I Got A Job

I went in for my first day of work yesterday (Saturday) and signed a lot of papers, and went out for a pretty long orientation session with my new supervisor.  I'm going to be working weekends in the office of the local Humane Society, and I couldn't be more excited about it.  Everyone I met there seemed nice, and I'm looking forward to making a humble contribution.

How long will I be there?  Very long, hopefully!  The job is a good fit for me, since it still allows me to focus on my Dad.

So things are great.  It's getting colder.  My sister and my nephew are coming out in a few weeks for Thanksgiving.  I've got a ton of raking to do.  I'm keeping up with my five kilometer morning walks.  I'm happy not to be spending time every afternoon looking at local job openings.

This week I'll be training to work the phones.  As of next weekend, I think I'll start working my regular Saturday and Sunday schedule.

I probably won't have a lot more to say about it, other than that it will be nice to get out of the house (hey, even my Dad will probably appreciate having a break from me).

"Home of the Big Bun!"

No, Bellingham doesn't have In and Out, but we do have Grant's!  I treated myself after my first day of work yesterday (yes, that's a vanilla shake).  Pretty good stuff.  Would nom again.

Making Plans for James

I just accepted a new job.  It's part time, so I can focus on taking care of my Dad, and for the first time in over a decade it's not teaching.  I'm going to start my training this Saturday.  I'll have more to say about it later, but it's a great organization and so far I've really enjoyed meeting the people I'll be working with.

When I lived out here for a year before moving to South Korea I made kayaks.  It was a tough, physical job (I wore a hardhat even!) but it payed off all of my debts before I moved onto that adventure abroad.  Things are much different now -- for the better.  Bellingham is not and never will be the best place to find solid, middle-class work (it's about one half retirees who come out and build their own houses, so construction is actually a growth field) so I'm feeling pretty good about myself, to be honest.  Based on my experience out here 12 years ago, there are a lot more places hiring and starting wages are a lot higher (almost double in some cases) what they used to be.  This is a very good thing!

Money Always Wins -- A Halloween Story

For your Halloween reading pleasure and delectation, a story from me (cw: gore).  Happy Halloween!

Money Always Wins

The plan for Halloween was simple.  Stranded at that frustrating age between enjoying a night collecting free candy and a night of hard drinking and dancing in as little clothing and as much body paint as possible, the potential hook-up and all, Sasha, Sasha, and Joaquin decided to make their own fun.  They were all students at the local high school way up and out of town to the north, practically Canada but not quite.  Fall had already moved in – not the crisp, bright autumns you see in movies set in New England where people pick apples in over-priced fleece vests, but the rainy, dank fall of Bellingham, Washington.  The leaves didn't crunch under your feet as much as they turned to mush, and fat, confused slugs wondered where the sunshine was hiding before being pancaked by truck tires.  Battered pairs of jeans and leather jackets, each a size or two too small, were their uniforms now – like shivering little Ramones for the next five months.  Only tourists or old people would be caught wearing weather appropriate gear out here.  Sasha G., rarely acknowledged as pack leader but leader all the same, had made plans for the Saturday night before Sunday, Halloween day.  They were going to break in and search through the abandoned tribal casino just off the highway towards Mount Baker.

Sasha G. came from even further up the highway, where a few generations back a local Orthodox church had payed to bring entire families of fellow believers over from Russia.  There hadn't been too much thought put into just what these families would do once they were settled in the wilds north of the town proper, but construction jobs were usually plentiful.  People liked to retire out here – buy a piece of land with more trees than they knew what to do with, then cut them all down to make lawns, almost out of fright at so much wild nature being allowed to remain in place.  So a snowball of plumbers, electricians, and general workers who knew how to use a chain saw (or pretended to) could make something of a living out here along with the retirees from California and their pensions.  That's what Sasha G.'s own father did, close to retirement now himself, as well as Sasha B.'s father before the heart attack.  Joaquin's dad was a dentist in town but liked living out here with the deer and the squirrels and the rabbits, who actually seemed to love the isolation and quiet despite the fact that his wife and son very much did not.

Fall Color

Bellingham, Washington.

Lovely fall color.  Of course, I'll have to rake it all up eventually.

Sic transit gloria, amirite?

