Bourn to Lose

Michael Bourn as a New York Met?

What were once whispers that the Mets might be interested in free agent center fielder Michael Bourn have developed into a loud drum beat. There are two hang ups that seem to be keeping the Mets from locking up Bourn. The first is that they are unwilling to pay him $15 million a year and second, since Bourn is a Type A Free Agent who was offered a qualifying offer by the Braves, the Mets would lose their draft pick, 11th overall, for signing him.

Letting people think they are seriously going after Bourn is a good idea for the Mets. It helps them win the war of the sports covers in a winter where the Yankees were doling out one year contracts to guys who were All-Stars when I was in high school and were outbid by the Pirates for Russell Martin’s services. It’s also tells fans that ownership and the front office are interested in fielding a better team.

Actually inking Bourn to a three-year or, worse yet, a four-year deal, would be a disaster for the Mets. It sets back any effort to gauge what their outfield prospects can do, puts into stark relief the way the team handled the R.A. Dickey contract negotiation and subsequent trade to the Blue Jays and hampers the Mets ability to spend money if they become competitive in the next few years.

The problem is that the Mets weren’t very good last year and outside of David Wright, Ike Davis, Daniel Murphy and a possibly more consistent Lucas Duda, this doesn’t look like a very good team on offense for 2013. The Mets won 74 games last year, 77 in 2011, and 79 in 2010. Last year, their run differential was -59.

Without Bourn, the Mets would open the season with Ruben Tejada leading off and a platoon of Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Collin Cowgill in centerfield. With Bourn, Tejada would slide to second in the lineup and the platoon would be relegated to the bench. There is no doubt that in the short term, this would be an improvement for the team’s offense.

But, by blocking Nieuwenhuis and Cowgill, two guys who have yet to play a full season in the majors and are 25 and 26 respectively, for a guy on the wrong side of 30 who gets most of his value from his speed, the Mets could be doing some long term damage. In three minor league seasons, Nieuwenhuis put up consistently solid numbers. In 282 at-bats with the Mets last year, he had a slash line of .252/.315/.376. Cowgill has put up less impressive numbers but has always shown pop and speed. When Bourn was 25 and with the Astros in 2008, his full season slash line .229/.288/.300. This isn’t to say Nieuwenhuis will become a Bourn type player, but if Houston had gone out and got a new center fielder, they would have missed out on his 2009 season where he went .285/.354/.384.

Bourn is 30 years old. Any multi-year deal will be paying him mostly for what he has already done. Not what he will do in a New York uniform. In 2011, Bourn led the league in steals with 60 and in caught stealing with 14. In 2012, his steals dropped to 42 but he still led the league in caught stealing with 13. On top of that, he strikes out in bunches with 140 in 2009 and 2011 and 155 in 2012. As his legs get older, his batting average will continue to drop as his loss in speed negatively impacts his batting average on balls in play.

Photo via CBC

At the last home game of the 2012 season, R.A. Dickey won his 20th game of the year. Just two months later, Dickey was traded away to the Blue Jays for a package of players headlined by catching prospect Travis d’Arnaud. The Mets traded away Dickey weeks after he won the Cy Young Award because they were unable to come to an agreement on a contract extension that would have covered the 2014 and 2015 seasons, seasons where Dickey will be 39 and 40. It wasn’t that the Mets were unwilling to extend Dickey, it was just that the sides were $5 million dollars apart. Over two years.

While they may not go as high up as $15 million a year for Bourn, they will have to go north of $10 million a year to make him a Met. Bourn isn’t a necessity for a team that isn’t going to be competitive for a few years. But Dickey, even if he didn’t replicate his 2012 form and in a winter where a pitcher like Jeremy Guthrie was signed to a three-year, $25 million deal, is a necessity. A team like the San Francisco Giants won with great pitching in the starting rotation and bullpen and an offense that didn’t overpower you outside of a few guys.

Before the trade, the Mets would have entered 2013 with a starting rotation of Dickey, Jon Niese, Matt Harvey, Johan Santana and the possibility of uber-prospect Zach Wheeler at some point. Without Dickey, that rotation looks a lot less imposing as the Mets will need to lean even more so on Santana who faded post no-hitter and Dillon Gee who is working his way back from a serious season-ending injury last year.

The Mets let Jose Reyes walk, ostensibly because of their financial limitations, given their connection to the Madoff scandal and diminishing attendance. They haven’t been good in several years, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. With young pitching prospects and d’Arnaud and others, the Mets could have a competitive team in an NL East that looks stacked with the Nationals and Braves leading the charge, thanks to the second wild card playoff spot. In two or three years, a Mets team that is in the hunt for the playoffs will have Bourn’s sizable contract on the books. They will be paying a high price for diminishing returns if Bourn’s contract hampers their ability to improve the team with an in-season deal or off-season acquisition.

