Our Victorian preoccupation

I haven't seen many wristwatches lately, though I think Republicans wear them. In DC at least, Cell phones have become pocket watches, and their plastic and silicon are checked and stroked with as much finesse and care as an engraved gilded heirloom.

I see their ancestors on Antiques Roadshow and I consider gentlemen talking into them with proper diction and great purpose on Lafayette Square. Squirrels were introduced recently to delight and entertain them, but there is urgent business to attend to all alone talking into a gold fronticepiece! It would be ridiculous if it weren't true. They're all mad, mad I say!

Unfortunately though the gesture of time checking on an elegant gadget has returned, the manners that went with the age have disappeared. I've left home, left my baby and on this train have just blown my nose into one of her socks- perhaps there are some people who would still offer handkerchiefs to ladies, if there were still ladies to receive them. I glance around and of course everyone is so absorbed in their pocket watches, no one is appalled at me for soiling a baby sock. Maybe they wouldn't notice a breast pump. Now there's a preoccupation.


-- Post From My iPhone

Loginesia

I googled it. It doesn't exist. And now it's mine. Here's my stab at an Oxford's definition, if I can get this thing to catch on.

Loginesia /ˈlɔgˌɪniʒə/
1. Complete or partial loss of memory of website login username and password information. 2. Having a large number of unrelated usernames and passwords such that an individual becomes incapable of remembering them. 3. An independent virtual state consisting primarily of internet-related detritus, files or data recorded or written in versions of software no longer in common use, and multiple digital photographs that are not intended for print. (see 'Photoblivion')

That's mine too.

Beware of Fraud on Facebook

This is NOT a conversation between me and my friend Matthew. It is a conversation between me and someone claiming to be my friend Matthew. Luckily I'm of the generation that still calls mothers at the crack of dawn to verify the location of their sons.

But in all seriousness, please be aware of this fraud tactic. I'll be contacting the FTC and InterPol today.

Matthew
Need's Urgent Assistance!about an hour ago
Clear Chat History
7:03amMatthew
hey there
How are u doing?
7:03amZB
hi matthew. it's early! I'm just fine. how are you?
7:03amMatthew
Am not good
7:03amZB
what's wrong
?
7:04amMatthew
Im in some kind of deep mess right now
7:04amZB
how so?
7:04amMatthew
Im stranded in London
I got mugged at a gun point last night
7:04amZB
holy shit?
where are you?
specifically?
7:04amMatthew
All cash,credit card and phone was stolen
7:04amZB
did you go to the police?
7:05amMatthew
Im in a public Library
7:05amZB
what credit cards do you need to notify?
7:05amMatthew
i have reported to the local cops here.Investigation is going on
7:06amZB
who do you need called?
7:06amMatthew
I really need your urgent assitance
Thank God i still have my Life and passport
7:06amZB
sure - how can I help?
7:07amZB
The US embassy is helping me with my return flight home
My return flight leaves in few hour but having trouble sorting out the hotel bills
7:07amZB
what hotel are you staying at?
7:08amMatthew
Wondering if you could loan me some few $$$ to pay the hotel bills and take a cab to the Airport
I will def refund you when i return home
Would you loan me some cash?
7:08amZB
what's the quickest way to do that, western union? it might be easier if I call the hotel with a credit card
and then western union some cash
7:09amMatthew
you can wired it to me via western union
7:09amZB
can you go to the hotel so I can call you there and help sort that part out?
7:09amMatthew
Do you know any western union outlet around?
7:09amZB
where are you in london?
7:09amMatthew
Kentish town
7:09amZB
what hotel?
7:09amMatthew
You can wired the money to my full name as written on my passport
I checked in with cash...
7:10amZB
what hotel?
7:10amMatthew
Sector Inn...
7:11amZB
can you go back there so we can talk?
7:11amMatthew
Would you call the hotel Manager on my behalf?
I have limited time here
7:11amZB
Yes, I can do that - are you going back there before the airport?
7:12amMatthew
I cant go back to the hotel now..I need to return with cash Jessyca
How much can you spare me with right now?
7:14amMatthew
????
7:14amZB
hold on a sec
7:14amMatthew
ok
7:14amZB
I'm on the phone with your mom
who is certain you're in mississippi
and that you're reporting to teach today.
want to tell me who the hell this is really?

