Yes, indeed:

Tetherow Way
Terrebonne Town
Smith Rocks rise in windy skies...

For those unfamiliar with central Oregon, Smith Rock is located outside the hamlet of Terrebonne, which isn't even registered on epodunk.com. And there's a song about it by an obscure group from Eugene, Spiritfarm, which also seems to lack a web presence.

All this to say, I'm sure there are avalanches of Boulder songs that can be heard in the bars and coffeehouses of that municipality on open mic nights.

Boulder song challenge

I think the elven one, having lived there, should know if there is a Boulder song. If not, can we commission an original ode? Does academic writing dull the ode instinct, Arwen?

If there's a song for Terrebonne, Oregon, there has to be one for Boulder. Maybe not a famous one...

Songs part two

Tree, don't forget the classic:

Going through the big D don't mean Dallas
I can't believe what the judge had to tell us
I got the jeep, she got the pallace -
Going through the big D don't mean Dallas

Now I just need to keep my ear out for songs about Boulder. For some reason I don't think there will be many.

Cities of song

It's comforting to live in a city that has songs written about it. Here are some of the facts about Dallas, according to Jimmie Dale Gilmore:

Dallas is a jewel.
Dallas is a beautiful sight.
Dallas is a jungle.
Dallas gives a beautiful light.
Dallas is a woman who will walk on you when you're down.
When you are up, [Dallas is] the kind [of woman] you want to take around.
Dallas ain't a woman to help you get your feet on the ground.
Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eye.
[Dallas is] a steel and concrete soul with a warm-hearted love disguise.
[Dallas is] a rich man who tends to believe in his own lies.

It's hard to say whether any of this is true yet, but I will report back in a year or so.

Face recognition

This weekend I went to a reception for an art show, mostly because I know one of the artists; I'm not really much of an artsy person, myself. The girl I knew only had three paintings in the show, and I took a pretty good look at those, glanced at some of the other artwork, chatted with the two people I knew who were milling around, ate a cookie, and was pretty much ready to leave, having spent a total of maybe twenty minutes there.

As I turned to go, I saw a face I suddenly recognized, someone I hadn't seen in at least wo years. I used to write her email on a fairly regular basis, and she even came to visit me on her spring break one year. What struck me about it was how I instantly recognized her, without doubt or hesitiation; it was definitely her. And even though she disappeared in the two seconds I took to collect myself and try to think of something reasonable to to say to someone I hadn't seen in years, even though I only saw her for half a second and haven't seen her since, I am certain it was really her, that she was really there.

How many faces are there in my mind, floating around, waiting for me to see them again?

notes from Arkansas

Arkansas is a new frontier for the Tree of Valinor. But the climate brought me back home to Virginia's Blue Ridge. There are countless small differences, like the presence of armadillos and loblolly pines in Arkansas. But in the Ozarks in early spring, what the skin feels and the nose smells is the atmosphere of the woods of my youth. At night it stays warm. The pretty rolling hills are blurry on a moist day. The rain creates a sweetly decaying fragrance rather than the papermill scent you get around Eugene or the sharp bitterbrush scent around Sisters.

There are big signs as you pass Hope and Hot Springs, announcing Bill Clinton's birthplace and childhood home. Texas isn't the only state with a sense of pride. Texas seems overrated in many areas, in fact. I'm not sure it lives up to all the boasting.

the death of rap

A sad article came to my attention after those happy descriptions of the Academic Elf's students. This writer seems to think rap is a dying genre:

"Such profanity once drew attention to ghetto life, forcing conservatives, policymakers and critics into sociological debate; now hip hop is more likely to suffer admission into the American literary canon."

Art moves on, I guess. It would be silly to compose like Haydn in 2004 or to write like George Eliot. Thomas Kinkade is trying something like that. People feel sorry for you.

But are there genres that don't go stale? We still get excited to see some really good musicians go crazy when the summer jazz festival comes to town. And what about narrowly prescribed games like basketball that people play again and again to ever-admiring crowds? Maybe I am getting off track here with the sports example.

It seems like what we admire in the young Arizona freestylers (and in the Dixieland band and the basketball team) is their performance within the constraints of an existing genre, not any new contribution to the definition of art. Creativity exists within genres, although we seem to admire most the people who invent or redefine genres: Cervantes, Beethoven, Elvis, Fosbury.

Happiness and purpose

This is only barely related to the discussion about money and contentedness, but I haven't said anything in quite a while so I thought I'd say something. In War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges, which I recommend, he says that both (1) happiness and (2) a sense of purpose are important to a balanced life. Happiness without purpose ends up being boring and empty, while a strong purpose without some sort of happiness becomes a mania or obsession, which is the main thing he's concerned about in the book.

As I try to choose between two positions that offer me $15,000 a year in two of the most expensive cities to live in in the United States, I wonder about both. Will graduate school really give me a sense of purpose, and will that even be enough money to subsist in Boulder or Eugene?

about money

I think the mistake comes from thinking either one is desirable: poverty or money. Poverty is not noble because you spend all that time in misery obsessing about where your next meal comes from. Riches aren't noble because you end up obsessing about how to impress someone completely unworthy of being impressed with the meal you're going to invite them to. Money is not evil in itself, just like the meals aren't evil in themselves. The evil is in caring about the wrong things. Not being able to respect someone else because you're hungry and crabby and working all the time, or not being able to respect someone else because you're so busy and full of yourself and deluded about what's important.

So the key is to be happy where you are. Easy for the rich person to say!

Voila the Tree's two cents' worth.

Suggested research topic

Has anyone done research on the average distance between a person and their automobile? This seems like it would be interesting to study. In America, at least, when a car is seen, it is safe to assume the owner is nearby. We don't really think about this. When we sleep at night, the car is in the garage. When we're at work, the car is in the parking lot. Vehicles are necessary appendages.

It's time to end the bondage! Sell your car now!

Spy notes

The manipulator of likenesses finds herself recognizing people she has never met. She's scanned them in, sharpened the contrast in their faces, removed their blemishes, traced the outline of their hair, blown them up, sized them down, and slid them all around the pages of publications. Then she runs into them at the oil change place and stares at them a little too long before she realizes she's a complete stranger to them.

The Tree sings of spring

The Tree of Valinor wonders if errant tongues are still in danger of sticking in Chicago. Is the city hiding its Big Shoulders under copious coats? What color is Lake Michigan?

It's been exactly a month since the last, lone snow in Dallas, a legitimate wintry symbol to the Texans for half a day, appreciated by the leisurely Tree as a lacy Valentine rain. Now the fruit trees are shedding petals on the sidewalks and spraying perfume in the air, along with the lilacs and hyacinths. Many little colorful things are out, but the Tree disdains tulips.

Green leafy vegetables that are preferable to lettuce

Spinach

Memorable phrases from Dallas

The two key words are: caution and flammable.

Do they do worship, or do they just sing hymns?

Now write this down. What God desires, he wires. And what he wires, he inspires.

Bubba Hotep

Bizarre is the best and probably the only way to describe this film. It strikes me as precisely the kind of thing bored college students would dream up late at night when they should be studying, but beyond that it is difficult to describe. To say that's it about Elvis and JFK who are both still alive in a nursing home in East Texas and have to fight an Egyptian mummy who is destroying the souls of the other nursing home residents is to completely fail to do the movie justice. If you like bizarre movies, see it; otherwise, stay home.