Michael Bourn is a good player. The Mets aren’t a good team. But Bourn will age and get worse. And the Mets will mature and become a better team that could get into the playoffs. Signing Bourn won’t help in that effort.

The Composite CD Give Away: A Tradition Like No Other

Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all, you ‘re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel.

I was sitting at a bar last fall on a date and we ended up talking about music. The conversation eventually landed on the fact that I had been making a bunch of mix CDs for the five hour drives I had been making to Vermont in the summer.

It was at this point that my date was shocked that people still made mix CDs. Now, I have had friends give me grief for calling them mix tapes instead of mix CDs, but this was the first time anyone thought they lived in a world where mix CDs were a thing of the past like moderate Republicans in Congress and the Montreal Expos.

Coming just a few months after I’d been asked to resend a mix CD in mp3 form because the girl owned a computer that lacked a disc drive, it got me thinking what comes next. Your typical 80s kid made mix tapes by recording songs off the radio. In college, I burned mp3s off my Windows Media Player!! But what about in 10 years or 20? Will mix CDs be relegated to the sonic dustbin that is home to eight-tracks and the walkmen.

But until that day, I’ll be buying blank CDs and burning music onto them for a whole range of reasons: road trips, party mixes, CDs for girls I’m trying to impress, and once a year, a CD for you!

We’ve put together a mix of 11 of songs that have been methodically selected, arranged in just the right order, listened to and then re-listened to just to make sure the CD is pitch perfect.

Want a CD? E-mail thecompositeblog@gmail.com by 11:59 pm on February 14 with your address and we’ll send you that CD.

A few things to keep in mind (like last year):

• To my European friends who find this blog because they are still searching for photos of the Titanic, your request will be honored.
• Limit first 100 requests. We came so close last year!

All you need to do to be part of this fledgling tradition is to e-mail thecompositeblog@gmail.com.

Watergate: A Novel – I’m Not a Book…You Should Read

Watergate: A Novel by Thomas Mallon – Via PoliticalNewsNow.com

Maybe it’s just me but I’ve always looked on the “historical fiction” genre with hesitant eyes. It seems to be the turf of guys like Newt Gingrich (and co-author) who take actual historical events and end up playing them out in an alternative universe. Not crazy stuff like aliens helping the Union Army at Gettysburg or a band of werewolves stopping the Great Chicago Fire. Instead, they play out the historical what ifs on par with the Confederacy winning the Civil War or a successful Axis ground invasion of Britain.

These books, to me at least, come off as the literary equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. History is too boring to be left to biographers and historians so we’re going to play make believe with real people, guessing how they would have handled situations they never found themselves in during their lives.

Thomas Mallon’s “Watergate: A Novel,” is a horse of a different color when it comes to historical fiction. Instead of giving us a history of the Nixon Administration where the Watergate burglars are never caught, the reader is treated to Mallon’s exploration of the time between the Watergate break-in and the last minutes of Nixon’s presidency. It seems like anyone was even tangentially related to the Watergate break-in and ensuing cover-up gets a spotlight shined on them in this scattered novel. From the wives of some of the burglars to Nixon himself, we are treated to their motivations for actions both important and irrelevant.

Oh no, I’ve given away the ending – Via WorldFamousPhotos.com

And there in lies one of (but not the biggest – we’ll get to that) problems with “Watergate.” Mallon spends so much time bouncing from one person’s perspective to another that we don’t get enough time with any one individual to find out what truly matters. By trying to combine history with a novel, we don’t get the character development one expects from fiction. Maybe it has something to do with an assumption by the author that the reader is already familiar with these historical figures, but no matter the underlying cause, it weakens “Watergate”

If the novel side of “Watergate” is hampered by too many characters, the non-fiction aspects are lost when Mallon overloads his book with secondary figures whose character arcs clutter the progress of the book and take away from the history at hand. We get a lot about journalist Joseph Alsop and Theodore Roosevelt’s oldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt Lodge. Be it about Alsop’s sham of a marriage or Alice’s regrets over the loss of her daughter, these tangential explorations draw away from the titular subject: Watergate. The Saturday Night Massacre gets rushed through with nary a mention of Robert Bork yet we get page after page about Alsop and Alice.

All of these pale in comparison to what Mallon himself shares with the reader in the Acknowledgements section:

…I have operated along the always sliding scale of historical fiction. The text contains deviations from fact that some readers will regard as unpardonable, and other swill deem unworthy of notice. But this remains a work of fiction, not history.

