A Post Election Day Poem

      This is a little post-election day poem (more like a "pome," if you know what I mean), inspired in part by the awesome undertaking of the NPAD project at truffin.com. I haven't thought of any better title than the first line, so let's call it "Hope is the spore of Maybe."

Hope is the spore of Maybe
that lands on the fallen and rotting trunk of No,
and instead of dying in its turn,
conducts the corruption to a secret, inner crucible

where, shadowed even from the sunlight of Reason,
through an ineffable alchemy
unrecorded in any text,
Hope transforms that dross to the
perfection of an infinite spoked circle, capped with
a crenelated white dome of Possibility.

Making Smithereens

      I'm not normally the bloodthirsty type--I don't own any weapons and I've never had much interest in hunting--but neither am I immune to the primal, center-brain appeal of guns, loud explosions, and blowing stuff to smithereens. Not critters--just stuff. Recently, a friend of mine who owns guns and, more importantly, maintains a safe and sensible attitude toward their ownership and use (remember, pop the magazine and then rack the slide), introduced me to the joys of target shooting. No blood is spilled, and no asses are frozen off in duck blinds or deer stands. But things still go BOOM, and, with the proper kind of target, there are smithereens aplenty. Perfect.
      At some point back in college, I had fired off a few rounds from a .22 revolver on a camping trip, but my gun-owning friend took me to a proper handgun range to try out his Taurus .45 semi-automatic. Even with ear protection, the noise on a handgun range is pretty shocking and required a few minutes of "flinch adjustment." Then the guy in the lane next to us opened up with his .44 Magnum, the booming report of which drew curious, what-the-hell-was-that glances even from the experienced shooters in the room and created percussive bursts of air so strong that I could literally feel them in my gut, like the bass at a rock concert.
      Handguns really are bizarre, visceral machines, in a way that nothing else is--not even long guns. No toy gun can convey the weight and the queasy feel of potential that a serious handgun with a full clip imparts to its holder. Before I picked up the gun, I was a fat, easy-going freelance writer who wished no one harm; after I picked up the gun, I was still a fat, easy-going freelance writer who wished no one harm, but I was also uncomfortably aware that simply by turning around and extending my hand, I could end somebody's life. I think that's where the the real difference between long guns and handguns lies. When you hold a long gun it feels like a tool--dangerous, certainly, like a chainsaw, but still a tool--and therefore external to your self. A handgun feels like an extension of your hand, and you quickly internalize it as part of you. Thus, the queasy feeling I mentioned.
      So while I enjoyed the handgun target shooting (and did pretty well BTW), I was much happier when my friend introduced me to shotguns and "sporting clays" at Deep River Sporting Clays near Sanford (yes, my friend is very generous with his guns and ammo). "Sporting clays" is a lot like golf with shotguns. Really. The shooters move from station to station, where pairs of bright orange clay disks are launched in different settings and flight patterns designed to emulate the movements of different game birds. There are even a few "rabbits," which are clays that are launched bounding along the ground. With the kind of expert instruction that my friend provided, even a total beginner can hope to make a few smithereens, and the sense of satisfaction upon disintegrating a particularly tricky "bird" is surprisingly deep. Like golf, you need to learn a few proper mechanics to be successful, but, also like golf, the more you allow the mechanics to become habitual and the less you actually think about them in the front of your brain, the better you do. Slow, lazy, drifting clays actually prove more difficult for me than the low, quick crossers because I have too much time to think about the former and simply have to react to the latter (Station 11 is my house, Jim).
      While taking up a hobby like sporting clays is probably a little too expensive for me right now, and while I'm not likely to purchase a handgun anytime soon--even for self-defense--I'm still glad I've had the opportunity to experience them both firsthand. At least now, when civilization ends, I won't have my brains eaten by the zombies because I couldn't figure out how to load the shotgun or disengage the safety on the .45. How embarrassing would those final moments be?

