My mom never handed out Halloween candy. It was against her principles. Or something. Not a religious thing; she just hated Halloween. She hated everything about it; the dressing up, the skulls, the witches.

In her mind, Halloween was a celebration of evil and death (and of evil death). It was not something she’d grown up with in Argentina. Young people don’t do anything resembling Halloween there (except, perhaps, mugging people for money/candy, but that’s not the same spirit).

To hear my parents tell it, most holidays in Argentina involve military parades. That pretty much explains why they don’t do Halloween. Even if you could find that many costumes, it’d be pretty terrifying to see 10,000 soldiers dressed as grim reapers marching down the main avenue in town. Sort of faux-apocalyptic. Or real-apocalyptic, depending on your disposition.

So throughout my youth, my mom’s October thirty-firsts were pronouncedly uneventful. They began with her helping my sister and I find costumes. For me, that meant opening a bottle of wine, burning the end of the cork, and smudging my face with hot soot. Then I’d throw on some nylons, wrap a silk handkerchief around my head, and declare myself a pirate.

Once the costumes were finalized, we’d take them off, put on six or seven layers of sweaters and long underwear, and then put them on again. Things changed over the years; I grew, made new friends, lost old ones. But no matter what happened, come the end of October my costume was the same: chubby, swordless pirate.

Honestly though, it never bothered me. Somehow it was fitting. Maybe it still is.

After we were dressed, we armed ourselves with pillowcases (not spares, mind you; our everyday, functioning pillowcases) and went out into the candy-y night. The minute we stepped out the door, every light in the house went off. She must have had them on a timer or something.

From the street you could barely tell the house was there. For my sister and I, it was like walking away from a black hole. But unlike that miracle of physics, our house was meant to repel, not attract. My mom’s stated objective was to make children (or their parents) believe that this place was not only unlikely to have any nice or sweet things to give away, but was also very probably unsuitable for living creatures.

And yet, some kids always ventured. Why is it kids insist on going where they are clearly not intended to go? If a house is completely dark and displays no Halloween paraphernalia most people will conclude these people either aren’t home or don’t want visitors. But not kids. For them, a dark house is a challenge.

It’s like they think someone’s trying to fool them out of candy they rightfully deserve. _Oh, I see, they turned the lights out so we won’t get their candy, those jokers. Well, we’ll show them!_

But they didn’t show anyone. If my mom even bothered to come to the door, she came bearing a frown and nothing more. She had no candy. I remember her going through the house the week before Halloween just to make sure there was nothing around that could possibly be misconstrued as candy.

Oftentimes, though, she’d just stay in bed. She’d put on headphones and listen to _I Pagliacci_ so loud the frantic knocking of sugar-crazed children was no louder than the ticking of her bedside clock.

Meanwhile, her children (that’s me) would be out in the neighborhood, greedily collecting from anyone who dared crack open their door. We were ruthless, I tell you. Completely without mercy. _Out of candy? TOO BAD! Get out your wallet or something cause we’re not leaving without out at least six more ounces in the bag._

_Fine. In the pillowcase. Whatever. Make with the Lincolns._

I’m sure I must have felt bad about taking candy from all these people when I knew my mom was refusing to give candy to their kids. But that feeling was hidden deep inside, in a place obscured by partially digested Milk Way bars and un-chewed Sour Patch Kids.

But in a way, it didn’t matter. Because those kids had normal parents who carved pumpkins and hung dried corncobs on their front doors. When they got home, their moms and dads would probably check their candy for razor blades; mine would simply advise us to empty out the pillowcase before going to bed. Not as comfortable, you know?

And then, even before we started eating it, my sister and I would carefully search for a hiding place for our candy. This was because my dad would have no qualms about throwing it in the garbage the next day. One night of this strange American tradition he could withstand; after that, back to normal. Things with artificial flavors and Yellow #5 might as well have been labeled “Radioactive”. Candy bars lived on the lam in our house, always seconds away from a cruel and heartless demise in the depths of the trashcan.

All of which explains why, now that I have my own house, I’m so eager to participate in the Halloween tradition. Last night we set out those little lunch-bag jack-o-lantern lights, put pumpkins on the front porch, and strung up little orange pumpkin lights. The house was practically singing, “We want to give you candy!”

But no one came. Scratch that: seven kids came. And three of them were suspiciously teenaged-looking.

