“Cats are natural predators of not just birds but also mammals. Killing is what they are meant to do, and it’s not their fault.”
 — Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute research scientist Peter Marra, on data that indicates that certain species of birds are being wiped out by house cats in suburban areas.

“A man on a flight from Paris to Atlanta has been charged in federal court with sexually assaulting a passenger and then karate chopping a federal sky Marshall who came to detain him.”
 — There are direct flights from Paris to Atlanta??? Who knew? What’s next, Kuala Lumpur to Sacramento?

Well, technically it is Mardi Gras everywhere, but nowhere is it more Mardi Gras than in New Orleans. Here’s a little “mix” I made for you, which is naturally incomplete (WHY WON’T YOU LET ME EMBED “WHO SHOT THE LALA,” YOUTUBE?) but is a pretty decent soundtrack for the day. Laissez les bons temps etc., everyone!

(Because it’s “They All Ask’d For You,” the only decent video I could find is a montage of scenes from a trip to the Audubon Zoo. This clip also contains “Hey Pocky Way,” so I think it’s a fair trade-off.)

And just because:

by Teddy Wayne

Teddy Wayne’s debut novel, Kapitoil, opens up The 2011 Tournament of Books at The Morning News tomorrow, squaring off against a little-known novel called Freedom by some guy whose name we forget. Kapitoil was named one of Booklist’s “Top 10 First Novels of 2010,” among other honors, and an excerpt won a 2010 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. Its narrator is Karim Issar, a young, socially awkward computer programmer from Doha, Qatar, who comes to Wall Street in the boom times of 1999 and writes a program that accurately predicts oil futures based on geopolitical news articles. Karim has learned his stilted — though grammatically perfect — English through the worlds of finance and technology. In this excerpt, he attends a party in Brooklyn thrown by his colleague Rebecca, with whom there has been some possible romantic tension.

Jessica left to talk with Rebecca and her friends, and she returned to our circle and asked, “Anyone for weed?”

Everyone else said yes. “You want to have some fun, Karim?” Jessica said.

I said loudly, “Yes, I would like to have some fun.”

She said “All right,” and we all followed her to Rebecca in the corner. Rebecca watched me closely. She whispered, “You know what this is, right?”

“I am not a child,” I said. “I know about marijuana.”

“Okay, sorry,” she said.

Jessica retrieved from a closet a tall red plastic cylinder that had a metal smoking pipe attached to it. She took it to the kitchen, and when she returned the cylinder was partially filled with water. One of the men removed a clear bag with marijuana in it. He inserted his fingers in the bag to pinch a small quantity, as if his hand was a machine that picks up dirt, and carefully deposited it in the pipe.

I observed him closely so that when it was my turn I would not humiliate myself. He covered a small hole in the cylinder with his index finger while he moved an activated lighter over the marijuana, then he inhaled from the cylinder and simultaneously removed his index finger. The smoke passed through the water, and I hypothesized that it made it less carcinogenic and softer for the lungs, which made me less nervous about inhaling it, as I have never even used a hookah.

Then he contained his breath for over ten seconds before he exhaled the smoke like a factory chimney. After he finished he said, “That’s a totally groovy bong, dude” in an intentionally false and high voice, and everyone else laughed with him although I didn’t know why, and I decided I should not make any more jokes in the U.S. because I still didn’t understand the logic of humor here.

He shifted the bong clockwise to the next person. I was next, and while the female next to me inhaled, Rebecca looked at me again as if she was afraid for me.

When I received the bong, I inflamed the marijuana for a long time and inhaled strongly. The water inside made a quiet bubbling sound that was pleasing and then the marijuana smoke reached my lungs, and it burned and produced tears in my eyes, but I closed them and continued inhaling at the same pace as if I was a machine that could proceed infinitely. When I was finally done, Jessica said, “Damn, Karim knows how to par-tay!” and I still contained my breath for even longer than the previous two people. By the time I exhaled there were just a few clouds of smoke, so I had absorbed the lion’s share of it and was using the product efficiently.

