49 04’ 55” N, 106 21’ 46” W

49 04′ 55″ N, 106 21′ 46″ W

10/28/2008

Kenneth Burchfiel

 

Hello. Is this the support line?

Good. I’m sorry. For a second there, I thought the number would bounce back. Different country and all, you know.

Bryson, Dale.

See, that’s the thing. I’m not sure. I just thought… well, I had the customer support number on my phone. But I didn’t think you operated over here.

Well, the car’s another story, and I know your company is going to charge me by the minute. And that’s not good, because my wallet’s in the car, and—

Of course. I understand. But there’s not much information I can give you.

    Not even that. Let’s see. Is there a sign? No, not from where I’m standing. But I can say that I’m on Route 2, and it curves a little bit in front of me. There’s some grass to my left, and a field to my right. Already harvested.

    Of course. First name Dale, last name B-R-Y-S-O-N. I rented a little coupe.

    Tulsa? So you can pull up my account information. No, Tulsa was five days ago. That was when we left the airport.

    Well, that’s something of a private question.

    Don’t be concerned about the car. She—I mean, it’s in safe hands. It should be back in Tulsa by the 16^th, unless she changed her plans.

    Can’t you guess who I’m talking about?

    Right.

    You could try her cell, but she told me that she would have her number switched by 4. And I would trust her; she’s very resourceful. You wouldn’t believe how she got me into this.

    Look—I would give you the story, but I really am worried about the charge. They pay you folks fortunes for calls like these; I know it.

    Yes, we did sign up for the Premium Service. 10^th anniversary, after all.

    Thank goodness. Fine. Well, the car’s somewhere north of me. I’m not sure just where, but she’s still on Route 2, for all I know.

    It terminates in Prince Albert? That’s—what, 200, 300 miles north of here? Well, we refilled it in Bismarck, so that’s probably where she’d end up, anyway .

    Yes, I realize the contract limited us to the Midwest. But she was the one driving, not me.

    So we were at our anniversary dinner the night before St. Paul, and one of us said something about the other’s clothing.

    Yes, it was me.

    Well, it comes back to the car. Trust me. So she says this will be the second anniversary I’ve ruined in a row, and starts shouting about one thing or another. So I shout back. It’s in my blood. The next thing you know, both of our drinks are staining the table and the waiter’s rushing to get my attention.

    Of course I was drunk. What do they teach you at the call center?

    No, really. It’s nice to have someone to talk to. At any rate, I slumped into the back seat and she rammed the car into gear. That was the last thing I remembered: the transmission shifting to “Reverse.” And you really do sell nice cars on the Premium Service.

    Not at all.

Eleven glasses of wine.

    St. Paul? No, we never made it there. When I woke up, there wasn’t a building to see. We had crossed into Montana.

    Well, I’m a heavy sleeper, and she’s a fast driver.

    Yes, pleaded with her. If it weren’t for the seatbelt, I would’ve been on my knees.

    I’m telling you, it used to be a happy marriage.

    She finally did open her mouth. But that was only to say, “No Items to Declare.” And that was to someone wearing the Red Serge.

    Right. We’re driving up Route 2, and all of a sudden, the car stops. She unlocks the side door and throws it open with her hand.

    Used to play basketball. I think that’s what gave her the flexibility.

    How could I have? She didn’t unlock the trunk.

    My arms are a little numb, but other than that, I’m hanging in.

    No, no. The sun set some time ago.

    That was my hope, at least. I’d be happy to pay the fee.

    You could get someone here from Lewistown? How far is that?

    3 hours? That’s fine. Might be a little chilly, but I’ll manage.

    Just past the Canadian border. I’ll be on the left side of Route ;2 if you see me laying down, just honk. I’ve been up for quite a while.

    Thank you so much.

    Goodbye.

 

    

    

 

Faceless #1 (A comic)

You may have to click on the comic twice to expand it all the way.

“Weather Talk” 1: A Circular Explanation for Arctic Cold

Writing is just one way to inform and educate. The following is a short and simplified version of a topic I’d like to cover more in-depth, but nevertheless, it’s an alternative to the usual text-block science article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6yrYEn4_PY

Specialty Pizzas: A Newspaper Spread

The PDF link (see below) features a pizza spread that I worked on for the McLean Highlander, our student newspaper.

specialty-pizzas-spread

War Stories

War Stories

10/13/08

Kenneth Burchfiel

 

 

The sun had gotten itself stuck on top of Old Rag. It shone an amber light onto the field before him and coated the river gold.

They had just held the 50^th anniversary at Sperryville High. It was a short drive in the Mercedes for him, but others flew in from Munich, South Korea—even the Philippines. Much of the senior class had lived on military bases.

