From the land of Winter Break: Pt. II

We used to get The Patriot Ledger delivered to the house, but my dad canceled our subscription, probably about a year ago. That newspaper has really gone downhill in the past few years. Instead of news, it’s mostly big images, chunky text, useless graphic design, and features lacking newsworthiness. About the only section that’s still noteworthy is the Business section, which is probably due to the fact that Jon Chesto, a Wesleyan alumnus, is the Business Editor.

While in high school, I used to read the Ledger just about every night after dinner. In the summer, I’d read it in the early mornings, after I got home from nights out with friends and before I went to sleep. I resurrect the habit over school breaks, because my dad usually picks up a copy of the Ledger or the Herald for me to read. While both papers are rags compared to my regular, the New York Times, they both have crosswords and Sudoku. I’ve been spending an hour or two most nights trying to complete them. I still can’t complete Sudoku puzzles harder than “moderate” and I still have yet to finish an entire crossword puzzle, but I’m getting there.

Aside from the puzzles, the Ledger had two interesting tidbits over the past few days.

One was a quote attributed to Greg Bliss, a Hingham resident opposed to CVS’s plans to plop yet another pharmacy in an otherwise residential area of town. Hilarious and spot-on, Bliss said, “It’s quiet and nice here. As soon as they start building this stuff here in residential areas, it becomes Weymouth or Abington or somewhere not as nice.”

Damn, Bliss, you said all that needs to be said about the level of development in Abington. I once had plans to get involved in town politics here, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that there isn’t much here that’s worth improving. Bliss’s quote sums it all up: we’re an overdeveloped, mismanaged suburban wasteland with little sense of community, a town whose only solution to climbing tax rates was build, build, build, ripping up all available lots and allowing giant retail behemoths like Stop & Shop, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart, and Target to infiltrate our small town.

Does a town of 14,000 really need four huge big-box stores, with their sprawling parking lots and endless streams of traffic, their disproportionate gobbling up of town services and reckless destruction of the few open spaces we had left in this town? And is it really fair to taxpayers that these massive corporations pay the same tax rate as the average homeowner? Or that these retailers are welcomed with open arms and tax breaks to come and destroy the small-town community that might, instead, have been nurtured?

My answer is no.

The second was a story about the Abington elementary school teacher who allegedly had sex with a boy over 300 times in the course of two years, starting when the kid was 13 years old. Now, sexual abuse of a child is inexcusable and, if the allegations are found to be true and she is convicted, she deserves to be punished. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but chuckle at a number of the comments that readers have left on the story, making the kid out to be the luckiest guy in the world. One user, rusty75, wrote:

Why weren’t my teachers good looking when I was in high school… If it was my son that did this, I would give him a high five and bring him out for ice cream. This is every guy’s dream when they are that age… Good for that kid, 300 times in two years!!!

My sleeping habits continue to be erratic and unmodifiable, despite my occasional attempts at adopting a more normal schedule. I’ve been playing a lot of Call of Duty 5 and Grand Theft Auto, and I’m not a little scared that if I see a pedestrian in a crosswalk, I’m going to plow him over. I was never one to believe that video games contributed to increasing violence, but after an hours-long session of GTA, it takes a while to snap back into my original moral mindset and remember that beating a bum to death for his pocket change, or taking a hooker into a dark alley for some fun, or rampaging through a hospital wielding a double-barreled shotgun, is simply not acceptable in the non-video game world.

The moon is nearly full tonight, and the world out my window, breathtakingly bright. The sky’s a crisp, marine blue. The moonlight reflects off the icy snow still coating the lawns, establishing itself as sunlight’s equal. And the earth is eager to assist, the ground like a giant mirror, amplifying its brightness and casting a faint blue glow on the trunks of trees. The moon is in command of the sky and the earth; irregularities in the otherwise polished surface of the icy snow reveal specks of glinting moonlight, like tiny twinkling stars brought down from the heavens and placed within our grasp. The earth radiates a foreign form of light—the otherworldly luminescence of an underpowered black light—revealing itself, if only for one night, on the ground, beneath our very worldly feet.

BBC Radio’s Heart and Soul has featured Gerald Butt the past few nights, talking about the lost spirituality of flight and flying, and I’ve just so happened to catch it on WBUR. Tonight’s installation featured a poem by Andrew Motion, called ”Coming In To Land”. It really gripped me, and I drove through Pembroke mesmerized as I blindly cruised up Route 139, transfixed by the sound in my ears rather than focused on the road in front of me. Coming from Wendy’s house, the site of a budding relationship, Motion’s use of landing as a metaphor for death, and his focus on the impermanence of youth, was sobering.

Listen to the poem for yourself; Butt’s relevant commentary starts at 8:20 and ends at 13:13.

Twenty minutes out from base, we begin a glide on course from 10,000 feet. Up here it is hot in the sun, but we can see on the ground, it will be dull. Broken layers of stratocumulus are wastelands, stretching as far as the horizon. They’re at 2,000 feet, and won’t worry us for a while yet. We live by death’s negligence. I believe that, and think of Don, though there is nothing to say. Falling short makes me despise myself.

With air speed at 85 mph, the surging roar has ceased, and now the old kite rests on the air, slightly nose down, and sighing. No vibration, both engines muted. The props meandering around, minute after minute, while the distant world imperceptibly approaches with small clouds anchored like white zeppelins, and flashing lakes, and river bends beyond them.

I never realized how much my life involved him. Things I remember seem endless. The whole region is loaded and rich with them. Friesians lifting their heads from grazing, cottage washing lines, dust following a plow. All these sights become less real and more as I know them. Shall I see Gene when I’m home on leave? When Mrs. P. let me know Don had volunteered for airborne work overseas, I said, “Gene will be sorry.” But, “Not sorry, proud,” came the answer. That soon brought me betraying my own youth to youth’s error. What if he’s killed?

Here we go, sinking over the road, across the field, skimming the hedge and straight to the beginning of the runway. It nears, it broadens, it rises to become hard ground rushing past. Our engines barely murmur, but we still rest on the air while grass streams away on either side. At last comes the crunch of first contact. We bounce a little and bump again. Bump, pause, bump bump bump bump bump, circling in quicker until we are easy. A grand life.

Sooner or later, we shall come into line with the rest and stop. Then the engines will cut, the props jerking stickily to a halt. Then the silence will sing to me.

I am going to try to sleep now.