New York City, 1988: Pilgrim girl vs. cockroaches

I moved to New York City a month after my college graduation. Late 1980s, I was 23. I finished my last college class in December and was in New York City by the next February. I remember nothing about the preparation for this adventure besides shopping for a new set of cooking pans at the Bon with my mom and putting $1,000 of savings into travelers' checks to bring with me.
I also forced myself to look at the Sunday New York Times at the Boise Public Library. I read the job and apartment listings because it seemed like I should. But classified ads about a place I didn't know, and jobs I couldn't imagine, were far too abstract.
I always thought my brother, Peter, was right when he said that for my generation, living in New York City for a time was a cultural imperative. He didn't go. He went to East Germany for a time instead, which says something about him and his freedom from cultural imperatives.
My college roommate Katharine, and a friend of hers from high school, found the apartment we lived in. A building on E. 22nd Street. This street was as abstract to me as the classifieds, mere shapes and lines in my Michelin guide. But my new address was near Gramercy Park. This was a place I loved, at least from the outside, since I'd never been inside New York's lone private park. I had admired it, urchin-like through the iron gates, though, during many past trips to the city.
Our apartment had a low-ceilinged, chilly basement room that I shared with Katharine. White walls, short, grey, industrial carpet, a scent of new drywall and aftershave that hinted a man had lived there last, and florescent light that I tried to never turn on.
If there's anything worse than the sight of one's face and body under florescent overhead light, I have never known it. 

This basement room would provide me with an indelible image that still rankles me 20 years later: florescents turned on in panic after a distinct sensation: insect feet on bare arm. Then spotting a brown, leaf-shaped water bug, lunking its way across the grey carpet.
~~~
I spent a month looking before I found my first job, development assistant at the Guggenheim Museum. Before that, I had a few bad, directionless interviews for editorial assistant positions — the kind of interviews where they say, "Do you have any questions for us?" and you say, "Uh, not really," because you really don't.
My job goal at that time was to find something entry-level, but dignified, not embarrassing to tell people about, and not entirely at odds with my interests, which were then, what they are now, art and writing. 
The museum job was dignified, even if it paid $15,000 a year. It saved me from that certain sense of "outlaw" — walking around in the middle of the day when everyone else has somewhere to be, counting up quarters to see if I really should spring for that cappuccino. And back then, before grunge music and Seattle-mania made it popular, coffee was cheap. Cappuccino was just an ethnic take on a cheap drink.  
I was so relieved to get the Guggenheim job that I can still remember the sensation, riding the subway back downtown in the chilly mid-morning after my last interview, knowing I would have a place to be.
For the final interview, I'd worn an outfit I considered very stylish, but which, in retrospect, resembled a pilgrim costume. It was a flowy, tentish black Laura Ashley dress with a big white collar and a longish necktie attachment. I wore black hose, low black heels, a jacket with padded shoulders and grey plastic buttons meant to look like granite. I wore my hair in a long braid and the candelabra earrings I favored at the time.
When my boss-to-be, a Park Avenue matron with a girlish nickname, gave me the job, she also gave me two big, soft-cover catalogues of paintings in the Guggenheim's permanent collection.
Whether meant as a prize, initiation or study guide, I couldn't believe my good fortune, getting such books for free. I carried them home on my lap. They've been in my bookshelf in every apartment and house I've lived in since.
I wish I could say I was thrilled at the idea of being among great art, and that I had a plan worked up in my head that would transform me from assistant, to curator. I did love the building. I loved walking in the employee entrance every morning. I loved the nondescript door that led from our offices right onto the spiraling ramp of paintings. I loved walking through the collection, alone on Mondays when the museum was closed.
But the truth is, my happiness about getting that job was grounded in relief, not in ambition.
I've felt versions of that particular sense of joyful, weightless relief throughout my life.
As a little kid it came from studying for tests and getting all the answers right, seeing that glorious red "A," sometimes accompanied by a "+," at the top of the page.
My private celebration back then was to sing Simon and Garfunkle's "The 59th Street Bridge Song," quietly to myself on my walk home. The line, "I've got no deeds to do, no promises to keep," was code for: I got an A on the test and now I don't have to worry.
As an adult, the sensation of joyful, weightless relief has mostly come from getting a job I wanted.