I felt slightly imbalanced, but I was not truly inebriated yet. They passed the bong around the circle, and the originator asked if we were up for another round. A few people, including Rebecca, said they had inhaled a sufficient amount, but Jessica said she wanted more and asked if I did, and I said, “If you have enough remaining I would like more,” not only because I wanted to see what the true sensation was like but also to show Rebecca that I knew how to party.

I watched the first man produce another cloud of smoke. I thought about how it was previously the marijuana plant, which came in a larger shipment that was probably sold by a drug dealer with a small income who bought it in a much larger shipment from a drug dealer with a larger income and so on, and was transported into this country by a drug dealer with an even larger income, and originally derived from marijuana plants in the ground, but that it was picked by someone with a very small income. It is always a valuable exercise to evaluate how a product arrives at its consumer, because it shows how many middle men there are and whose labor helps determine the market price.

When the smoke contacted my lungs on the next round, it didn’t burn at all, and my body instantly felt lighter, as if someone had rotated a dial and reduced the gravity in the room.

After I handed the bong to Jessica I thought about how:

• 1. The party was not stimulating the economy, because most of what the guests consumed for entertainment at the party minus the alcohol was either essentially “free” (all the food was homemade, although the raw materials were purchased elsewhere) or not purchased from a store (the marijuana) or was previously purchased and reused (e.g., the music);
• a) but then it also meant the guests were not paying for middle men or advertising;
• b) and ultimately they were creating a “product” (a social event providing entertainment) from almost nothing via creativity and cooperation;
• i. which is impossible in the physical world in which matter cannot be created or destroyed;
• 1. but this is how human emotions and intangible products differ from objects;
• a. and the most powerful material/emotion that you truly derive from nothing is love, which does not require a source and has no limit;
• i. e.g., I have infinitely loved Zahira since the first time I saw her and will always feel that way.

As I concluded this thought, I observed Rebecca more closely than I would normally, especially the small area between her lips and her nose and the soft angles of the two vertical lines there, and I almost became imbalanced, but I put my hand on the wall and remained vertical. I could hear the blood zooming in my ears like water boiling in a teapot, and I licked my dry lips.

I craved water but I couldn’t go to the kitchen because I didn’t want anyone to see me in this condition. I went down a hallway to the restroom on the other side of the apartment.

The restroom was locked, so I leaned against the wall. It hurt my back and I plummeted slowly until I was sitting. That was uncomfortable also, and then I noticed an open door to another room. Multiple coats covered the bed in a pile like a bowl of colorful herbs, and I considered that if coats were allowed to be on the bed then I could be as well.

The room had only a small lamp on for minimal light. A picture of Rebecca’s brother was on the table by the bed and next to a black-and-white picture of a young female with long straight hair who looked like Rebecca. Three framed paintings hung on her walls of men’s faces in colors such as orange and blue and green that looked like the inverted true colors.

A bottle of prescription pills was next to her pictures. I rotated it to read the label:

Rebecca Goldman
Zoloft
Take daily with food (150mg)

I rotated it back and reviewed the paintings. The men looked like aliens, and their faces were very angry and sad simultaneously, and my heart accelerated and my skin perspired at an infinite number of points. I sat on the bed where there weren’t any coats and reclined and closed my eyes because the ceiling looked like it was spinning. Then I grew very panicked, because I knew I did not have complete control over my thoughts anymore, and I didn’t want to be at the party anymore and I regretted inhaling marijuana smoke only to impress Rebecca.

I tried to regulate my breathing but I was inhaling shallowly, and then a voice said “Here,” and a cold wet cloth was on my forehead and absorbing the perspiration, and when I opened my eyes Rebecca was leaning over me. She said, “You’ve been gone almost half an hour,” even though it seemed like only a few minutes.

“I am not feeling well,” I said.