The first two girls were dressed as princesses or queens, but they wouldn’t speak. They just looked at me doe-eyed and felt around in the candy bowl. Trying to avoid the trick-or-treat pencils, I presume.

After them came the teens, who clearly weren’t even taking themselves seriously. You’re too old to trick-or-treat if you were born in the same decade as the person handing out the candy. Rule of thumb.

At the end of the night, when it became clear there weren’t going to be any more kids, I turned out the pumpkin lights and closed up shop. There was barely a dent in the huge mound of candy in the bowl. A disappointing turnout, but then, fewer kids at the door means more Kit-Kats in my belly.

And more chocolate in my pillowcase. Just in case my dad stops by.

Just links today… hmmm, where to start?

Well, it is, as you know, Halloween weekend, which, judging by the elevated hype and hysteria, has been promoted to national holiday status. If that’s the case, you might as well have some good Halloween music to go along with it. And a candy corn flag.

Somehow it seems fitting that the White House is haunted. Can you imagine the number of people who have been killed in that place? Why, some!

And if you don’t just want to _see_ dead people, but _make_ some_, you’re going to have to train yourself to use some kind of weapon. I suggest playing cards. Aim for these spots.

And now for some weird robots: a drummer, for when your bandmate stays out too late drinking, an excellent Mario Brothers player, for when your roommates pass out from video-game exhaustion (believe me, I’ve seen it happen), and a hungry president, to replace those gaunt-looking candidates (oh, wait, that’s not a robot).

Finally, if your Halloween plans are scant, you can always amuse yourself other ways. Use this private library kit to put circulation cards in your books so your friends won’t steal them (they still will, though). Or, tie a digital camera to a kite and take pictures from above. Of course, this would be much more fun if you tied the camera to yourself, and then tied yourself to the kite, but then who’d hold the string?

You know what The West Wing needs? Besides a kick in the pants? A Reality-Track. Like a laugh track, that ubiquitous background gurgle of the sitcoms. But instead of coming in at the punch lines, it would appear at those perfect moments when the show mutilates reality like a street mime playing Hamlet.

When those moments came (and they seem to be coming more frequently this season), the tape would kick in with sounds of amused laughter and sporadic vomiting. Seriously. It would make the show so much more bearable.

Not that it isn’t bearable. I mean, it isn’t. It never really has been, for me. It’s always given me the urge to throw a wet towel at the screen. But at the same time it’s highly addictive. The cheesy schmaltzy dreck (funny, Word knows schmaltzy but chokes on dreck; where _is_ my Yiddish word-processor) has traditionally been relieved by snappy, fast-paced dialogue that makes me think, “Yeah! Go White House! Gooooooooo!”

And for that reason I’ve always considered myself a fan (to the same extent that I’m a Twins fan; it like them when they’re good). Martin Sheen, for all his extra-terrestrially saintly qualities, makes the presidency look cool, like being the captain of the football team. Or the lead singer for a good band.

But even when Aaron ‘Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Written “Isaac and Ishmael”‘ Sorkin (no really, see for yourself) was writing, the show suffered from frequent and overwhelming bouts of histrionitis: the irrational belief that everything would somehow just work out if only actors were in charge.

I watched tonight’s episode with my girlfriend and our friend Alex, who is a disturbingly committed West Wing fan. Besides having a mad (but repressed) crush on Josiah Bartlett, her birthday happens to coincide with Mr. Isaac and Ishmael’s, which she takes as Proof From God she was meant to be on the show. She loves Allison Janey, and somehow procured a disposable coffee cup C.J. used during a press conference on the show.

“This was _on_ The West Wing!” she said, repeatedly, after she got it. “That means I was _on_ the show!”

Well, you know how some people are. You’re not friends with them because of their devotion to rational behavior. In fact, in Alex’s case, probably just the opposite. Plus I’m sure she’d put up with any strange things I did, if I did them, which I don’t.

Back to Josiah, though.

On last night’s show the Reality-Track was in full effect. To begin with, the show’s writers would have us believe that a top U.S. general could be killed in a terrorist car bombing and we wouldn’t reflexively blow the snot out of something, somewhere. Then they expect us to accept that another passenger riding in the car (which exploded and flipped over) would somehow survive. Why? Because she’s blonde, and cute.

Those things have saved me from car bombs countless times. But still.