Much as Mallon leaves the judgment up to the reader, I do the same with you. But I leave you with this. If Mallon wants us to look at Watergate from a new perspective and the key players in a different light by filling in what he believes were the conversations that happened in the Oval, on Air Force One, and in the Watergate, it is tough to get on board when the reader is unable to sort the fact from the fiction.

Are You My Mother?

Are You My Mother? – Via Cleveland.com

Alison Bechdel’s “Are You My Mother?”, is ostensibly an exploration of her relationship with her mom. But at the same time, it is so much more. The graphic memoir explores Bechdel’s relationships – with her therapists, her girlfriends, her parents, her writing and herself. As a way to figure out what has been going wrong the people and activities listed above, she explores the intersecting lives of Virginia Woolf and Dr. Donald Winnicott.

The tricky thing with parents is that no matter how old you are and how far away you get from them, in any measure of distance, their impact remains. It colors your professional and personal lives and as Bechdel struggles to unravel her complicated relationship with her mother, she has to dig deep into her own self to get where she needs to go. This awareness has its own drawbacks in her romantic relationships as she not only has to navigate the present with an eye to the future, but her past remains by her side.

While this is a memoir about her relationship with her mother, it is also about the writing of this very book, the writing of her previous memoir and how her mom responded to having the family’s baggage exposed for all the world to see. As a reader, especially one who isn’t familiar with Bechdel’s previous work, it takes a while to catch up with what feels like a pre-established narrative at the beginning of the memoir. The memoir kicks with a dream and jumps to the middle of a phone conversation between Bechdel and her mother while the author is driving to Pennsylvania.

Alison Bechdel – Via Barnes and Noble

Some of the most interesting moments come when Bechdel shares her experiences with her therapists. Three are featured in the memoir and they all play different, but important roles in her life. As someone who recently started seeing a psychiatrist, its amazing to read the thoughts of someone who has been in therapy for most, if not all, of their adult life, talk about the powerful impact it can have. It’s a testament to Bechdel’s willingness to share so much with her readers that we can see how her therapist’s world views eventually shape how she handles her own life.

“Are You My Mother” is broken up into a handful of chapters that all begin with the retelling of a dream. While these dreams give the reader an indication of what the chapter will cover, the more interesting feature about these dreams is that a few years pass after she has the dreams and only years later does Bechdel piece together the meaning of the dream and the role that lesson has in her life.

Inevitably, the story comes back to the mom. Even when Bechdel is writing about Virginia Woolf’s writing or Winnicott’s research into parent-child relationships, it all goes back to her efforts to create something with the mother who stopped kissing her goodnight when she was seven-years-old. While I won’t give away Bechdel’s realizations at the end of the memoir and where her and mom are at that point, tagging along with her as she gets to that destination, makes the ride worthwhile.

All Kinds of Time With Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Image via USA Today

One of the best songs written by Fountains of Wayne came from their 2003 album, Welcome Interstate Managers. “All Kinds of Time” tells the story of a young quarterback who in the middle of the game pieces it all together during one play.

Quarterback are at the center of the action. Fellow teammates on offense look to him for leadership. Either he calls the plays or relays them from the sidelines. The defense is watching him watch them as they line up. The QB can stick with the play or call an audible. All of this transpires in seconds. But it’s in the rush of the ensuing seconds between the snap and when the ball leaves the quarterback’s hands in flight down-field that 21 other players run, crash and push to either enable or stop the quarterback. It’s in these ticks of the clock where a quarterback has to scan the field for receivers and defenders alike. A half second there or a beat here is the difference between a sack or worse and a first down or better.

In “All Kinds of Time,” knowing that millions in the stands and at home tuned into their televisions are watching what he does, particularly his family around that flat screen, time slows down for him as he receives the snap. I remember reading as a kid that Michael Jordan was so good, he used to see plays develop before they actually happened. Fountain of Wayne’s quarterback seems to reach the same level.

As I read Ben Fountain’s novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” last week, I kept returning to this song. And not just because Drew Henson, one of just two non-fictional players referenced in the novel, never reached that level of ability in two professional sports. It’s because, in the hands of most writers, a character like Billy, a 21 year-old soldier with no college education who manages to have a deep reserve of natural intelligence and emotional intelligence, would seem like an unreasonable stretch of the imagination. But with Fountain, Billy’s almost preternatural internal dialogue seems like the natural outgrowth of his growing up in Texas and his experiences in Iraq with his fellow soldiers in Bravo Squad.

Fountain’s novel is set on Thanksgiving Day 2004, but the story is propelled by flashbacks to Bravo Squad’s time in Iraq, the doldrums during the squad’s national celebrity tour and the time he spends at home with his invalid father, his overrun mother, his two sisters and his rambunctious nephew.

