Not Just A Hat Rack

Air Traffic Control, We Have a Problem

  According to reports in today's Salt Lake Tribune and yesterday's evening news, Salt Lake City has the worst air in America.  Television reported that our "haze" is 2 1/2 times worse than Los Angeles.  Calling Mayors Rocky Anderson and Peter Corroon, can you make this a priority?

In the unique way in which Utahns avoid controversy and use euphemisms, "haze" is really starting to get to me.  This is smog - and it's one of Salt Lake City's biggest negatives.  We're talking about "unsafe for children and elderly to be outside" toxic air.  For crying out loud, airplanes CAN'T land because visibility is so bad.  Do you realize how nasty this is?

Yes, this city is in a bowl surrounded my mountains that causes some unique inversion of smelly, dirty air - but no locals recall this phenomenon more than 10 years ago.  This is emissions-induced 21st century "gunk" that is literally jeopardizing the health of its citizens and significantly deteriorating the quality of life here.

In fact, I'd have to say it's probably the single biggest disappointment for me since transplanting my family here 2+ years ago. 

Law of Dreams

Peter Behrens' coming-to-America novel Law of Dreams follows a poor Irish farmboy through potato-famine era tragedy and misery.  It's a satisfying country byway of a tale with a gripping storyline.  A veritable stew of characters enter and exit the narrative, constantly encouraging the reader to question their motives, sincerity and fate.  A reader is never quite sure whether it's worth "rooting" for any character.

Fergus O'Brien is the yo ung protagonist who flees the farm his family has worked when the potatoes come up black.  Sent to a "workhouse", he doesn't last there long either.  He is called by the road, by a life incompatible with staying anywhere, and days of chasing and pursuing follow.  He pursues opportunity.  He chases food.  He seeks women, companionship.  He follows dreams.  But, mostly he flees stillness.  Like the quiet wake of a slowed ocean liner in a riverway, Fergus leaves a trail of corpses, suffering and greed.

"The world is strangers," Behrens writes as he introduces us to plenty.  He opens with  Carmichael, the farmer, with his comely daughter Phoebe.  Murty Larry befriends Fergus in the workhouse.  Luke leads an Oliver Twist street urchin army called the Bog Boys.  Mary runs Shea's Dragon, a Irish outpost with a lyrical sound and a lurid story.  Muck Muldoon fights man and horse - he's a bare-knuckled villain of a boss.  Molly is with Muck.  William Ormsby is the sage traveler with tales of Indians encountered, vanquished or married.  Behrens keeps them coming.  They appear in the road like oncoming carriages.  And by and large they pass, some leaving an indelible mark on Fergus, some like a deep bruise fester under the skin.

Law of Dreams is a journey well worth the cost of passage.  Reviewers consider it a well-researched voyage of historical fiction.  For me, it's an emotional snapshot, carefully written, of a doomed generation of Irish souls.

Is courage just the awareness that gestures, journeys, lives have intrinsic shape, and must, one way or another, be completed?  That there is a path to be followed, literally to the death?  Awareness is harsh but better than being unaware, never sensing a path.  Better than a life of stunts, false starts, dead ends.  Better than the irredeemable ugliness of the halfhearted.  Better than feeling there is no shape to anything - there is.  The world knows itself.

Diarios de Motocicleta (2004)

Mrs. Hat Rack and I haven't made it to Sundance in our first two years here on the Wasatch Front.  We're intending to try and make a film this year, but meantime must derive satisfaction from catching one of 2004's breakthrough films on TV on the Sundance Channel tonight.

Filmed in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Cuba, Motorcycle Diaries is an endearing portrait of one of the most polarizing figures in 20th century America, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, as a 23-year-old.  Just a semester short of graduation from medical school, he sets out with his crass, clever 29-year-old biochemist friend, Alberto Granado, on a motorcycle journey from Buenos Aires to Patagonia to Valparaiso to Macchu Picchu to Caracas.  Politics aside, I recommend this film indisputably for its very original portrait of one of the most truly revolutionary characters in history.  Plus, the landscapes and faces of 1950's South America are spellbinding.

And if you delve into the politics, you see the seeds sown of Che's fiery, short-lived revolutionary life - before it became a myth, a logo, a focal point for young liberals everywhere.  Laced with humor, the film still paints a grim portrayal of indigenous men marching to near certain doom in the Atacama copper mines of Chile; of ruined Macchu Picchu abandoned for sprawling, miserable Lima; of laborers, lepers, artisans and the outermost fringes of mid-20th century society.

In the final credits, we learn that Granado accepted Che's invitation to Cuba in 1960 and founded a medical school where he still dwells today.  Che Guevara never saw the '70s.

To my father, who under ordinary circumstances would summarily dismiss a Sundance film (executive producer Robert Redford) telling Che Guevara's story ... don't.  For the humor, the crisp Argentine language, the cinematography and the origins of the Che Guevara legend, it's worth every minute.  I'll be surprised if you don't see a little of yourself in Italy in 1960; and a little of your son in the Czechoslovakia in 1991.