He had tried to tell them about his summer homes and his banking company, but nobody listened. Needless to say, the vets were the center of attention. Ryan Seawolf got a whole crowd to listen to his parachute descent into Cambodia. The Bryan brothers repeated their old story about landing in Korea during a rainstorm. All the men wanted to see were one another’s’ badges—which, of course, they had bought along on the ride. Nobody cared about his stock portfolio.

    He grew more jealous by the minute as they laughed about SOP manuals and boot camp. If only he had a war story of his own.

    “Grandpop?”

A wild-haired boy—Jason, he believed—sat down on the whitewashed stair next to him.

“Dinner’s ready. That’s what dad says.”

Dinner in Sperryville was a special occasion. His son had decided to start a farm—said banking was a greedy, wasteful way to spend a life—and now cooked the best chicken this side of the Shenandoah mountains.

“Jason,” the grandfather said, “did you know I fought in the Cold War?”

The boy blinked. “Dad never told me about that.”

“Well, it’s a long story. Do you want to hear a story?”

The child looked back inside and nodded.

“Good, because I want to tell it.” He pointed with a ringed finger to the field in front of him. “See this farm, uh,”

“Jason,” he said.

“I’m sorry. Well, Jason, it was the Bloc War of 1963, fought right when Moscow was ready to shell the United States. Our squadron saw a farm just like this as we headed into Vilnius. Our goal was to meet up with the Lithuanian Resistance, a group of rebels hoping to free their country from the hands of communism. The sun had already set, and we were hoping the Sov-yets wouldn’t see it.”

“Were you scared?”

He remembered descending into Vilnius for an international banking conference. The first class seat had almost put him to sleep, but he kept himself awake to watch the Neris snake under their plane. A flight attendant pointed out the National Library to him.

“Only a little. See, the Sov-yets had these big, powerful tanks that could reach every corner of Lithuania. If they came on us, the Americans wouldn’t have been able to advance into Belarus, which was the whole point of the Bloc Assault. We had to crouch real low—” he demonstrated on the steps “—so that we wouldn’t be picked up on radar.”

“Jason! Dinner!”

“One second! Grandpop’s telling a war story!”

No response came from inside. He could hear footsteps coming their way from the kitchen.

“So we advanced, step by step, up the Neris River. The Lithuanian Resistance was to our north. We had almost made it to the National Library when a barrage of shots came out from our left. So we ran up a road—Vytauto, they called it—with our packs shielding us from their guns.”
    He would never see his high school class again. But if he could get his son to believe this—even for a few years—it would make the difference. They would call him a hero here; they would make him the pride of Sperryville.

“Now, the Sov-Yet Union knows how to move around their troops. They had guns coming out from the south, the west, the east—even from above. Our cover was blown to nothing. So you know what I did?”

The footsteps stopped at the front porch. His son was watching them from behind—he knew it.

“I went out on my own. Stopped at a little place called Žvėrynas and ducked inside a cathedral. That was when I decided to go solo.”

Jason gave him the kind of stare that he had been looking for at the reunion.

“I crept around the western side of the city. A breathless hour later, I had made it to the White Bridge. They had it blockaded, but I shot down the defenses and moved my way across. You would have loved the sound my gun made.”

“Jason, remind your grandfather—”

“And once I made it to the other side of the Neris, I walked over to Lukiski Square. To my relief, there were about a thousand people standing there with guns. The Lithuanian Resistance had arrived.”

They had ended the banking exposition at Lukiski. But his grandson wouldn’t be impressed by currency discussions and stock trades; he wanted to hear about assaults and medals.

“And wouldn’t you know: we had a straight shot to Cathedral Square. I found myself at the front of the pack, shooting at all the soldiers that came our way, until—”

“There was no Bloc War of 1963.”

 

He turned around to see his son in the doorway.

“Excuse me?”

“There was no Bloc War. There was no Lithuanian Resistance.”

Jason looked confused. He turned to his father, then to his grandfather.

“What are you talking about?” The eldest of them laughed. “Why, I was right in the middle of the Neris river, looking out—”

“You were a banker. Your only goal was to grab up more money for your retirement fund.”

His grandson had lost his awestruck face.

“Didn’t you hear my story, Jason? I had almost made it to the Square, when…”

His voice trailed off. A bird called from a lone apple tree in the field.

“Come on, Jason. Your dinner’s getting cold.”

Jason looked at his grandparent, then stood up and walked through the door. The rest of the family had already begun eating.

The grandfather stayed outside until Old Rag mountain swallowed up the sun, and until the field and river had all but disappeared.

A Certain kind of Salesman

A Certain kind of Salesman

10/10/2008

Kenneth Burchfiel

 

A certain curtain caught my eye—the cheapest of the darker hues.