The focus of the episode was on talks the president was holding at Camp David between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I could overlook the _so-five-years-ago_ nature of this plot line. But when Friday night came and the opposing factions stopped negotiations to observe their respective Sabbaths, I gagged so hard my pants ripped.

For 16 minutes (or something) we had to watch a God-awful montage alternating between the Jews and the Muslims doing their holy stuff. “See…they’re so similar,” the show practically shouted as it faded (for the eighth time) between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian chairman glowing in spiritual trances.

And then, as if the montage hadn’t been condescending enough, when it ended one of the president’s staff just went ahead and said it, “They’re so similar, the Jews and the Palestinians. Throughout history no one has ever wanted either of them.” (Quoting from memory here.)

Uh… I’ll accept that Jews and Muslims are very similar. But what’s this about history not wanting Jews? What about the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, a nice piece of snowy land in Siberia given to us by Lenin in 1928? That’s resort country, folks, in case you don’t know, right up there next to Khabarovsk Krai, the Aspen of the East.

Anyway, why does The West Wing have to coat everything in an impenetrable layer of syrupy sentimentalism? It’s a political show written by people who should be writing for Oprah.

Sorry Alex, but it’s true. Martin Sheen and the Big O would make a great team, either politically or on a talk show. “Should we bomb the Kumaris, Mr. President?,” asks the bomb-surviving coma-overcoming hotty with a good heart.

“I’m not sure, let’s ask the V.P. What do you think Op’?”

“I think someone’s got a special gift waiting for them under their seat!”

“Oh, oh, oh! Oh, you didn’t! A new Pontiac! OhmygodIcan’tbelieveit!”

And then the real twist: new Pontiacs for everyone at Camp David. The Israelis, the Palestinians, even the Secret Service agents.

Then they’d all go on a little caravan through the countryside, bumpin’ some crazy tunes in their new convertibles.

God, I wish the real world were more like The West Wing, then maybe we wouldn’t be having all this terrorism and stuff. People just want to get along, y’know? And drive Pontiacs.

Man, Vice President Oprah is the best.

It’s a little hard to take the electoral process seriously with people like Puff Daddy reminding me to “Vote or Die.”

There he is on television, along with a gaggle of celebrity friends, urging me to vote. This is done mostly through t-shirts bearing the threatening slogan, but also through hip-hop music, which we all know is the magic key to young peoples’ minds.

Is this what the founding fathers had in mind? Political advice from a man who changes his name every two years, but still can’t manage to get rid of the word “Puff”?

Vote or die is right, I say. But only insofar as it’s taken to mean, “Don’t do both.” We have enough trouble with near-dead voters in Florida as it is. I know it’s Halloween and all, but we don’t need no senile zombie disenfranchisement.

Ah, but why do I make light in the face of such momentous events? Is because I can’t contribute anything worthwhile to the fair and flowing stream of thoughtful commentary on the presidential race? HA! Of course not. I have many arguments sitting right here beside my desk waiting to be thought out. _Right…over…here…_ (runs away with laptop under his arm).

I have once been chided for providing political observations in this space, and I do not intend to be chided again. It is boring, I was told. Boring boring boring.

Plus, really, there are three-hundred-and-seventy-two billion political writers out there already. There’s no need to add another drop to the already swollen waters.

Basically it breaks down like this: when the Jehova’s witnesses came to my door wanting to discuss abstinence and Jesus, I said no-thanks-I’m-Jewish and my-girlfriend-lives-here-though-she-might-want-to-talk. When the Cub Scouts (OK, just one, actually) came to my door wanting to sell me a holiday wreath, I said no-thanks-I’m-Jewish but the-neighbors-are-Lutheran-and-I-bet-they-want-one (I was later informed that wreaths are religion-spanning; news to me).

When a young, hip-looking man with a goatee came to my door asking for contributions to the __________ National Committee I said no thanks. That’s all, just no thanks.

I don’t find myself motivated to participate in nitty-gritties of the democratic process. Just like I don’t see much reason to play along with the whole Christmas decorations fundraiser racket. I figure, if I don’t buy a wreath, millions of other people will ensure that sufficient wreath buying does in fact take place. Christmas will go on without me (oh, sorry; The Holidays will go one without me).

Does this mean I spurn the glorious civic act of voting in favor of an apathetic know-nothing attitude? By all means, sort of! Well, no. I voted the first chance I got after I turned 18. I voted again in 2002. And I will vote again in ’04 (not sure how).

