I need a one-day liquor license for a fund-raiser I’m doing in Baltimore next week (Baltimore’s Literary Cabaret). Someone told me it’s easy to get: “Just go downtown and pay fifty bucks. It’ll take an hour, tops.”  He didn’t say where downtown, though I assumed it’d be at or near Baltimore City Hall.

I approach City Hall and its environs with great hesitation, if not fear. Civil servants — those underpaid, under-appreciated form-scribblers and data-shovelers who have seen too much of the public and, as a result, don’t really want to hear about your problems, no matter how special you think your case may be — these people scare me. They seem like weary participants of a psychology lab experiment gone wrong. You know, like that experiment that proved anybody could be a tyrant and torturer if given the chance? This is an unfair generalization, I know, but it’s how I feel.

So: despite my best intentions to keep a good attitude, I had a sinking feeling as I approached the crowded counter at the Liquor Board yesterday. My first misgiving came when I saw an announcement taped to the wall: “As of May 1, all one-day licenses must be obtained 10 days in advance of the event. No exceptions.” When I’d phoned the Liquor Board earlier, a man told me that I had to come in today because of this rule. But he’d said nothing about it being a new rule that would start on May 1. It was only April 28. “You come in today you just made it in time,” he said. But he was wrong, wasn’t he? It wasn’t May 1 yet, so the rule didn’t apply, did it? But I wasn’t about to argue.

I’ve noticed that most civilians are ingratingly self-effacing, even shy, when interacting with clerks at city offices for fear of incurring the wrath of the bureaucracy. We submit ourselves to these clerks as a lost five-year-old would submit himself to a store manager or a police officer, our opened hands outstretched, palms up, our eyes begging for mercy.

I didn’t have very long to wait until I was escorted to the desk of a Ms. Robinson, a middle-aged woman with close-cut hair and big eyeglasses. I’m sure she’s somebody’s happy grandma. She looked at my yellow form and said, “I can’t do anything with this.” Before I could reply, she looked at my other piece of paper. It was the official stationery I’d brought with the tax exempt number of the non-profit I serve.

Ms. Robinson said, “What’s this number?”

“That’s my tax exempt number,” I said.

“I don’t know that,” she said.

“But that’s what it is,’ I said. “The man said that’s all I needed.”

“What man?” she asked.

“The man I talked to on the phone.” Why hadn’t I thought to ask his name?

Ms. Robinson said: “No, sir, you need a letter from the IRS.”

“A letter from the IRS?”

“That says you are tax exempt.”

“Where would I get such a letter?” I asked. “My event is in 10 days.”

Ms. Robinson shook her head in dismay. “You should have that letter already if you are tax exempt.”

It occurred to me that I could call AWP headquarters and have them fax me the IRS letter right away. So I asked Ms. Robinson to write down her fax number.

“This sheet,” she said of my yellow form, “I can’t do anything with because you don’t have a zoning permit.”

“Zoning permit?” I hated that all I could do was echo everything she said.

“All you got on this form is an address.” She pointed. “I don’t know how it’s zoned.”

I thought: Holy shit, what have I gotten into? I’m renting an art gallery for the event. Is the place even zoned for public use? Does the place have to be inspected? Am I going to get the place shut down?

“You got to go over to the Zoning Board and get a permit,” Ms. Robinson instructed. She wrote down the address. I drew a deep breath, glanced at the clock: I had two hours before closing.

I stepped away from the desk and opened my phone to find the number of AWP headquarters. I hate my phone because the screen is the size of a saltine cracker and the download time is interminable and I can never find anything on the screen once I’ve downloaded a web page anyway. The phone numbers I needed were contained in emails, not in my “contacts” folder — that’s the way I run my messy life, never anything where it should be. I couldn’t get my email client to open. Then I realized I had AWP stationery in my hand–and there was the phone number I needed as part of the letterhead. Ah, serendipity! Or was it synchronicity? I phoned AWP but nobody was in, so I left a message.

The Zoning Board was two blocks away. When I arrived I was relieved to see that there was no line. A pleasant Admin. Assistant gave me a form to fill out. I decided that I could spend the afternoon collecting forms. This one asked for all kinds of information I didn’t have. As I tried again to access my email via my phone, the AA told me I couldn’t do phone work in the office. This seemed to be the case in every city office: cell phone use prohibited in this office! I wondered why. It wasn’t like an airplane. The AA said I had to get another office to stamp the form anyway before I could hand it back to her.

