On the Road

Our former apartment in New Jersey is now a pristine empty box, and the keys have been returned to the landlord. All our worldly possessions are either in transit to England or in our cars. Our dogs have been deposited with our friend Marilyn, and yes, I cried, despite the fact that they seemed perfectly happy to stay with her. And now, Dave and I are homeless!

Dave's parents came to New Jersey on Sunday evening, towing a trailer behind their SUV. We spent all day Monday loading up the remainder of our furniture and the small items that we either aren't moving overseas or that we need during the transition (like clothes). I thought after the movers came and went that we were down to almost nothing, but when it came time to pack it all up, the stuff just kept multiplying! We filled the trailer and both Dave's Lexus and my little Florence.

We drove all day yesterday to get to Michigan, where Dave's parents live. They left first with the trailer; Dave and I followed about an hour later, each in our own cars. Fortunately the weather was nice and the drive was pleasant. I actually had a good time jamming to my iPod and enjoying the scenery -- central Pennsylvania is really beautiful. We stopped for lunch at Aunt Lu's Cafe in Clearfield, at a truck stop that also featured the above chapel carved out of a converted motel room. Purely by coincidence, we stopped at the same place last year!

Today the plan is to unload the trailer and get the furniture listed on Craigslist. (We had to bring it back to Michigan first because it's part of a set that includes other pieces already here.) I'm thinking it might be better to contact an auctioneer or a used furniture dealer who can buy everything at once, so Dave's parents don't have to negotiate with the shady Craigslist crowd.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

I'm reading a book called "The Wilder Life" by Wendy McClure, a Chicago author who sets off on a physical and virtual journey to discover what she calls "Laura World," the social phenomenon of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her "Little House on the Prairie" books.

I read the first two books when I was a child, "Little House in the Big Woods" and "Little House on the Prairie." I loved their descriptions of pioneer life and remember them well -- the family's bout with "fever n' ague," the snowbound Wisconsin woods, the way the girls were happy at holidays to receive a shiny penny and a candy cane. McClure travels to many of the Ingalls' and Wilders' former homes, some of which are now museums, and she talks to many people about their own bonds with the "Prairie" phenomenon. (Many of them turn out to be more bonded to the TV show, which differed widely from the books, but oh well.)

Anyway, it's an interesting read. But it got me thinking about books that come in series, like the "Little House" books. I don't know why I never read beyond the first two, because I loved them, but I realize that's true of many books in series. I read the first two "Harry Potter" books and stopped. I read "The Hobbit" but never made it to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. I read the first three "Clan of the Cave Bear" books but went no further. In fact, the only series I can remember reading to completion is James Herriot's "All Creatures" books, about his years as a veterinarian in northern England. (I read several of those sordid V.C. Andrews "Flowers in the Attic" books, but I don't remember whether I finished all of them.)

I'm just not much for sequels in general. I like a book to stand on its own, and no matter how good it is, sometimes I don't want to know what happens next. There's a beauty in the uncertainty, and when I turn to another book I like starting a completely fresh story with new characters and a new locale. Maybe I just have a short attention span!

(Photo: Hell's Kitchen, on Saturday.)

Brunch in the City

Yesterday I took a train into New York with my friend Bill to meet two other mutual friends, Dan and Carl, for brunch. I haven't seen Dan and Carl in months, and I really wanted to catch up with them before our move. (They, as well as Bill, are longtime journalism pals.) So we arranged to meet at Vynl on Ninth Avenue, in the heart of the mostly gay Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, because Dan said he wanted to go somewhere with "boys and margaritas."

Dan definitely got his wish. Hell's Kitchen seemed even gayer than usual, probably because it's Pride Weekend. The big march is this afternoon, and it's sure to be a crazy scene of celebration following New York's approval of gay marriage this week.

Anyway, we got caught up on all our news and had a fun time with bloody marys and mimosas (curiously, I don't think any of us actually ordered a margarita). I got something called the Vynl Scramble, which purported to contain watercress, but was basically just scrambled eggs flecked with unidentifiable green vegetation. Not bad, but not watercress-ish, either.

I always get a kick out of the bathrooms at Vynl, which as you might expect is themed to celebrate records and the music industry. Each of its four bathrooms is dedicated to a singer: Dolly Parton, Elvis, Nelly and Cher. Each features a huge tile mural and a glamorously costumed doll of the honored artist. (I assume so, anyway -- I didn't go inside the Dolly and Nelly bathrooms.) Above, for example, is Cher's special bathroom, and here are scenes from the Elvis loo:



It was only after I'd come back to East Brunswick that I realized this was probably the last time I'll go into New York. We've got some things to do today and tomorrow, both fun and not, before Dave's parents show up tomorrow night.

