Lowell, MA

So, I've been procrastinating blogging about my trip to Lowell, MA, for a long time now because I'm having camera problems. The morning I left (on October 4), I couldn't find my camera, so I borrowed my dad's and took lots of pictures. He burned a CD of these pictures for me, but it was blank. And I just keep forgetting to get them. Josh found the camera while I was gone, but the case (which has the USB cord in it) is still AWOL. So, Halloween party pictures of me in a black widow costume recreated from my youth and skeleton Josh will be forthcoming.

In the meantime, I give you the Lowell report sans photos (for now).

I was invited to Lowell to read a shortened version of my article on Kerouac's On the Road at the Jack Kerouac Conference on Beat Literature. Kerouac was born in Lowell, which is roughly an hour outside of Boston. BYU fully funded the trip, so I thought--why not?

I loved seeing MA. Right outside of Logan airport were the row houses, the sports teams playing on a lit field, the guys in matching shirts rowing boats, the fall colors--all of these images I associate with New England but didn't think I'd actually find. The drive to Lowell was delightful. We passed the most stately houses nestled into wooded alcoves. There were trees everywhere! It actually made my slightly claustrophobic, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

I made it in on time to get to the second panel of the day, which was held in an old cotton mill turned museum. Cool setting. Next door was the actual scroll on which Kerouac wrote On the Road. (If you haven't heard the story, he wrote the first draft in a matter of weeks on a continuous scroll of paper.) I was equally interested in the museum itself, which contained hundreds of the actual looms that immigrants labored over. The noise of them all going is deafening.

I delivered my paper the next morning to a good crowd of scholars and students. There were some serendipitous connections between my paper and another woman's--she was Greek and there all the way from the UK. We were both talking about Baudrillard and hyperreality as it relates to race in the novel, though we didn't actually overlap too much in our readings. After the panel though, there was an INTENSE Q&A session. We're talking a half hour at least and me answering almost all of the questions (for lack of anyone else jumping in). Going in, I knew that I would be talking to a defensive audience. As one scholar put it, Kerouac conferences tend to be as much fan-club convention as scholarly forum. Plus, it was the 50th anniversary of a novel that many scholars have had to fight tooth and nail for in order for it to be accepted in the academy. Plus, it was Kerouac's home town (and the same week as the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival). All of those plus-es equaled an audience not wanting to hear about the problematic ways in which race is dealt with in the novel. Actually, the ironic thing was that I wasn't even passing judgment on the main character, Sal, and his racial attitudes. But I was getting questions/comments like--well, you sure are talking a lot about Sal in the paper... ...um, yeah, he's the main character. It was pretty funny. This is not to say that I didn't get any valid questions. I did, and I think I held my own, but some of them were just ridiculous. Afterwards, the panel's moderator told me in private that he's been in other panels where race has come up and people just freak out. It's like they don't think Kerouac can handle being talked about in that way. So that was interesting. The good news is that the people who really mattered--i.e. the keynote speaker and others--complimented me several times on the essay, so I know it went over well among those who I respected. And it's being published.

I was genuinely surprised by the back-biting nature of many folks in the older generation, whom I ate dinner with because we were all staying at the same hotel. They were so catty in tearing down the younger scholars, who were more theoretical and--at least in my opinion--much more rigorous in their approach to the novel. Maybe it's that way at all single-author conferences, since people have devoted a lifetime to studying just one person and can easily feel threatened by others doing the same thing. Bizarre.

Anyway, the Greek restaurant we went to was divine and made even better by the fact that we had a Greek native there guiding us through the menu. Lowell has a large Greek population due to the mills.

Saturday I walked around and took a zillion church and house photos. I was obsessed with the houses. I also went to a really great quilt museum. What a cool, female, history-laden art form.

And then it was home! I was disappointed I didn't get to spend time in Boston, but that city is high on Josh's list of places to go, so I look forward to a future trip there together.

Unveiling

Last night Josh and I went to our first painting "unveiling." It was really cool. Our neighbor Ben McPherson is this amazing painter, who has done a series of Biblical pieces. The above appeared on the cover of the Ensign a while back after it won a church-wide competition. It was also featured on a This American Life TV show. Because of the dearth of bearded men in Provo, he rounds up homeless men to photograph for his paintings.

Anyway, we went to his studio last night, which is in the old Fur and Hide Building in south Provo (in fact, another neighbor--retired--had once worked there shaking out sheep hides, though he didn't last long he said due to the smell). Ben's newest painting was really spectacular with great contrasts and textures. The center figure was one of our friends from the ward (though she was aged significantly in the painting) holding her little girl.

As we were going home last night, I was thinking about how much I love our neighborhood, which is home to so many artists and so much diversity and history.

Jailbird

So most of yesterday was a normal Sunday--church, family dinner, and the like--until Josh got arrested. And taken to jail. And bailed out (by me.)

What happened
Our registration had expired this month and we needed new brake pads before we renewed it. We weren't able to schedule a garage visit in (having only one car) until today. So of course we got pulled over last night on our way home from Josh's grandparents' house. After running his license, the cop asked him to step out of the car and onto the sidewalk. By this time, another officer had pulled up. He explained to me that there was a 2005 warrant out of Josh's arrest for a traffic violation. The two cops arresting Josh didn't even tell him that much--they said they had no idea what the warrant was for; they had assumed he would know (which he of course didn't). One of the officers then asks me, "Do you have a valid driver's license so that you can drive this vehicle when we take your husband in?" I'm thinking, "take him in?!" He explained that unless I had $650 cash on me, they were going to have to book him. Well, rarely do I have even $6 cash on me, so I realized jail for Josh it would be.

