What's THIS For...?!http://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/Fall-of-Because/blog/default.htmen-USCopyright © 2009 DominikFri, 03 Jul 2009 01:16:08 GMTFri, 03 Jul 2009 01:16:08 GMTSampa v.1.0 (www.sampa.com)http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss12010 Minutes that Changed Nothing, ActuallyMy house is situated such that you can return from a week's vacation and not realize that a giant -- albeit not roof-crushing -- limb has fallen and rested itself on the far side of the garage roof.

Not until the dogs led me back there, in pursuit of an imagined prey giving off an imagined scent from an imagined position of danger, did I notice just the fringe branches at the end of this walnut limb.

It's a funny feeling, that discovery: Wow, stuff happens when you're gone. Wow, if not for my dogs' wandering, that "nuisance" to neighbors could have sat there for weeks. Wow, what else do I not yet realize I missed?

After a week of catching up with work, Monday night I used mid-summer's late daylight to heave out the ladder from storage, prop it up against the garage, and take my saw up to the roof. It's a not uncommon exercise when your house is surrounded by a few towering trees that like to dwarf and threaten the home.

For about 15 minutes, I sawed the 25-foot limb (walnuts apparently have very long and slender limbs) into manageable pieces I could toss off the roof without my momentum sending me tumbling after the toss. I spent some time looking up at the tree, trying to study where the limb came from (found it) and whether it might be weak or diseased. We'd had it pruned by an arborist last summer, so I didn't expect to find anything Amateur Homeowner could actually pretend to interpret.

Once finished, I brushed off the roof, climbed down and started sawing the pieces into still smaller ones. My wife came home and pulled her car into the garage. As she got out, we caught up for a few minutes -- she standing still next to the car, caught between conversation and bag retrieval.

Then I heard it.

Pop...burrrrruurn ... burrrruuuurn-snap-WHOOSH

Another limb, about twice as big as the one I just removed, snapped and came to a crash landing right on the same part of the roof where I'd been just 10 minutes before. This one carried so much momentum and length that gravity or destiny then brought it sliding down to the grass on the side of the garage.

My wife saw the stunned look on her face and initially started to walk out of the garage, but I didn't want her coming out, since I wasn't sure where the limb was headed. But really, it happened so fast I was basically inert.

If I'd still been on the roof, I don't know how that two-second moment would have transpired. Had I frozen, I suppose the still-green leaves and small branches with the limb would have softened the landing enough so that it didn't kill me outright. Whether I'd then have rolled off the roof, who's to tell?

But I'm fascinated by these moments -- not in a morbid way, but more in a biomechanical and routine-vs.-flight way. Had I still been up there, would my sporting instincts have kicked in to scramble to the other, safe side of the roof? Would I have lost my balance and tumbled off the other side? Would I have played running back and foolishly tried to dodge the falling limb without running like hell?

I don't know. I was never afraid of heights as a kid, but these days when I climb on roofs I flirt with that feeling of wooziness -- like the feeling I get when I crawl up to the edge of the Grand Canyon to ponder the great dropoff and the expanse of space. I think it's fascination with the body response and with the ability of a flinch or sudden move to change everything in a moment. And fascination with a physical positioning that an urban dweller just doesn't experience that often.

So if I was up there on the roof, saw in hand, and realized the bigger limb was coming down, would it be the awe of the moment taking over? Survival? Paralysis at the competition of both?

I don't know, but it's fun to think about. Fascination aside, I'm sure glad I didn't find out.


]]>http://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/10-Minutes-that-Changed-Nothing.htmDominikHomehttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/10-Minutes-that-Changed-Nothing.htmhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/10-Minutes-that-Changed-Nothing.htmThu, 02 Jul 2009 00:13:13 GMTThe best Onion video yet?It's scary how good they are, how well they capture so much of our times. It's daunting to imagine anyone attempting to be a modern-day Twain when The Onion can do it in a two-minute video (complete with priceless crawl and ticker).

"Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals for America after Visit to Denny's"




]]>http://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/The-best-Onion-video-yet.htmDominikhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/The-best-Onion-video-yet.htmhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/The-best-Onion-video-yet.htmTue, 09 Jun 2009 16:48:00 GMT2009-06-09T16:48:59Exiting to the bluesThis picture is from the second memorial service for my dad (because every important person must have more than one service!).

Hearing the bluesIt was a week after the first one (the village/family funeral when he was rolled out in a casket and then cremated). It was in the city and scheduled, I suppose, to allow for more distant visitors to make it to the service. (With the number of stops and miles to cover, there was no way we were making the first service.)

