Midterm Evaluation, pt. I

When our main pipe was broken

(On the margin, some wrongfully unpublished scenes from the last seven weeks)

Darn! It's spring break already! I've lived in Athens for seven weeks and three days now, and as usual, that sounds longer than it feels in retrospect. In that time, I might have been introduced to almost a hundred people (I don't intend to exaggerate here!) and might have forgotten the names of maybe a third of those people. Because sometimes, you meet a friend of a friend, have some beers and a good time, and then never see that person again. That's how it works.

When the sun set nicely

   Other people become your friends because you live with them and/or because you go to the Columbus Museum of Art with them, or to Old Man's Cave, or you hang out on porches and rooftops together on sunny Saturday afternoons, roaming the bars with them at night, walking up and down Court Street, slipping on the ice in front of a hundred people on that one corner near Tony's, dancing to the Black Eyed Peas in some shitty bar although you know it's horrible to dance to the Black Eyed Peas because they are the Black Eyed Peas, but you don't care, because that's what beer's there for.

When I was in a bathroom

   Also academically speaking, these past few weeks were great. How long have I wanted to read The Grapes of Wrath, Huckleberry Finn, and Death of a Salesmen!? The latter two had caught dust on my bookshelf in Leipzig for years, and I had continually refrained from buying Grapes simply because I knew I would not have the time to seriously read it, just like those other two classics. And now, for "Popular/High Culture in 20th Century America" I've binge-read them over the course of six weeks! Even more, classroom discussion yielded so many insights that I would not have recognized all by myself. Grapes's ex preacher Jim Casy has the same initials as Jesus Christ!! Whoooow...Little things like these.

When we had Tacos on Tuesday

   But also the bigger picture. The development of popular culture from Twain, tell-tales, con-men, and circuses to vaudeville, the nickelodeon, Charlie Chaplin, realism, and good ol' Jack London up to Woody Guthrie, agitprop theater, hard-boiled detective fiction and film noir. I've learned quite a bit. My midterm paper--I cannot quite estimate yet what to think of it. The assignment was to identify one guiding theme of The Grapes of Wrath. Not too hard, true. Then, however, the actual argument should address the question which medium communicates this theme most effectively--John Steinbeck's novel, John Ford's (great) 1940 movie adaptation by the same name, or Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads which is in parts directly based on the novel. I found it relatively hard to make a well developed argument for a claim which I would rather attribute to subjective taste instead of academic analysis. Especially limited to five pages, double spaced! For a 600+ page novel, a two hour (Right?), and an album with 13 or 14 songs. Well, after spring break I'll see how I coped with that.

When the deer was hungry

Okay, since that part on my pop/high class came out longer than expected, I'll postpone writing about the other good classes. So there might be a Midterm Evaluation, pt. II. But more likely, the next days will bring forth (only) a couple of probably shorter pieces on Julia's and my travels across New England.

When the snow laden tree shone red in the night

When dusk descended upon Baker

Spring Break 1: from Athens, OH, to Washington, D.C.

Feb 28, 2014. 6:17 a.m. Airport shuttle from Athens to Columbus. Lights are off, so no reading. In my ear, Jack Kerouac makes fun of old Westerns. Inefficient heat, so my feet are still cold from -14°C that I had to face to get to my ride. 6:23, hesitant sunrise in the East. We pass that medium security prison situated on a woody hillside like some mountain spa hotel with searchlights and barb wire fences. 

10:37.  Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington, D.C. From Columbus to here, a good flight through clear skies. Flew over the Virginias, and probably a bit of Pennsylvania. Perfect view on suburbs of Columbus and D.C., on what appeared to be a frozen lake, weirdly shaped, and on what could only be a quite flat part of the Appalachian Mountains. Below, some evidence.