On Finally Reading Ezra Pound's The Cantos

I've had a relatively large amount of free time since I moved back to America from South Korea, and yet I've also been busier than expected in taking care of my Dad.  It's not a job exactly, but it requires a lot of attention to detail and scheduling just like, say, a "real" job.  But I have managed to read more in 2021 than I have since graduate school, and almost entirely for my own pleasure -- mostly novels, some history, and some poetry -- something I read very little of while living in Daegu.  This fall I've also started picking and eating wild mushrooms, only for myself -- not out of gluttony, but because poisoning my 92 year-old father at this point would be a pretty bad look.

I bought myself a copy of Ezra Pound's The Cantos, the big black 824 page edition from New Directions than any former English major will recognize -- a commanding, uninviting tome, even before you open it.  And while I read it for my own enjoyment (or lack thereof), not taking too many notes, I'd say it took me about a week and half to get through it.  I came to it familiar with the often anthologized bits, and a great like -- not quite love -- of his early, less ambitious works.  (Personae is a great place to start.)

So I say this with the vigor of any personal artistic opinion -- it is a deeply silly, unnecessary work on so many levels.  How it held so much sway -- so much power -- over English poetry in the 20th century is beyond me.  It is about one half gibberish -- intentional gibberish -- met with multiple laments against "n*ggers" and "k*kery" and, maybe to balance things out, Thomas Jefferson.  (John Berryman could pull this off most of the time in The Dream Songs.  When Pound tries to emulate foreign or, let's face it, black speech patterns it comes off as simply dull and cruel, like the worst jock to ever hold sway in a locker-room.)

"I wake up to a sunny day"

 

Eddie Rabbitt, "I Love A Rainy Night" live

Let's face it, people -- part of getting older means your tolerance for cheesiness increases exponentially.  I love this song.

Things move ahead slowly here in this tiny county just south of Canada.  I'll have more to say (of course!) but I've got two short stories getting published soon with a local online journal.  This will be my first published fiction, and I'm excited about it.  I'm also dealing with some South Korea stuff, believe it or not.  I really want to visit the country this February, but I won't go if the mandatory 14-day quarantine is still in effect.  Koreans and Korea-based expats are optimistic this will end soon, but who knows.  I've got a job interview this week which I'll also keep under wraps for a bit, although I'm optimistic about it.  And finally, I've been living for nine months with my 92 year-old Dad.  I think he's relatively happy, and I'm not sure if you can ask much more than that.  We'll go into town tomorrow (Monday) for some dawn-light grocery shopping, which is one of our rituals out here along with Saturday and Sunday football watching.

It's getting cold.  Bellingham kind of goes straight from summer to rainy, bleak winter, but I'm one of those weirdos who likes raw onion on his sandwiches and copious amounts of rain.

"a global humanitarian crisis"

There is nothing wrong, nothing at all, at this stage of Late Capitalism:

"Mohamed Arrachedi, the union’s Middle East coordinator, said he wakes up to dozens of WhatsApp messages from distraught sailors around the world: 'It’s a global humanitarian crisis.'

In the United Arab Emirates, one shipping company abandoned seven container ships in recent months, leaving behind dozens of crew members, each owed a year’s wages. A five-man crew marooned next to a Dubai tourist resort, living off little more than rice for 10 months, recently ended a four-year ordeal.

Last year, a mostly Egyptian crew was abandoned in Sudan. The ship was then sold and manned by a mostly Sudanese crew who also were abandoned in Egypt. Three of them are still aboard, floating off the Suez Canal in their ninth month without pay.

The surge in cases prompted three of the world’s largest seafaring nations—China, Indonesia and the Philippines—to propose in August the establishment of a seafarers’ mutual emergency fund to help abandoned crews.

Trade disruptions caused by the pandemic and the nature of the competitive, lightly regulated global shipping industry has helped drive the increase in the number of stranded sailors."

Tell me again -- who, exactly, are the pirates? 

Important Sports Post

This prediction is more aspirational than not, but I'm looking for Tampa Bay and Milwaukee to play in the World Series.

Update: Ouch.  Fuck the Astros.  I honestly don't care for any of these teams, except maybe the Dodgers or Giants.

Sad Sculpture

Bellingham, Washington.

A creepy abandoned casino, just in time for Halloween.

Widowmaker!

Things move along out here in the wilds of northern Bellingham.  Fall came in quicker than I expected -- lots of rain, and I've already got leaves to rake.  One thing you'll start to see out here are widowmakers, which are trees that don't quite manage to fall during rain or wind-storms.  If you look at this picture from left up to the right you'll see a medium sized tree snapped and fell into one across from it.  At any point (probably the next storm) it's going to fall.

So that's your little bit of Pacific Northwest wisdom / safety for today.