See recent report on CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/05/facebook.impostors/index.html

the (little) devil in the details

In Praise of
The Second Nine Months by Vicki Glembocki

At about 5 months along in my own pregnancy, I read The Second Nine Months with a bit of trepidation but with great recommendation from a friend of the author’s who insisted that I would enjoy it. I did. The trepidation had come not from worrying that it would be too negative or sarcastic, or whiny and insufferable as “Operating Instructions,” (the voice of which smacks of bitterness from not having a partner with whom to venture into parenthood among other meanderings about drugs and religious hooey) but out of a fear of my own feelings. I get annoyed at the neediness of the dog, how will I ever be a mother? It is the unabashed, unapologetic look at self doubt that makes The Second Nine Months a success – not in delivering us a new trend in baby-and-pregnancy-related books (though it will likely result in a string of copycats).

I have a brutally honest friend who announced early in her first pregnancy that she thought the whole thing was gross – including the idea of having an infant – and while at the time I confused her portrayal of motherhood as a bit cold and unemotional, what I missed in the statement was the very emotion in it, the questions in herself she’s willing to face, and the strength to say, “it’s not complicated, or it is, but the fact that I’m straightforward with myself about it is not.” She’s right, it’s gross. Not admitting it is more gross. Not being able to speak the truth can literally make one sick and further – for what I’d like to think is the urbane woman – makes us slaves to the marketing empire that is salivating for us to drop our precious load on the economy, oddly, making us “consumers” while really we are producers.

Pregnancy makes you do weird things, like steal fruit from business breakfast buffets and google “why men find pregnant women so hot.” It makes you fierce and wilting a the same time. It conjures up all sorts of strange nightmares that progress with the pregnancy, of deformed babies and a deformed self image, coupled with a growing realization that while it may all be worth it in the end, the poopy parts might also have to be as good as it gets. It’s also a vibrant, pulsating time when you feel like there’s a beam of light on you wherever you go, a fecund image of life, family, sex and of loving a parasite. It’s confusing.

What I take most from Second Nine Months is that I know that deep, irrational love, the kind I feel for the first time with my future spouse and father of my child, and what I expect to feel for my child, comes with the capability to hate, a dark repose and broiling anger for the whole mess, the whole lot, and anyone that would dare step in my way as I couple with it. The balance between the two makes for a complicated woman, a light and darkness that defines us all, and a worthwhile life.

Thank you, Vicki. I will almost certainly give it a second read. If I have time. Which I have a feeling I will not. But I’ll want to.

PS
The one thing I would change if I could in the story? Wouldda sent that email and then FIRED her ass.
Millenials...

o kentucky

Recently I went to a Louisville Bats game at Slugger Field. The opposing team was somewhat irrelevant – let’s call it Bats v Gnats. I was impressed by the diligence of the seat steward, guarding the “diamond club” seats, all ten of them, with pride though the entire section lay empty. I sat at the periphery, the lone fan in my section, near first base. It was also called the “first base club” which I connect with Louisville’s air of innocence. The kissing and hands-on-top-of-blouse section, as it were. When a young barista offered me a “hot passion,” pronounced “pay-shun” I felt the blush push up past my cheeks and through my scalp. Kentucky people are deliberately slow, not to stave off heat or the shadow of oppression as in your deep southern states, but to make sure you know they’re trying really, really hard to please you. They talk like bourbon here, and it makes you want to confess all your secrets and be done with it.

If I looked deeper, if I moved my clothes and my life here (which includes a significant other that looks and talks like he should be here anyway) and settled into a neighborhood outside the candy fleur de lis shell, I do wonder what I would find. Kentucky is at once rich and destitute, a crossroads where horse people meet piss poor. There is a fantasy of wealth in Louisville and a romance that is shocking for a town in a state that borders Indiana, so far my least favorite state in the union – I lived in Valparaiso and no one had ever heard of Mardi Gras – something tells me they know about Mardi Gras in Louisville. In my experience, what lies across the border is in the boring belt. Kentucky, the rolling, pretty bluegrass south, is so far away from the beer gut that is most of the middle of the country. Taking in Kentucky one does not guzzle. One sips.