She continued petting my forehead. “Just stay still.”

We stayed like that for a few minutes and my breathing deepened. “Do you think some slow music will help?” she asked, and I nodded.

I closed my eyes and focused on the words of the singer on the stereo she said was named Leonard Cohen, and it helped reroute my brain from panicking. The line “Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm” especially helped because I had to mentally link the two images, and it was a logical connection I had never previously considered, and after he sang that I opened my eyes and Rebecca’s hair was now hanging down on the pillow like falling black water and covering everything else around my face like a cylinder and all I could see was her face looking down at me, and my body felt more stabilized.

“Who produced these paintings?” I asked.

“My brother,” she said. “He’s studied art since he was little.”

“Zahira is artistic as well.” I didn’t know what else to say in that position. “But my father discouraged her from taking classes like that when she was young.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “Girls can do whatever they want here.” She removed the cloth from my forehead. Then she lowered her head and her hair touched my face like feathers. Her eyes fluctuated quickly from my eyes to my chest, and her warm breath moved over me, and my heart accelerated again.

I said, “Rebecca,” because the silence felt like shallow breaths again, and she didn’t answer, so I said her name again and she said, “God, it’s been a while,” and I wasn’t certain what she was referring to but I had an idea, so I said, “Then possibly — ”

Before I could finish my sentence, which was going to be “Then possibly we should first discuss this situation from other angles,” she sat up and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is a mistake.” She kept saying the word “mistake” to herself as she stood up and moved away from the bed.

I said I was feeling enhanced and should go home, even though I was perspiring again, and tried to find my coat. The pile was large, and Rebecca stood there while I searched. She said, “You must think I’m a real shithead,” which almost made me laugh after I had analyzed the word, but because I didn’t know how to respond I looked around while I continued feeling through the pile and saw her blue wool hat on her desk.

I said, “That is a nice hat,” and she said, “My mother knitted it for me,” and suddenly I became very sad thinking about her mother producing a hat for her, even though there is of course nothing truly sad about it for her, but I could feel pressure behind my eyes, so I refocused on the pile and finally found my coat at the bottom and said I would see her on Monday and walked out while holding it, and I exited the party without saying goodbye to anyone and took a taxi home.

Teddy Wayne is the author of Kapitoil. He lives in New York.

“Security companies have started to use Iraqi guards because they work cheaply and know the area. These Iraqi security contractors now try to imitate Americans in their clothing, by wearing trousers with several outside pockets, half-length boots, dark sunglasses and rolled-up sleeves. They have absorbed the way that American contractors look so much that sometimes we Iraqis cannot differentiate between an Iraqi and an American by the way he dresses.”
 — This is fascinating!

With the NCAA tournament starting next week, it seems like a good time to talk about why sports even matter. I’ve argued about this with more than a few people, most often un-athletic friends with unpleasant memories of high-school gym class. And it’s true: This basketball tournament won’t make any major illnesses disappear or stop people from killing one another (all told, sports probably hurts that effort). But it does grant us a distraction from the killing and suffering in the world — and at its best, contests like this offer us a way to judge what’s important to us about competition, fairness, heart, skill and all those other major life themes. It lets us play out what we value about ourselves and our society in real time, with a ref wearing stripes.

Some sports have managed to capture the imagination in such a way as to get people talking about this stuff. Yet of all the major sports, basketball elicits the least amount of serious, non-game-specific coverage. Baseball’s bona fides as an illuminator of our social condition are well established, thanks to a uniquely American history and its turn on the pedestal as a sport beloved by poor and blueblood alike. Baseball’s relevance as Metaphor also owes a great deal to the many writers, such as George Will and John Updike, who have used the sport as a prism through which to ponder the existence of the universe. Then came Ken Burns, and a new generation of fans was introduced to the idea of baseball as something more than “mere sport.” To the extent that today a kid with a penchant for baseball statistics is now a New York Times regular whose political analysis drives the whole discussion.