In moments no longer than any given football play, but far more momentous, a few members of Bravo Squad found themselves under attack near a canal in Iraq. Other members of the squad arrive as back-up and take out the Iraqi attackers in a battle captured on film that was later aired by Fox and other news outlets, leading to the beautification of the soldiers back home as heroes. The death of one solider, Shroom, whose strong intellect and friendship with the squad’s leader, Dime, settles heavily on Billy, and the severe injury to another are brushed aside by everyone other than the squad during their national “victory” tour. The culmination of the tour is their attendance at the Cowboys game on Thanksgiving.

Without giving too much of the story away, the squad manages to make their way from the end zone and their field level seats to the bowels of the stadium for a press conference and a meet-and-greet with Cowboys cheerleaders to the owners luxury box. Spread across one afternoon, these interactions and developments flow naturally and occur in such a way that it seems totally reasonable that these ten guys who just weeks before were stuck in some god-forsaken desert in a country most Americans could barely locate on a map would be able to grip and grin with everyone from the Jerry Jones-esque owner of the Dallas Cowboys to the random fans coming up to them when recognized as Bravo Squad.

Welcome Interstate Managers – Image via Tradebit.com

Getting back to that matter of moments, Billy’s life is full of them. From the situation that drove him to the army, to the reaction under fire to instances throughout the game where split second decisions, the story’s internal engine and his direction as a character are powered by these choices. And while they are made with limited life experience, there is also a presence of mind and composure that others pick up on from the start. From Albert, the Hollywood producer looking to turn Bravo’s story into a blockbuster movie to Dime who sees in Shroom’s loss a need for Billy to step up, to a Cowboy’s cheerleader whose heart is in the right place and even to the Cowboy’s owner who wants to negotiate with Albert and Billy after Dime goes bonkers, people see something special in Billy.

When writing in the past about the novels I’ve read, I have, from time to time compared certain books to Jonathan Franzen’s unwieldy “Freedom.” “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” captures what it was to live in America and be an American in a lot of ways, in the closing months of 2004. President Bush had won re-election with the held of some Swift Boating of his Democratic opponent, the foundation for the economic collapse at the end of the decade was being swiftly put on credit and the unwavering devotion to a foreign policy that was killing Americans on a daily basis and doing little to make us safer at home were going at full-speed still. All of these are on display in this book. Fountain weaves all this together naturally by writing about characters who are at the center of these events and developments.

The story ends soon after the Cowboys game concludes in a Dallas loss. As the soldiers leave the game, Billy has one last decision to make. And much like the quarterback in the Fountains of Wayne song, he has just seconds to make it, but by the end of novel, for him and for us, it feels like all kinds of time.

Really? With the Books? Again?

How many books do you think Ahab read in a year? (Forbes.com)

Having a blog is a lot like taking care of one of those gold fish you’d win as a child at a street festival or county fair. There was that initial exuberance and excitement. The next morning though, almost inevitably, you’d find the gold fish, for whom you’d already gone to the trouble of naming and after feeding that first evening, scaring the shit out of by shoving your face up to the bowl, dead. Our parents, quick to avoid any pesca-tragedy would dispose of the little fella via a quick flush to sea. While that was always the case with my not so lucky goldfish, there are some people whose ability to keep their goldfish alive opened their eyes to the possibility of fish tanks filled with colorful aquatic life and the responsibility that comes with taking care of a fledgling eco-system residing in your dorm room or home.

Flipping through some old photos at what was my mom’s home a few months ago led me to one shot of me as a toddler in my father’s arm at street fair. Standing next to us was my Uncle Johnny doing his best BALCO impersonation and in my tiny hands was the top of a bag holding this bright orange fish. That fish and this blog have some things in common. But lets start with what they don’t so that inconsistency can be addressed. Most obvious is that that fish is alive and in the strictest of senses, this blog is not. It is a combination of coding and letters that become words that turn into sentences and paragraphs before hopefully transforming into something thoughtful and interesting.

If you don’t care for the fish, it’s not going to last. Just as if you don’t take the time to care for a blog or anything you are trying to create, it isn’t going to survive. Since we already established it isn’t alive, the blog is not going to die but it will drift away slowly. You might check in once and awhile, but it isn’t enough. And that, dear reader, is what happened here with The Composite. Life has a way of getting in the way. Over the course of the last two years this site has embarked on the possibly Quixotic effort to read all 100 Books on the New York Times’ Notable Books list in each respective year.