A Saturday in Athens

When you live in Athens, OH, and you experience the second Saturday with temperatures significantly above freezing, you remember how good that first warm Saturday three weeks ago was when people would hang out all over town on their porches and play music and games. So you shlep yourself into Alden Library in the hope of working at least two hours on your Pop/High Culture midterm paper which is due on Tuesday, the day of the midterm exam in that very same class. And you somehow manage to bide your time in Alden for a bit more than two hours. Then you go home, have a great bagel for lunch and call your roommate to  find out where they are so you can go there, too. You go to a bar, wait in front of it and then you are led up a steep flight of stairs right next to that bar, enter a cool murky apartment and then ascend another even steeper flight of stairs to the rooftop of that building where people are sitting in the sun listening to some country pop mishmash. Someone hands you a  PBR and you sit, then lie down on the warm tar. Aggregate some solar energy because you know next week is gonna be cold again. 

   About an hour or two later, you move on. A friend knows that there's something going on on a friend's house's front porch. So in a group of four or five people, you walk along streets that are roamed by dozens and scores of dudes in shorts, gals in ultrashorts, jocks in tank tops, and jockettes in flip-flops. Then, to your left, a group celebrates a girl's birthday by playing beer pong. You pass the unbelievably oversized frat building, redbrick, with white window frames and huge doric columns, guarded by two giant concrete lions. And then there's the porch, filled with people and music from an iPhone. You join them, are introduced to two or three of them, then participate in a drinking game which, quite fortunately, doesn't involve any drinking for lucky you because you know how to handle that ping pong ball. Then you try the hammock which is hard to mount but very snug once you've mastered the high art of lying in it. You gather the last sun rays because it's almost 5, then go into the kitchen, have a coffee. Outside the window, down on the parking lot, you see your musician friend who tells you you should come over to his house later to jam a little in his basement. Sure, you say. After a while, you stop by at another one of your friend's friend's place, say hi to the guys watching hockey, have a beer and leave. Down to the basement, try to play some music with people you'd met before. You're mediocre at best, but they say it was good. Maybe it was okay. Then you're invited for a burrito and enjoy it before you head home to get some beers. You mount the mound and, inside the house, you find your roommate who you've lost track of earlier that day with another friend drinking margaritas in the kitchen. Of course, you have one, too. Make plans to meet up again later somewhere uptown. Grab the beers, get back to your friend's place where the music has stopped because everyone's sitting on the porch. Another friend had invited you to a party some hours ago, so you say, let's go there. So you and the guys, you go there. Your friend is not at that party, so you just enter a room where neither you nor the guys know anyone. You leave two hours later after having talked to two or three people you hadn't met before. Hit the bars. The group scatters. You meet some friends and roomies from earlier today. Reunion. A slice of pizza at Goodfellas, then the weak half of your group goes home, the other half goes to a last bar, and home eventually.

Math. Music.

I took the following notes earlier this night, between 10:30 p.m. and about 1 a.m. at a concert at Casa. They're almost unedited. Insertions are marked by [ brackets ]. The first band I saw was called, I think, Small Steps. The second band must have been Frankie Teardrop, although I might mix the two up right now. The third band of that show was called Gnarwhale. Very very good stuff in the realms of chaos, post-hardcore, emocore, experimental, whatnot.

"[written after the first band] Chaos. The pristine beauty of experimental screamo-math-stuff. Loud and aggressive but appearing much more thoughtful and intricate than your standard hardcore and metalcore - I mean the stuff we're mostly exposed to. [I am not talking about good hardcore and metalcore! But a lot of bands I've seen over the last years...I don't know...It's just a re-enactment of the same thing over and over again] And not as mucho macho. No performance of masculinity, muscles, tattoos and tunnels. Just  a celebration [!?] of controlling what appears to be chaotic. Present day's jazz?

I don't understand a single word of the singer's lyrics. Guitar, bass and drums are too present. he's pissed. I know that. But apart from that -does it matter? Really matter? - the lyrics?