But baseball isn’t even America’s favorite pastime anymore. These days it’s football that has come to stand as the truly American sport: violent, guttural, beautiful and garish. Football has enjoyed only a margin of the writerly love that baseball has received; only George Plimpton (Paper Lion) and Don Delillo (End Zone) spring to mind as having given football the kind of treatment that baseball has long enjoyed. Surely there are others, but none with the same cultural relevance as baseball’s chronicles, although this may be because the readership for otherworldly football tomes is just not there.

Basketball has had its literary turns: Updike’s Rabbit Run, John McPhee’s paean to Bill Bradley. But increasingly basketball has come to be the refuge of statistical goofballs, lovers of the game and stylists of the common man’s prose. Bill Simmons, basically. The democratization of the Internet has accelerated this trend. Which isn’t to say there isn’t good basketball writing being written. On the contrary, there are lots of good words written on basketball. But most of them involve the telling of a great story about basketball. They stick to the game — and leave the universe out of it. Sure, there may be parables of life involved in that, but what’s missing is the bridge from college basketball to the greater existential questions we ponder. I happen to think there’s a lot of potential there, and I mean that in a sense that’s bigger than merely illustrating that players are also people with real problems, as so many sports writers manage to do so well already. My desire is to see the view tilt upward from the court, not down to the street level.

Take this week’s NCAA conference tournaments. We all know to expect exhaustive coverage of the winners and the losers, the ups and downs of the favorites, the inevitable appearance of a Cinderella and all that other good stuff. We’ll probably hear the word “bubble” about 800 million times and most of us won’t mind that much, if we even notice. We’ll see standard definition footage of the surprise small-conference winners piling onto each other and high-def highlights of middling BCS schools aching to right a season gone wrong. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. The NCAA tournament is a great cottage industry. So great, it occupies its own cultural zone of relevance. People who couldn’t tell you the difference between a free throw and a touchdown will tune in, see some baby-faced college kids leaping around in a moment of raw exuberance and be given a moment to cherish. Then they’ll fill out their bracket sheets and check the scores and follow along even if they don’t like basketball (or sports, for that matter). There are only a few events like it in the world — the World Cup, the Super Bowl, possibly the World Series, though I’d argue that last one no longer has the same resonance it once did.

But only a few of us will think about — much less care — that beyond who wins the semis of the Ohio Valley Conference postseason tournament, it’s the very playing of the OVC tournament that has meaning. On one level, we’re watching kids from Paducah and Nashville and places in between lace up their high tops and run the picket fence. On another, we’re watching forces of good and evil, of right and wrong, of big and small take and hold the stage. Gladiatorial battles are unfolding in the back and forth of minutes passing on a digital scoreboard. Yes, this is hyperbole, but that’s exactly the point. Hyperbole about sports is one of its chief attractions. It lets us blow off steam, keeps us sane and evens our keels. Driving ourselves to distraction about things like basketball is part of what makes getting through a day, a week, a year a little easier. And more importantly it’s what helps to teach us lessons about what to do when we find ourselves up against it. Maybe the “it” for us is a mortgage or caring for an elderly parent. Maybe the “it” is failing a class or seriously bombing a task at work. Strange as it may seem at times, we watch kids in shorts and jerseys and cheer for their exploits so that we, too, can better understand how to overcome obstacles and how to accept the ones that are immoveable.

This coming six-week-long extravaganza is the purist and best expression of what basketball as a game can really be about. And what will matters isn’t who wins and loses, even if those are the facts we’ll record and remember. But the real importance will lie in those moments, those random takeaways, that are harder to express. These moments of elemental discovery are what I hope to capture from time to time in my work. It’s an ambitious goal and one I may not be good enough to always reach, but I sometimes believe (and other times, fail to) that in the effort itself is nobility of purpose. I can think of friends and colleagues who aspire to something similar in their own writing. We may not always get there, but if we even get close, we at least shine a light on one small corner of the cosmos.

