Lancaster County currently has the lowest unemployment rate in the state.

Just sayin’.

Were we to host a casual, 20-somethings Thanksgiving for friends and friends of friends in Lancaster, would you be interested in attending and potentially able to?

(By “we” I generally speak of the Lancaster contingent, not just the Klotzes.)

I cook a mean turkey, and Karin loves her some mashed potaters.

If you haven’t yet figured out why I love Byron Borger and Hearts & Minds bookstore yet (or if you have), here’s why.

Oh, and you do not want to miss this.

I went to LATimes.com this morning for reporting on the wildfires out there, and I stumbled upon a wonderful article on a subject of popular discussion:

Seven clues that ‘Potter’s’ Dumbledore was gay

Ben was a keen observer and had
a clear memory. I’m asking friends to check this prose elegy for errors of
fact. Ben was my fact-checker. He could be counted on to remember that no,
Timothy wasn’t there, and further that I forgot that Mark was there when such-and-such went down, or when we took a trip to
that one place.

He admired clean reporting,
clear writing, and their product, good thinking. It wasn’t until a classmate
read aloud a piece of reportage that included the phrase “the drink satisfied
his quench” and did not see that anything was wrong with it that Timothy and I
knew it was time to see the registrar and drop the “advanced” writing class.
The class met once a week, at night, and Ben had the prescience to see it held
nothing for him two weeks earlier. Timothy and Ben were rooming that semester,
so it gave us more time to hang out, and to watch whatever reality TV shows
were on that night of the week. We both loved cultural critique, and we both
reveled in particular shallow elements of popular culture that tickled our
fancy. It wasn’t ironic detachment—we both hated ironic detachment—it was
inconsistency: care and thought on the one hand, reckless abandon to cheap
pleasures on the other.

That year was my junior year at
Eastern, and a tremendously difficult one for me. In the fall I lived off
campus with two roommates who had dropped their studies and taken on full-time
day jobs. The rest of my closest friends were studying abroad, and I was left
behind, my request for a study away rejected, and not a dorm room left for me.

I was welcome in his room in Kea
as a roommate, in addition to Brandon in the fall, who switched places with
Timothy in the spring. I spent hours on the beat-up couch in there, many times
studying, many times procrastinating, and many times relaxing. I’d be sitting
on the couch in mid-afternoon reading for one of my classes, and Ben would be
on his computer—writing diligently, playing Text Twist, or, most commonly,
multitasking between those two pursuits plus listening to music. He would
quietly get up, gather papers and a book, and excuse himself to go to class. He
would return later; I would still be there, or not. I drove over to campus
before a snow storm hit so I could get snowed in there, and I spent the night
on the floor.

Ben made frequent trips to our
off-campus house, too, in his beat-up stick-shift. He had been part of the
brainstorming session when we settled on the name for our dilapidated duplex at
47 Grove Avenue in Devon. Tebben had been planning to spend that year trucking,
so in honor of that we named it “Exit 47,” later to be fondly referred to as
simply “The Exit.” I remember Ben calling it “the house” sometimes. It was an
exit, an escape; eventually for me it became a much too nihilistic one. But he
was there for good times—the turduckin at Thanksgiving, the carol sing, Martin
Luther King Day—as well as for the bad—driving Timothy over and back to campus
when he’d had a particularly awful day (he being in no state of mind to drive
when he arrived, and in no legal state to drive when he left)—and for the
mediocre, too. On one occasion splatters of his vomit wound up on two of the
walls and the door of our downstairs bathroom. We never figured out the physics
of it. He slept on the couch a few nights; I woke up and he was gone, back to
campus and back to work.

We didn’t float in and out of
each others’ lives. We shared life. The rhythm of hanging out and being apart
to do our own things was natural, casual. It was so easy with him.

Some people have changed my life
just by virtue of having met them. It was a revelation to meet other young
people who loved to write poetry and could write it well, for instance. It
could have been that way with Ben. The trip to the top of the Empire State
Building (“Do you guys want to do something crazy?” “Umm, yeah.”) would have been enough. That was a life-altering
experience. It was the only major experience I shared with Todd until Ben’s
death recently united us to add to it.

Ben and I played Halo (1 &
2) together, ATV Off Road, Kings of Chaos, Literati, Capture the Car (our team
won). We went on two spring breaks together. He was part of the explosion that
put holes in my tent on a camping trip I didn’t join. Between the two of us we
drank half a bottle of dark rum one evening on the beach (the rest finished it
off). I have more body mass; I could walk straight. He couldn’t. I slung his
arm over my shoulder part of the walk back to the campsite. He pointed at
everyone and acknowledged them by name, even if he didn’t get the name right.
He acknowledged Timothy’s foot, then fell into self-amusement. “…Foot. Stoot.”