[written after the second band, but related to both bands] The reinvention of sound. If education in the discipline of mathematics was ever important for anyone-if it ever meant anything for me to know your numbers-it's with this kinda music. Especially the drummer. Wow. Never before has the ability to count to 5, 7, 19 or 79.3 ever been as important as here. Any kind of time you can imagine except of 4/4, 3/4, or 2/4, 8/8, 4/8, or 6/8. Instead, most songs felt like mixtures and successions of 17/4, 3/5, 1/50, and 600/31. And I can't reasonably express the fascination with this. It's beyond the admiration of the musicians' (magicians'?) talent. The music extends limitations. It breaks boundaries. It destroys conventions. Maybe the equivalent would be abstract painting? I can't tell. To the uninitiated, it is nothing more than a wall of confusing, annoying sound. Germans call it Krach. To the connoisseur, it is beauty. This is the best stuff I've seen in Athens so far.The first thing I would refer to as art."

Weather Update

I woke up half an hour ago - around 3:20 - for no apparent reason. Only a few minutes later, I heard a distant thunder, followed by two, maybe three violent gushes of rain that poured onto the street outside and the roof above my head for no more than 30 seconds each. Then -lightning! This must be the first thunderstorm I've ever experienced at temperatures right around freezing. A wind that rattled fiercely at my window for some long  seconds, and then disappeared into imperceptability, carried the heavy rain, the lightning and thunder away towards the west. Now I'm left to fall asleep again under the light but incessant rainfall and the dripping of water all around---but no! Another lightning flash! Brighter and more intense than its predecessors, and followed frighteningly close by its audible complement. And now again nothing but rain.

OH, the Beauty!

Last Sunday, the day following our dinner night, I intended to stay at home, and read, read, read. Steinbeck, Kerouac, and biotech (this latter for my GLC class). It was cold outside, sheets of snow and ice on sidewalks and streets, on lawns and trees. And I was still tired from last night. But on the other hand - did I really want to read about biotech?
     My roommates Geeg and Natalie came up with the idea of driving to Old Man’s Cave because they hadn’t seen it in winter yet. They said I should join them, and since I had never been there at all, sure thing! After some deliberations as to whether we (or rather, Geeg) should really take the car out on the snowy roads of Southeastern Ohio, we decided to try. To complete the expedition party, I texted our friends Sam and Sophia if they were interested in joining us. And they were. So, less than half an hour later, we were on the road.

     It was the first time that I left Athens and the immediate area surrounding it, and with only about one hour, it surely was a short ride. But we made it a good road trip. Fitting five people into Geeg’s not-too-big car made it a snug and cozy ride on the back seat. Swiping the steamy windows every other minute in order to take a look at the rolling hills on both sides of the highway, and the snow covered grasslands that stretched between scattered patches of bleak woods. So much for aesthetic pleasures. The actual fun was provided mostly by stereo: my roommates have a pretty good taste in music, and we listened to a lot of classics: Crosby, Stills and Nash; Steely Dan; Dylan; Stones; Steve Miller Band. Even better—for most songs, all of us joined in singing, especially Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work” which just seems to be Nat’s and Geeg’s song. Great one, too!

     Soon we approached the Hocking Hills State Park, and a few minutes later we eventually arrived at the parking lot for Old Man’s Cave. I was still not quite sure if this cave would really be as nice as predicted - and why would it be so much different in winter than in any other season? After all, caves are not really exposed to snow. Turns out that the designation “cave” is a blatant understatement for what we were about to see!