So I went to that other office, which looked like a DMV waiting area, with its cordoned lines and clerk stalls. I borrowed a pen from a clerk at the nearest counter. She and her co-worker were chatting about their mutual friend’s amazing cupcakes, which  look like miniature wedding cakes.

I stared at my Zoning form. It asked for the name of the building’s owner. I couldn’t remember his last name. It asked for the square footage. I had overheard somebody saying that the Zoning Board will charge your event according to square footage you’re using. This gave me pause. The form asked for more phone numbers I didn’t have.There’s phone email and there’s regular email. I needed regular but it takes up so much bandwidth I couldn’t pull it in. Did I mention that I hate my phone?

I filled in a few lines of my form in a gesure of wishful thinking then handed it to one of the cupcake clerks. She said, “You’ve still got to fill out these lines. And then this section that describes your event.” Then she turned to her co-worker, “The description with the square footage is all that counts, right?” I returned to the end of the counter and made up names and phone numbers for all of the lines, anything to complete the form. I figured all the city wanted was my money, not accurate information. Was I wrong? When I handed the completed form back to the cupcake clerk, she glanced at it, then stamped it. Then I returned to the other Zoning office, where an assessor took my form and directed me to return to the DMV room again, where I sat at a clerk’s stall and received my Zoning Permit bill: $25. A note in her stall said: “No curbing permits will be issued in Baltimore City. Basements may continue to be lowered using the underpinning method.” Perfect, I thought.

After paying my Zoning bill, I returned to the Liquor Board two blocks away. My detour had taken less than an hour. At this point, I asked myself, When did governments start regulating the consumption of alcohol? Is it unreasonable? Is it a scam? Later, a little research told me that governments big and small, local and national, have been regulating or attempting to regulate alcohol for as long as there has been alcohol — for millennia — because humans are determined to get high on the stuff. So, asking the question, “Who says the government can tell me what to serve and where?” will get you nowhere. If your local government can tell you where to park, it can tell you where you can and cannot drink.

When I inquired after my fax at the Liquor Board front desk, the clerk (another middle-aged woman, not Ms. Robinson) said, “Why’d you need something faxed?” After I explained that I needed the official IRS tax-exempt corporation verification letter, she said, “You didn’t need that.” I shrugged whatever. The crackerjack AWP staff had indeed fired the fax over. As I waited for the clerk to process the paper, the other clerk behind the counter — a guy with sly humor — said, “You still here?” I nodded and he chuckled.

Ten minutes later, the other clerk said my documents we in order. Then I handed her my Zoning Permit receipt. She said, “That’s not a Zoning Permit.”

“I know,” I said, “it’s a receipt for the permit — which has been approved. They say the permit will be ready in a day or two.”

“I can’t issue you a liquor license without a zoning permit,” she said.

I looked at her over the tops of my eyeglasses, one of those Come-on-now-let’s-work-together looks. I said, “If I don’t get my liquor permit today, you people aren’t going to give it to me later.” I pointed to the new May 1 regulation.

She raised one eyebrow, nodded her head in agreement, then pulled over a date/time stamp and gave my form the mark. “There you go,” she said. “Now you’re on record. You can bring this back the day OF your event and you’ll still get your permit.”

I thanked her and was grateful to get away. When I returned to my car and its expired meter, I expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there was none.

Tags: Baltimore City, City Hall, IRS, Liquor Board, Literary Cabaret

Related posts

• Who Wants to Buy the Brewer’s Mansion? (0)
• Throwing Out the Christmas Tree (0)
• The Lady Vanishes! (2)
• The Guy Who Wants to Tow My Car (0)
• Take OFF Your Belt! (2)

Yesterday, a yard worker wielding a leaf blower chased me along the sidewalk, a leaf-cluttered blast of hot wind gusting at my back.

You’ve seen this guy: he wears shades and a baseball cap, a plaid shirt and jeans, he’s got a gas-motor strapped to his back and a fat hose gripped in one hand, with which he’s blasting leaves and dust from the corners of buildings and across walkways and parking lots. He carries his rig like a high-tech weapon (think of Ripley in “Alien”). It alternately whines and roars. At full throttle its noise travels a good half mile.

The blower-man spends his days aiming it at ephemera — leaves and twigs and litter and handfuls of dust. If you’ve watched him in action, you may have wondered at the amount of energy expended to move these tidbits from one place to the other. It takes a long time. You may wonder: Wouldn’t a broom do the job in half the time and at a fraction of the cost? Figure in gas consumption, CO-2 emissions, and noise pollution. Oh, and don’t forget ear damage because it appears that most of these guys aren’t wearing hearing protection. By the day’s end the blower-man must hear nothing but the hiss and ring of tinnitus.