Sometimes I saw him as a sort of
younger brother, a younger brother who was much smarter and more full of
promise than me. When the drinking got heavy, and the smoking became a habit, I
worried. It forced a few of us to grow up, quit the college-boy lackadaisical
attitude, and put on a serious face so we could show our concern. The boy could
get addicted to anything. When it was something actually addictive—alcohol, tobacco,
pot—I think he found himself surprised. He seemed naively to feel betrayed,
like a child who lets you hold his hand during grace but is shocked when you
don’t let go when it’s over. He knew enough of the world to be cynical, but his
nature was to be trusting.

One day Ben was listening to 16
Horsepower. I hadn’t heard them in a year or so, and I couldn’t remember their
name. Ben told me I had to listen to a particular song. I loved it, and I
wanted to hear it again. And again. And again. He put the song on repeat for
me, and didn’t mind as I listened through it at least ten times. He didn’t even
grimace. Later, he sent me the mp3, knowing full well I’d just stick it on
repeat for myself, and that maybe he would be around when I did.

Ben loved sharing the news, and
with some of us he would indulge a guilty pleasure of sharing choice bits of
gossip. It helped him cope with having to resist publishing it. I never felt the slightest inkling of
suspicion that he might have gossiped about me.

Ben was there when Timothy smoked
his first cigar, in the woods below McInnis, the last night of a spring
semester. Ben and I smoked a cigar, too. Then the three of us lit the three
hundred-foot-long ropes of firecrackers we had laid out along the dirt trail
and bolted back out to the paved path, trying to walk away naturally (looking
back over our shoulders, “What’s that?”) in spite of our schoolgirl giddiness.

Ben came along when we skipped
our dorm hall’s weekly Bible study meeting to go see Jackass in the theater.
It didn’t seem odd or contradictory that he was also a brilliant exegete of the
Bible and went on to help manage the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. We could talk
philosophy together. We could have entire conversations of nothing but curse
words. In his last blog entry, I make a comment indicating my profound
reverence for the Hebrew Law. I also call it “f—– up.” Ben understood. We
were both on long religious quests. Neither of us expected to reach a
comfortable destination while we yet lived. I mourn the death of a fellow pilgrim.
We both feared God and were picking our way through dense undergrowth and
wrinkled landscapes in search of God. We knew it would do no good to run, and
that time is God’s. We knew we couldn’t hide from God; the problem was that we couldn’t find God.

Ben was a better journalist than
I was, but I didn’t mind and he didn’t care. Long after I left my post as the
Waltonian’s news editor (I had the pleasure of working with him as a writer his
first semester at Eastern) and he went on to surpass anything I had
accomplished while on the paper, he still treated me as a peer, a colleague. He
always loved the ideas I had for fiction stories and plays, even though I think
he knew better than I did that I would never write them, at least not soon. He
gave me the privilege of publishing an essay of his in Frodo’s Notebook. He was happy to serve as our editor-at-large
later, and he contributed more than he realized during that time. It was on a Frodo’s Notebook planning retreat that
he and I found and picked up the black rat snake which now appears in photos
that have been shared around.

I once complained to Ben about
how much DJs talk on the radio in the morning, when I’m grumpy and just want to
hear some good music. Ben saw it differently (he saw most things differently).
He told me how he liked the human touch, how it helped him get to work in the
early mornings the summers he spent roofing. (The first summer, he played Kings
of Chaos almost every day before work, leaving him only time to grab a whole
unpeeled carrot on his way out the door. That was his breakfast.) That was Ben.
He was often at his best, and when he was, he used his abilities to give
himself more time to spend with friends. He also unfailingly used his talent as
an observer to see, point out, and cherish what is good in things. I can only
wish that I was as keen an observer as he was, with as clear a memory, that I
could have seen, and today point out and cherish, every last thing that was
good in him.

This week has been wondrously normal. Amanda is now home on weeknights as well as weekends. At work I’ve caught up on all the time-critical tasks and have had time to get ahead on long-term projects. I did laundry, I took a shower every day, I fed the guinea pigs, and I watched reruns on TV. Ah.

Tonight, if it doesn’t rain, the Klotzes and Rezendeses are going to Clipper Magazine Stadium (home of the Lancaster Barnstormers, and within walking distance of our place) to watch a double-feature of Shrek the 3rd and The Simpsons Movie from the chill luxury of the Chamber skybox. I intend to drink a beer. If anyone else cares to join us (gates open at 6:30, Shrek starts at 7), I’ve got extra (free) tickets, just let me know.

