So the first thing I heard on the radio this morning was CSNY's "Ohio," and I was a bit surprised not to hear any commentary from the Boomer Overlords about the anniversary day of the most significant event to happen at my alma mater.
There's a parking lot now where the shooting happened and every year lots of aging hippies crawl out of the woodwork to protest downtown, women with hair down to their knees and faded Oberlin College t-shirts, men with coolie hats and t-shirts with the Vietnam flag on them telling you "I was there, maaaan!" and all sorts of other types who show up for such things.
Because of my reputation as a "random force of chaos" and because despite my introverted tendencies I somehow get acquainted with a strange mix of people, I ended up hanging out with a crusty punk kid with feathers in his matted hair who called himself Cobalt who'd ridden on top of trains to get here for the big protest (this was in the heart of Dubya's second term). His clothes smelled so bad that the ARA girl he knew here had to hang them outside her dorm room window.
He joined our dinner table and watched the Black Keys with my crew of friends (who told me afterwards "we just all assumed that he was someone you knew"). We all went to the playground at midnight to go on the swings and hang out in the parking lot and then the next day me and him sat outside debating politics and religion while while eating out of a jar of ancient organic peanut butter with our fingers. He was "fighting capitalism" by stealing pens from campus offices so people couldn't write checks and coughing up blood every five minutes and I'm amazed I didn't get sick, but I did buy him food on my meal plan because I had a week of school left and a few hundred dollars to burn. I wonder where he is now.
We had a May 4th room in the library that was a popular destination for vacationing Freedom Rockers and a haunt for dirty old men as it had a computer and was dark, and every year the school has a big symposium where the likes of Bobby Seale and Jello Biafra speak, music by people like Country Joe, and a lot of general hagiography and accompanying mythology surrounding the event. It's like 9/11 for the Woodstockers and their acolytes more or less. "Tell me Father, did they aim?, and all that.
I asked my dad about it, since I grew up on his record collection full of Creedence, Neil Young, and Hendrix, and since he had neither money or grades for college and didn't want to Vietnam if he didn't have to (being skeptical of our reasons for being there), he was in the National Guard at the time, but stationed in Toledo (going off base to see the MC5 at Bowling Green and feeling like he looked like a spook) and he says that the 60's had a lot of great music but were hell to live through.
He doesn't have much patience for most of his generation and this probably explains a lot of my cynicism about suburban crackers who listened to Zeppelin and now dig smooth jazz, who wax poetic about "True Revolutionaries like Che Guevara" but drive new SUVs and live in the suburbs away from all "those people" but will tell you about that one black friend they had in college who had an Afro and was down with Malcolm X.
There were a lot of activist groups when I was there, and while there were some really great people who've no doubt gone on to try to save the world, there were also a lot of holier-than-thou types who believed that bathing was "fascist" and more than a few trust-fund socialists from Hudson who drove nice cars and wore Nautica chinos with their Che shirt and it was very hard for me to take them seriously when I was selling my books and CDs for grocery money, working 30 hours a week, and walking everywhere.
Certain members of my family blame my Kent State education for making me a flaming liberal but if anything, my time there soured me on both sides so completely as things like Abu Ghraib and the torture memos began to come out and the rank hypocrisy of those who claim to be more moral and Christian justified the unjustifiable but the left wasn't a friendly place to born-again pro-lifers like yours truly who are too skeptical about general human nature to believe that we can build a better tomorrow through greater bureaucracy and Kum-Ba-Yah.
Showing posts with label kent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kent. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Friday, April 2, 2010
come outside, everyone's outside...
I've been taking an hour or two these last 2 days of vacation time, for various adventures and reconnecting.
Went down to Kent yesterday to walk around my old hangouts, reconnect with old friends, get some sweet potato/black bean burrito goodness at Taco Tonto's and see Henry Rollins for the second time with good people.
Drove back rocking to Jawbox and loving that the night is warm.
I'm going out today to shoot more graffiti and Cleveland-related photos, drive around to good music, bask in the sun.
Went down to Kent yesterday to walk around my old hangouts, reconnect with old friends, get some sweet potato/black bean burrito goodness at Taco Tonto's and see Henry Rollins for the second time with good people.
Drove back rocking to Jawbox and loving that the night is warm.
I'm going out today to shoot more graffiti and Cleveland-related photos, drive around to good music, bask in the sun.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
dog days
There was everything going on this weekend as far as fun city stuff goes, but it was enough for me to hang out with an endless succession of people who rock my world. My sister's bachelorette party was a success, and us girls had a lovely night at Lakewood Park eating hummus and watching the sunset. My cousin came in from Columbus and I got to see him the next day. English class started again for the kids, and it's now a little more structured, so far so good.