Born out of a desire to read a wider array of books, I now almost feel like a Bibliophile Ahab. Stymied two years ago with the onset of a job that demanded the entirety of my time, energy and focus, I strongly believed that 2012 was going to be the year. By March, I had already hit the 30 book mark – easily on pace to if not reach 100, get real close. And then life, again, inserted itself in ways unimaginable. Reading memoirs of loss stung too much, non-fiction about wars and tragedy were of no comfort and the saddest of it all, was fiction, which as a child was a world for our young mind’s to escape reality for just a little while, but now was littered with books about dysfunctional families, destructive relationships, death and situations where the possibility of hope was no longer in the cards. Staring loss head on meant turning away from the books, on the list and most any other. Until this week, I can’t remember a single book I was able to finish since I finished The Art of Fielding in April.

But unlike the legions of goldfish lost and the libraries filled with fictional characters doomed to repeat their fates with every new reader, the living, the truly living, have the ability to continue. And part of that continuation, for me at least, is to once again to try and read all of the books on 2012 iteration of the New York Times’ Notable Books list. The list was released the Sunday before Thanksgiving last year. And this Sunday, if all goes as planned, the race to 100 will begin anew. Lets see 2013 has in store for us.

A Serious Case of Natitude

The 2012 Nationals have a simple request.

As I write this on Monday night, the Washington Nationals are the best team in baseball with a 75 and 46 record. Want some metrics that are a little more sophisticated, they have the best run differential in the National League at the start of tonight’s game against the Braves.

Speaing of tonight’s game, if the Nationals win – they’re currently tied at 4 in the top of the 11th – they’ll be 30 games above .500. A DC major league baseball team hasn’t been this good since the Senators won 99 games in the first year of FDR’s first term. The last time the Nationals/Expos franchise finished with a better record was the 1979 Expos, though an argument could be made that ’94 Expos would have made all this moot since they were 34 games above .500 in early August when the players went on strike.

The funny thing about the Nationals is that this wasn’t supposed to happen – not this year at least. When pitchers and catchers reported to Florida and Arizona back in February, much of the talk in the NL East revolved around the flashy and pricey contracts laid out by the Miami Marlins, the garish ballpark they were opening in downtown and their outlandishly boisterous new manager. Or how the Phillies wouldn’t be as good as they were last year but they’d still manage to win the NL East. Even the Braves overshadowed the Nationals in some pre-season projections.

This was all in spite of trading for Oakland ace Gio Gonzalez, getting Stephen Strasburg back from Tommy John surgery and building off an 80-win season in 2011 where they finished the season strong after Davey Johnson took over as manager.

Washington’s success this season is all the more impressive when the injuries they’ve dealt with are taken into consideration. Outfielder (and my former boss and life-long Phillies fan’s favorite contract to make fun of) Jayson Werth went down with a broken wrist in May, closer Drew Storen was out until after the All-Star game, Ryan Zimmerman was not himself till he received a cortisone shot in July and catcher Wilson Ramos who survived a scary kidnapping in Venezuela this winter was lost for the season in May. This is a team whose starting nine was not at full-strength until very recently.

Bryce Harper steals home while the Phillies consider the benefits of getting first dibs on tee times in October – Via Washington Post

What has been at full strength since April: pitching. From a starting five that is arguably the best rotation in the major leagues and a bullpen to match that has not missed a beat without Storen as set-up man extraordinaire Tyler Clippard assumed the closer’s role after Brad Lidge was released and Henry Rodriguez proved ineffective.

I remember going to a 2009 game in DC where the Nats took on the defending World Champion Phillies. It felt like we were in Citizens Bank Park as any Nats chant or cheer was shouted down by the Phillies fans in the stands. That wasn’t uncommon when the Phillies were in town.

Now things are different. The one moment in the season series that captures the changing of the guard in the NL East and the natitude of this Washington team came on May 6th when Cole Hamels drilled rookie phenom Bryce Harper in the back. Harper got to third and then stole home on Hamels.

After the game Hamels said, “I was trying to hit him. I’m not going to deny it. That’s just – you know what, it’s something I grew up watching, that’s what happened, so I’m just trying to continue the old baseball…” Nats GM Mike Rizzo fired back, calling Hamels “gutless,” “classless,” and “fake tough.” Rizzo adding, “Cole Hamels says he’s old school? He’s the polar opposite of old school.” Maybe not the brainiest move on Rizzo’s part, but it showed fight for a team that was long pushed around by the Phillies while being the doormat of the NL East.

I remember opening day in 2008 when Ryan Zimmerman hit a walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth against the Braves. That Nationals team finished 59-102. Tonight marks the first game of a critical three-game series between the Nationals and the second-place Braves. A Nats sweep would put the Braves eight games back with 38 to play. A Braves sweep would cut the lead to two. This is a BIG series.