Meanwhile, Josh has no idea what's going on. He thinks he'll be able to give the officers a credit card number and leave. Then they ask him to turn around and put one hand up across his back. It then dawned on him that they were arresting him! Handcuffs and all, I got to have a brief conversation with my husband, who was seated in the back of a police car. I said "I'll follow you to the jail, honey." We were both laughing at the absurdity of it all.

On the way to the jail, the officers transporting Josh remarked on the deserted rural street they were driving: "I bet you think we're driving you out here to get rid of you." Josh: "No, I hadn't thought of that, actually, but thanks....I guess it would be a lot less paperwork for you guys." Josh sort of regretted that last remark. The officers were nice guys though and were talking and joking most of the way. Meanwhile, Josh was name dropping like mad--trying to think of anyone he knew from high school that we now a police officer. He made some connections. They decided to drop the registration ticket ("to not add insult to injury.")

When Josh arrives at the jail, he is led into a room with a "demolition pad," which is basically just a padded wall. He is asked to stand against it and does so with his back to the wall. The booking officer (a different guy with a much less sunny disposition) says, "face to the demolition pad!" Josh: "This is going to be bad."

At this point I should say that what follows may sound like the words of a sarcastic, wise-cracking criminal with a bad attitude. The lines were not delivered in any such spirit, however. Instead, Josh said that his tone was very jovial--that he couldn't help trying to joke around a bit, despite the unresponsiveness of his audience. So read no disrespect into what follows.

Booking officer: "Do you have any enemies that we need to keep you away from in jail?"
Josh: "Yes. All prisoners are my enemies. Please keep me away from any and all criminals."
Booking officer: "Are there any sharp objects on your person?"
Josh: "Yes, these handcuffs are very sharp and digging into my wrists."
Booking officer: "Oh, good. We like that. Any medical conditions we should be aware of?"
Josh: "I'm allergic to cats."
Booking officer: "We've got about 10 of those wandering around here."
Josh: "Well, my eyes are going to be itching out of control."
Booking officer: "Do you have any drugs on you?"
Josh: "I've never done drugs in my life."
Booking officer: "Do you have any needle marks on your body?"
Josh: "No."
Booking officer: "Do you expect to be suffering from any withdrawals during your stay here?"
Josh: "Withdrawals from what?!"

But the booking officer never cracked a smile.

Then it was on to finger printing (they're digital now), a mug shot for which Josh tried to look nice and smiley, though it didn't quite turn out that way, and the drunk tank. That's right, while they were finishing his paperwork, he had to hang out with two drunks. One was sleeping on a phone book, making Josh glad he didn't need it to look up any numbers, and the other seemed to be watching a baseball game but was actually staring at a wall.

Meanwhile, I've been waiting in this ugly, cramped lobby for at least 45 minutes waiting to post bail on my credit card. I decided against the bail bond companies, especially the ones labeled "Rebel Bonds" and "Bad-boy Bonds." As a side note, bond companies tailor to very specific groups of customers. Other titles included "Sportsman's bonds" and "Beehive bonds." I finally see Josh's mugshot come up on the computer screen--a rather surreal experience--hand over my credit card, and finally see him through 4 panes of glass on the other side of the office. We exit through separate doors and are united at last!

The explanation
Josh's version: Josh thinks this whole thing must be a mistake. The warrant was for the county, not a city, which means that it would have had to have been a highway ticket, and he's never been pulled over on the highway. Plus, just last year he got a new driver's license, a new passport, and changed his middle name. He thinks someone would have noticed a warrant at least one of those times. He'll find out when he appears in court November 14.

Rachel's version: Though Josh has never been pulled over on the highway, I remembered that he had received a ticket on the highway in 2005 when the movie truck he was driving literally blew up (he actually had to drop and roll away from the vehicle, which was flaming). Needless to say, he got a ticket. And the production company promised to take care of that ticket. I'm guessing they never did... I'll find out if I'm right when Josh appears in court November 14. And then we'll get the production company to pay for the lovely ticket (we were promised that the bail money will be refunded).

In the end, Josh thought the whole experience was pretty fun. He had a big huge smile on his face as he left the jail--a great story to tell and more fodder/research for movies...

Men in charge of the temperature

During the summer, I am freezing 80% of the time: I freeze in my office building at work, I freeze while teaching at BYU, and I freeze when at church. And I'm not the only one. Virtually every other female I know is similarly freezing in these locations. I've long wondered why, considering both the financial and environmental costs of blasting the AC, these buildings are kept so frigid.

A couple of people have suggested to me that arctic temperatures ensure that men in polyester suits aren't hot. I have to admit that I was slightly skeptical of this theory, though it did seem probable. But then today on NPR (yes, I listen during the fund drive), there was a story about Japan's fight against global warming, which has included turning the majority of the country's air conditioners up to 82 degrees. And to make such an increase in temperature tolerable, there has been a movement to get men to stop wearing suit coats and ties! And everyone's happy! The reporter even mentioned--as a side note--that the women in these offices are relieved by the warmer temps.

And so I ask you, what temperature would your office/church building/business be if women were in control of the thermostat?