Buy my book!

Hi everybody,

Just to warn you, this blog is pure and simple (and shameless) self promotion.

My Rough Guides book came out in February - I wrote the Introduction to the book and the Panama chapter in the Rough Guide to Central America on a Budget - so go to your favorite local bookstore or any of the online megamarts (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc...) and request that title! And buy one million copies! ;)

Actually, don't worry about buying in bulk, I don't see the royalties from that. However, I am a royaltied author on the Rough Guide to the USA, which comes out later this summer, so keep your eye out for that (and I'll send you a reminder).

And all you Cape Codians (and Cape Codians at heart) check out the front page of ESPN.com today (tax day, April 15th) - I've got an Old Man and the Sea kind of tale about a fisherman on Cape Cod that the front page editors picked up - it's at the bottom of the page in the "Inside ESPN" section, and it's been up for a while, so if it's not there by the time you get this, it'll still be up on ESPNOutdoors for quite a while - it's called "Fighting Giants".

OK, self promotion segment over... for now.

Bats in our belfry

Kate and I were attacked by kamikaze rodents last night. We were hearing noises in the walls that sounded like really big mice running a marathon – turned out it was bats.

So, here’s how it all went down.

11:00 p.m. last night, I’m climbing into bed after a long weekend in New York City. I’ve never been that happy to go to sleep.

11:05 – (Screaming from Kate downstairs) “AAAAHHH! OH MY GOD! BAT!... BAT, BAT, BAT!, Jamey, there’s a baaaAAAT!

Me: (lots of expletives) Walking down the stairs, turning the corner, bat in the face.

Kate’s laughing and screaming and pointing at the bat flying circles around the ceiling. Alfie has woken up out of a dead sleep and is barking at the bat.

11:15 – We open the door and run outside – I’m in boxers and a t-shirt and it’s 30 degrees. Kate’s fully clothed and wrapped in a blanket, which she gives me after a few minutes, reluctantly.

The bat can’t make it out the door with echo-location, so it’s just flying in a circle.

Kate: "Maybe we should whistle at it. No, bats are deaf right? Oh wait, are bats deaf or blind?"

11:25 – A homeless guy walks by and we briefly contemplate offering him $5 to catch it. (Is that wrong?)

11:40 – The bat flies upstairs.

11:45 – We crab-walk inside to make sure it’s not getting a running start to dive-bomb us, and we google “how to get bats out of your house.”

Step 1: Don’t Panic ---- (do you consider sitting Indian-style on the floor in your underwear and waving a broom above your head panicking?)

Step 2: Close all doors to corral the bat in one room and keep him from flying around the house. --- (the bat is upstairs now, showering and trying on clothes)

Step 3: Put your pets in a different room and close the door. ---- (we send Alfie upstairs and think he might render the bat deaf with his yelpping bark, making it easier to catch)

Step 4: Wait for the bat to roost. --- (check)

Step 5: Get a hand or dish towel and rubber gloves (optional). --- (OPTIONAL? - seriously?)

Step 6: Carefully place the towel over the bat. --- (what?)

Step 7: Talk softly to him. He is frightened and will make buzzing noises. This is his echolocation. --- (You want me to talk to the bat. What kind of a (@&%*!) website is this?)

12:15 – We chuck the website’s advice, grab the broom and a couple of giant pieces of Styrofoam board and notice the bat has crawled out from between the ceiling and the wall and is back in the same place where he started.

12:30 – I close off the doors to the rest of the house and Kate prods the bat until he’s flying around again. So, we’re both crouched down on the floor, Kate’s waving a broom and I’m waving two giant pieces of Styrofoam, trying to get the bat to echolocate the door. We’re yelling at each other and running into each other and the bat is flying like a drunken pigeon. It doesn’t work, but the bat gets tired and takes a break on the chair so I throw a dishtowel over it.

12:45 – I have a copper pot that I’m going to try to put the bat in, but all of a sudden another bat comes flying out from under the closed door. We run outside and it chases us and flies straight at my face. That’s two bats in my face in one night.