There are tremendous problems here, just as in the middle and the sides and the bottom and top of our country. There are pockets of poverty and ugliness, there are uneducated, abusive people, there is racism and intolerance, there is probably a serious issue with evolution and terrible corruption. That just makes it normal. There are piles of coal on the river. I could overlook those. Because it’s gorgeous here and the accents just kill me. The architecture is solid. There’s a serious take on preservation, a growing interest in sustainability, and an established dedication to stay local and buy American. People smile here, and there has been little reason to smile lately. I will admit I am still clueless about the complexities of life in this state. But I leave wanting to know more.

When I was thirteen I had a mysterious encounter under the blazing hot New Braunfels sun. There was a black bottom reservoir, a green eyed bathingbesuited boy a few years older than me (and about a foot taller) and an opportunity. We had this silly and polite adolescent-intellectual conversation under a tree for an hour, and I took his picture doing a swan dive into the deep water. I never saw him again but I will always be able to recall with great accuracy the romantic buzz I had for the rest of that muggy Texas summer. He had this funny southern accent I didn’t recognize and touched my hair and cheek sweetly and kissed me goodbye, first base nowhere in sight.

Kentucky sorta makes me feel that way.

led by strangers

well, I wouldn't want to stand there and wait for a conductor.

He was so patient, seeming to look at a point just off my shoulder as I reached him in line, a steady stream of besuited ants marching by him and out the train door.
- one woman, the one that sat next to me and spoke staccato
words in a language I did not recognize, stepped off, turned around and
said, "does he need help?" and then before I could advise, disappeared.

"I only see one conductor and he's way down at the first car [helping
people who are perfectly capable of getting out of the train all by their
big-boy selves...] - why don't I take you where you need to go" I said hopefully to him, above the din and shuffle.

"aren't you nice. thank you" he offered and we stepped over the threshold, a gap that I normally
ignore completely, but of which today I made a verbal presentation. "we're stepping over now" I said eagerly and when our right feet hit the platform in unison, he took hold of the heel of my hand and launched down the ramp to the station with more conviction than me. His command of the space - limitless to him and bound to me by hundreds of bodies and obstacles, caught me off guard and I momentarily hesitated - he was leading me, for a moment, and then I rebounded to finish the job as I thought I should.

This could be my realizing that I take too much for granted - vision, among other natural 'gifts' but I'll refrain, and it would be untrue. Mostly in those moments I had with him, I thought about whether or not he could do things better than me, like smell and feel. If it's annoying waiting on arms to hitch rides, and if he could tell by my voice that I am a nice person - and an idea for a love story. Certainly he can't tell his gentle grip on the heel of my hand and great purpose with which he took his steps made me think about falling in love without seeing someone. No, you can't tell that from a walk and a chat about the daily commute - so banal and chatty a chat about the acronyms that follow us like stray dogs through our days in DC.

No I'd have to tell him that, I suppose. And many other things that none of us care to see in each other.

there is no car magnet to describe it.

You want family values? Let's let our new president teach by example.
Not the canned love we've become accustomed to in our politicians, but a real blushing passion-
for his wife, daughters, and country. This is the first family of fables, something
we've only seen in the on-screen heroics of hollywood presidents, the good ones.
This is all so spookily familiar, a final sigh exorcising the last curses
of the Kennedys, one nation-wide recollection of our sweeter past that may not have really
existed- the one in our daydreams that is sepia toned and never, ever angry in church.
Never, ever in front of the children.
And what we've got, pulled up on that big screen is the larger than life character, not the celebrity.
A good man. Doing good things. How refreshing.

P.S.
Your flag decal won't get you into heaven any more.

edible sentiment

I don't dislike Paul Newman's take on marital fidelity as much as I want to steal it while carefully avoiding the woman-as-meat metaphor. It is simple in it's purpose, to illustrate the great secret that is, I assume after fifty years with his wife, a great marriage. He said, "why go out for burgers when you have steak at home?" Truly.

