20061128 Rashomon, My Dinner with Andre and Picking out the perfect tree

Rashomon, My Dinner with Andre and Picking out the perfect tree

Picking out the perfect tree

Chasing windmills with Jim and Kevin – and Laura McCandlish

November 6th, 2006 – November 28th, 2006

Posted by Kevin Dayhoff

Baltimore Sun reporter Laura McCandlish does a wonderful capturing the essence of yet another “Jim and Kevin adventures in the quixotic.”

James E. Slater, Jr., AICP, QEP, the Carroll County Government Environmental Compliance Officer, and I got together Thursday, November 2nd, 2006, for the third year in a row, in our annual quest for the perfect Christmas tree for the front of the Carroll County office building on North Center Street in Westminster.

Ms. McCandlish rode along with us to witness yet another continuing sequence of Louis Malle’s “My Dinner with Andre;” the 1981 movie, written by and starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn – only with Jim and Kevin.

Meeting Ms McCandlish and spending several hours in the county van with her and Jim was delightful. Jim and I are both passionate about reading and writing and it was fun to have an english major along for the ride.

And yes, it is true, that to a certain extent true, Jim and I agree on very little politically. We even have some “pathway conflict” on approaches to environmentalism. We both love to read – and read, and read - - and we love to talk and talk and talk, about what we have read; especially the esoteric nuances of environmentalism and science – especially the natural sciences.

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 was right before the general election in which, for the most part, Jim and I probably cancelled out many of each other’s votes and politics was one of the subjects de jour.

Ms. McCandlish had written several articles in which it was my feeling, the Baltimore Sun was attempting to fuel divisiveness in the county. (I know, you are, like, soooo surprised…) A divisiveness that may very well have been present in the county with a few local attention-getters - so desperate to be relevant, and insiders; but a divisiveness, that for the most part, in my view, does not exist in Carroll County.

For an outsider to read the articles, my concern was that they misrepresented Carroll County – or at least fed into stereotypes which only exist with the simplistically oriented.

To make matters worse, Ms. McCandlish writes quite well. I have enjoyed her work. She is persuasive and compelling and I wish that she confined some of that persuasive and compelling to “columns” and not news articles.

Memo to the local newspapers; Andrew Sullivan said it best in a post on August 17th, 2005, “This red-blue thing isn't real: it's a grid put down on the landscape by lazy pundits in order to foster a conflict that isn't there so the people who profit from conflict can work their way with us.”

For the most part, in my view, Carroll Countians certainly have their pathway conflicts and political disagreements; however, we are usually pre-occupied with family, sports and community - - not partisan political disagreements.

There are many of us in Carroll County who don’t play the red-blue game. And, as the election season wore down, most of us had - had it with a few vocal folks, for whom every disagreement in the county is some huge Kabuki Morals conspiracy laden death match.

It is more like Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 classic movie version of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “Rashomon.” Everyone has a version of the truth. In Carroll County the analogy gets even better as the original movie was done in Japanese with Chinese subtitles and dubbed in English. Sounds like many of the conversations in Carroll County.

(The “Rashomon Affect,” if you will recall, is the dynamic in which the subjective analysis and resulting perception of an occasion by observers, is filtered, which causes many different but equally factual accounts of the event(s) in question.)

When we were all riding together, “Rashomon” came to mind several times, but Jim and I spared Ms. McCandlish of that esoteria. If you will recall, it rained, symbolically throughout the movie and the book. Just as it had been “raining” symbolically and literally in Carroll County in the weeks – months, just before the election.

Yet the day when Jim and I got together to pick out the perfect Christmas Tree for Carroll County citizens – it was a beautiful day…

Again, for emphasis, there are many conservatives and liberals in the county who are the best of friends and do not let their political disagreements get in the way of friendship, family, art, literature, community and kids.

At first when I discovered that Ms. McCandlish was going to go along with us for the ride, I felt concerned for her mental sanity as I am sure that she had not a clue as to what she was getting into.

To make matters worse, Jim, who I consider one of my best friends, and I had not had a chance to talk with one another for months and months.

So lots of conversations had been bottled-up, just waiting for some time together. To make matters worse, I was dead tired and bleary eyed from spending too much time with the laptop and peering into the abyss of a computer screen. I needed several cups of coffee and some Fox News while doing my vegetable routine on the living room couch. I was not in a mood for subtle diplomacy with a Baltimore Sun reporter as scrivener-voyeur.

Unfortunately, I have developed a huge distrust for Baltimore Sun writers, for which I do not have for most newspaper writers in general, unless they earn it.

Too many really really bad experiences…

Jim and I had done this routine several years ago with another Baltimore Sun reporter “who didn’t get it,” and the resulting article was less than desired. As soon as a number of our colleagues were told that a Baltimore Sun reporter was tagging along, they bailed. Who needs gotcha-journalism, when you’re having fun, and getting some time together and looking for a Christmas Tree.

Some reporters do not understand the “human aspect” of the folks who volunteer their free time for public service.

Although at first Ms. McCandlish had a bit of that “deer in headlights” look – justifiably so. But whoa, Ms. McCandlish was a real trooper and fit right in. She is welcome to be company anytime Jim and I decide to get together and chase a windmill or two around.

Jim and I talked a little politics until we both became worried that Ms. McCandlish was beginning to ponder whether she had a greater statistical probability of surviving the Jim and Kevin show as opposed to surviving the leap from a county van at 40 miles per hour.

Ms. McCandlish writes quite well and it was a pleasure to have a writer accompany us.

The county community Christmas Tree is a big deal, as hopefully it is one piece of iconography which will bring folks together as the holiday season approaches.

This year’s tree is beautiful and I couldn’t wait until Mike Whitson and his merry Bureau of Facilities folks men installed it and got the lights up.

Please enjoy Ms. McCandlish’s article while the hyperlink works. After the hyperlink goes dead, I’ll paste the rest of her article in this post. For now, please click on, “Picking out the perfect tree - Officials search high and low in county for holiday spruce that's a cut above the rest.”

Note: I began this piece on November 6th, 2006 and just today, November 28th, 2006, re-visited it. The link has gone dead – and I have pasted her entire piece here. It is a keeper. Thanks Ms. McCandlish.

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Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster Maryland USA. E-mail him at: kdayhoff@carr.org http://www.thetentacle.com/ Westminster Eagle Opinion and Winchester Report http://www.thewestminstereagle.com/ www.kevindayhoff.com has moved to http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/