Soccer's Best Young Writer

Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl is head and shoulders above any other writer covering Major League Soccer from a national perspective.  It's probably safe to say he's better than every local scribe as well.  Several dinosaurs have first-hand experience writing about soccer for decades, but this youthful sport with its 12-34 fan base needs to develop its beat writers, just as we've had to groom referees, broadcasters, marketers and playmakers.  (Speaking of which, kudos to Freddy Adu, Chris Seitz and the rest of the USA U-20s for their 4-1 victory in the first game of qualifying for this Summer's World Youth Championship.) 

Here's a great interview with Grant Wahl (the best writing about MLS is still on blogs and sport-specific websites).

And here's how the Beckham saga went down, as written by Grant.

Nuclear Bomb Explodes (It's Only LA!)

            As a mushroom cloud created by a nuclear detonation unfurled on television tonight over Los Angeles, I remembered 1983 – the last time I watched a nuclear bomb going off in America in prime time.  As a 14-year-old, I was profoundly affected by the ABC miniseries “The Day After” when a television show demanded that we consider the most dire implications of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

            How times have changed.  I know many people who are too young to remember the latter stages of the Cold War… moments, people and places I feel like I grew up with: May Day weapons parades in Red Square, Olympic boycotts, Charter 77, Ceaucescu, Gorbachev, Walesa, Havel, Chernobyl, Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars initiative – the “Miracle on Ice”.  Time and history march on.

Barry Bonds, Mark Sweeney & Me

          According to a New York tabloid, Barry Bonds named teammate Mark Sweeney as the source of the amphetamines that caused the slugger to fail a drug test last year. Bonds’ people immediately issued a statement clearing Sweeney of any responsibility, but the episode did remind me of a run-in Mark Sweeney (and I) had with “the law”. Maybe Barry was right in the first place? Maybe Sweeney is a career criminal … a thug?

            In 1993, Mark Sweeney and I shared a season in the California League with the Palm Springs Angels. Sweeney was a $1,000/month, straight-arrow, Class-A dreamer with a smooth swing and dreams of playing for Autry’s Angels in Anaheim. I was a $1,000/month concessions manager dreaming of a bright future managing more (and bigger!) hot dog grills and beer kegs in Lake Elsinore (which peaked as an inland tourist destination for Hollywood types in about 1925).

            

Bagnato Byline Brings Back Bygone Memories

      Boise State’s improbable, never-say-die, underdog victory over Oklahoma has been amply dissected and disseminated by scores of sportswriters.  As much as I enjoyed the game as a fan, there is nothing I can add to this “Instant Classic.”  However, one game story leaped out at me above all others.  The byline of the AP game story the morning after spoke to me like the first day of journalism school.

             I remember the bitter cold of the 50-yard walk from my dorm door to Fisk Hall’s stately entrance.  It was the first week of classes in January 1987 and as an 18-year-old freshman I met my first journalism lab instructor: young, dashing, funny Andy Bagnato.  He was only two years removed from his student days at the Daily Northwestern when he returned to campus to teach a lab for Professor Roger Boye’s Basic Writing 101. 

In one of our first classes,

On the Road...

Ft. Lauderdale, FLA. -- I am attending the Major League Soccer combine where about 60 top collegiate players are vying for the attention of 13 MLS teams, which will stage its 11th SuperDraft next Friday in Indianapolis. 

Thus embarks another year of 50,000 miles of flying for me.  It's part of the job and last year took me to Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Fresno, Portland and Chicago - and one foreign country, Panama, for 24 hours.  The travel used to be fun - almost glamorous.  Today, however, we talked about how MLS is becoming middle-aged. 

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays from the ‘Hat Rack. We’re celebrating Christmas still, New Year’s and even Martin Luther King Day – which is when some of our cards will probably reach their intended destination. 

We love our cards – which were shot by Heather Brown back when there were still leaves on trees and crisp air required a sweater, not a pair of snowshoes (like Thursday in Salt Lake City.)  We were able to review all the images from Heather on her website.  Faced with too many choices, it took us forever to pick a card image, and even longer to communicate the choice and the holiday message, to her.

She moved mountains to get us the cards (secretly passed through a car window on a frigid day in an LDS ward parking lot) just before Christmas.  Food poisoning (me), an ear infection (Sophie), abdominal pains (Ms. Hat Rack), the lethargy-inducing inversion (all of us) conspired to bring about January far too quickly, without the cards having left our foyer table.  So, come this week, we sat down for the simple process of transferring and cleansing our address lists - made much easier by the receipt of so many cards. We managed to make the process last something like 36 hours, instead of the XP!-advertised “mail merge your address book in seconds” hype that has accompanied this age. 

So, with our apologies, the cards are en route, replete with holiday stamps. I’m off to try to get AHEAD of the curve for Valentine’s Day.

Four Wife Home for Sale

"This is at least a three-wife home," said Isaac Wyler...

Only in Utah, and only in the Salt Lake Tribune, can your New Year's Day newspaper contain a story about polygamist homes.  In case you have wondered what happens to houses vacated by polygamists fleeing prosecution now that their leader, Warren Jeffs, is in custody, read here.  Happy New Year everyone!