I’m thankful that memories of Ben continue to slowly trickle out into my mind. I doubt I’ll be able to write the sort of thing I want to write by Brandon’s October 28 deadline, but I’m going to try to write something. I haven’t written anything of substance about Ben yet, and I want to. If I let things get too normal, they won’t stay that way for long, because my grief for Ben will find a way to break through one way or another. So I have to remember to grieve as I can when I can, without requiring it of myself, and to practice what I suppose life will be like once I accept Ben’s death.

I watched two more Bergman films in the past two weeks: Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring. In the latter, we witness a terrible scene. How that scene is worked out through the rest of the movie is an achievement of film. It hits hard when the characters agonize how God saw it happen, because we the audience saw it happen.

(I don’t actually find much resonance in the problem of evil as an argument against the existence of a benevolent God. I find myself believing with the Christians that God is seeing what is terrible and doing something about it.)

Tomorrow is my final day-long class in my project management course. I’ve learned the generally accepted methods and the PM lingo. I’ll probably go for my CAPM (certified associate in project management) designation, as a step toward the PMP (project management professional) designation down the road.

Our strategic planning process is on the homestretch, and already planning is beginning to blend a bit with execution. I’m very excited about the direction this chamber is taking; it’s way leading-edge within the chamber industry. And it’s not about being just pro-business.

I’m still working on a Halloween costume idea. I mentioned to some of you the other night how I recently stumbled across an old entry on this blog where I recorded that I was considering “the religious right” as a costume idea. I’m as perplexed about what I had imagined as you probably are. Here is the October 20, 2004 entry, which I find a fascinating one to revisit. I was very caught up in Nader at the time (I still love him, I just don’t talk about him constantly). I also indicated my dream of getting a PhD in English Lit from Cardiff University in Wales. And I alluded to a (then) upcoming shopping trip with Amanda and Julia, where, as it turns out, I punched a Jeep. There’s consistently between then and now, though, too. I was reading Freud, beginning to take psychoanalysis seriously and wondering what it would be like to undergo the process. I had gone with Julia to a Sam Phillips concert; this week I’ve been listening to a lot of Sam Phillips, and just this weekend Amanda and I saw her with John Mallinen at a venue in Gettysburg. I was still fixating on HVAC; when I moved down here I interviewed for a couple HVAC positions, then spent a year in a similar trade. I didn’t like it, and it left me far too exhausted to read old English literature.

And of course, in a comment Tebben uttered those infamous words, “Seattle, eh?” I forget, did you in fact live there, or was it just an extended visit?

I grow more hardcore about Facebook. Also I am reminding myself how regression analysis works. I’ve already reminded myself how factor analysis (love it) works.

Amanda and I had a wonderful time at Emmaus in Gettysburg last night for the Mallinen/Shields et al show. You’re both so talented and you make such a complimentary vocal duo.

It’s been brought up more than once recently, and I finally looked just now: A one-way Amtrak ticket from/to Lancaster (station code LNC) to/from Phila’s 30th Street Station (station code PHL) is $14. If you’re a AAA member, make that $12.60. The trip is just barely over 1 hr.

There are certain times and directions (mostly Friday nights heading toward Phila.) that the fare rises to $17 ($15.30 for AAA members).

It’s $12 ($10.80 AAA) between Lancaster and Ardmore, and Paoli is $10 ($9 AAA).

Especially what with Amanda working weekends to groom her first 100 dogs, and my being left bored on the couch, I do plan to take advantage, and soon.

I wish Ben could read this entry and those that will follow. I would love to tell him that Patton is a remarkable young man, and a hick and a conspiracy theorist, and still quietly remarkable. I would like to tell him how much time we spent hanging out with his brother Daniel, what he taught me about Torah, and how great it was to see him playing guitar with Isaac, then with Dave. I want to tell him how his younger brothers and sisters climbed all over Brandon and Timothy. I want to tell him how Dr. Cary was at his house. I want to tell him I got drenched in sweat trying to keep up with his dad dancing to Hebrew dance beats. I want to tell him how much I now understand about his tangled and complex relationship with his family’s faith.

Most of all, I want to tell him how Saturday night, after everyone else was gone from our campsite of college friends, I took the last remaining, half-charred piece of firewood down to the dock, doused it in lighter fluid, lit it and pushed it out onto the stock-still surface of the lake. And how I was worried for a moment it was going to run into a boat docked there and set it on fire. And how it was glorious. And how it was goodbye.

“If i hadn’t just met Meg and found that she’s a cat, i would have been
rather disturbed by your fascination with her hot body supplely
stretched on the floor.” 8/2/2004 12:44 AM, transarchist

I just can’t stop talking about Ben in the present tense. Ben is; I don’t know what it means to say that Ben was.

Tonight is going to be rough.