When I meet people and they learn that I’m a sportswriter, I often get a “Man, that must be awesome.” Never mind if the work the person does (teacher, doctor, soldier) is more important. Never mind that in the grand scheme of things what I do is historical dustbin material, especially at this early stage of my career. People think writing about Patriot League basketball is cool. On some level, that’s probably because it doesn’t sound like work at all. They can’t know the struggle that comes with any creative endeavor. And for my part, I wouldn’t begin to equate what I do with the stresses (and sometimes, real dangers) of other occupations. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to start.

But I will always hold that there’s value in entertainment insofar as it can be extracted from the garbage and polished to a shine. Maybe you’ll watch the Colonial Athletic Association final and see a game between two teams of perversely big men wearing colorful clothes. A few will enjoy it as a lead-up to the bracket-and-betting part of the whole enterprise. That’s fine. That’s what it’s there for, on a basic level. But I hope that some folks will walk away from it with an appreciation of what the contests themselves represent, of why beyond the accumulation of wins or losses we go to such lengths to play, watch and cover these games.

Originally from Kentucky, JL Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on politics, culture and sports can be found at The New Deterrence and on Twitter.

Photo from Flickr by geeknerd99.

“Renaissance Man” is an appellation bestowed too freely these days, but if anyone is deserving of the title it is David Cho. Entrepreneur, web designer, social networking theorist, food critic and visual artist of striking conviction (his vociferous campaign against the placement of awl imagery, while wrongheaded, reveals a creative confidence that defies popular taste in favor of a spare and unforgiving aesthetic), Cho’s most expressive work comes in the medium of YouTube annotation. In a series of short films that he has birthed over the last few years, Cho has given us a new way of seeing. (When Cho’s Dancing trilogy debuted at Cannes, director Werner Herzog famously despaired of his own ability to achieve such an uncompromising vision.) While often perplexing, these works do what the best art does: they force us to confront a world in which certitude no longer exists and perspective is distorted by the fun-house mirror of identity. We spoke with him briefly about his latest project, Racist Cat.

The Awl: It’s always a tricky thing to ask an artist about his intentions, but I’m curious about what you’re trying to say with Racist Cat.
David Cho: I find it amusing to attribute human characteristics to things that can’t actually possess those traits.

So you’re denying that there’s some larger statement to it about cultural stereotypes or the feline bigotry? That seems a bit disingenuous.
Any stereotypes we put on the cat are more of a reflection of ourselves. The animals are just screens that we project upon in the theatre we call life.

But the title itself contains so much ambiguity. Is the cat racist or is the cat being put in a racist scenario? Or were you trying to suggest something altogether different?
Look inside yourself. Look past yourself. That’s where the answer is.

I can see you want to leave it open to interpretation. Fair enough. I have a question about form, though: What I find most remarkable about Racist Cat is its concision. You’ve managed to pack several layers of meaning into a short period. Is that itself a statement on the fast pace of our modern world, or were you attempting to convey a message about the way racism permeates even our most brief interactions?
I believe less is more. Think about it: Everything happens in an instant. How many interactions or experiences do you have that last longer than this film? Or are they just a series of smaller instances that go on to create something bigger? The cat in Racist Cat… it’s a stranger whose reality you have the opportunity to make into whatever you want, because all you see is this brief window on his life. Did he drink that beer on the table? Where did the gyoza originally come from? That’s all up to you.

You’ve given us a lot to think about. One last question: Variety is reporting that you’re in talks to helm your long-gestating project Jew-Hating Ferret for DreamWorks Animation. Can we expect to see an expansion of the themes touched on in Cat or are you going in a different direction?
It would be premature to talk about anything beyond what I’ve already shown you. For what it’s worth, though, I think my canon speaks for itself: Dancing Bear, Dancing Grimace, Dancing Panda, A Group Of Ducks Is Blown Away By The Wind

… the work answers any questions you might have.