Some friends from Ethiopian church had a cookout at Edgewater that we went to, spicy grilled lamb and such. Muk rode his bike over after work and we hung out, lay down on the rocks to bask in the sun, were massively entertained by the little kids daring each other to pop 3 Warheads candies at once and telling each other "These are so awesome! They're TOXIC!"
Drove down to Kent for the wedding reception of some friends who are moving to Salt Lake City so it'll be awhile before I see them again.
I haven't seen everyone in forever and it felt like a family reunion. All the little babies I remember are running around and they've got younger siblings I haven't met. We're all trying to catch each other up on the last three years since I moved out of Kent and back to Cleveland.
The last time I saw some of these people was when I still lived down there, and others saw me last when I was dealing with some serious post-college underemployment-related depression so I was glad at least to be bringing some good news. And it was good to see everyone having a good time and doing well.
I only work two days this week, and then I'll be driving south with a stop in Mansfield to see my good friend Ryan and catch an MST3k movie with my cousin, who will be riding back with me for the rehearsal dinner for my sister's wedding. Should be good times. Wedding season has turned out to be fun.
Some friends from Ethiopian church had a cookout at Edgewater that we went to, spicy grilled lamb and such. Muk rode his bike over after work and we hung out, lay down on the rocks to bask in the sun, were massively entertained by the little kids daring each other to pop 3 Warheads candies at once and telling each other "These are so awesome! They're TOXIC!"
Drove down to Kent for the wedding reception of some friends who are moving to Salt Lake City so it'll be awhile before I see them again.
I haven't seen everyone in forever and it felt like a family reunion. All the little babies I remember are running around and they've got younger siblings I haven't met. We're all trying to catch each other up on the last three years since I moved out of Kent and back to Cleveland.
The last time I saw some of these people was when I still lived down there, and others saw me last when I was dealing with some serious post-college underemployment-related depression so I was glad at least to be bringing some good news. And it was good to see everyone having a good time and doing well.
I only work two days this week, and then I'll be driving south with a stop in Mansfield to see my good friend Ryan and catch an MST3k movie with my cousin, who will be riding back with me for the rehearsal dinner for my sister's wedding. Should be good times. Wedding season has turned out to be fun.
Monday, April 27, 2009
trust fund slum
I was laughing this morning when I saw the link to this article
I lived on that street for a year because I had friends looking for roommates and it was a short walk from campus and downtown.
It was more or less a slum for rich white kids who wanted to have their own "Animal House" with old homes that were literally falling apart and yards that were littered with old kegs and red plastic cups. There was broken glass everywhere and blackened pieces of old couches that had been burned in the middle of the street. I get really mad when I hear people in suburban Cleveland talking about any group of "other" people bringing down the neighborhood, because their own kids would do a damn good job of it.
The city council called it a "blighted neighborhood" for good reason. And Peter Frampton's daughter lived a couple houses down from me. I was living there when the first College Fest went down, and while there were no riots with tear gas and pepper spray, it looked almost exactly like this. Really, it looked like this pretty much all the time.
We didn't have keys to the front door, just deadbolts for our rooms and it wasn't uncommon to come home and find a drunk high school kid standing in your living room wondering where the party's at and trying to tell you that he's 23 or someone you've never seen before passed out on the couch. The girls upstairs used to throw water balloons off the roof at people walking home from the bars. One time three strippers showed up at my door looking for Jimmy and I sent them elsewhere.
The year after I moved to more quiet and less expensive environs, kids from Akron used to come up and rob and pistol-whip people walking home from the bars because the combination of stupidity, alcohol, and money was just too easy of a target.
I got to hang out with my old roommate this weekend, and it says a lot about dorm life that living here was better, but also that we wondered how we ended up there, and how we thought that life was actually normal.
I lived on that street for a year because I had friends looking for roommates and it was a short walk from campus and downtown.
It was more or less a slum for rich white kids who wanted to have their own "Animal House" with old homes that were literally falling apart and yards that were littered with old kegs and red plastic cups. There was broken glass everywhere and blackened pieces of old couches that had been burned in the middle of the street. I get really mad when I hear people in suburban Cleveland talking about any group of "other" people bringing down the neighborhood, because their own kids would do a damn good job of it.
The city council called it a "blighted neighborhood" for good reason. And Peter Frampton's daughter lived a couple houses down from me. I was living there when the first College Fest went down, and while there were no riots with tear gas and pepper spray, it looked almost exactly like this. Really, it looked like this pretty much all the time.
We didn't have keys to the front door, just deadbolts for our rooms and it wasn't uncommon to come home and find a drunk high school kid standing in your living room wondering where the party's at and trying to tell you that he's 23 or someone you've never seen before passed out on the couch. The girls upstairs used to throw water balloons off the roof at people walking home from the bars. One time three strippers showed up at my door looking for Jimmy and I sent them elsewhere.
