It's about the black diamond slope

I've discovered that I'm not the biggest fan of driving through Pennsylvania. There are too many unexpected mountains, too few exits, too few truck stops, and it's been raining every time I've been there.

Because the universe (or at least our load dispatcher) has a cruel sense of humor, we've had four routes through PA over the last ten days. Alas.

On this last one, though, we were sent to pick up a load of mousetraps (bizarre, I know) at a company called Woodstream in a town named Lititz. I guessed that the town was probably founded by Germans, and it turns out that I was right.

Lititz could have been the filming location for "Gilmore Girls." The houses were pretty, well-kempt, and looked old in a good way, as if they were all vying for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. The streets were so small, however, that it was obvious the houses had given them an inferiority complex. As such, driving on them in the truck was a bit like white-water rafting!

Woodstream, when we found it, was filled with very nice people, who directed us to park in one of their doors and wait for the mousetraps to get aboard.

Now. You'd think - indeed, you'd hope - that the street in front of the delivery door would be large enough to accommodate a 73 foot vehicle that needed to back up. In this case, you'd be disappointed. The key to ease in backing a semi is having space to pull forward, so you can make large corrections without having to worry about knocking down a wall that snuck into your blindspot. In this case, when you pulled forward, you were put nose to nose with a fire hydrant and a brick wall. Not to mention that the street was fairly busy, so you had cars lining up to get past, adding to the tension.

The backing bunny slope had been left far behind. I was about to take on the black diamond of all alley backing.

It would have been nearly impossible without having a second pair of eyes behind me. My trainer planted himself in the dock and gamely gave direction; I maneuvered and counter-maneuvered, playing chess with myself, and tried not to think about hitting anything.

It took us over half an hour, but eventually, we accomplished the deed! So maybe, in the end, Pennsylvania wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

It's about catching up, and Truman Capote

I was reading through a few of my previous posts about the 2016 election a little while ago. I had to shake my head at how much I still had to go through, back in May of last year; there were still six months to go before the dust settled.

Settle, however, it did. And about 100 days into the Trump Era, I am a great deal less worried about our chief executive now than I was last spring. He so far seems to be pursuing a fairly centrist agenda that only seems extreme to progressive extremists. But then, anything a hair to the right of Hillary would count as extreme from such a point of view, so it's understandable that Trump would appear like the second coming of Hitler. I didn't vote for him, but I broadly support what he's done so far.

The biggest upshot of these first 100 days is that I realized I love the Senators from Kentucky. Rand Paul is both principled, fiery, and practical; he's that rare idealist who actually wants to get things done. Mitch McConnell is one of my favorite people: from start to finish he is a tactician of the highest order, and he managed to steer Neil Gorsuch squarely and smoothly onto the Supreme Court. What a time to live in KY!

In one of my earlier post attempts that didn't make it to the publish, I was talking about one of my favorite authors, Gene Wolfe. I may go back to that one at some point, but it made me want to talk about a new author and a new book that I just read- or rather, just listened to.

Truck driving provides an obvious opportunity to enjoy the invention of audiobooks. My trainer had a few before I joined up, and we bought a few more in the first two weeks. I purchased a book called "Indigo Slam" by Robert Crais which I really liked, but which, due to us finishing every other option, we listened to at least five times in seven days. So! Taking advantage of a mournfully short visit to my family, I packed in a dozen new books to listen to.

One of them, picked up at the library, was "In Cold Blood," by Truman Capote. I'd always heard that it was beautiful, but I wasn't prepared for how lyrical and haunting it proved to be. It tells the story of "a multiple murder, and what came of it." The Clutter family of four, upstanding citizens, is murdered by two men who don't know them for the sake of ten thousand dollars that don't actually exist. The book is excellent in that it fleshes out every character and explores every angle of the crime and the conflict that followed with truly beautiful language. The Clutters are detailed in their purity and goodness; the murderers are painted in all their folly, pain, loss, suffering, ruthlessness, and lack of love. The book shows, but refuses to "tell:" it never takes the seat of judgment, never condemns the murderers. It lets the events condemn. Nor does it try to exonerate the men; it simply provides the story of how they came to do what they did.

I reflected that "In Cold Blood" accomplished, with less madness and fewer pages, what "The Brothers Karamazov" ultimately failed to do. It presented a world in which the idea that "everything is permitted" is beginning to boil up into the lives of ordinary people, caused by the abuse, absence, or negligence of parents, and showed the effect of such a mentality on the lives of everyone concerned. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock unknowingly hold the same philosophy as Smerdyakov, but they, unlike him, are presented as victims who became predators. Capote, unlike Dostoyevsky, writes about human wickedness as it is, as both caused and uncaused; he is not employed in making caricatures, but in portraiture.

I'm sure this counts as literary heresy, but I firmly believe that Truman Capote is a better author than Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

It's about time!

Hello again to everyone reading! It's been almost a year since my last post. At this point, my blog title has become inaccurate or ironic, depending on your view, as I am now a professional truck driver. Go figure.

I'm parked at a rest station in East Texas right now, so this post is just going to be a notice of this blog's impending resuscitation... or Resurrection, given the season. I'll try to post some new thoughts as soon as I can, because I've learned that driving a truck is an almost sure-fire method of meditation, and I have a lot of things I'd like to say.