I treasure my vote, really. I would gladly purchase and wear one of Mr. Daddy’s ‘Vote or Die’ t-shirts (although I think ‘Vote and Die’ would be a lot funnier). But the last thing I want is for my vote to be a life or death matter. I want to be on the winning or losing side of a large margin. Something where my decision couldn’t possibly have made the difference.

And isn’t that the whole point of a democracy, after all? I mean, the nice thing about voting is that (at least in theory), your vote never makes _all_ the difference. It’s the distribution of individual responsibility. Otherwise we’d just have a random person choose every four years, and 7 out of 10 politicians would be WrestleMania stars. (By the way, have you seen Jesse Ventura lately?)

No one wants to go to the polls thinking that there’s going to be a 50-50 tie, and their vote will break it. And lord (the lord of ‘holiday’ wreaths) knows we wouldn’t be very comfortable if democracy worked that way.

Democracy provides shelter in the crowd. It makes difficult decisions anonymous and compromised. And that’s how it should be. It’s set up precisely so you aren’t faced with the choice between Vote or Die.

You can vote. You _should_ vote. But if for some reason you fail to get to the polls on election day, don’t go doing anything drastic.

From the end of my street I can see all the skyscrapers of Minneapolis. If that isn’t evidence of what a big small city Minneapolis is, nothing ever will be. There are about four or five real skyscrapers in that city across the river. The whole mass of big, shiny glass buildings occupies only a few degrees on the horizon.

Think of it this way: fall has not yet taken all the leaves off the oaks and elms that hang down low over the intersection of Fulham and Hendon. That leaves me with a small window to the west, about the size of a compact car. And yet through it the whole city is visible.

There’s a reason you don’t often see postcard depicting the great Midwestern skyline of Minneapolis. But we’re working on it; lots of construction going on. Mostly lofts, but some big buildings, too. Soon we’ll be the largest metropolis in the Midwest north of Chicago.

OK, we’re already that. And also we’re the only metropolis in the Midwest north of Chicago. And we will never surpass the windy city. The Sears tower alone would make our loftiest edifice tremble and squirm.

Not that I mind. There’s nothing wrong with being mid-sized. We can legitimately pretend to be big, and legitimately pretend to be small. Neither is accurate but neither is incorrect. For what it’s worth I like being able to see both edges of the city without moving my head. Makes it easier to get oriented.

If you’re ever in Minneapolis, don’t open your eyes until you’re standing to the northeast. That’s the best view, in my view, although that’s where I most frequently view it from. So maybe I’m not trustworthy. Or maybe I’m _extra_ trustworthy. You decide.

Last night the buildings sat blinking, silently, and I realized there’s nothing more empty or alone than an empty city. How many human beings could be counted inside those swaying towers at 9:30 at night? 500? 2000?

And at 3:47 in the morning? 20? 7?

Think of all that empty office space; stories upon stories of cold, dead volume. And from my street, between the oak branches, it all looks so small and fragile. As if it really were made of glass.

By contrast the houses on my block show all kinds of signs of life. Rooms shimmer in the blue glow of televisions. Chimneys cough politely, like babies, in little puffs of white. Bathroom windows bead up with steam; putting the kids to bed.

And what do we look like to someone at the top of the IDS tower? There’s nothing to obstruct the view up there, except perhaps an occasional cloud. But last night was flawless; one of those October skies made for full moons and bare branches. So what do they see?

I know what they see. And you do to, if you’ve ever been on a plane at night. It’s a mossy bed of yellow lights, growing haphazardly mold. From the towers of Minneapolis my block is, at best, a ridge of darkness. At worst it’s indistinguishable from the others.

How many people are in the houses on this block at 9:30 pm? 50? 100? So why is it we are the symbol of life and vitality, while poor old Minneapolis must not only stand empty, but also stand for emptiness.

Right, sorry. Why, beside because I said so?

They are so quiet, those skyscrapers. They sleep so peacefully. You’d think for all that cost and all that trouble they’d keep them running round the clock. But no, the tallest buildings in the upper Midwest shut their eyes just like the smallest.

And who knows, maybe looking down on us from way up there, we all look peaceful too. Twinkling away the last few hours before we go to sleep, and only the darkness and the streetlights remain.

Oh how I wish Garrison Keillor were my puppy. I would feed him and take him for walks and build him a doghouse of scrap wood and bent nails. In return, he would love me and smile at me in that expressionless way of his. On Saturdays he would tell me jokes and sing old folk songs with his floppy jowls bouncing rhythmically.