     Among snow-laden conifers, we descended a couple of stairs and then went down an incline between smoothly shaped black rock protruding towards us from the left and right. It took me two or three more minutes to realize that we were now right at the bottom of a long gorge.This was our destination, not even necessarily the cave itself. As we walked (and slipped,as you will see) through it, I continually lagged behind because I had to take so many photos of this beautiful scenery. Its steep crags laying bare the naked, now brown-coppery to pale grayish rock. The crystal icicles hanging from the ledges in the hundreds and thousands. The meandering creek that coiled and twisted its way along the bottom of the gorge, revealing its clear waters only where the sheet of ice no longer prevailed. The conifers and the bald and leafless gnarly black trees all around us. This was much more than I had expected from this trip!
     Walking through the gorge, we repeatedly had to face the challenge of descending thickly frozen stairs. While we still tried walking them the first and second time, we realized that this would not really work, it was even dangerous. Instead, it was much easier, and much more fun, to just slide down! So we squatted on our cheeks and heels, used our hands for support, and slipped down those icy stairs. It’s hard to imagine how funny this actually was - both seeing it and doing it! And there were a lot of stairs, so we had quite some practice to master the discipline.
     Moving on like this, we came to three or four frozen waterfalls, one of which was only half frozen, another had some water trickling inside of it. So it must have been the perfect temperature that day to allow for some water to appear in its liquid form while most of it was solid ice. When we passed the cave itself, we wanted to go on first and then return to check it out. We never did. Our way brought us up on one side of the gorge, and we decided that it would be too much of a hike back just to see the cave. I’m positive that we will go there again in spring, and then we’ll visit the cave, too.

     The ride back home was much quieter than the one that brought us out here, I guess because most of us were somewhat tired. Additionally, the former excitement had given way to reflection and satisfaction. Back home, we had a good cup of hot chocolate and enjoyed some leftovers of last night’s potato dinner. After that, and into the night, I eventually read some Steinbeck and biotech. Kerouac was the one who had to yield to this day’s outdoor experience. I know he'd be the first to understand.

Stammtisch

Last week, Sophia and I had the idea to host a German dinner. It was mostly intended as a way of expressing a bit of the gratitude we feel for some of the folks that we’ve met here (like the man whose name you’ve read in almost every single post on my blog, including this one) and to have a nice evening with a couple of our new-found friends. So the two of us and Sam (he insisted on helping us) spent a good deal of Saturday afternoon in my kitchen preparing the food. In practice, that meant peeling and cooking dozens of potatoes and sweet potatoes because we wanted to cook a sweet potato and ginger soup along with potato salad and potato pancakes. Although we called it German dinner (or, alternatively, Stammtisch) we had no intention of necessarily preparing the most typical German food, but instead just something we like to eat. And while Sophia was the brains, the chief executive and manager of our culinary crew, Sam and I were the executive organs. The hardworking hands, relegated to the menial labors of peeling and grating the tubers. We had a good time racing each other at the graters while constantly afraid of the possibility of grating our own fingers as the potatoes shrunk away, but in the end we might have had too much fun because we weren’t quite on schedule. 

     So, while the first guests came in after 7 p.m. dinner was only almost ready. But they had crackers with cheese. And beer. Luckily, the other Leipzig students also brought some food, so we did not solely depend on a potato based meal. Then everyone was eating, and no one was complaining. Everyone said they liked it, and I think we’d done an okay job, too. I'd also put some effort into creating a playlist with some good German music, including a whole lotta great songs by ClickClickDecker, Herrenmagazin,  Tomte, Eins Zwo,  and, of course, MC Fitti's 30 Grad. Unfortunately, most people preferred listening to Geeg's record collection (Stones, Dylan, Fleetwood Mac, etc.) in the living room. Can't blame 'em, it's good music! Anyway, after dinner, we hung out a bit more, some of us shotgunning beers on the porch (I know, it’s really bad. Don’t do it!), drinking some self-made hot nuts (Take that, Tony’s!—Just kiddin’, love you!) or-the alternative preferred by some others-just fencing intellectually over the federal government’s success/failure in social politics. Then, because Natalie knew another place for us to go, we left the house to crash another living room where we might have stayed for about half an hour or so before we hit the bars. A couple of beers later, after the dreadful hour of 2 a.m., the few of us who were still up and about said hi at Michael’s and Justin’s place where we watched some Sochi snowboarding, and then went on home, back into our house upon the mound. Maybe the best thing after all is, a lot of the food is still left!

The Super Bore. - Or Was It?