Ravens fall to Patriots, Refs, and Ravens

      I have very mixed feelings about last night's Monday Night Football game, in which the Patriots continued their march to a perfect season and high TV ratings thanks to some key Ravens blunders, some typical Brady magic, and a sprinkling of pixie dust from their Fairy God-Referees. Part of me very badly wanted the Ravens to win, just to see the twisted snarl of bitter hatred on Belichick's sourpuss, and to see how badly he would snub Billick at the post-game handshake. The Steelers fan in me thought, "If the Patriots lose this thing tonight, they're going to want to take it out on the Steelers." Ultimately, although I've never said or even thought this before, I felt bad for the Ravens.
      However, the Ravens players pointed a lot of fingers after the game, and not at themselves. Boller's terrible interception throw kept them from scoring again. On the first key 4th down play, they did call time out, and then the Patriots clearly had a false start (which can't be declined). But...
      I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but the defensive holding call on the 4th down at the goal line was definitely a ticky-tack call at best, and at worst had the distinct whiff of officially-sanctioned favoritism towards the league's Chosen Ones. A great game like that just should not turn on a yellow flag.
      By the way, what was with all the camera cuts to Belichick on the sidelines during the game--he was on camera as often as Tom Brady. And whenever they showed him smoldering away over there in his grey hoodie, I kept imagining what he was saying into the microphone, "Release your anger, young Brady. Feel the power of the dark side!"

North Carolina Wine. Seriously.

      Donna and I spent today with a couple of friends, touring two of the many fine vineyards that have sprung up in North Carolina’s Piedmont region in the last couple of decades. The area has become enough of a draw for oenophiles, in fact, that five of its vintners have created the Haw River Wine Trail to encourage tourism and promote their wines.
      We couldn’t have chosen a more perfect day for our outing—sweater-weather with a brilliant blue sky to set off the orange, red, and gold fall foliage at its peak. I had almost despaired of having any kind of decent autumn after our long, dry summer, but a bit of rain and a sudden cold snap have made for one of the better leaf shows in recent years.
      We began the day at a winery that’s not officially part of the Haw River Wine Trail, the Silk Hope Winery, though we thought our day might be over before it even began when we encountered a CLOSED sign at their front gate. The gate itself was open, however, so we drove up their long, steep, gravel drive to what turned out to be one of the highest points in the Piedmont, with a beautiful view. We saw the couple of acres of vines and a few steel buildings, but no signs of life; disappointed, we began the steep descent. Cindy had the presence of mind to pull out her cell phone (Donna and I still live in the Stone Age without one) and give the owners a call:

“Are you guys open today?…you are?…great, we’re going to drop by…yes, we are the people who just drove through your roundabout without stopping…” (the rest drowned out by laughter).

      Back at the top of the hill, the owner’s son led us through a tasting of their wines, mostly Chambourcins and Chambourcin blends—I especially liked their “Grand Vista” red, a dry, slightly sharp Chambourcin/Cabernet Franc blend—and of course we ended up taking some with us, both for ourselves and for holiday gifts. He then walked us through the vines, pointing out their varieties and answering Donna the Gardener’s questions about pruning and drought and pesky critters. Us: "What kind of pests prey on grapes?" Vintner: "All of them." On the way out, we performed our good deed for the day by flipping their sign from CLOSED to OPEN.
      Our second and final stop was Benjamin Vineyards and Winery, part of the Haw River Wine Trail. Benjamin is a bigger operation than Silk Hope, catering more to the tourist trade with a larger selection of sweet, dessert wines and a kind of country-cutesy gift shop. They also had some very good dry and semi-dry wines, however, including both oaked and unoaked versions of their Chardonnay and a very interesting Chardonel, which I had never tried before.
      Unfortunately their Chambourcin was sold out, so we didn’t get a chance to conduct a “head-to-head Thunderdome match” with Silk Hope’s Chambourcin, but I think if—to paraphrase Tina Turner—“two wines enter, one wine leaves,” then Silk Hope Winery would be the Road Warrior to Benjamin Winery’s Master/Blaster.