Until last Friday, my only encounter with Mr. Keillor had been through the speakers of my car radio, where his breathy, sighing voice found me on my way to other stations. It is true, I am a Minnesotan, born and raised (but not bred). Yet contrary to popular belief, all us Saint Paulites do not each Sabbath eve gather round the old Fitzgerald Theater stage to hear told tales of Woebegone.

We accept those strong women and above-average children as our mascots, proxies of ourselves to an outside world that knows us only for our celebrities. But we do not lie sleeping with our companions in prairie homes. We don’t all speak of winter in reverent tones. The lutefisk swims not atop our stoves. And what’s this about Lutherans?

I’ve heard it said that “A Prairie Home Companion” flirts with boredom. I think perhaps even the faithful followers of the long-running show might accede that point. Keillor’s voice was made for radio. But it was also made for a hypnotist’s office where the hypnotist’s goal is to lure you into a deep sleep. Garrison Keilor could make a CD in which he mumbles gibberish for 78 minutes and make millions selling it to parents of newborns.

“Goo goo,” he says. Breath. “Gah…” Sigh. “Gah.”

Friday night was my first time seeing the show. Well, actually it was a preview show; a dress rehearsal. This was because a) Saturday’s show was sold out, b) preview tickets are cheaper c) I made a mistake. Mix and match.

Nevertheless, it was a complete performance. Music, singing, accordion playing, two mandolin players, and old-timey radio sound effects. “A Prairie Home Companion” is not boring, let me start with that.

That robotic, synchronized clapping you hear on the radio is sincere, though it may not seem it. Keillor stands in the middle of the stage, a tall, stooped-over man, doing a slow-motion stand up routine, and the audience eats it up.

But if you’ve never seem him perform live before, the most interesting thing about the show is the complete blankness in Keillor’s face. Maybe it’s those big cheeks of his, but I think I saw him smile only once throughout the show, and even then it looked like someone was pushing up the corners of his mouth with chopsticks.

He is a funny, funny man, but his face is a lump of warm Playdoh.

Much of Keillor’s monologue this weekend addressed an issue that is top-of-mind for many of us Minnesotans: the looming arrival of hated, suffocating winter.

The last two weeks here have been, as the man said, like something from a murder mystery title sequence. The image that comes to mind is of an Edward Gory illustration, soaked in vinegar. Friday I looked out the window at work at 2 p.m. and it looked exactly as it had at six that morning: dark. Completely dark.

Keillor does a good job of capturing the you’re-not-one-of-us feeling that winter gives to many Minnesotans. “This is the time when people who aren’t from here leave,” he said (quotes used to indicate he was speaking, not that I’m accurately relaying what he said).

Winter, for all its crushing doom, has a nice way of getting everyone to pick teams: you’re either with us (humans) or against us (nature). Most people pick how you’d expect, although there are some who side with winter. But most of those people don’t make it, so, you know, not to worry.

Saturday I had planned on preparing the house for winter (weather-stripping, window-wrapping, etc.), but in the end all I could muster was one painted radiator. Still having problems with water coming through the kitchen ceiling, and the tree in the backyard has developed a dangerous looking baseball-sized crack. But I’ll save that for a things-that-are-broken update later in the week.

Sunday was God’s way of making Garrison Keillor look foolish: it was sixty-five degrees and sunny. A perfect day for a walk, or two or three. On the way home we stopped by the hardware store and picked up two pumpkins, which my girlfriend likes for their decorative value. I can only see them as they’ll look three weeks from now, rotting and slimy, begging my not to touch them. And of course I’ll be the one who has to throw them away, great dripping snot-balls that they will have become.

But for now, they’re just pretty. Pleasant autumn decorations, like colored leaves and apples and cinnamon. If you’re a nice Minnesotan child, dressed up for trick-or-treating, they say “Welcome to this home, we have candy.”

But, as the droop-jowled Keillor said, if you’re from anywhere else, the pumpkins say, “Get out. Go home. Migrate.”

I.F.S has passed. He was about six months old.

What his life lacked in length, it made up for in fullness. Toward the end he had a large tank with a water filter. He had a neon lump of molded plastic in the shape of some kind of coral formation. He was, by all accounts, a happy fish.