There is still time for this team to hit the wall and fade. Stranger things have happened. Or the Braves could rip off an insane winning streak in the waning days of the season. Even with these nightmare scenarios rattling around my mind, a 99.1 percent chance of making the playoffs playoff calms those concerns most days, the opportunity to enjoy meaningful baseball as a fan this late in the season for the first time is fun. And that’s what being a fan is all about. After years of hoping that draft picks would finally pan out, that guys like Lastings Milledge might turn it around (not so much), and that one of these seasons the team might crack .500, that time has come.

I haven’t been to the park since 2010 when I was trying to catch Strasburg’s first start and ended up with a prototypically underwhelming Livan Hernandez start against the Reds. But I’ve caught the Nats on TV throughout the year and as the season has progressed, there has been an energy at the park. And its an energy that is palpable. It’s Natitude through and through. And its a swagger that starts at the top with the players and is also in the stands. And its a message to any team that finds themselves playing the Nationals in October: we’re for real and we’re here to win!

And in the 13th inning last night, the Nationals won on an infield squibbler that Dan Uggla, the Braves’ second baseman mishandled. Thirty games above .500 and a six game lead in the NL East. We may have a generic aughts designed stadium, we may have a weird mascot and a lame team name, but we’re better than your team.

The Power of Unfinished History

Bannerman’s Castle as it looks today. Via Artificial Owl

We’ve already written about the underwhelming first, and every other impression Penn Station makes upon your arrival – be it on the train, subway or from street level. It makes Soviet architecture look lively and warm. Even during its most packed and maddening rush hour moments, Grand Central Terminal maintains a grandeur that excuses the hustle and bustle of the suburban commuters and bewildered tourists.

The only justification that excuses the madhouse that Penn Station can be is the promise of the beautiful scenery flying by your window no matter your destination – north along the Hudson, New England-bound as you hug the Atlantic or south as the train runs through the Chesapeake region. A word to the wise, the absolute worst time to find yourself in Penn Station is Friday during afternoon rush hour. Not only are tens of thousands of commuters making their way home, a fair amount of them already tipsy, but you’ve got a litany of sold-out Amtrak trains loaded with families on vacation, tourists exploring the US by rail and long-distance commuters trying to get home. It’s a combustible cocktail of exhaustion, anxiety and weariness that can test the nerves of the most hardy traveler.

But even the worst Penn Station experiences can be wiped from the memory quickly. Last Friday, just minutes after departing Penn Station for Vermont, as the train rumbled over the Harlem River into the Bronx, the stressful wait at Penn Station had begun to slip away. As the train made it way up the Hudson with the sun settling gracefully over the Catskills, giving the river a golden hue, the hullabalo that is Penn Station disapeared from my thoughts.

That’s the great thing about the ride between New York City and Albany, no matter the weather or the time of the day, the river and it’s surrounding environs are a cathartic bubble if you’re lucky enough to catch a window seat and find yourself in the right state of mind. At night, the lights of the bridges and the small hamlets on the western banks periodically illuminate the river. In the rain, the raindrops, at the right angle look like skips of rocks bouncing over the water and on partly cloudy days filled with a bright sun, it’s easy to understand why a school of art was named after  the body of water.

For me, the best moment comes about an hour out of New York City. For the entirety of the ride, the Hudson River is dotted with speed boats and kayakers, lighthouses and puttering tugboats hauling barges to the port. While these are picturesque, nothing comes close to the the abandoned structure near Fishkill, that is a few hundred yards from land. It looks like it could be the mansion in Jane Eyre – after the fire.

Having ridden this route consistently since 2003, this relic of another century has always left me wondering – who lived there? What was it like to call that building home in a time when the natural beauty of the lower Hudson Valley must have been less hemmed in and towns and cities along the rivers banks were the exception, instead of the norm? What was it like living there through the coldest of winters where people could cross the river simply by walking on the ice? How stunningly jaw-dropping was it to stand on those grounds in the middle of the most perfect summer nights as the constellations were plastered on the sky as if they were nightlights on a ceiling?

For years, my lack of knowledge allowed my imagination to wander about the Victorian and Gilded era opulence that the mansion once could have been and the stories of the scions and their brood who called the place home. And to the eventual destruction of the place – was it overnight? Did it creep upon the estate as the last of the family line aged and was unable to maintain the building financially, physically or both? What type of Franzenian (yea, I turned his name into a verb) family drama ensued that sealed the fate of this once imposing structure? Could it be restored? Would it make any sense to do that? What would it be like to live in the restored grandeur of a 19th Century mansion in the middle of the Hudson?

