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Mount Washington Cog Railway September 30, 2007








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By Meredith – September 30, 2007

The Native Are Restless

Nike has released the Air Native N7, a running shoe exclusively available for Native Americans. Nike is quite proud of itself for offering this “true Native fitting, performance product” that meets the “specific fit and width requirements for the Native American foot”.

The USA Today article mentions the shoe’s “culturally specific look.” Other than a strip of color that runs along the laces, these are the biggest, whitest, most oblong sneakers I have ever seen. In USA Today’s picture, the sneaker makes the guy’s head look like a peanut. That’s a helluva toe box.

I’m no orthopedist, but I am a cynic. I wonder if ‘regular’ sneakers that suit the feet of every other race were really that inadequate for Native Americans, themselves a diverse population that span a continent. Or is Nike’s market so saturated that they are shamelessly going after a market share of 1% of the population (and the non-profit health foundations that cater to it)?

But ultimately, I suspect that this is a feel-good initiative for the employees of Nike, a company that has $15 billion in revenue a year and is still scrubbing at the tarnish from the controversy in the mid-1990s over its exploitative sweatshop labor in third-world countries. What a bizarre sequence of events in White European/Native American relations. In 500 years, we’ve gone from wiping them out with smallpox and stealing their land to niche-marketing them sneakers.

Posted in In the News.

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By Meredith – September 29, 2007

Friday Night Frights

I attended exactly one football game during high school. It was the Homecoming game my Freshman year, back when I gamely “participated” in a doomed effort to sneak into a clique of sub-popular academic kids who never willingly talked to me at school events.

Maybe our team won, maybe we didn’t. My only memory is the Homecoming Court. The boys wore suits and ties, and the girls all wore dowdy skirt suits. They coupled off and perched on the back of convertibles that circled the football field, carrying flowers and waving. After a lifetime of seeing Homecoming Queens and Kings in popular culture, the lackluster crowning ceremony disappointed me.

The football coach was a Russian immigrant named Coach Marinkov, loved for being the easiest and most fun history teacher in school. But I’m glad that I never had him, because he ridiculed weirdos and was a blatant misogynist. The football team’s consistently dismal performance gave me deep satisfaction, because Coach Marinkov as well as every single football player was a jerk. Seriously.

The other day, I was web surfing and happened to come across a recent article about my alma mater’s football program: “Methacton savoring first win since 2004”, about how they snapped a 25-game losing streak under the tutelage of a new coach named McNally, who taunted them over the off-season by wearing a t-shirt with the No. 25 on it.

I emailed the story to my best friend from high school, snidely noting how “the Warriors ripped McNally’s oft-worn and sometimes smelly T-shirt to shreds.” Apparently, the sentence struck her and me the exact same way, as she replied: “I can see it all. And it makes me feel anxious.”

Posted in Nostalgia.

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By Meredith – September 28, 2007

Breakdown

I don’t have time to write a real post today, because I just spent 20 minutes composing a poisoned missive to MBTA Commuter Rail Chief Bob Stoetzel (via the MBTA ‘Write to the Top’ feedback) about how the hour-long delays that have plagued the Worcester line for the past few months due to ongoing track maintenance are bringing me to the brink of a nervous breakdown. I would re-post my compliant on this site for your entertainment, but I’m not too proud of the hysterical whining (“YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE”), goaded by tonight’s commuting disaster that ended 2 hours later with Mr. Pinault picking me up in Boston. WAH.

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By Meredith – September 27, 2007

Today’s Pet Peeve: Engineers who think “anyone can write”

Obviously, engineers are literate, and usually intelligent enough to form a lucid linguistic construct. But even if their words are grammatically flawless, the resulting expanse of abstruse syntax is often the diametric opposite of what can be considered “communication.” The prose of an engineer treats the reader as if they have the cognitive powers of a robot.

Through natural ability and years of practice, I have honed my ability to communicate complex concepts through clear, concise writing. That is how I get to be a technical writer. Where do engineers get off thinking that “anyone can write?” Sure, anyone can cook too, but few have the culinary prowess to be considered a chef. I make a mean grilled cheese, but I’m not going to attempt ricotta gnocchi with tomato passatina, pecorino romano, and frizzled leek relish for $30 a plate.

If engineers want to express themselves, they can build a bridge, develop an artificial body organ, create a food additive, design a portable music player, or construct an aircraft carrier… Engineers are experts in engineering, a discipline that a group of engineers once defined as the creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.

Undeniably, an engineer crafted that explanation. My point exactly.

Posted in The 9 to 5.

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By Meredith – September 26, 2007

Tales from the Women ‘Hood

My new company (after a month, it feels dodgy to persist in saying “new,” but it is just that) shares a Ladies’s Room with what seems to be the customer service division of a financial company. This company employs a large number of young females who regularly congregate in the restroom to apply make-up, style their hair, or stare vacantly at the mirror. When in a group, they’ll spew boredom, whisper gossip, gush excitement, or sometimes let loose a foul deluge of bitter complaints. Potty mouth, if you will.

The communal aspects of the lavatory prevent me from overhearing anything too juicy. There’s a lot of fantasy catty retorts to unnamed adversaries. “Oh, God, when she said that? I was, like, ‘get off your high horse, and remember that you are not my manager. Because if you were my manager, I’d so be gone tomorrow'” is a typical rant.

Today I was privy to an interesting exchange between two young woman who I often see brushing their glorious manes of dark hair in front of the sinks. “I learned in school, that, like, there are some tribes that send women to these special huts when they have their periods,” one young woman said, “and they just do nothing but sit around for an entire week.”