Though he didn't tell us -- nor want us to know, I suspect -- when The End was coming, I imagine his meticulous plans for his post-death services were arranged in such a way that I and his other kids could make this second one.

(As detailed earlier, we didn't quite make it. We decided to wait for the summer, when we could make it a grander trip to the Czech land where everybody who wanted to go could go.)

At the time, I knew that my jazz drumming father specified some jazz to be played during this service -- so naturally I wondered which, of the literally thousands of old records he owned, contained the numbers he wanted played. What special meaning would they have? Would they be obscure or widely recognized classics?

As I understand it, he was exposed to Western music while under the thumb of that crazy WWII period where first the Nazis and then the post-war Soviets decided, like so many empires before them, that Czechoslovakia would be a nice land to conquer.

So in addition to being sort of a student pro-West rebel, he was a bit of a swing kid -- although with more political orientation than the kids in the movie.

I expected to find out the songs when we visited in June -- maybe even hear them there -- but one of my sisters contacted our main English-speaking contact over there and got the answer. Fittingly, it touched me and made me laugh all in the same.

They were classic tracks, alright, but not in the sense I was expecting:

The first track was played before and after every Blues hockey radio broadcast. The second was played (faster) by the organist after every Blues goal. Eighty games a season, 100-plus home goals a year, I figure my dad heard those songs something about 10,000 times, more than any other songs in his life.

So there's that, but also: A lot of my better memories of him are wrapped around those tracks, as hockey was the main way we connected when I was growing up, and these were songs I heard coming over the radios he had placed strategically throughout his house so that he wouldn't miss a play.

Hart to put into words now what it's like to imagine that ceremony, pictured above, and have these tracks added to the soundtrack. For one, I know I'd be in tears if I were there when these songs began. For another, I know I'd also be laughing then (and now) as I watched all of these Czech relatives look at each other and wonder why on Earth he chose these bouncy songs for his proverbial exit.

He was an eccentric, even by Czech standards, so this would merely be par for the course. But still: it adds a little more levity to the moment, and it adds that mystical across-the-thin-red-line communication to think that, in some way, it was a shout out to his son.

Like smell-based memories, musical memories are always so very damned powerful to me -- like direct routes to the soul (or brain stem, as it were). So I'm not saying everything I want to say right now (partly because I'm scattered, but I know I'll never get it down if I don't just process it out loud here, now). But the flush of memories that wash over me listening to those songs, conjuring them up in my head, and thinking of this service I didn't attend and all of the Blues game "ceremonies" I did with my dad, well it's a pretty powerful time-brain-audio-sensory experience.

It's not even sad or happy or nostalgic, necessarily. It's just ... life. It's like so many years -- a huge swath of life experiences -- composed in one sustained moment within my brain here now. And it's pretty cool to just sit back and watch it play.



]]>http://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/Exiting-to-the-blues.htmDominikBluesfatherhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/Exiting-to-the-blues.htmhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/Exiting-to-the-blues.htmMon, 11 May 2009 21:59:25 GMT2009-05-11T21:59:26Shaking the museSo I'm clearly not handling this writing for multiple jobs thing well, as this blog keeps falling too dormant. Part of that is I really want to reorganize or redesign this site before adding content, since I'm pathetically disappointed with how the automatic redesign from the host put things all catawampus. But if I wait, I'll be waiting forever -- and this is the role (albeit unpaid) I enjoy writing for most.

So I'll stop whining. While I keep having topics in my head without the time to execute them...

...That ends today. We're picking up the pace here, come hell or high water. "God willing and the creek don't rise," and all that. Some will be unfinished or short of the mark, but I've got get pen-to-paper going again, or I'll keep stagnating. Please bear with, and as always feel free to point and mock. And thanks for the patience.

]]>http://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/Shaking-the-muse.htmDominikhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/Shaking-the-muse.htmhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/Shaking-the-muse.htmMon, 11 May 2009 21:11:11 GMTA different sort of 'Different Strokes'A friend just sent this to me, and it is excellent. The power of music to totally change connotation. [YouTube clip, safe for work, etc.]

On that note, I never paid much attention to the visuals of the "Different Strokes" intro, so I never realized just how blatantly "Look! Rich white guy rescues two of them black kids!" it was. (Although, in truth, I suppose that was the whole premise of the show. What the hey, I was young and innocent at the time.)

If you still even check this, I promise to post more now. No really. I'm finding that balance -- I swear! -- now that the Isles' season is over.

]]>http://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/A-different-sort-of-Different-St.htmDominikhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/A-different-sort-of-Different-St.htmhttp://FallOfBecause.sampa.com/fall-of-because/blog/A-different-sort-of-Different-St.htmFri, 17 Apr 2009 21:11:22 GMT