1:00 – We go back inside, thinking that we’ve got things pretty much taken care of, and we see two more bats coming from the ceiling. We give up, grab our things from the bedroom (where we see another bat) and let Alfie out of his crate (he runs straight outside and sits down by the truck – so much for any aspirations we had of him being a guard dog), drive to my sister’s and spend the night on the floor with a couple hound dogs.

Today:

I go home in the morning, after calling the landlord (who tells me that bats are friendly and good to have around when there’s mosquitoes outside) and a man is walking out of my front door holding a bat on one of our spatulas. Amazed that the bat is being so still, Kate asks, “Is he dead?”

The guy says, “No, he’s just cold,” and plops him on the tree in front of our door.

Turns out the guy was hired by the landlord. He gets three more before the day’s out using what appears to be a Swiffer sweeper with glue smeared all over it, applies caulking to the gap in the ceiling and calls it good...

But, as he’s leaving, he says, “Man, when there’s a colony of these things, there can be like 500 snuggled up in a tiny little corner – you never know.”

Great.

Alfie and I were at the dog park the other week when there was a 60 degree day and bright sun. I decided to let him go and run while I would work on my school portfolio at one of the tables in the park. When we got to the park there happened to be a pack of four dogs already running around and playing so off Alfie went, to play with the other dogs. I set up camp at a table and began working and it wasn't long until this guy with a camera came up to me and asked to take my picture for the local paper, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. I said sure and just went about my business. Then, Alfie, inspired by Gisele Bundchen, decided to climb up to the table and start bashfully playing with my paint brush as I painted, licking my face, turning this way and that and generally hamming it up for the camera. When the guy was done he came over and asked if that was my dog. I told him yep and apparently he has aspirations of becoming an elite fashion model and is never shy in front of a camera. The photographer told me to look in the next day's paper for our picture. Below is what was printed.

Kate Lynch of Little Rock paints while her dog Alfie, a redbone coonhound, keeps an eye on a pack of dogs at Paws Park in Murray Park in Little Rock on Monday afternoon. Lynch was using watercolors and painting from a photograph she took in New Zealand.

When it was printed it was a space filler in the paper on the Arkansas section, thrown in between a story about a fiery bus crash and a convenience store robbery. Alfie could usually care less about visiting with me when he is running around the dog park so I thought it was funny that he decided that day to come over and interact with me all cutesy and what-not. Just so we're clear, it's an act. He's a charlatan, don't trust him for one second. I'm still not clear what his motives were but I believe it might have been to buy a one way ticket to stardom and outta this one horse town. I will keep you apprised.

I thought that the extent of people recognizing me would end at the three people I know here in Arkansas. Turns out, more people read the Dem. Gazette and read the captions of random pictures, than I thought. For instance, I dropped Alfie off at doggie day care (yes day care, I'm not working and I use dog day care, I'm that person) and the first thing the guy at the place said to me was "hey, I saw you guys in the paper!" But they were dog people and had watched Alfie at their center so it wasn't so unusual. About three days later I was throwing some trash into the dumpster in the back lot of my townhouse/apartment unit when Reno (named by me, not his given name), the homeless guy that sifts through the dumpsters for redeemable cans and bottles, scared the living shit out of me and then proceeded to tell me that he had seen my dog in the paper too. At which point he jumped out of the dumpster and started playing with Alfie. I found it a little weird that the dumpster diving homeless guy recognized my dog and knew him by name but I figured it was fine and heck, we're sort of neighbors.

Today I was walking Alfie, the weather was a balmy 25 degrees and we were sliding across and ice sheet that was the intersection near the local bar Juanita's when a gentleman donning bright red pants with chili peppers printed all over and a black bandanna with a confederate flag placed conspicuously in the center of his forehead, crossed the street and met us at the other side.
"Hey, is your dog friendly?" he then bends down and starts petting Alfie and Alfie starts licking the day old salsa off his knees and I needn't say that he was friendly. "Boy he is a good lookin' dog" confederate flag kitchen worker says and I say" thanks, his name is Alfie."
"Alfie?" says kitchen guy, "I saw him in the paper! you're just so cute, yes you are, you are cute, ooohshy, booshy boo...." and this goes on and I'm thinking, hello? I was in the paper too. Aren't I friggin' cute? why don't people cross the street to come and hug me? Why does Alfie always get the overly affectionate conversations and kisses from perfect strangers?