“Really?” said her friend. “That sounds great!”

“I know! And my professor made the hut sound bad, like it was demeaning, like it was a punishment, but I’m thinking, ‘Omigod! Send me to the hut!'” The women laugh. This is the sort of conversation that could only happen in a Ladies’ Room: for some a place of biological necessity, for others, a place of respite and bastion of womanhood.

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By Meredith – September 24, 2007

I am Alive

The dearth of posts in the past few days may lead some readers to wonder if I’m alive. Indeed, I am. I’m alive and thriving in autumn’s benevolence. Today I climbed to the summit of Mount Washington, the highest mountain peak in the Northeast. It was a piece of cake… or, rather, a piece of coal, since I sat upon the amazing Mount Washington Cog Railroad (opened in 1869, the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railroad) as it chugged and spewed on a journey to the top that left me covered in soot rather than sweat.

For sure, I felt lazy for taking a train rather than climbing by foot, but humans were created to function best with periodic lulls in between insane bursts of activity. So I submitted to relaxing in the railroad carriage, marveling at nature and at man’s ingenuity, to build something as bat-shit nuts as a cog railroad up the side of Mount Washington.


Posted in 4000 Footers, Trips.

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By Meredith – September 23, 2007

Faces of Evil

Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about a recently discovered photo album belonging to the adjutant to the commandant of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. The album contained roughly 120 photographs, but not the typical concentration camp pictures of starvation, suffering, and inhumanity. No, these were pictures of the SS guards at play and leisure. Having a sing-a-long with an accordian. Relaxing in lounge chairs on a patio at the SS alpine-style retreat Solahutte. Playing with a dog. At shooting practice. Hunting. Lighting the camp Christmas tree. Eating blueberries.

On the train, I stared at photographs in the New York Times, fascinated (here for article “In the Shadow of Horror, SS Guardians Frolic”), then at home I viewed the entire album online at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (here). The museum’s exhibition juxtaposes these pictures with those of the prisoners, but my imagination can readily conjure the horrors. And as I flipped through the album, what struck me most was how consistently happy they seem, like anyone taking respite from work that fulfills them. How contented, plump, and dapper; how banefully normal they appear. How unaware they are, that they are monsters.

Posted in In the News.

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By Meredith – September 20, 2007

I’m Too Sexy For Eighth Grade

A just-turned 13 year old girl named Maddison Gabriel was chosen as “the face” of the inaugural Gold Coast Fashion Week in Australia, prompting fabulous publicity from all sorts of outraged people, like other models (“I was 15 when I started, but 12? That’s taking it to a whole new level”) and the country’s Prime Minister (“We do have to preserve some notion of innocence in our society”).

Now, let me just say that I’m so over the demoralizing hijinks of High Fashion. If designers want to showcase their unattainable clothes on animated skeletons, and if people continue to be fascinated, adoring, and envious of these emaciated ideals, well, whatever. Maybe we should just chalk it up to another peril of affluence and start to pay attention to the humans who aren’t trying to starve themselves to death.

Still, this story disturbs me. Not because the fashion world is exploiting a willing 13-year old, but because she actually looks 13. Usually teenaged models appear to have gone through puberty, and their facial features are fully-formed so that I’m surprised that they are so young. But Maddison Gabriel looks like a prepubescent. And that’s perverted.

(I haven’t been this scandalized by fashion since my trip to Provincetown, where male swimsuits with heavily-padded crotches are the style du jour.)

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By Meredith – September 19, 2007

Forkys

Ideally, one should be passionate about their career. For the record, I have never met a passionate technical writer. Nor would I want to. I mean, that sounds like the most annoying person ever.

I am passionate about hiking. Sometimes I think: How cool if I could hike for a living! And not as, like, a sherpa! Maybe people would pay me to lead them on hikes. I could read maps, exude enthusiasm, and point out obvious things in nature. “Look, it’s a mushroom! That’s called a, um, white mushroom.”

Mr. Pinault dreams of opening a restaurant – simple yet elegant, French yet affordable, casual yet French. For several years, I championed the idea of a fondue restaurant in a cosmopolitan location. Then we discovered that urban areas are brimming with fondue establishments, and thanks to a chain called The Melting Pot, even upper-middle class suburbs like Natick can dine on fondue for roughly $50 per person.

But what about fondue for the masses? In lower middle-class rural and suburban areas, casual sit-down restaurants are a popular social activity, and since all foodstuffs are a slight variation on the same tasteless, greasy, deep-fried thing, a novel presentation is appreciated. It won’t be classic Gruyere and Emmenthaler Swiss fondue, but given the target market, it wouldn’t have to be. We’re talking Velveeta fondues with bread, oil fondues with hot dogs, chocolate fondues with twinkies and marshmallows. $8/head for basic, $12/head for deluxe, and did I mention the waitresses and waiters are all (nonsensically) wearing Lederhosen?

It would make a killing, I tell you. But my passion in this venture was always based solely on the strength of being able to call the restaurant Fundue. Unfortunately, a quick Google search revealed that Fundue is trademarked by a desktop USB fondue set (“Looking to expand your culinary sophistication without leaving your cube?”). Wow. That’s so… disgusting.

For some reason, my alternative names (Fon-fun, Forky’s, The Fat Pot, Pot Belly) just don’t sustain my passion. I mean, even white trash wouldn’t eat at a fondue restaurant called Forky’s.

Posted in Existence.

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By Meredith – September 18, 2007