It is so much easier to go on about people that don't mean anything to you. I am speaking of stories I have taken down with great amusement as if I were taking a dictation from Georges Sand. Oh the too-clever musings of a will-never-be. The problem is, or rather, the "opportunity" is that when I sit to do this now, my thoughts are remarkably clean. You. And thus everything seems filthy. The words that were born in the mash of erotic potatoes that seem to surround a relationship early on - the bulbous and attention-getting and looking vaguely like the indiscretions of past presidents, and for the most part somewhat uninventive and tasteless – those starchy dear ones are not there any more. The common burgers, the philandering fries. So I must move on from idle reporting, and the silly pursuit of ordinary hot potatoes. I simply cannot bear the lowly roots when I am faced with the possibility of poetry.

I'm looking into a tea of temperance, the lines on your face, and your unique take on godlessness. And cucumber water. I was indulgent, but limited. And now I'm rare wordless filet mignon in some ludicrous herbed sauce. I am a pound of butter and a gallon of fresh juice. I am culinary and clean, but decadent nonetheless - the finish of a fine pinot and your relentless check mate. You've made my love wholesome, and as I gag on that word, I will say as well that it is goodness on a wide spectrum, played out in a come to dinner bell of multi-tonal loveliness across the field of this new life – including the craggy cat's meow and red kettle air raid on a crisp October morning. That smoke tendril I hate and love. Remorselessly wearing aprons and giving myself over to your steady and kind rule over the kitchen. That bread knife fiasco. Being the baker – I'm an early riser anyway. Well just for old time's sake, here's a curse on you for making me happy and ruining my idle nonsense. For making me lose my apetite for fast food. But not for dining on dreams and if necessary to put dinner on the table, with second rate knives. And not for caring enough for me that I may dine on love and occassionally grilled cheese and tomato soup, which you will somehow make into a gourmet meal. I am fearfully but hopefully tasked now with writing a real love story.

unfreedom

My dear brilliant daughter I hope that you are hiding your intelligence, your creativity, your natural ability with numbers and your sense of direction. I hope that you are saving them under a clever veil of government sanction ditziness so that they not be culled by a society that has no place for their vessel, lovely you. You are not a Regular. You are not an Elite. You are my Magnolia. Never mind if you've been renamed Long Mauve Truck, and are the assistant to the vice chancellor of knitting beer coozies - you are the shining flower of my genes and your father's genes (I will explain the difference between God and Biology in subsequent letters), Hopefully you are, by the age of 12 or so when you find this, capable of hiding your talents so that you are not imprisoned, or altered, and understand that you are not defined by being "one or the other." Act Regular. Be extraordinary.

and reuse this as something. It was a tree.

your mother

giving lemons to a sourpuss is fruitless

I can forget, momentarily, that young female business travelers are on occasion mistreated for not having a bunchy leather pillow stuffed with cash in their pocket, propped up structurally by an "it's ok, I'm on a business trip" flying man-buttress. Nor will I dwell on the fraying of my last nerve by the evil that are petroleum-laced cosmetics, staining with one nefarious "pook" my otherwise virginal white cotton summer dress, moments before the criminally placed hairdryer falls into the sink, cord still coiled like a southern black snake on a young pine, waiting to strike me.

But freaking Berkeley has lemons, on trees. And someone just smiled and gave me salt. And maybe the ghosts of the Claremont will break the life-long paranormal boycott on me. I'll bet Oppenheimer was here, the brush and sway of gentle St. John on his mind and a curse to the pink California horizon just flirting with a shape, "o...." And I'll bet those lemon-tree owners don't appreciate their lemons like I would, rosemary and olive oil, some coquette vinagrette that it is physically impossible to mess up.

I'm plucking that lemon tomorrow. That makes me a no-account sourpuss lemonnapper.