There's that magical period of time, before the new job actually starts, but you know it's there, secured. It feels like a suddenly clear conscience.

Little spud in the big city

Last spring, a new eatery just north of Union Square, New York City, was showing off a cutting edge menu: baked spuds with an array of delicious items to put on top. 

The proprietors were also showing off cutting edge window design in the form of authentic "gunnies." The very burlap containers that the dads of you, me, and every other true Idahoan worth their tubers have hanging in the garage, filled with various western items. 

In our case, that's the pump for my dad's fishing boat. 

We also have gunnies in the back of the family car. For what, I don't know. To carry firewood? Dispose of road kill? Keep the apples you've just gotten at a u-pick-'em orchard from rolling around in the back seat? To throw down in case you have to sit on something dirty? 

My dad says you can't go anywhere without a gunny.

But it's still weird to see a bunch of them on 18th Street.  

Let there be no mistake...

A long morning spent at the Western Idaho State Fair allowed me to confirm something I have long suspected: Goats are half-martian, half-dog. Pictured here, Idaho Statesman reporter with numerous martian-dogs, Livestock Pavilion, August, 2008. 

(Photo by Kerry Maloney for The Idaho Statesman)

Is that a gun in that monkey's pocket...or is he just happy to see me?

When you go to the zoo, you expect to see monkeys, maybe a brooding vulture. You don't expect to see visitors with handguns. But you would have, had you visited Zoo Boise Saturday morning. 

About ten members of the local chapter of OpenCarry.org, a national group that advocates for citizens' rights to openly carry handguns, met there for a morning out.

After a little confusion at the front gate about whether it's legal to pack unconcealed heat at the zoo — it is, if you're in Idaho — the group, all visibly armed, bought tickets and sauntered in, past the concession stand with the dino fries, and bins of plush toys.   

Naturally, I wanted the members of OpenCarry to be bandoleered like Mexican revolutionaries. I was there to write a newspaper story after all, and I'm always hoping for a detail like that.

Alas, the closest thing I saw to a bandoleer was the black belt, studded with silver hearts, that held the holster of Carol, a friendly open carrier from Nampa. 

(For those of you not from this part of the world, Nampa is a town near Boise known for its sugar beet factory and box store sprawl where you're really likely to hear someone say, "Wow, I remember when that car dealership was a potato field.")  

Bandoleerless, Carol left her sunglasses on the whole time we talked and proclaimed herself a big fan of home schooling, along with the firearms. 

Carol has gone through the steps, the training and the background check, to qualify for a concealed weapons permit. Hiding your weapon, rather than wearing it like jewelry, is the next step up in personal safety. 
Though she now considers her holster as integral a part of her wardrobe as her underwear, she can still imagine an unarmed world.

"In an ideal society, one of peace and people taking control of their own lives, you wouldn't need a gun," she said.

Unfortunately, said fellow OpenCarry.org member Blaine of Eagle (another town near Boise, where the presence of a cupcake store indicates its relative prosperity), the world is a dangerous place of random shootings — even in malls and churches. Going through life unarmed? Folly.

The former military man said he's not a vigilante and has no desire to chase down criminals. 

"When seconds count, police are still minutes away," he said.

Neither Carol nor Blaine has ever had to use their gun in self defense. 

They have been asked to leave private property, though, like restaurants and stores where their guns made people nervous.

Lt. Alan Cavener of the Boise Police Department said that when it comes to carrying guns in public, reason has to play a part.

"We support peoples' constitutional rights, but we also want to ensure public safety. People need to use common sense about where they choose to bring a firearm," Cavener said.

The OpenCarry zoo visitors were trying to make the point that bringing your pistol, along with your middle schooler, to look at the monkeys was common sense. 

"Coming to the zoo was something we could do together, like any family would," said Carol.

The only other reporter who showed up to cover the story, was a handsome, square-jawed tv guy. He was all over one particularly photogenic clan of open carriers. 

The dad wore a Smithsonian t-shirt. The kids, a couple meek-looking, doe-eyed daughters and a boy, were all too young to carry their own handguns. They wore holsters, holding little knives and canisters of pepper spray instead. 