Both Dave and I are ready to go. Now that most of our belongings have been shipped, we feel like we're just kind of hanging around, and that lingering feeling can be frustrating. This entire adventure has been one long goodbye.

Scenes from the Big Move

So here's how things looked in our apartment yesterday. The movers came and packed our stuff, and did an amazingly thorough job of wrapping our belongings. I actually didn't even take photos until they were almost finished, and it's just as well, because initially things were pretty chaotic, with stuff everywhere.

In the photo above, the mover is wrapping my dining room table, one of the two large items we decided to take. (The other is our mattress, which is almost brand new.) I took the picture to send to my dad, who built the table in the early 1960s while he was in graduate school. I thought he'd appreciate how well-protected it is.


This is the living room. The large, flat box to the right contains one of my Gaia prints. Again, I was impressed with the packing job.


More boxes, with some stuff on our other dining room table (Dave's old table) waiting to be packed. Dave's table and our remaining furniture is going to Michigan for storage and sale.


This is how the table ended up, just before being loaded onto a truck. As we understand it, the items will go from truck to shipping container, and when the container is full, it will head overseas by freighter. We've been told our stuff should arrive in 30 to 45 days. Better later than sooner for us, since we don't yet have an apartment!

Movers

The movers arrive today. We're just putting the last touches on our preparations -- basically making sure that everything that needs to be packed and loaded is in one place, and separated from the stuff we're leaving behind or carrying ourselves. I had a horrible night's sleep, partly because I was lying awake thinking about all the things still to be done.

I took a pretty big step yesterday, recycling my childhood encyclopedias. I've been hauling those things around for four decades, and I finally decided that even taking into account my sentimental attachment to them, saving them was absurd. They were woefully out of date, and my family members didn't want them either. No one could argue that we didn't get our money's worth out of them.

I'm still wrestling with what I should do with certain keepsakes -- yearbooks, old paper journals, letters, photo albums. I was going to store them at my mom's house in Florida, but then I thought, "Why shouldn't I just take them with me now, while the movers are here?" The answer is, because we have no idea how long this London gig is going to last. What if we're back in the states in a year -- why should I have paid to haul such items overseas? On the flip side, what if we never come back?

I'm growing more inclined to move such items today. What the heck. The worst that could happen is I pay to move three or four boxes of extra stuff.

Our intention is to move and stay. So I think I should keep that plan in mind.

(Photo: This is not my stuff! Just a pile of old furniture I passed in New York last Thursday.)

Me and my anti-shadow

Shocking News

Dave and I were at a party yesterday afternoon when a friend and former coworker called me and asked, "Have you heard the news?" When someone starts a conversation like that, you know you're in for a shock. And I was.

The company that owns the newspaper where I worked until June 9 laid off about 700 people yesterday, including a majority of the news staff in my former newsroom. I wish I could convey to you how shocking and absurd this is. We were already a skeleton staff, smaller than any newsroom I've ever seen and smaller than the small-town newspaper bureau (or satellite office) where I began working in the late 1980s. We were struggling to keep up with daily news. Now they have two reporters, one local news editor, a news clerk and a couple of photographers, all of whom are shared with other sister newspapers.

What this means is that no one will attend municipal government meetings, no one will be able to devote time to developing sources, no one will pound the pavement to find out what's really going on in the communities we covered. The paper's watchdog role, already severely strained, is entirely eliminated. My guess is, the reporters will be reduced to rewriting press releases that come into the office -- even when I was there, I was surprised by how much time we were all forced to be in the office rather than on the street. Readers are going to abandon the paper in droves, mark my words.

I feel sorry for the people who were let go, including some of the most connected, informed members of the staff. I have respect for the people left, but I wouldn't want to be them.

There are so many issues here. As CJR pointed out, the executives of the company make multi-million dollar salaries -- excessive in any industry but certainly in one struggling as much as this. The accumulation of wealth at the top levels of our society, and the elimination of wealth in the middle, is a poisonous development that is going to challenge our stability as a nation.

As for newspapers, they need to abandon the corporate business model altogether. Successful newspapers -- and maybe news organizations as a whole -- will be nonprofit entities freed from the demands of Wall Street and the analysts, traders and shareholders who demand 20-plus-percent profit margins. Or they'll revert to being family businesses.

I really am shocked by this development, especially so soon after the massive reorganization in February that required us all to reapply for our positions, and cut our staff by half. I have honestly never seen such a badly managed organization.

I was never uncertain about my decision to leave, but this clinches it. If I'd stayed, I likely would have lost my job yesterday anyhow.

(Photo: Chelsea, last Thursday)