And with that Cho takes his leave. “I have so much more to do,” he says, with a mercurial twinkle in his eye. It’s a fool’s errand to bet on what to expect next from David Cho, but one thing seems sure: it’ll probably have animals in it.

Ross Douthat is at it again, with an incitement towards monogamy and fewer sexual partners as a path to happiness. (Yay happinesss, by the way!) First, there is history! “Yes, in 1950 as in 2011, most people didn’t go virgins to their marriage beds. But earlier generations of Americans waited longer to have sex, took fewer sexual partners across their lifetimes, and were more likely to see sleeping together as a way station on the road to wedlock.” Sure. Like in the late 1700s, when at least 1/3rd of all brides gave birth on average just five months after their wedding day. And then, to his point: “they may have been happier for it.” They may have! (Also, they may have had untreatable syphilis too.) Then he goes into some recent science, which finds that the more people you’ve slept with, the more “unhappy” you may be!

What’s that you say?

The happiest women were those with a current sexual partner and only one or two partners in their lifetime. Virgins were almost as happy, though not quite, and then a young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed and the present stability of her sex life diminished.

Oh dear! Poor lasses! From a review of the book in the TNR:

Consensual sex, they observe, appears to be an arena of free choice, but in practice it doesn’t quite feel that way, especially for young women. A woman might experience pressure to sleep with her boyfriend — even if he does not apply any pressure — because she thinks four months is a long time for a man to wait. The mix of societal cues that gave her that idea creates a background noise that drowns out the question of her personal willingness.

So… it’s society’s fault. (Hmm, is it?)

Be whatever as it may, I’m pretty sure onset of “depression” (which is not “unhappiness,” by the way) does not have a habit of stemming from one’s number of sexual partners. It may sometimes! And also it may just coincide. People who live in big cities are both likely to have more sex partners, more abortions and a greater incidence of depression. Ta da! ABORTION CAUSES DEPRESSION.

From the TNR as well: “Some 70 percent of young adults, in one study, think they should have waited longer to lose their virginity. And in a national college survey, nearly as many men as women — 73 percent of them — regretted at least one hookup.” I bet this is very true! Sometimes people sleep with other people for the wrong reasons or at the wrong times. (Although, to be fair to hookups, I also regret that entire pizza I ate last week.) Still, that also means that 1/4 of all college students regret exactly none of their hookups.

I would not be picky with Douthat — he is allowed to say that monogamy will make some people happier! It is likely true! Except then he goes on to pick on Planned Parenthood and that organization’s “larger worldview — in which teen sexual activity is taken for granted, and the most important judgment to be made about a sexual encounter is whether it’s clinically ‘safe.’” Spoken like a man who has never been to Planned Parenthood. Having worked in the field, I can tell you that this is not actually what sex educators who work with young people do or believe. Douthat can rest assured that these people take up the role relinquished by frightened or even ignorant parents and talk with young people about “safe” choices of not just the body but the heart, informed by the young person’s emotional, cultural and even religious impulses. To say otherwise is just more culture war-mongering.

“Right? I mean, let’s be all the way real. This is not cold fusion. We’re dealing with things like crackle nail polish, bangs, cocktail dresses, bags and shoes. Stuff that is nothing more than random articles of listless bric-a-brac… ZOMG I am just kidding. All of these things are crucial and we will talk about them with the gravitas and devotion they deserve. In any case, I just hope this space will develop organically, find its voice and get along with the rest of the online community… and bludgeon competitors to a bloody, wretched pulp of searing envy and bits of hair. SIKE. I just hope you guys like me. And that you’ll bear with me while I splish around and figure out what I’m doing. Meow. First day. Who am I gonna even eat lunch with?”
 — Awl pal Mary H.K. Choi has started her blog at MTV Style. And the world is already better.