Zoo visitor Laura, from Salem Ore., questioned whether it was really necessary for someone besides a staffer working closely with dangerous animals to carry a gun at the zoo — legality aside. Saturday morning, the most ominous threats appeared to be runaway strollers and kids throwing tantrums. 

"Legal and appropriate are two different things," said another visitor, Alex from Boise.

POST SCRIPT: 

I wrote my story. It ran in the paper. I am not a fan of guns, or "carrying," open or otherwise. In my personal life I've been vocal about that. In fact, the one time I've been abandoned by a man in a restaurant, was when I told a him I would not live in a house if there were guns inside it, even if said guns belonged to George Washington, or something. He got offended and stormed out. 

OK, so there were other issues in that relationship, but still. 

In the newspaper business, as a reporter, you're honor-bound to write about things fairly, regardless of your personal thoughts. So what I tend to do, because I'm so afraid of looking biased, is that I usually end up sounding sympathetic to the side I'm personally against. Also, I inevitably end up liking most of the people I talk to, or hitting it off in some weird way. Like when Carol told me she got her studded leather belt at Fred Meyer, on sale, looked at me and said, "I know. Cool, right?"  

I always get this Rodney King, "can't we all get along" thing. Not the best for a reporter.

So the fallout from this piece was, I got a few emails from gun enthusiasts who were really appreciative of the article. I think they thought I was on their side. 

The truth is, I will never think that a family that open carries is just like any other family. And this is coming from a true, native daughter of the Wild West. As a kid, I watched Gunsmoke regularly. One of my earliest crushes was on Matt Dillon. Sheriff Matt Dillon.
I got bags of beef jerky in my Christmas stocking every year, was terrorized by uniquely western fears, like, would it hurt if I fell into Old Faithful at Yellowstone Park, or would I be instantly par-boiled and feel nothing?

I did own a weapon.
I remember one Saturday when my dad took me and my brother to the sporting goods store so we could get our own knives. 

I chose a little pearl-handled pocket knife. As I recall, the attraction was the pearl-handle --really pretty -- not the blade. 



(A sign posted near the ranch of coyote-lovers outside Ketchum, Idaho. A second sign on the property reads: "'Happy' is our pet coyote. He warns our dogs when the wolves are near." Only in Idaho — maybe in Montana and Wyoming as well — will you find such a constellation of canines.)

The first ones of the season

Finally, after a year of strategic planting of lots of scarlet things, my first up-close encounter with a hummingbird. These creatures are nothing less than magical. I have planted three tall agastaches. "Tutti-frutti" variety in the front yard. I was crouched down by one the other evening, weeding out inadvertent cantaloupes grown from "composted" seeds. I heard and felt that particular flapping buzz that seems to entirely change the air around it, that always means a hummingbird is near. And there he was, satiny green, going blossom to blossom on the agastache right next to me. I don't actually think he knew I was there. So I didn't move anything but my eyeballs, watching him. 

My earlier up-close encounter with a hummingbird was more taxidermic in spirit. Walking along the sidewalk one day a couple summers ago, I looked down and saw a newly-dead hummingbird. I picked him up and carried him home, sandwiched between two geranium leaves. He was that small. 

I inspected him on the kitchen table for a long time. Because how often do you get the opportunity to see a fully intact, stationary hummingbird?

I saw a long, dry, thread-like tongue. Grey-green feathers like epaulettes on his shoulders. I put him in a Ziploc bag and put him in the freezer. When I look at him now, he seems even smaller and his green color is almost gone. 

He shares the freezer with a goldfinch, found lying outside a state office building. Intact also. I suspect a collision with a plate glass window did him in. 

Battered and broken, the Hulk comes home

Broken feet in the air. Face down in a ditch. Green skin pock-marked and scratched. Sure, it looked like the aftermath of a 24-hour bender. But it wasn't the Hulk's fault. Purloined from the sidewalk outside the Outpost 12 comic book store on State Street in Boise Thursday night, the seven-foot papier maché sculpture met an ignominious end in a drainage ditch at the bad end of 36th Street. 

