldn't hear the rain at all.

So yeah, I'd like some actual stability, and I think it starts not only with the fact that this is the last place for us here in Henderson, but with music that I've always loved and have never been able to find easily here until now. Online, sure, but I don't like to be on the computer all the time. Being that there's no hill after Green Valley and Robindale, hopefully that will help in Pulse 96.7 coming in clearly. For now, I will listen through the static. I will make it the station I wake up to every morning until we leave for Pacific Islands and hope that I can make it the station I wake up to every morning over there. Recovery from moving. Recovery from having moved five times in a little over three years. Time to start living again. Music that I've always loved and should listen to more, and a new apartment to actually live in, to decorate the right way for us (instead of all these boxes, which we're finally going to get rid of), is a proper start.