Mind you, the blower wasn’t his idea. He works with whatever you hand him. He’s got no say in the matter. Somebody higher up — supervisors and managers — thought the leaf blower was a good idea. The damned thing was invented by Gustaf Doragrip in 1980. He called it a “shoulder-supported pneumatic sweeping apparatus.” Stockholm-based Electrolux first marketed it. Gustaf was doing what inventors do, I suppose, finding a niche for a perceived need. But, my god, if you’ve every raked leaves or swept a drive, you know that it’s really not hard work and, in fact, can be quite relaxing — because it’s a simple, easily contained task that allows you time to settle into the day and loll in your thoughts.

The leaf-blower destroys this gentle chore and, in its stead, creates a portable trauma that the yardman carries hither and yon, startling children from naps, inciting dogs to howl, drowning out phone conversations, and everywhere cracking the calm of the day with a hurricane’s roar. There is nothing at all necessary about this machine. It’s not like a jackhammer or a lawn mower, whose work accepts no substitute. The leaf-blower is so over-muscled for its intended task, it is nothing more than a practical joke of technology. It’s the equivalent of using a flamethrower to light your backyard barbecue. Fifty years from now, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look back at our leaf blowers and laugh, much the way we now laugh at video games like Pong or 1960’s computers that were as big as a bus and good for little more than sorting recipes.

Tags: Alien, leaf blower, pollution, technology

Related posts

• The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Student (0)

I just returned from the amazing annual conference of AWP (the Association of Writers and Writing Programs), which must be the largest of its kind in the world — it drew over 8,000 poets, novelists, playwrights, and short story writers for four days of panels, discussions, and celebrations of creative writing. Twenty years ago, the conference drew a few hundred participants. The growth of the conference mirrors the growth of writing’s popularity in the U.S. Twenty years ago, there were only about 50 academic programs offering degrees in writing. Now there are over 500.

As a result, our nation is rich with writers. This remarkable growth of an art that makes little money — in a time of dwindling readership –  raises the question, What has happened? Why are we seeing an unprecedented number of people, young and old, clamoring to write? Here are some possible answers.

1) Writing is a dream of independence, the well-worn fantasy of living the artist’s life, answering to no one but yourself and an artistic vision that will make you beloved and rich.

2) Writing is power, a means of influencing others, of having a say in the world, of making yourself a leader, an oracle, a guru.

3) Writing is an answer for those who can’t find answers elsewhere — it offers the promise of control or stability or access (to power, influence, etc.). Because it doesn’t cost anything, because it’s portable and self-contained, it looks especially attractive to those who don’t have as much as they would like to have.

4) Writing is play and, now more than ever, an increasing number of people want to play. In the not-too-distant past, grown-ups did not allow themselves to play. Most adults of my parents’ generation seemed to be done (”old”) by the time they turned forty. They were very serious about growing up and most determined to “settle down,” buy the big house, and make good money as soon as possible. But no more. From the baby boomers on, we have cultivated a culture of entitlement: we feel we deserve to spoil ourselves and express our inner child (see “Sesame Street”) and liberate our dreams. Life is short. So write on!

5) Writing is an obsession, an inexorable call to wrest sense from frightening senselessness (take #3 and multiply it by 10). Writing is the web that holds the fragments of life together. Sometimes it is the only thing that holds. If you don’t do it often or regularly, you feel yourself falling apart. This would explain the diary of the late Reverend Robert Shields, as reported by London Times:

He spent a quarter of a century chronicling his life in five-minute segments. In his journal he faithfully recorded his reflections on God and his every visit to the lavatory. He even taped a nostril hair to its pages so that future scientists can study his DNA.

He slept for just two hours at a time so that he could record his dreams. He had three dozen ways of describing the act of urination. At his most prolific, he wrote three million words a year

Many years ago, when somebody asked me why I write, I surprised myself by saying, “I write to be loved.” I knew immediately that this was true. If –- with writing — I can make something beautiful enough, enjoyable enough, sensible and solid enough, then everyone (or almost everyone) who reads it will love me. I suppose this is a variation of #2. And this is the reason I enter writing contests. Every win is a hug and a kiss.