I want to apologize now, because I think over time I have treated the issue of my brother’s fish(es) with insufficient compassion. In my previous comments on this site and privately I was crass and disrespectful; I behaved as though my brother’s pet – the only pet he has ever had – was nothing more than an occasion for humor.

And though I won’t deny he was a funny fish, he was also so much more than that. He struggled bravely against fin rot, which caused his little fins to curl and flake. Yet he swam (or wriggled) gracefully through the murky waters of his unclean bowl (this was before the tank).

He was smart. As my brother pointed out to me at least twice, he could easily predict – with incredible accuracy – the times when he would be fed. All one had to do was lay a hand on the food canister, and I.F.S. would come flopping to the top of the tank.

What did he accomplish in his time here? It’s hard to say. But we mustn’t measure a fish’s life in mere dollars, awards, or diplomas. He lived simply, and so at the very least it can be said that he simply lived. Not a bad epitaph.

And, just as importantly, I.F.S. played a major role in the development of a child. He gave my brother an outlet for his incredibly weird naming ideas. If not for that dearly-departed beta fish, he would have grown up and found himself, at age 46, a successful businessman with a family. But unfulfilled.

Because somewhere in the deep, still waters of his heart, the desire would remain to use the name International Fish Station. For something … _anything_. Having had it rejected by his wife for the name of their firstborn, having seen his superiors at work pass it over multiple times as a suggestion for a new brand, he would fall into despair.

“Why doesn’t anyone understand?” he would wonder. “It just makes so much _sense_…”

But none of that will happen (probably). Because the name, like the fish, found a way into our hearts. And there it rests, gurgling, “Remeeeember meeeee…”

We will, I.F.S., we will. You will always be a special fish.

When you scavenge for newspapers in the cafeteria at work, you’re not bound to get the best pickings. There’s always an abundance of sports sections lying around, but though I’ve tried, I just can’t get into reading them. The only games I might care about are the ones I watched on TV the night before (in this case, the Red Sox-Yankees game).

For me, reading about a game I already saw is like reading a math textbook. All I can do is think, “Why are you telling me these things I don’t need to know?” I saw David Ortiz hit a bloop single in the bottom of the 14th to win the game. I don’t need to read a newspaper article saying that David Ortiz hit a bloop single in the bottom of the bottom of the 14th to win the game.

So that leaves the obituaries. Well, sometimes maybe the business section, but I’m usually eating soup, and I can’t handle a spoon and focus on business at the same time.

The obits simultaneously attract and repel me. On one hand, I’ve never understood people who read them; it’s just depressing. On the other hand, it’s some of the most interesting stuff in the paper.

Maybe I’m morbid, but reading the obits is the only time I feel real emotion for the people in the news. The rest of the time it’s just “Peterson, a 34-year-old Hinckley native, said his neighbors rarely argued.” Yes but what about this Peterson fellow? I want to know more.

The people you learn a lot about in the newspaper tend to be famous. At least, famous enough to be in the newspaper. That’s the point, right? You never hear about Abraham Bindlebaum from Orono who got a master’s in short-wave radio operation and then went on to join the VFW and the Orono Yiddish society.

Until he’s dead. Then his whole life gets squished into three column-inches, paid for by his family at the rate of $5.80 per line. And suddenly Grandma Bindlebaum is a writer of sorts; maybe the most honest kind.

Or the least. Depends on what Abraham was like. Hard to say, not enough lineage.

I’ve heard people justify reading the obituaries by saying that the older you get, the more you start to recognize the names. People you went to high school with. Old neighbors who moved across town, etc.

But I think reading the obituaries is basically a way of thinking about death without having to, y’know, _think_ about death. Let’s face it, whether you’re young or old, you don’t like any reminders that you or someone you know might die. It gets so bad that a lot of people won’t even let themselves think about it. I’m not in a position to know (thank god), but how many people, even those who have good reason to, think _”maybe my parents will die”_?

Not many. And I don’t blame them. There’s no use, as far as I can see. Because the second you start thinking about it you inevitably start writing those first few lines.

At the same time, people feel a need to explore the possibility of death. To get used to it. To put a hand on its cold face and make out its features. Because they know it often comes unannounced.

So we peer into the deaths of other people. People we don’t know but can sympathize with, because they are just like us. Young people old people middle-aged people. Healthy people sick people good people bad people.