Then later, at the library, I am sitting on a bench outside with Alfie, getting ready to walk home when one of the many homeless guys that patronize the library during the cold months, stopped, looked at me and said "hey girl"
looking up I realized he too recognizes Alfie and wants to wrestle on the frozen ground with him here in front of the library and I say " oh yeah, this is my dog Alfie, you can pet him if you want, I'm sure you've seen him in the paper"
and homeless library guy says "nah girl, i ain't care 'bout your dog, I like your shoes." He smiles at me, winks and walks inside.
So it seems that not everyone is in love with Alfie, some people still notice me and more importantly, my shoes.

SEE BELOW

Alfie's Christmas Goose

Hi everybody! It's Jamey, and I need your help. I run a rodeo website (what?!?!?!? I know, trust me, no one is more surprised than I am.) The link to the website is http://www.espnrodeo.com/ or http://www.espnbullriding.com/ . I need you all to please, please come to the website and click around on stuff so that I can keep my job.

And forward these links on to anyone you know who's either
A.) interested in rodeo or bull riding,
B.) curious about the strange customs of cowfolks,
C.) compassionate enough to take some time and click around for a good cause, or
D.) afraid that if I lose my job Kate and I will come live at your house for an extended period of time (you know who you are!).

The best time to visit is now and everyday after that - http://www.espnrodeo.com/ . The best thing to do while you're there? Whatever you want - read one of my incisive articles about steer wrestling, bareback riding, or team roping, for example - but, the easiest and best thing for our traffic numbers is to go to any link that says photos, open a couple of photo galleries and click through, and then open another one and click through, etc...

The deal with our traffic is that we get to count every click, no matter where it comes from, so if I sat here at my computer and clicked through photo galleries (which I'm doing right now as I write this) and viewed 1,000,000 photos, we'd get 1,000,000 clicks. People buy ad space on our website depending on how much traffic there is and my boss' boss' boss decides that it's worth keeping Jamey on staff for at least a little while longer.

Thanks in advance for your support - each photo gallery you view means that Alfie (our dog) is that much closer to getting that Christmas goose and getting off those crutches... God bless us, every one.

It's a bit out of character for me to have several blogs just days following each other but i feel like i need to shout from the mountain tops or the Ozarks or the ghetto liquor store down the street. I am, like many, many people in this country, so relieved and elated to witness Barack Obama take the presidency. Win, out and out, no bullshit, win the presidency. No recounts, no supreme court and no accounts of voter fraud or corruption. How freaking refreshing. I feel like this oppressive scary stranglehold from this Bush administration has been lifted. As soon as the CNN projection came on the screen and the cheers went up i knew everything was changing and it was really, finally happening. I could breathe again!

For those of you who don't know I live in downtown Little Rock, a predominately black and poor part of town. It is as we speak being "revitalized" and what that means for this town isn't yet clear. I'd like to think Jamey and I are mavericks (just to use that word one more time) and we are singlehandedly reintegrating downtown Little Rock but alas, I can not take credit. My street for example is all med students or law students of different styles and persuasions but just one or two blocks away you get abandoned lots, abandoned Victorian homes and abandoned people living off the street or under the overpass on I630. This is the reality of this town. It isn't perfect, its an ugly American reality and we live here deliberately because we don't want to hide away in the white neighborhood and pretend that things like poverty and homelessness don't exist. We also know that by just renting a place down here we aren't going to change these realities but at least we think about them on a daily basis and we are constantly challenging ourselves to find solutions and sustainable ideas to address them as citizens of this city. And the people in this part of town know what it is to struggle for a myriad of reasons and so the Obama victory is felt on such a deeper level. It gives people an ounce of hope where there may have been none before.