Is that a good reason to write? I don’t know that I can judge. It’s what I do. I couldn’t stop writing even if I tried (but why would I try to stop?). I see now that all five explanations factor into my motivations for writing. I keep at it not because I’m obsessed (though it is an obsession) but, mostly, because I’ll never get it right. Sometimes, though, I come close in little ways and that makes my mouth water and my head spin and I think, Man, that felt good. Let me try it again. . . .

Tags: AWP, baby boomers, writing

Related posts

• Why Writers Run Away (now and then) (1)
• Where Are Your Manners? (0)
• The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Student (0)
• Searching for Jonathan (3)
• My Mistake! (6)

Friday afternoon I was napping on the couch because I was feeling run-down. The phone woke me just as I was sinking into a Marianas trench of dreams. The call was my doctor with results of my annual check-up. He said my numbers would look better if I lost 10 pounds. Maybe he was being polite. Ten doesn’t seem like a lot. In the span of decade I’ve gained 25. It sneaks up on you. One day you turn around and, well, there it is. I went through a period where I swore my pants were shrinking in the wash. “Lose the weight,” my MD all but promised, “and you should level out.” I told him I could do that. But, then, after he hung up, I wondered: “Can I?”

I returned to my couch and settled in again. Napping on the couch is a guilty pleasure. It’s the best sleep I get. But not this time. Before I could reacquaint myself with dreamland, Jill called upstairs to me in a panic: “My car is gone!” She had parked on the street because in our garage (on her side) sits a ten-foot-wide, eight-foot-tall cabinet she bought at an auction last week. The cabinet will go in her office. But right now it sits in the garage. Very large and in pieces. “Who would steal an eleven-year-old car?” she exclaimed. “Nobody,” I agreed as I met her in the kitchen. We were both peering out the window. The block was cleared of parked cars for rush hour. She phoned the police and learned that her car had been towed. “I guess I didn’t read the street signs well enough,” she concluded glumly. It would cost her $260. Cash. If we didn’t pick it up immediately at the short-term impound lot downtown, it’d be transferred to lot near the county line tomorrow.

Five minutes later, as we were getting ourselves together for our trip to the impound lot, the phone rang again. It was a social worker at Central Booking. She said she was calling on behalf of Will, our young friend who helps around the house. Will had been arrested for assaulting his sister. He needed bail. The social worker said, “He’s gonna lose it if he doesn’t get bailed, he says.”

I’ve never been to central booking. It’s one of those nightmarish places that television cop shows never make scary enough, probably because film can’t capture that kind of scary. You’ve got to be there to feel the creepiness, like standing in front of a hungry tiger and feeling its hot breath on your face. Will had 30 days to wait in jail for a hearing — regardless of whether or not his sister was going to press charges.

Will and his sister have always had a tenuous peace, at best. Will had just asked me, the day before, for an advance so that he could help his sister pay her utility bill. Obviously something had gone wrong. But something is always going wrong between those two. Family, what are you gonna do?

The downtown impound lot sits under the Jones Falls Expressway (JFX). The passing traffic overhead sounds like bowling balls trundling down their wooden lanes. A hard noise. You’re not allowed to take photos inside the fine-collection facility, which looks like a tiny brick house. I waited outside. Jill said there was lots of cursing inside. $260 cash is a tough ticket for people of modest means—and they’re the ones most often getting towed.

Once we liberated Jill’s car, we searched out a bail bondsman. There are lots in Baltimore, but few are open after five. We ended up at Big Boyz in Highlandtown. Crystal, a skinny young woman with elaborate fingernails, walked me through the process: you hand over a recent pay stub, you let them do a credit check, you pay $100 down on the $500 fee (which is ten percent of the bail), you sign that you’re good for the total if the parolee jumps bail.

Here’s how Will go into trouble. He was staying with his sister. He was eating a banana for breakfast when his niece—his sister’s little girl—asked for a piece. He gave her some. A minute later his sister saw the girl eating a piece of a banana and yelled at Will for being too cheap to give the girl a whole banana (these were Will’s bananas). Will said, “She didn’t ask for a whole banana.” His sister cursed him out. Then threw him out. They struggled over his luggage and she fell. Then her husband attacked Will. His sister phoned the police. The police report records that the incident started with an argument over a banana.

Family — what are you gonna do?

Tags: bail, Baltimore, central booking, Jones Falls Expressway

Related posts

• Yard Sale! (0)
• How to Sell A Book In America, Part II: road trip (2)
• Baltimore, Snow, and the End of the World (0)