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Note: I received this many months ago, but I’m working through a tremendous backlog of blog posts. Blame the “drafts” feature in Wordpress.

From a small home in Lawton, Okla. comes a small brown package. A postal worker exchanges money for a series of stickers that guarantee passage through the wily Midwest. And just three days later, it rests on top of my mailbox in Peoria.

The package is undressed, and a cylindrical canister appears. “Adams Old Fashioned Peanut Brittle: a real nutty surprise,” it reads. I’m hungry, so this is good news. The lid pops off the antique metal container and three long SNAKES propel themselves across my living room. Says Mr. Harrison Ford: “Snakes… why did it have to be snakes?”

I remember this; my dad and I rummaging around his childhood home, him handing me the can and these fabric-covered springs jumping into my face. And now I’m a proud owner of a 1930s “snake in a can” from the famous S.S. Adams Company. Thanks to my aunt Anna!

“God Himself became an irrelevant ice cream vendor
slowly scooping a ball of lemon sherbet
from horizon to painted horizon.”

It Was So Cold by Whitman McGowan

With the weather at a bone-chilling 10 degrees since Christmas Day, I figure it’s high time to post a few winter photos. You know, before it warms up again. (all photos by Adam Gerik/Journal Star)

Hot damn. 2009 is hours from dead, and we’re just about ready to start using the much more comfortable phrase “twenty-ten.”

I’m the proud new owner of prescription sunglasses, my first pair. Not because I’m flush with cash, mind you, but due to asinine flex spending rules that require you to spend your balance by Dec. 31 or light the money on fire. These rules also limit what you can spend these pre-tax dollars on; abortions, yes, but toothpaste, no. My teeth have rights too, you know.

So risking a cart full of Tylenol and bandages (or much worse), I joined adulthood by protecting these fragile eyes of mine from the incredible UV assault shooting from that ball of fire in the sky. I got to the shop at 30 min. till close, rushed around looking for something that looks nothing like aviator glasses, and spent nearly every penny on a pair of nerdy frames. They arrive in a week.

Rather than brave the downtown madness tonight (a blue moon, ya’ll), I’ve decided to spend New Year’s Eve with those I call family almost every night of the week: my crass, bitter coworkers. Off to dinner, then madcap cleaning before the guests arrive. Maybe I should have asked if anyone needed pills. There might be $5 left on my flex card.

Night harvesting in Western Illinois, shot at 70 m.p.h.

After a brief coquetry with air travel last month, I find myself once again embarking on steel stretched from Illinois to Kansas.

The sky is smokey, filled with a soupy mixture of burning fields and dust kicked up from the lighted combine machines harvesting late this year. It’s quite a sight, and one that I had no time to capture. I’m running late, and I’ve already cost myself dinner.

–

In the observation car, there’s a boy and a girl conversing. The girl is giggling more than necessary; the boy boasting a bit too much. But this is flirtation, after all.

“I never asked you, but what’s your name?”

“John.”

She giggles again, until a lull forms, cloud-like. There’s a few moments of silence, the eye contact disappears, but they push forward and resume talk: of meditation, of ex-boyfriends, of curly hair and of mountains climbed.

Strange conversation – these strangers – as we lurch through rural Missouri via locomotive. Next stop: Lawrence, Kan.

I’m supposed to reflexively raise a stink when pure artistry is adapted in the name of capitalism. Tainted! Ruined! Encouraging an evil. Yet Levi’s “Go Forth” commercial spots have such beautiful urgency, a haunting narration, that I cannot help but love them. Walt Whitman in any form, s’il vous plaît.

The cinematography is top-notch, cinéma vérité mixed with home movies. Sullen exposure that showcases the inky blackness. I’m reminded of Pavement’s album Terror Twilight, named after that uneasy time between sundown and complete darkness. Backed by both Whitman’s own reading of “America” (from a rare wax cylinder recording) and Will Geer’s salute-worthy rendition of “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”, these spots make me lust for more Whitman.

Purchasing new jeans is a mere secondary effect, as a clear message emerges that Levi’s are built for certain things: trouncing about uninhibited, relishing nature, carpe diem.

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call–hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!–swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!