The year after I moved to more quiet and less expensive environs, kids from Akron used to come up and rob and pistol-whip people walking home from the bars because the combination of stupidity, alcohol, and money was just too easy of a target.
I got to hang out with my old roommate this weekend, and it says a lot about dorm life that living here was better, but also that we wondered how we ended up there, and how we thought that life was actually normal.
Friday, July 11, 2008
friday and my thoughts are scattered.
the jehovah witnesses have invaded. seriously. they're all over down here. they're busy going to a conference so they're not as interested in making me part of the 144,000 or whatever. thankful i don't drive down here because they've taken over all the parking lots and garages too.
back when i was a lowly undergrad at kent, i was a victim of a driveby evangelism campaign at 7am when i was walking up the summit street hill and this minivan pulls up and throws a couple watchtowers and that awake! magazine at me and drives off. i read the things just for kicks and marveled at the bad graphic design and the poorly written, uncredited articles. i wouldn't want my name on that either.
i am drinking coffee and attempting to wake up. trying to plan a weekend cleveland date of fun hanging out this weekend with the lindsey. not that i ever really make plans because the best plans tend to be those that randomly happen to you, but i do like to know what's going on.
somehow the eric b & rakim cd i ordered from the library got mixed up and i ended up with orchestral maneuvers in the dark instead.
when i was walking down mayfield yesterday i could tell there was a punk show going on because of the sudden influx of cars with loads of bumper stickers and kids with pink hair driving suv's with nofx painted on the back. reminds me why i didn't start listening to punk rock until my late teens when i got addicted to college radio. before that, i figured that if it all sounded like the sex pistols, mxpx, and the offspring, i wanted no part of it.
might check out the tremont art walk tonight after work. the last time i was down there on such a night i was driving around with val singing along to bad classic rock on the radio and somehow ended up exclaiming "die yuppie scum!" in the direction of a hapless well-dressed couple that came out of nowhere into the path of my car. not one of my finer moments especially considering that they heard me.
despite all that, st theodosius is having some display of byzantine art that looks fascinating (i have this weird thing for icons and iconography that i don't understand, no longer being catholic and having no orthodox background at all). i like seeing what other people are doing creatively and it gives me new ideas to try and also makes me realize why i've never wanted to break into the art world in the first place.
i think one of the things that i like about this style of work is the fact that it's hardly changed in about a thousand years and even though the portraits are stiff and not as lifelike as later renaissance religious art, at least jesus doesn't have blond hair, blue eyes, or european features. that's refreshing for some reason. this one below dates from something like the 6th century and resides in a monastery on mount sinai:
back when i was a lowly undergrad at kent, i was a victim of a driveby evangelism campaign at 7am when i was walking up the summit street hill and this minivan pulls up and throws a couple watchtowers and that awake! magazine at me and drives off. i read the things just for kicks and marveled at the bad graphic design and the poorly written, uncredited articles. i wouldn't want my name on that either.
i am drinking coffee and attempting to wake up. trying to plan a weekend cleveland date of fun hanging out this weekend with the lindsey. not that i ever really make plans because the best plans tend to be those that randomly happen to you, but i do like to know what's going on.
somehow the eric b & rakim cd i ordered from the library got mixed up and i ended up with orchestral maneuvers in the dark instead.
when i was walking down mayfield yesterday i could tell there was a punk show going on because of the sudden influx of cars with loads of bumper stickers and kids with pink hair driving suv's with nofx painted on the back. reminds me why i didn't start listening to punk rock until my late teens when i got addicted to college radio. before that, i figured that if it all sounded like the sex pistols, mxpx, and the offspring, i wanted no part of it.
might check out the tremont art walk tonight after work. the last time i was down there on such a night i was driving around with val singing along to bad classic rock on the radio and somehow ended up exclaiming "die yuppie scum!" in the direction of a hapless well-dressed couple that came out of nowhere into the path of my car. not one of my finer moments especially considering that they heard me.
despite all that, st theodosius is having some display of byzantine art that looks fascinating (i have this weird thing for icons and iconography that i don't understand, no longer being catholic and having no orthodox background at all). i like seeing what other people are doing creatively and it gives me new ideas to try and also makes me realize why i've never wanted to break into the art world in the first place.
i think one of the things that i like about this style of work is the fact that it's hardly changed in about a thousand years and even though the portraits are stiff and not as lifelike as later renaissance religious art, at least jesus doesn't have blond hair, blue eyes, or european features. that's refreshing for some reason. this one below dates from something like the 6th century and resides in a monastery on mount sinai:
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