Why, of course did I watch the Super Bowl! I’m usually proud of my strict and narrow-minded attitude against sports (as a spectacle, not as an activity). Let’s be honest—all the money, time, passion, interest, and effort we put into sports could be invested so much better in so many other areas where these things are seriously needed! This is just the most obvious aspect about it. And I know: ‘But it’s so exciting, and it’s a form of art, and it brings people together across national boundaries, and it generates so much revenue and this and that and most of all!’–Nope. Sorry.

But anyways, I won’t get started on this topic. Don’t wanna alienate each and every one of you! I like my friends regardless of their affiliation with sports ;-) So I told myself earlier okay, either you erect a flagpole on your front lawn or you watch the Super Bowl—try something ‘American.’ The second option was the cheaper one, so I opted for that. Also, it prevented me from becoming a Sunday-night social outcast. It won’t come as a big surprise to my faithful reader(s) that Sam’s family had once again cordially invited me over to their house, so I gladly accepted the offer and went there. He’d also invited some other friends, and we had a good time with some great food (the most important aspect of Super Bowl!). So then the game started and I tried to remember some of the things that Rene had taught me a couple of weeks ago when we’d watched football at Jacky O’s, but I didn’t recall a lot. I think I understood the basics even though I had no idea what the other guys’ “Oooooohhhhhh” or “What’s he doing?” or “Seriously, dude!” referred to most of the time. Didn’t bother to ask, either, because

a)      any explanation would have caused a string of follow-up questions: –“Wait, the line of what?”

b)      I didn’t want to interrupt watching the game

c)       I would have forgotten all of these things by Monday, and—to be honest—

d)      I really didn’t care too much about the mechanics of American football to justify going through a), b), and c).

Apart from that, I can proudly say that, early on in the game, I recognized two things all by myself (they weren’t too hard):

a)      Peyton Manning (Denver Broncos) must be some kind of superstar.

b)      This wasn’t his best game.

Now, I won’t walk you through the entire game. I couldn't do that and it would just bore you. If you’re interested in it, you've probably watched it yourself anyway. The Seattle Seahawks won 48:6 (or so). And it was entertaining to see, no doubt about that for me. But it was not a good game (Jimmy would disagree). The Broncos got served big time, and they did not seem to have much to set against that. But you still have the commercials! The game is interrupted like every single minute, so there is a lot of time to tell us

-          that the beauty of American diversity has to be somehow connected to the world’s most famous soft drink. Seriously, have you seen this spot? What’d you think? There’s a lot of debate going on currently about how outrageous it is that “America the Beautiful” was sung in languages other than English. Whatever you wanna think of that. I haven’t read any statement, however, that asks what this has to do with the product. It’s a soft drink!!! It’s not the federal government!!! I mean, we all know how commercials work, sure. They’re almost never about the product they advertise. They’re about the lifestyle that detergent X will bring to your home, and about the incredible success with women you’ll have if you just put on enough of that new fragrance of deodorant Y. But this spot—it just felt like the epitome of manipulative advertising, exploiting something that people believe in, that they have grown up to appreciate, to take for granted, to admire, to hate, or whatever. To sell drinks. The thing is—it works!

-             Or that the car you buy should be built in America. It’s not such a bad commercial, but the fact that Bob Dylan tells you all these things, like “Is there anything more American than America?” just in order to sell cars—that somehow just doesn't work out for me. Wasn't there a time when he was one of the most important critical voices of capitalism in this country? Hmmhhh. Well, maybe “times are a ‘changing” for the man who used to proclaim that he “Ain't gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”

I could go on complaining about many other spots, but I think both you and I have better things to do. There were also some very funny ads (featuring Stephen Colbert, the Muppets, and ALF)! Oh, and the half time show? I missed it. I was talking to Sam’s mum. Such a nice lady! But I think I didn't miss a lot with Bruno Mars and the RHCP…

Discoveries

Dear Reader! Have you read my last post? I mentioned the pitfalls of routine and tunnel view. Luckily, I haven’t been exposed to them entirely over the last days. So I have continued discovering many aspects of Athens that I haven’t noticed before.