One of the castle’s exterior walls – Via HudsonValleyRuins.org

Knowledge may be power, but when it comes to confirming the perceptions you’ve honed for years with little basis besides your imagination and fictional narratives imbued in your psyche from years of English class assigned novels, knowledge can be the ultimate downer. During my last trip to Penn Station on Amtrak, I finally decided to Wikipedia the building that had long enchanted me.

Located on Pollepel Island, the structure is Bannerman’s Castle. Built by Francis Bannerman in the early 20th Century, it was intended for his military surplus business. Bannerman needed a place to store his more than 30 million surplus munitions cartridges because his storeroom on Broadway was, naturally, not the best place for these items. However, when he died in 1918, construction stopped. And that began the downward slide that has left the structure in the dilapidated state it’s in today. A portion of the building was destroyed from an explosion involving 200 tons of shells and powder a few years later. The structure was all but abanoned after the ferry serving the island sank in the 1950s. Just a few weeks before man landed on the moon in 1969, a fire destroyed much of the building. The final ignominy for this imposing castle came just a few years ago when a sizable portion of the structure’s front and east walls collapsed.

Like the Titanic, crumbling away as it suffers at the hands of time and nature, Bannerman’s Castle, standing in the middle of the Hudson, is probably not long for this world. In a decade or two or maybe three, this once glorious, unfinished structure will be no more. Who knows how many riders, from the glory years of passenger rail zipping across the Empire State on the New York Central, to the bleak days of the downtrodden Penn Central or today’s travelers on Amtrak and Metro North let their minds wander as this structure, intended to house military curio and relics, caught their eye? Structures like Bannerman’s Castle may remain unfinished in reality, but their unfinished nature gives our imagination the opportunity to right the wrongs unleashed by the unforgiving hands of time and nature.

Sonic Monday: Heartbreaker by The Walkmen [Video]

By the time your second semester of freshmen year at college rolls around, you known both your limitations – that sixth can of Natty Light in the last 90 minutes was one too many – and how far you can push the envelope – waiting till the night before a ten-page paper is due to start writing: yes; waiting to study for a mid-term till the night before said exam: not so much.

All suited up and it’s a school inservice day – Via Pitchfork

Routines also become easier to fall into. Once a week during the spring semester  of my freshmen year at Seton Hall, one of my roommates and I had the same hour-and-a-half block of time in the afternoon free. Invariably, we would play Grand Theft Auto and listen to whatever new CD I’d purchased in Hoboken. One of those felonious afternoons, we listened to Electric Version by The New Pornographers. For some reason, while unleashing utter destruction in GTA, we unknowingly sketched out a very intricate mumblecore movie about the folks living in our dorm suite, using each song in the album as a plot point. This cinematic crafting hadn’t happened before and never happened again, but it gave me an appreciation for songs that sound like they should be in a movie.

From the opening chords of “Heartbreaker,” one of the songs off The Walkmen’s forthcoming album Heaven, to the lyrics and the pacing of the drums, this song sounds like it should play during the opening credits of a good movie.

I’ve been listening to The Walkmen since 2004. Every one of their albums that consists of original material has explored similar sonic terrain while highlighting the variety of sounds that exist in that space. “Heartbreaker” signals a change to that method. Compared to songs off of Bows + Arrows and You and Me, “Heartbreaker” is downright upbeat. Lyrics like, “I’m not your heartbreaker/ Some tender ballad player,” have a vitality and energy to them. Hamilton Leithauser’s vocals have always been powerful and emotional, but in an angry, somber or resigned way. When Leithauser sings “These are the good years/ Ahh the best, we’ll never know,” it’s call to embrace the present, enjoy what we’ve got in front of us and who we’ve got around us. Much the same way, the heartbreaker/ballad player lyrics are both a promise of what he won’t do and also a quick acknowledgment of what he won’t be.

The unique thing for me about this song is that the order in which I heard it is totally backwards. Typically, I listen to the album (and song) ad nauseam leading up to a show, hearing the way the band’s studio intentions before seeing how the tune lives in an open space, performed by folks who’ve really only got one take to get it right. I heard “Heartbreaker” for the first time sitting in the front row of the balcony at BAM. This and other songs off of the upcoming album were totally new to me. I had no preconceived notions of what the lyrics meant or how the vocals would interplay with the instruments in a live setting. Maybe, most important, these songs had yet to make or leave their mark on me emotionally. Sitting in the breathtaking Gilman Opera House at BAM for The Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Festival, I was a blank canvas when these songs played.