Following what one of the Hulk's owners, Ray Egusquiza, described as a "semi-anonymous" phone call Friday night from someone claiming to work for "the highway department," the shattered super hero cum art project was hauled from the muck. He's currently in seclusion in the Outpost 12 game room. "His arm is sitting on a table all by itself. Yeah, it's kind of depressing," Egusquiza said. 

Egusquiza, who has an art degree and crafted the Hulk, is taking the vandalism hard. He had planned to start a new project, a life-sized Supergirl, intended as the Hulk's companion. But that will have to wait. 

Egusquiza believes the Hulk can be repaired, but estimates the job may require "two or three weeks of dedicated work."

Healing the emotional injuries may take longer. 

"At first I was mad. But at the same time, I thought it was kind of nice that someone thought the Hulk was good enough to steal," Egusquiza said. "But then, finding out they dumped him in a ditch. That was crushing."

The Hulk had only spent about a week and a half on the job before his assault. But in that short time he had begun to develop a following. 

"We had whole families coming in. Kids would pose with the Hulk, parents would take pictures," Egusquiza said. "We took him in and out every day with a handcart," Egusquiza added wistfully. 

Outpost 12 co-owner Jeff Doyle was helping a customer at about 8:30 p.m., Thursday, when he saw two men in a white pickup truck leave the smoke shop nearby. They threw the Hulk into their pickup and sped away. 

Egusquiza believes the Hulk will reassume his post outside the shop after he recovers. "But he'll be secured with a nice, big chain," the artist said. 

Rat-A-Rama brings ardent rodent lovers to Boise

The sixth annual Rat-A-Rama was an event on a mission: To dispell unflattering myths about the frequently benighted creatures. 

RatsPacNW, a rat fanciers club with around 300 members across the Pacific Northwest and Canada, hosted the "fancy rat show and educational fair" at the Idaho Humane Society on Saturday. 

According to rat lovers like Lynn Rosscamp, a certified show rat judge who came all the way from Seattle for Rat-A-Rama, rats have personalities that combine the best of cats — independence — with the best of dogs — loyalty and a pack mentality. She fell in love with rats years ago, after her boyfriend adopted a retired rat from a science lab. She found him "charming," which went for the boyfriend, too. She married him, and got more rats. 

"Once you go rat, you'll never go back," Rosscamp said. 

She had a good day Saturday. Mitsu, her newly-adopted "Russian Blue Wheaton Burmese," a rat undeniably pretty as rats go, with a soft grey coat that looked like a sweater you would definitely want to wear, took the Best of Show prize in the "solid color kitten" category. Yes, rats younger than 14 weeks are known as kittens. 

The ideal time to show a rat is when it's between four and nine months old. That's a rat's "prime beauty time," Rosscamp explained. "After a year, you get that middle-aged spread." 

Michelle Carroll, a Rat-A-Rama organizer, raises rats in Boise and cares for abandoned pet rats or "rat rescues." Her favorite rat variety is the "hairless" — which looks a little like Yoda from "Star Wars" wearing a loose, pink suit. The sight of these animals, flopped in one of the rat hammocks Carroll designs and sells, could likely melt the stoniest heart of a rat-hater. The movie, "Ratatouille," featuring animated chef rats, helped the image of rats, too, Carroll said. But it also had an effect similar to the release of "101 Dalmatians" when people adopted puppies too hastily without considering the work that goes into owning a pet who is not animated. 

"We had a lot more rat rescues after that movie," Carroll said. 

For Robbi Schaecher of Tacoma, rescue worked in the other direction. 

Caring for her pet rats helped her recover from an eating disorder, she said. Being around them calmed her, and she liked coming home to find them waiting for her in their cage. In addition to Aaron, a squishy, handbag-sized rat who perched on her shoulder, and Joanna, a sleek rat who won a satin ribbon in the "marked kitten" category, Schaecher has made a lot of human friends through her interest. 

She drove  to Boise with fellow rat enthusiasts, a score of competition rats and several rescued rats available for adoption. 

The night before the big show, she and the others formed an assembly line at Michelle Carroll's house. One person washed the rats in the sink with baby shampoo, another person dried them, and someone else clipped their toenails. 

From the looks of the scratches on her neck and shoulders, Schaecher appeared to have gotten toenail duty quite a few times. 

"They're my battle scars," she said.