Anyway, the other night we had a choice in locations for the election results parties but we heard that the UALR black law students were congregating at a bar close to our house so we decided that is where we wanted to be, surrounded by a sea of exceptionally smart people who understood the meaning of hard work and success. So it was me, Jamey and our friend Seth and we headed to our neighborhood Mexican bar to watch an African American man elected president. I wanted to be surrounded by people who were feeling this momentous occasion so deeply and to see on their faces the enormity of the event. Obama being elected was big for everyone in Little Rock and I have been feeling it for some time.

I was really reluctant to move to the South because of many reasons but facing the reality that racism and all the ugly trimmings that go along with it are still very much alive in this part of the country was one of the things that scared me the most. Our trips to Mississippi this summer were eye opening, scary and amazingly beautiful all at the same time. Living here has helped me to understand our sordid past as a country and the deep thriving culture that abounds here in the deep south. It was not lost on me that as I was celebrating in the streets after the projections were made, that I was just blocks away from Central High School and where the Little Rock Nine paved the way for social change and integration in 1957, 51 years ago. 51 years ago my parents were living the reality of the civil rights struggle and here I was today living the reality of what the brave people of that time had given me and the generations to come. Hope! Success without barriers.

By no means do I think that the struggle has ended. We may have leapt a large obstacle but there are many more battles to be won. Especially evident by the fact that most of the citizens of California still believe in taking away the rights of people based on their sexual orientation and that Arkansans believe that homosexual couples should never raise a child together. I wish that they would just wade through the bullshit talk and put what it is they really mean on the ballot:

Issue 1: Because the person proposing this bill is ignorant and scared, gay people and heterosexuals who don't want to get married should never raise or foster a child-
check yes/check no.

Anyway, I digress. I just feel so damn proud. I feel proud of my country, finally. I feel like I can travel overseas and not pretend to be Canadian (although I never did because I wanted to prove Americans were cool cats like me). I feel like I can believe that the leader of my country has its people in its best interest and understands the word democracy and community. I feel like this administration doesn't believe in governing using fear and oppressive scare tactics. I feel like the youth is finally AWAKE! I feel like dancing in the streets and hugging random people! oh wait, I already did that! And I was here, in Arkansas, voting for an African American President. Oh I see that promise land, indeed I do.

(this is sort of a random picture but I saw it on shirt in Provincetown once and I thought it was hilarious, just sharing the hilarity with you)

Even today, two days after the election I felt like I could walk into the Community Bakery, stand on my chair and yell "OBAMA" and I would have a chorus of whoops and hollers ringing along with me. It wouldn't be weird it would be an jubilant expression of how most of the people in this town feel. Usually when I stand on my chair and shout things I get food thrown at me so this has been a refreshing time. Although this state went Red, its very core is blue. Right smack in the center, here in Little Rock. And damn it, if Virginia can vote for a Dem anything is possible.

So I have learned several things over the last few days not excluding the Obama shuffle, which if you don't already know you apparently don't belong to an African American Fraternity at a state university. I have learned to trust the American people again and to believe that really, it is all possible. Anything we believe in and work for we can achieve. And we may not have a woman president now but I tell you what I'm voting for Michelle Obama in 2012. Hey, we don't even need to change our yard signs! Recycle!

Just a quick thanks!

Hi Y'all!
Thanks to all of my friends and family that supported me in the Little Rock Walk to support the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Little Rock raised enough money ($28,000.00) to start a chapter of the AFSP in the state to help fund research and support for people struggling with depression and other mental health problems. I think this is a pretty big feat for only 500 people raising money the first year. YEE HAW ARKANSAS!
I attached a picture of me in my Out of the Darkness shirt so there is proof the money went to the walk and not to buy a new keyboard to practice my Roberta Flack songs. Also, my mom was here this weekend and she went on a really tough, long hike in the craggy terrain of Petit Jean mountain with me and my hound dog Alfie. Alfie was born near this mountain and I wanted him to remember his roots so he got to sniffing early and his nose never left the ground. I'm very proud of my mama and how healthy she is now. Congratulations to Rosemary for hiking her second trail ever! (she is from the Bronx after all) Kick ass!

my momma in da grotto

reflections

Just finished and still peppy!

nite nite after the long hike