The Walkmen, Circa 2004 – Via Clashmusic.com

Even when it was just Hamilton on stage with an acoustic guitar singing “Southern Heart,” a song about a guy who has bourbon in his blood and other Southern characteristics, there was an unexpected peacefulness in the band’s sound. I recently read an interview in Pitchfork where Leithauser discussed the new album. It came up that ten years in, all the guys in The Walkmen are now married and have kids. Is there any possibility that these new sentiments appearing on Heaven come from those changes in the band members’ lives? The utter despondency of “Thinking of a Dream I Had” – lyrically and sonically – has been replaced by a mindset that isn’t teetering on morbid depression and has a far healthier grasp of the world.

One last thing about this song is the still image The Walkmen put on the YouTube video. The photo is of Pete Bower, the band’s bassist, and his wife and two children. As someone who lives in Park Slope, I see elementary school students wearing geek chic on weekends and toddlers who probably think my green chucks are so high school. Maybe so, but the kid in the picture, all suited up, looks like he is on his way to the best 1920s-themed pre-teen birthday party ever.

Petition: Tell New Jersey Transit to Stop Scare-Mongering

New Jersey Transit will scare you on the train. And they will scare you in The Times.

SIGN THE PETITION

Last fall, I wrote about a series of ads I had seen plastered on New Jersey Transit trains that were particularly tasteless and offensive. The ad was part of NJT’s “We’re All on the Front Line” message about the need for all of us to be on the look out for dangerous and suspicious activity that could lead to an attack.

This ad was offensive on two levels. First, it used a photo from the March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid. Beyond just showing the wreckage of a blown-out train, it showed several victims’ bodies covered by tarps. This willingness to casually display the dead in a PSA is tasteless.

Think about the language being used and the imagery. The implication is that commuters in Madrid weren’t aware they were on the front lines and that is why 192 commuters killed and nearly 2,000 were injured. So, beware New Jersey Transit riders, unless you realize every single one of us is on the front-lines, you might leave us vulnerable to attack.

No longer finding myself on New Jersey Transit that often, I didn’t think much about the ad till I opened up this Wednesday’s New York Times. In the Times’s New York section was the very same ad. I was so disappointed to see New Jersey Transit trying to revive this campaign that I set-up a petition at Change.org calling on New Jersey Transit to pull these ads. Please ad your name. I’ve also re-posted below the original piece I wrote in September about these ads.

Add your name here.

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See something, say something.

This catchphrase is omnipresent in New York City subways, buses, and commuter trains. It has become ubiquitous as the tagline for the MTA’s efforts to get riders to be alert and aware of their surroundings. Earlier this year, Boston’s transit authority unveiled ads with oversized backpacks and other items left behind nefariously with the tagline, “Its never this obvious.”  While these campaigns have been mocked on a variety of levels, there is something we can all agree on: they don’t terror-monger.

Meet New Jersey Transit’s latest safety related ad campaign.

New Jersey Transit is Scaremongering!

Unlike the MTA and T, which use staged photo shoots or photoshopped images for their ad graphics, New Jersey Transit used an image from the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings. Coordinated bombings on four trains during the morning rush hour killed 192 individuals and injured nearly 2,000. Look at that photo again, four of those fatalities feature prominently in this ad.

The only attribution the image has is “Train Bombing.” This is overshadowed, however, by the large fonted, multi-colored tagline that is in all caps, “WE’RE ALL ON THE FRONT LINES.” Seriously, New Jersey Transit? Every single one of us is on the front lines? If that is the case, why I have never once seen a train with NJ Transit Police riding on it? Or bag checks like those done on the NYC subway or PATH? Sure there are soldiers and police dogs at New York-Penn Station, but that is primarily Amtrak related and it does us riders no good at busy stations like Secaucus, Newark-Penn Station, Trenton, and other high trafficked routes.

Now more than ten years after the September 11 attacks, most regular commuters are used to these types public service ads. I’ll admit I saw this ad twice before really noticing it and the accompanying photo. Beyond engaging in ineffective terror-mongering, it is also horribly insensitive.

Maybe it is the fact that no Americans perished in the Madrid bombings, but using a photo of the aftermath, one that includes four bodies covered in sheets is beyond the pale. What would happen if an airport in another country, say Paris’ Charles de Gaulle used an iconic image from September 11 in a public service ad calling on all travelers and airport staff to be alert and prepared?

We don’t need to guess. Check out this Gawker post that compiles the five worst ads that use the September 11 attacks. Even the subtlest of references to that day can send ad folks scurrying back to the drawing board. In the days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released and then edited an ad that had a plane flying low over the Manhattan skyline in support of David Weprin’s special election campaign.

Ads that blatantly use the imagery of an American national tragedy are rightly rejected and criticized. If we expect others to respect our wishes to keep our loss and the memory of those who perished sacred, we should do unto them the same. New Jersey Transit, take down those ads.