No one cries in the cafeteria. The pages of the sports section aren’t wet, and neither are the obituaries. But reading them, you can feel something in your chest, and you know you shouldn’t stare too long at the dates of a person the same age as your father. Just note the important facts, swallow a spoonful of soup, and move on.

I had a busy day at work today. For me, that looks a lot different than you might expect. For a firefighter, a busy day involves riding in the truck, running into burning buildings, sliding down the pole (do they still do that?), etc. For my mom, who designs closets, a busy day means driving about 150 miles to and from building sites to measure rooms and talk to clients. For my girlfriend, who is a teacher, whose days are unfathomably busy; even a regular day means chasing after kids who run and cry and desire candy bribes and so on.

But me, on a really busy day, I barely get out of my chair. I sit and look at a computer screen and mold invisible alternating electrical currents into messages. Like a hallucinatory sculptor.

If I’d worn my pedometer today, it would have had an extremely high count, but that’s just because it’s a cheap freebie, and it counts more steps when you’re sitting than when you’re walking. Kind of poetic, actually.

Most days I try to take a walk during my lunch break. In nice weather this means going outside around our beautiful walking paths. In bad weather I circle the six floors of our gigantic building, starting at the top. Down to one end, down the stairs. Back to the other end, down the stairs. Like an egg in a Rube Goldberg machine. Except I’ve got an I.D. badge.

But today I didn’t even get a chance to circle my own cube. I spun in my chair a few times, and while that may have helped get the blood moving in my limbs, it doesn’t qualify as exercise.

So it was understandable that this evening I wanted to take a walk. This I did, with some determination, despite the risk of missing the end of the Red Sox-Yankees game, which by that time had already gone to extra innings. At around 8:30pm I suited up in coat and hat and gloves, and left the baseball game to fend for itself.

My reasoning was thus: it’s tied in the top of the tenth, they’re going lose, maybe if I leave, they’ll get distracted and win. I have a theory about my influence over the outcomes of distant televised baseball games. It is a shaky and unsubstantiated theory.

But what theory isn’t, really? Alas.

So I grabbed the trash and headed out the back door. After the garbage can, I had no destination in mind. On a cold night, when you’ve dressed adequately, it’s rather comfortable to be outside. It’s just you and the yellow patches on the sidewalk. And the crazies.

But not in my neighborhood. Don’t worry. No crazies here. Well, not many, anyway.

Just in case, though, I followed the path of most streetlights, which is also known as the path to Como Avenue. It winds through the Luther Seminary grounds, under a grove of tall, sprawling oaks, and toward the little commercial cluster at the center of our neighborhood.

I got to the gas station, its bays all lit up, with cars waiting outside like patients in the hallway of an overcrowded hospital. From there I could see the neon ‘open’ sign of the library. My feelings about the library are pretty straightforward: it’s awesome. It’s just an awesome library. It was built at around the turn of the century as one of the many hundreds that Andrew Carnegie (dare you to pronounce his name right) funded across the country. It has three-story arched windows and beautifully detailed masonry; it looks like an architectural drawing.

The only thing I dislike about the library is its open sign. A library of such historic beauty shouldn’t have a modern, swooshy, oval-shaped open sign. It should have an old-fashioned sign. Hand painted. Or maybe just a porter standing at the door, letting you know if the place is open or not.

Then again, the nice thing about modernity is you can see it a block away. At ten-to-nine on a cold fall night, a warm, bright library looks pretty inviting, even if the invitation comes from a buzzing tube of inert-gas-filled glass rather than a nice old gentleman wearing a cap.

“Who goes to the library at this hour?” I asked myself. The only answers I could think of were: “Crazies,” and “Nobody.”

I went in to check it out, and I was definitely wrong on the latter. There were lots of people in the library; over a dozen. And when I looked over to the right, at the bench by the new fiction, I saw none other than my dad and my little brother. So maybe the neighborhood isn’t as sane as I thought after all.

They had stopped for a moment after returning a movie they’d checked out (it’s only a historic library on the outside, inside it is more neon-sign than cap-porter).

“Hey, how’d you know we were here?” my brother yelled, much too loudly. My dad laughed. I answered, again in too loud a voice, that it was the gentle hand of fate that brought me here, a.k.a. the path of most streetlights. No one said anything about our volume; apparently the rules get a little lax toward the end of the day.

“Believe it or not, I was on a walk,” I said.

“Belie’ dat,” my brother said, or I imagined him saying. Sometimes I wish he were more of a little gangsta’.