So be it.

vernal view

I do not mind sitting backward
sticks blur and pink blooms wisp
by in my single seat not by the others

I saw a subterranean march early spring -
little soldiers with lapel pins their weapons.
We hold the little secrets of ourselves
like treasured playing cards

And in the springtime they are so wet and full
in our quick hands dirt and creosote and birdsong -

But by crisp sudden autumn,
they blow away, the childhood leaves
turn vermillion and are gone

social justice and a hot breakfast

"You're looking very warm today;"
the sweet low twang of a southern man's voice
floated over the scrambled eggs and sausage
in the breakfast buffet. I said,
"I have to bundle up like nanook to be comfortable,"
matching vowels with him.
"I know that's right. Are you from the south?" he asked, I paused-

"Louisiana and southeastern Texas..and it doesn't get this cold there."
I wasn't sure why he wanted to know, but then came the verbal missive
on New Orleans, the humanitarian work out of Grand Lake his group
had done, the ongoing crisis, the old cypress guards of the fleur de lis
crumbling under the dismissive wave
of administrative orders.

It is not unreasonable to get nostalgic around this time.
Mardi Gras is around the corner. The displaced look for warmth in
each other.

He said, "you been back home
lately?" Home, I think about Home.

and he's right, Louisiana has always felt like home -
they say, where your bare feet first patter, that's the place that
matters, and to me - so deeply in my skin I feel it, I touch my chapped
winter hands together and think about the miracle in missing humidity-
he and I are suddenly in some space together, speak in the same voice,
and in that moment I feel a purple, green and gold emblazoned thanksgiving,
and when he says, "I'll get this one, you just do it for someone else
soon," I could just take off my hat and walk confidently
out into the bitter DC cold.

but ohio is normal

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving

The little white handwritten placards above our heads say “SOB” “MRB” and “CUM” The kid next to me has never heard the term “dear John letter.” He is blond and friendly, from Pittsburgh, and speaking with a broad man would like everyone to know that he charges an enormous hourly rate to make his commute worthwhile. I only know my stop, and will perhaps not know it well. Cumberland is where I hope to be let off, perhaps I will bribe the conductor with my beer, which I thankfully thought to buy in Union Station. It’s a toss-up if I or any of us will be released into the fall night by the conductor; when he talks his voice is full of cotton, his thoughts are sloe gin. We are headed for Chicago, and this is the strangest of routes. At first told to be seated upstairs in the sleek double decker, our little band was reprimanded en masse as the train embarked on its rocking trajectory, that the car was a “deadhead” and that we were to move, by an attendant who was troubled to put together a sentence, or make eye contact. There is a man in our mini-car who does this every day. Every day, 150 miles. Every day, he greets the crew, he puffs up with satisfaction that he knows them by name and by bad habit, by terminology and baggage and perfunctory rule-mandering. There is a young deaf man in the seat ahead, and he is better off not to hear this confederacy of plucky comrades. I don’t think we’ll ever get to Cumberland, and I imagine if we do, I will step off the train and see Studebakers. A woman comes in mildly amused by the gerbil habitat nature of our little car, and offers reservations in the dining car. I take mine for 6:30. It’s a bizarre ride, but
the sunset is all peaches and blue foamy November, a warm Tuesday for this time of year, and we’ve come to know each other chugging along, and I risk my ticket off this odd machine by drinking up.

new orleans notebook

Jackson Square was so freshly scrubbed it reminded me of a time I sat rear to ground and
chalk in hand chut-chut-chuting at an old roof slate for play, squinting at the sun
and a caliope played, some sad sweet tune- an echo I'd wake up to one morning,
thirty years later. how'd you get here? I could talk but it was before I cared to,
and things stick in you
like when you first put flour to oil to make a roux.

I wouldn't know this had Joette not told me, they used to pick up the trash with mules on
Prieur and it could very well be that way again, mules and prayers, cars and curses
it is so damn hard to get around now, but no hurry still.

An old chef told me in bright clean October, if I took my shoes off and walked around barefoot here,
nowhere else would ever feel like home. I remember scraping around shoeless in the early fall sun on stone and
grass, hands red and yellow and dusty, I saw the clown faces everyone did that sort of thing then - and I'd never be seven like my sister, and this old square was a big enough world.

the view from platform E

mingled at the castle, swirled around princes of industry
or just one bright business in particular-
the newest one where everyone wins
and realized no one would approach my chardonnay or my
prayer like stare
that one does to ones' electronic bonnet- to say "I'm busy"
ran down cool bluster to miss the red line just by a breath
and found I'd been tagged with a price on my hair
everyone has one

and then
the beige maw of union station opened up to me
and in two minutes I had a ticket and a possibility
this woman who sat next to me, she had just met the
president's father, don't you know it, she speaks some other language
that I can't understand, but whispers anyway
and with my bottle of water, young men in suits untied
bobbing forward and back staring with black pools
where blue used to be
staring and me and they are so slight and smart
in periphery
buy expensive beer and sometimes a pretzel