Tell me, Muse, of the men and women of many ways, who were driven
far journeys, after they had fled Madison’s shining Capitol.
Hard was their exile amid the labyrinth toll roads of northern Illinois,
many their adventures, narrow their escape from the wild monster Rahm,
new king of Chi-town, who is said to rip the fucking heads off men
and devour them. Speak of the bloating effects of Endless Pasta bowls,
the huddled iPhone calls with constituents at wind-swept gas stations,
and these brave heroes’ diligence in keeping up with the email
streaming ever daily through their state accounts. Then caught up,
here, goddess, begin our story on the Friday just past.

Then did Dawn visit the LaQuinta off I-80 in Tinley Park and stir
one of these dear ones where he lay sleeping in Southwestern ambience.
Rick Homer, son of Wausaukee, awoke to find gray-eyed Athene,
grave and beautiful, at the foot of his rumpled, dream-heavy bed.
“Cripes,” said Rick. Then, “Oh geez.” So he spoke.
The daughter of Zeus raised an immortal hand and shushed him.
“The Governor grows ever more wrathful. He sends his henchmen
to retrieve you. You and your companions must flee to the south.”
“To Bloomington?” asked Rick. “Further,” she answered.
“Champaign?” said Rick. “Further south still,” said Athene,
and in his boxers Rick shivered at the strangeness of it all.
“Decatur?” he asked, and at last the goddess nodded.

“Uff da,” said Rick. So he spoke. Then the goddess disappearing,
he rose from his bed and grabbed the khakis laid over the desk chair.
Minutes later the son of Wausaukee emerged from his dark chamber
to stand blinking in the gray morning light of the La Quinta parking lot,
like a god in presence. Or a middle manager. In his hand he held a phone.
He pressed a number and spoke into it. “Morning,” he said. “You seen Athene?”
One by one he checked in with his companions, the other Democratic 14,
each to the winds spread, distant from him but dear. One, brave and defiant,
rode on her motorcycle in the western woods. Another courted danger
(and the press) from a Chicago-area Hyatt. “To the south!” one and all agreed.

Helios inched above the horizon, to shine upon the nearby mall.
A sharp wind blew from the north, a reminder of the Governor’s vengeful plan.
Rick got in his Camry and pointed it south. He listened to the morning news,
then remembered he had a wife. He raised his phone: “How are the boys?”
Jacob had a cold, Nicholas was losing a tooth.
He and his wife agreed the going rate for that was a silver dollar.
“I used to only get a quarter,” he started, but she had to go, work was nuts,
and that gave the thoughtful man a pang, but then she added, “You’re doing real good,”
and he drove through the corn-giving farmland with a glad heart,
made even fuller when the morning DJ announced a classic rock jam half-hour.

Not two-and-a-quarter hours later at a Perkins in Decatur sat our hero.
“I might take up your table a while,” he told the fair-haired waitress,
who shrugged. “I have some time to kill,” he added humbly.
“I can’t check into my room till one.” “Coffee?” she answered.
She brought him a cup and poured fragrant joe into it from a glass pot.
She laid a bowl of creamers on the table, then brought out a plate
with a banana nut muffin on it and served it to him,
and he was filled with admiration. “Yum,” he said. So he spoke
without thinking, and the server gave him a look that was scornful
and he was chastened and reminded that he was a stranger to this area.

One booth down were old men in John Deere caps,
one booth up two sisters, both fat and permed and in middle age.
All of these people are from central Illinois, Rick marveled.
He considered addressing them: “Men and women of Decatur.
I am an exile among you. Fled my native land to escape a ruler run amuck.
I’m an ordinary man, but what’s right is right. But now I miss my family,
and 1,500 workers might be laid off if I’m not home by Monday.”
So he might have lamented, but didn’t, for he was a son of Wausaukee,
terse and chipper if thoughtful all beneath. Instead he ordered an omelette
and ate it slowly, looking out the window at the road that traveled south.

With apologies to Richmond Lattimore. And Homer.

Image via NASA.