“My fish died,” he said, somewhat unconnectedly.

“I.F.S?”

“No,” he said, “a new one. I hadn’t named it yet.”

So sad. The -tomb- toilet of the unknown -soldier- fish.

My brother was reading a spy novel. _The Eagle’s Eye_ or _Operation Beak_ or something like that. He blows through those books in a matter of days, sometime hours. My dad was looking at a picture book about penguins. I think he’s getting old. He used to read books with words. Now it’s penguins.

When the librarian started kicking everyone out, my dad offered me a ride. It was tempting, since I suddenly remembered about the baseball game, but I declined. Serendipity had brought me there; it didn’t seem right to let a minivan bring me home.

So I walked back up toward the seminary, the tall library windows behind me, the tall oaks up ahead. And waiting just a few minutes away? A baseball game and a warm house.

And one more piece of evidence to back up my theory.

Friday night I went with my girlfriend and her family to see a choral group called Chanticleer. It’s about a dozen men, most young, one with a lengthy handlebar moustache, who sing everything from medieval church music to Miles Davis. Also a song by a Korean composer that sounded like a sped up recording of some kind of large bird’s mating ritual.

That song was by far the best part.

Some of the men sing terribly low. The handlebar guy drops his voice so deep it feels like he’s sitting right beneath you. I bet he doesn’t even need subwoofers in his ride; when he listens to some rap music, he probably just sings the bass parts himself.

Another singer, this one with a trimmed goatee and a ponytail, is at the opposite end of the scale. His notes rarely come down beneath the stratospheric level. When someone who has been locked out of their house needs to break a window to get in, I’m sure he is the second person they call, after a hammer.

The really cool thing about Chanticleer is the versatility of their voices. The range of sounds they could produce reminded me that the human voice is really an amazing instrument. That was the other best part of the night; realizing that the beauty I’d seen on stage was created with nothing more than voice boxes like mine. It was a touching and universal message; music is in the soul of every person, and all you need to do is lift your voice.

I was pretty psyched about that. For a while. Then I tried to make that Korean ostrich shrieking sound and I got a little frustrated. Music may be the universal language or whatever but I think you need to be able to sing to speak it. Apparently I don’t sing Korean.

Plus, I think I sprained something.

Seriously, though, you can’t have a moustache like that and not have subwoofers. Or at least regular woofers.

Most everyone in the audience was pretty clearly a choir geek (and I say that in a loving, non-judgmental way). At intermission every conversation I overheard was about how “We should do Gaude virgo at the winter concert,” or “It’s amazing how full those third overtones were!”

At the end of the show when they announced that the last song would be “Keep You Hand on the Plow,” someone in the balcony actually said “Yesss!” I didn’t see who it was, so I don’t know, but I can only imagine he or she was pumping his or her fist.

Now, lest I give you the wrong idea, let me say that the song was a tremendous, soaring gospel chant and I was sorry when it ended. But if the words “Hand on the Plow” make you pump your fist, you are definitely a choral aficionado. Good for you, I say, as long as you’re aware of it.

Then again, I can see why someone would recognize the song; it’s one of those that takes over a whole room in your hippocampus and refuses to leave. I’ve been singing, humming, and thinking about it all weekend. Can’t get to heaven by drinkin’ gin, I reminded a passer-by on the walk to the coffee shop this morning. She wasn’t drinking anything, but she looked relieved anyway. It’s just nice to know.

Later at Marshalls I was in the dressing room trying on a pair of snow pants when I remembered that I needed to keep my hand on the gospel plow. Not having one around, I put my hand on my cell-phone, which, I thought, could at least be used to find a gospel plow, or call someone who could tell me about it.

Even now, as we speak, I hear the distinctive notes of that song coming from the bathroom, where my girlfriend is showering. That’s the power of gospel songs, I guess. They’re hard to stop singing. So the next time a glass of gin is placed before me, the first thing that’ll come to mind is an image of that pony-tailed man with his eyes closed and his face toward the sky, warning me, in an octave six times higher than normal, not to take it.

And you know what? I won’t. I will leave that glass were it lays. I will begin singing a mighty chorus of “Hand on the Plow,” in whatever octave I can muster. And if the mood is right, my friends at the table will start singing right along with me. Then maybe the whole bar will join in.

And a lone voice will come from the back of the room, drunk with joy and soda-water: “Yesssss!”