I'm going home now
where the heel stops short of the platform and
just as you fall in, a kind conductor offers
"miss, you forgot your sweater"

texas blues

Three and a half pounds of shrimp as big as your head for sixteen dollars. Texas blue crabs nip and I nip back, who knew there were crab tongs? Guilt tugs at me. they're too pretty to eat. I grew up on the Texas gulf coast, the part just shy of Louisiana, hot sauce with every meal the yearly threat of wind and water at your door and the promise of tiny black springtime frogs in a saturated emerald lawn. Childhood summers were covered by a green shroud; couldn't see any other color except for bark brown that you tag breathlessly with mud boots and herds of crickets your only witness.

Playing "outside or in, pick one!" was good until 9 pm and then suddenly sweaters, though it was 85 degrees and hot hot on the playground. The first day of school brought the excitement of pencil smell and playground pebbles in my knees. Why did construction paper not come in blonde? You have yellow hair when you cut it out that way-

Found Allison under a sappy white pine crying, no friends quite yet and there I was hands smelling like cyprus. It's twenty-five years later, ya'll and I look into her daughter's new almond eyes and mine cannot hold back the Texas Blues.

bizarre love triangle

Come out to see the play Rudy Doo by George Tilson,
performed at the Spotlighter's Theater in Baltimore (817 St. Paul Street)
playing the 17th and 18th Aug at 8 pm, Aug 19th at 2 pm, Aug 23rd,
24th, and 25th at 8 pm, and Aug 26th at 2 pm.

see The Baltimore Playwright Festival's website for more details:

BPF

slice of mandolin

strum thing- bent over a pie and a song
sometimes a poem is just a poem
other times, a word a besplintered, forlorn-
wooden spoon for a good while, sit and smile

all leavened and leveled and ready to file.

who's in nebraska?

The work of the thing - I suppose, could be part revisionist history,
part badly-gone affair of the heart, part super-nov(ell)a, part brown
sugar melting in the pantry. Perhaps summer is the time to air out
the underroos.

Bruce Springsteen's album by the same name is brilliant. Asbury Park
(pictured) what a mysery, and a mystery. It is not, however, a placeless
place, and could very well come back.

we're going streaking.

Below find the text from an article on today's Baltimore Sun
regarding naked hiking on the first day of summer. It is more
cautionary than judgemental, which I appreciate. More on nudity
some other time. I'd rather go frolick than sit in front of my
computer screen.
______________________________________________________

Naked ambition of hikers on the Appalachian
By Abigail Tucker
Baltimore Sun Reporter
Originally published June 22, 2007
Along the Appalachian Trail // Dave Odorisio unzipped his tent flap yesterday, peered out and stretched; a halo of gnats quickly formed around his tousled head. It was just another morning on Maryland's leg of the Appalachian Trail. But this particular morning, the 25-year-old hiker had an important decision to make: Namely, would he get dressed today?
Hike Naked Day marks the summer solstice on the 2,000-plus mile trail and gives the boldest adventurers a chance to walk -- not to mention scale boulders and gain summits -- on the wild side. The bad news for us is that the solstice falls at the time when backpackers are passing en masse through the Maryland area. These thru-hikers, trudging from the trail head in Georgia to its finish in Maine (a journey that typically starts in early spring and ends in late summer), are the most likely to shed their smelly regalia for the solstice ritual, making the 41 miles of in-state trail potentially perilous for Girl Scout troops or day hikers whose tour buses have paused there briefly on the way to historic battlefields.





The good news is that, although the nude hikers' flesh may be as brilliantly white as the blazes that mark the trail, they make themselves quite scarce.

It didn't take long for Odorisio to decide no, he definitely would not let the sun shine below the timberline, as it were. The morning was chilly, and the bugs were out for blood.