But then a certain curtain salesman ascertained I wanted to

Curtain my windows with a few

Of that certain curtain hue—so certain, yes,

He stood and said:

I’m a certain kind of curtain salesman—certainly, it’s rare;

The kind that cautions certain curtain buyers of the risk of wear

On curtains nearly sold for free—but, in actuality,

Will certainly split into three at certain opportunities.

I ascertained that he could name

A better curtain in the store—

And yes, he spoke of certain Corinth curtains costing dollars more,

And led me with a certain step to Corinth curtain styles galore.

A cirrus-quilted Corinth curtain certainly retained my gaze,

Yet certainly, the Corinth certain quilters had erred in such a way

That certain cirrus clouds looked more cumulus in form and shape;

And, tired with such certainty, I curtailed off my search for drapes.

“Thundersnow Logo”–a look at simple design

When designing a logo or similar sort of graphic, there’s always the impulse to make it as complex and impressive as possible. (Seeing as my design abilities are quite limited, I don’t have much of a problem with this.) However, I find that some of the best designs are those that assume a simplistic, straightforward form. Just as conciseness is valued in writing, element management–making more out of fewer parts–plays an important role in graphic design.

My “Thundersnow” illustration (click the PDF link below) is one example of this concept. Perhaps I’ll find a use for the logo; perhaps not. Regardless, it represents the style that I’d like to become experienced in.

thundersnow

Obama is not your Savior

Obama is not your Savior

10/8/2008

Kenneth Burchfiel

President Bush and Barack Obama might see one another differently, but this much is true: both have benefited from the American people’s tendency to turn to the executive branch for protection. George Bush’s approval rating surged to 90 percent following the 9/11 terrorist attacks; Barack Obama, in the midst of a recession, has won enough support from concerned voters to take a definite lead in the presidential race.

The problem is, Bush didn’t exactly save the country from the crises facing it in 2001. Considering this country’s history with “change” candidates, I wonder if an Obama presidency will turn out any different.

Whenever the United States is endangered, either by a terrorist attack or a lagging economy, the American people faithfully turn to the executive branch for their problems to be solved. Plenty of us envision the president as a fully understanding, fully capable individual who can turn the lives of 300,000,000 people around with a few strokes of the pen.

The problem with this vision is that it leaves out one important element: the American people. Barack Obama might be a capable leader, but he makes up 1/300,000,000^th of our population. The more we depend on an individual to change our country, the less initiative we have to support his or her efforts. It simply isn’t fair to expect greatness from a president while sitting on our hands.

Now, it may seem as if I have little faith in Obama’s potential. With all due respect, I think it is a worse fault to have too much. President Bush, knowing that 90% of America trusted in him in the weeks following 9/11, was able to use that support to launch a “war on terror “that has since decreased said ratings to the mid-twenties. Wariness on the general public’s part may have prevented the conflict in Iraq from turning into a bloodbath.

But even if Obama does inspire Americans to help out in the effort, and even if the public exercises cautious support—a rarity in politics—the candidate will still have two entities to deal with: the Supreme Court and the Houses of Congress. Not that this is a bad thing. Our system of checks and balances makes sure that presidents don’t end up steering the country off the road, even if our legislative process puts the brakes on law-making from time to time. If you’d rather move to a state in which one charismatic, ambitious leader has all the power, you’re free to give Russia or China a spin. Otherwise, don’t expect that Obama’s plans will go unchecked.

Should the Democratic ticket win come November 4, there’s no doubt this country will see some change. The one certainty about America is that it never stays the same.

But the Democrats expecting an overnight solution to any domestic or foreign problem would be wise to remember our current president’s experience. No candidate—black, white, Harvard-educated, war-tested—can “save” the United States single-handedly.

The upsetting truth is that we’ll have to lend a hand.

The problem with Internet English

The problem with Internet English

10/5/08

Kenneth Burchfiel

I have always been one of those hopelessly traditional people that capitalizes their text messages, makes sure to use apostrophes correctly when writing an e-mail and says “whom” in message boards. That is my confession: I’m behind the times enough that I still care about mechanics on the world wide web, though I do slip up from time to time. (This article, I’m sure, will have its share of errors.)

It is as if there exists an alternate form of language online, one I’d like to call “Internet English.” Open up a web browser, and all of a sudden, capitalization and punctuation becomes irrelevant. “Your wrong about they’re opinion” is just as fitting a rebuttal as is “You’re wrong about their opinion.” Another strange convention: Caps Lock has now become the standard means with which to make an argument.

