My weekend has been spent doing the dispiriting task of developing my employer’s human resources policies, at least to an initial state. I believe I have it wrangled but I found the experience tremendously disheartening, even though the intellectual and work-relation problems resolved by having a policy in place clearly make it necessary.
How can I put it? It was (and will continue to be) an experience I can only describe as deeply uncomfortable and wrong, a reminder of my apparently permanent alienation from my native society and culture. I found the experience profoundly depressing.
Viv was out of town as well, inspiring musings about all-day-barhopping or 24-hour punk-rock movie festivals, but instead I, um, researched human resources policy on the web from my soft, comfy couch. I left said position to
- a) do laundry
- b) make coffee
- c) go to the liquor store for gin and
- c) eat at Kimchee Bistro in the Alley on Broadway, about three and one-half blocks from my house.
I also had two long phone conversations with my parents, one while walking to the liquor store and walking back, and one while doing laundry. The additional portability of the phone under such circumstances is definitely appreciated. I doubt I would have had time to talk with them had I been constrained to speak with them while within range of the land line.
I was slightly disappointed that I did not meet my personal goal of not leaving the house for 48 hours, always my weekend aim (with the exception of next weekend, nota bene). I was also somewhat puzzled by my personal reluctance to watch one of the several interesting movies I have, unwatched, in the house on DVD or to walk one block beyond the liquor store to attend a theatrical screening of the always-rewarding Chinatown at the Northwest Film Forum.
A bright spot over the weekend was my unexpectedly long email correspondence with Jon Nelson, who I have mentioned here before. Many years ago, one of my truly lasting friendships (with one Eric White) developed in an epistolary fashion and I think that’s what happening with Jon and me now. He recently got a memorial tattoo dedicated to our mutual deceased pal Steve Millen, and talked about that and about the Green Tortoise, an alternative bus line that Jon drove for back in the mid-80s and which I once took from Seattle to San Francisco at midwinter. My trip was very memorable in a positive way. Jon does not look at his time with the Tortoise as positively.
Happily, however, Sunday afternoon, Vivian came home from her weekend getaway to Portland with one of her pals. We’ve just returned from dinner.
As I write, we are listening to the fathead classical programming of WCPE, a classical station I recently noticed in the default Radio::Classical subdirectory of iTunes. It transpires that the station is based near to my parents and may fairly be considered their classical station. It’s a public station, but I don’t think they run any NPR programming. They do run stuff that was once the mainstay of American public radio programming, such as the Sunday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts (if on Saturdays). They have never yet strayed from a certain middle-of-the-road (thus: “fathead”) sensibility in the orchestral and chamber music they play, which is slightly disappointing, if understandable. In many ways, it’s like an idealized time-capsule of public radio music programming in the era from 1975-1988.
Having learned to do intellectual work to this style of programming, it’s a kind of guilty treat to have discovered the station. I think there’s probably an interesting public-sector business story in the station as well, since its’ website branding is ‘The Classical Music Station.’ I presume they must obtain a significant percentage of their pledge drive income from internet listeners.