I'm not fat! I'm just big-boned.

1. Cardinals are beautiful birds! While I haven’t seen our herd of backyard deer for quite a few days now, two cardinals were jumping and fluttering around in the shrubbery behind our house just this morning. And there was a bigger bird as well, blue-white plumage. I wanna say it was a blue jay, but I don’t know if they live around here...

2. The best stores are the least obvious ones. Last week, my roommate Lisa and I went out to get some wine and beer for a party. She took me to this small privately owned shop on Court Street in which every bottle, carton of cans, and six-pack has not only a price tag, but also another tag with a four-digit number on it. At the cash register, a nice old man—apparently the proprietor—uses a thick magnifying glass to check your I.D. Then he jots the numbers from the tags down on a tiny slip of paper, so I guess that this is the way he keeps track of his inventory. It may take about 5 minutes to buy a beer here, but this is one of these nice little stores that are not yet standardized and hyper-sterilized, and you kinda feel that the money you just spent on tomorrow’s hangover helps the right person to make ends meet.
        And just two days ago, I discovered the lovely Athens Underground. Situated in a basement on North Court Street, this thrift shop would easily make thousands of Euros in Kreuzberg and Plagwitz. They sell tons of clothes, accessories, china, books, and many other things as long as they're vintage and—in Athens Underground's own words—ugly. I rummaged around for a bit and the hipster in me fell in love with a snazzy flannel shirt at a very good price. The rest of me likes it, too, so that’s fine. I might go there again.

3. OU takes—well—let’s say it takes good care of its students in some interesting respects. On Sunday, I received a text message (I guess every student did) saying “Ohio University Athens Campus is open tomorrow, Mon. Jan 27. […]” Aehm—Of course, it’s a Monday! Later, an email on the same topic revealed that this was about the cold. Apparently, it was not cold enough to shut school for Monday. Then, on Monday, another text message informed us that Athens campus would be closed on Tuesday! Weather forecasts had predicted a severe cold, so students should better stay at home. The accompanying email provided us with about half a dozen tips on how to survive this apparently arctic climate. Don’t leave the house, dress in layers—stuff like that. Rebel that I am, I left the house, and so did others! Thanks to OU’s good advice, however, we somehow managed to survive while Court Street was crammed with dog sleds, sourdoughs, miners, and prospectors who had all come down from Alaska to see if it was really that cold, thus turning the city into 1898 Dawson (You know I like to stretch things from time to time. — the‘truth’ can be so boring). The funny thing is that Tuesday wasn’t even the coldest day of the week. Wednesday or Thursday was colder, but school was opened. Hmpf. But I even kinda like the cold. There’s nothing like a walk on a crisp day under clear blue skies! When the air you exhale immediately turns to ice in the facial hair you’d like to call a beard, if only it was thick enough.

4. Warmth is pretty nice as well. At about 14°C (57°F), yesterday was by far the warmest day since I’ve been in the country. You can’t imagine the communal joy and excitement caused by the sudden appearance of spring! From our backyard in the early afternoon, and even from inside the house, we could hear people cheering and rejoicing all over town. We knew we had to do something outside in order to escape the house on this beautiful day. So what better thing to do than drive to McDonald’s!? (We had to get rid of some coupons.) We took Nat’s cat with us and she seemed like she couldn’t believe her eyes, running and jumping around in the car all the time and meowing constantly. She was happy. Grabbed some frappés and fries, and then Geeg drove Nat and me to some friends where we hung around on the front porch, hailing strangers on the street. Warm air, cold Miller High Life, hot country music, and cool puppy dog Winnie running around crazily because she was just experiencing her first warm day ever. Good times. Unfortunately, today I woke up to the sound of pouring rain, and it continued until about 1 or 2 p.m. In the evening, precipitation has turned to snowfall again, so right now everything looks just like yesterday has never happened.