It would be quite simple to attack those committing such errors and say that they don’t know how to write. And yet, they do know how to write. The people who e-mail you NOTES THAT LOOK LIKE THIS aren’t bad writers, necessarily; they just figure that mechanics don’t carry as much weight online as they do on paper.

It’s that perception that I take issue with.

There’s always been a battle of sorts between the “grammar hounds” and the “anything goes” writing schools. One says that dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s is imperative; the other says that what you write is more important than the exact form of your words.

I used to consider myself a full-blooded member of the former group. What did it matter if I had missed a semicolon here or there? My idea was there; my evidence was there; the story was complete.

That was when the internet started to develop. The more I surfed the web, the more I tended to discriminate based on mechanics. If a company advertised that their product would “get u in shape 4 school,” I tended to pay it little attention. If an e-mail said that “YOU HAVE JUST WON A $14,000,000 USD IN THE NAIROBI NATIONAL LOTTRY,” I would quickly delete it and move on. Slowly, I was becoming the kind of grammar policeman that I had used to detest.

Internet English arose out of a simple truth: online, we tend to pay less attention to how we write. Unfortunately, as I came to realize, we still pay close attention to how others write on the internet. Though most of us wouldn’t stress over accidentally posting “I liek that” instead of ‘I like that” on Youtube, we still turn up our noses when that mistake is made by someone else. That’s the danger with writing online; although one’s writing might get sloppier, the same standards for grammar and mechanics hold on the internet as they do in a book or a newspaper.

Is it wrong of me to ignore someone’s writing when it is riddled with mechanical errors? Should I be chastised for skipping over a one-paragraph, all-caps rant? Perhaps. But the simple truth is that grammar still makes a difference on the internet, if only because readers are still just as sensitive to errors and slipups made on the web.

Everyone has the right to use “Internet English” to the fullest. But don’t fault me if, looking through a message board or an online petition, I pay less attention to passages that pay no attention to grammar. It’s a condition I was born with.

Just a little funeral

(Fiction): Just a little funeral

10/4/08

Kenneth Burchfiel

When I was younger, my dad and I would go upstate and hunt owls. It was a riot. We’d get packed in the afternoon, drive up 93 and arrive at the forest late at night.

It was important that we got there after sunset, you see, because we hunted by sound. When I heard a hoot, my dad would point the shotgun in that direction and fire away. You’d hear a rush of wings and paws, and then he reloaded. “We’re getting closer,” my father would say. “There’s a big colony up there, I know it.”

The joke was that we never hit anything. The owls were high up in the trees, and my dad was a bad enough shooter in the daytime. But it turned into a tradition, and whenever my father wanted to get away for a little, he’d throw some ammunition in the pickup and call me over from the television.

We don’t go owl hunting now. One evening—it was dark but you could see the clouds, I remember that—we heard an especially loud hoot. I pointed up and to our left, and my dad got into position and fired. Four or five seconds later, we heard a thump 20 feet in front of us. My dad’s shoulders dropped a little, and I took a few steps backward. Almost tripped on a root.

Neither of us was sure what to do, to be honest. All we knew was that owls were probably an endangered species, and my dad had watched enough detective television to know what a bullet mark—he called it a “signature”—could reveal in the crime lab. So he picked it up by the wings and stepped back over to the pickup, telling me it was nothing to cry over.

Our house is close enough to Albeit that it doesn’t have much of a lawn. Judging from the moon phase, we got back at one or two in the morning. My dad cut the engine and walked out back to get the shovel. I just sat there, wondering if I should look at the owl or not. It wasn’t very large—a foot tall, maybe, with a few feathers out of place in the chest.

My dad and I were already wearing black, so we didn’t need to change for the funeral. He said that God probably loved this little owl, and I asked if that meant we were sinful—but he told me not to interrupt the preacher. It was a beautiful little speech, really, and by the end I think we were both in tears. We both agreed that it was a beautiful owl.

Our shovel was too blunt to cut through the grass, so we decided to dig up the radish side of the vegetable garden—both of us got pretty sick of them once fall came around.

Just as my father picked up the owl, a beam of light poked us in the eye. There was a blue-and-white car crawling up the street with a badge on the side.

My dad stopped in place, as did the car. The man driving took out a flashlight and pointed it straight at the owl.

“Just a little funeral, sir,” my father said.

The cop looked at our beet red pickup, then at the lawn ornaments, then at the bird. I wondered what handcuffs felt like. I wondered what I would say in court. They didn’t feature many owl murders on the shows I watched.

“You two keep safe tonight, all right?”

My dad nodded. The cop turned off his flashlight, rolled up the window and took a right on Ptarmigan.

I still don’t know if I’ll take my kid owl hunting. If so, I’d better find a place where there aren’t any owls.