Besides, in the next tent over, 24-year-old Ian Russ of Chicago was yelling: "You better not hike naked! I've got my 11-year-old brother with me!"

Even setting aside the obvious examples, there are many strange activities that can be undertaken sans clothes. Naked bull roasts and naked chili cook-offs. Naked scuba-diving and naked sky-diving. Nude Texas hold 'em tournaments, beach cleanups, 5K runs, blues concerts and "shine 'n' buff" car shows. But naked mountain climbing ranks among the more hazardous options.

Think of poor Pus Gut, who hiked naked a few years back. All thru-hikers who attempt to complete the trail are given nicknames, but Pus Gut truly earned his, said Todd Berezuk, who works at the Outfitter at Harpers Ferry, a hiking equipment store near the Maryland segment. Suffering a fit of modesty in the midst of his solstice celebration, the young hiker attempted to fashion himself an undergarment out of leaves he found growing along the trail.

Poison ivy? He wasn't quite that dumb. It was poison sumac.

"His stomach was blistered, inflamed, broken out completely," said Berezuk, also a nursing student, who examined him when he came into the store. "So everyone called him Pus Gut."

Rather than devising natural-fiber loincloths, many trekkers prefer to "just keep a bandana handy" on the heavily traveled trail, said Al Preston, an assistant manager of Western Maryland's South Mountain State Park, which the trail runs through.

"I really don't know why they do it to begin with," Preston added. No one really does. "It's been passed down. When I got here in '92, I was warned that on the first day of summer people hike naked. And they do." Technically, it's against park rules, Preston says, but on the solstice officials "tend to grin" -- and bear it.

Of course, it depends on which park you're in. Stark-naked hikers who don't make it as far north as Maryland on the longest day of the year may encounter patrolmen to the south who are less tolerant of the holiday. Bare hindquarters are given no quarter at Virginia's George Washington and Jefferson National Forest, according to Woody Lipps, a patrol captain there who is not afraid to fine the naked. Penalties range from $75 to $5,000 or six months in jail, he said.

"Once someone called and asked if we would look the other way if they hiked naked to the Cascades on Hike Naked Day," Lipps said. "If you are in a public area nude, you are going to get a ticket."

However, Lipps admitted that tracking down nudes on the move is neither an enviable nor an easy task.

"It's like a needle in a haystack," he said. "How are you going to find one naked person in 1.8 million acres? You could hide a hundred naked people out there."

No one knows exactly how many hikers participate in the informal holiday, said Laurie Potteiger, information services manager for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Actually, "we really try to pretend that it doesn't exist," she said. The activity violates the sanctity of the trail and often disturbs other nature-lovers. Besides, because of all that extra exposed skin, the naked "are much more at risk for Lyme's disease," she said.

Not to mention for sunburn, snapping turtle bites and pack-strap chafing that even Body Glide, a special lubricant favored by thru-hikers, can't prevent. And "southbounders" doing the trail in reverse better not even think about it, hikers say, because it's still blackfly season up north.

And yet, despite these dangers, the day of nakedness seems an integral part of the trail's kooky culture, which revolves around reducing one's possessions to the bare necessities until a whole life can be crammed in a backpack. To many of the travelers bound for the trail's end at Mount Katahdin, the naked hiker seems to truly embody the principal of stripping down, and everyone seems to hope he exists, even if they've never met him.

Six hours after dawn on Hike Naked Day, no one had passed by Maryland's Dahlgren Backpackers' Campground less than half-dressed -- not even 23-year-old Scott Ames of Massachusetts, though his trail name, Quarter Moon, sounded promising.

"Too many roads in Maryland" was Quarter Moon's excuse.

One librarian from Queens, N.Y., saw the adventure's appeal. Michelle Ray, 30, had posed as a life model for art students during her college days, and she was still contemplating hiking naked herself. "God forbid I run into a pack of Boy Scouts and scar them for life," she said. "A naked librarian? They don't need to see that."

Leaving other hikers with such a startling memory might violate the thru-hiker's vow to "leave no trace" behind in the wilderness.

And yet, Ray said, it could honestly be worth it.



abigail.tucker@baltsun.com
For information about the Appalachian Trail, visit appalachiantrail.org.