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This has potential to fail

Posted by Aaron - 31/07/10 at 07:07:49 pm

A friend posted this message on Facebook today.

I just don’t see this working out. Sorry.

On a Williams Carlos Williams kick

Posted by Aaron - 31/07/10 at 07:07:16 pm

A few days ago, I stumbled across this piece on McSweeny’s.

This is Just to Say
That I’m Tired
of Sharing an
Apartment With
William Carlos Williams.
By Laura Jayne Martin

Will, you are a dick. You’re goddamn right I was saving those plums for breakfast.

Fine, it’s not like they’re my favorite food in the world, but I mean, they’re a seasonal fruit, you scumbag. Buy your own food for a change. All you do is sit around the house all day writing about red wheelbarrows and junk…
read more

I had a good chuckle (I really think I did chuckle, not laugh) while reading it, imagining, in part, what it would be like to share an apartment with such an eccentric.

It got me thinking back to some of my favorite William Carlos Williams poems. None of these should come as a surprise; they are probably among his most famous, but that’s just because they are so good.

I’m going to share them (ps the great thing about WCW’s poems, most of them are short, except Paterson, which is six books long). Not sure if this is legal or not, but if some bloggers can get away with posting mp3s, I’m sure a little poetry won’t throw anyone into a tizzy.

The first, of course, is The Red Wheelbarrow.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Why so much depends upon a wheelbarrow or what it is doing beside the white chickens, I’ll never know. I did, though, come close to understanding the poem my senior year of high school. For a poetry a project, I picked Williams and The Red Wheelbarrow (I think my first choice was Bob Dylan and one of his songs but Ms. Kigar quickly put a stop to that). Somehow, I put together probably 10 pages or so about this 16-word poem. Not bad, eh?

Next is The Great Figure. This poem has tremendous potential energy (look at that, getting all sciency). It just builds and builds throughout and then rumbles away.

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

And finally … This is Just to Say. I don’t even like plums.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

All of these poems were copied from Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams, which I own, but left at my parents house, so I used the library’s copy.

PDFs of my heroin series in the Jackson Citizen Patriot

Posted by Aaron - 29/07/10 at 03:07:15 am

Maybe you are a print junkie like me. The internet is great, but some things look so good in print.

Like my series on heroin’s resurgence in Jackson County in the Jackson Citizen Patriot.

Below are pdfs of the pages. Click each link to download.

PS If you are my parents, don’t bother with the pdfs. I sent you copies. Love ya mom and dad!

Part 1: Addictive drug that can shatter lives ‘is back strong in Jackson’, July 25, 2010. (A1 pdf | A3 pdf)

Forced to choose between milk and heroin, Joe Pritchard called his dealer…

Once confined to dope houses and dens, slithering in the seedy underbelly of American cities in the 1970s, heroin is now a drug abused by all ages, all incomes and all over.

“And it is back strong in Jackson County,” Undersheriff Tom Finco said.

Part Two: ‘IT’S PURE EVIL’: Heroin kills. It strains families and destroys lives, July 26, 2010. (A1 pdf | A4 pdf)

Forced to choose between milk and heroin, Joe Pritchard called his dealer…

Once confined to dope houses and dens, slithering in the seedy underbelly of American cities in the 1970s, heroin is now a drug abused by all ages, all incomes and all over.

“And it is back strong in Jackson County,” Undersheriff Tom Finco said.

Part Three: Heroin addicts face physical and mental challenges when battling addictive drug, July 28, 2010. (A1 pdf | A4 pdf)

It is the toughest thing they will ever do.

Inside a Victorian house, set among the summer cottages and lakeside homes of northern Michigan’s sleepy town of Petoskey, almost 40 men wage war on addiction.

Among them is a 60-year-old with a lifetime habit of drinking; an 18-year-old with a drug habit that took hold fast and strong; and Joe Pritchard, a 39-year-old father of three from Jackson trying to rid his body and mind of the need for heroin.

“It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of pain,” said Pritchard, who was sent to Harbor Hall through the Jackson County Drug Recovery Court program.

Beating heroin is not a option. Addicts struggle internally, knowing they will square off with the disease for the rest of their lives. Police chase the drug, its users and its dealers.

Resurgence of heroin in Jackson County

Posted by Aaron - 28/07/10 at 05:07:30 pm

Heroin is back, and according to Jackson County Undersheriff Tom Finco, “it’s back strong in Jackson County.”

Nearly six months ago, I noticed an alarming amount of people telling Jackson County judges the reason they committed their crimes was to feed their heroin addiction. That spawned an exhaustive look at the problem of heroin in the county and the havoc it wreaks.

I wrote a series of stories — run over three days — trying to answer three questions: What is heroin? What is its impact? What is being done to fight it?

Part 1: Addictive drug that can shatter lives ‘is back strong in Jackson’, July 25, 2010.

Forced to choose between milk and heroin, Joe Pritchard called his dealer…

Once confined to dope houses and dens, slithering in the seedy underbelly of American cities in the 1970s, heroin is now a drug abused by all ages, all incomes and all over.

“And it is back strong in Jackson County,” Undersheriff Tom Finco said.

Part Two: ‘IT’S PURE EVIL’: Heroin kills. It strains families and destroys lives, July 26, 2010.

Heroin kills. It strains families and destroys lives. The drug lands people in jail, rehab and the gutter. The drug kept Joe Pritchard from his family, first jail, then rehab. It took Andrew Hirst from his family, killing the 24-year-old in May.

“It’s pure evil,” said Hirst’s father, Michael Hirst. “It’s going to kill you. That’s the bottom line.”

Part Three: Heroin addicts face physical and mental challenges when battling addictive drug , July 28, 2010.

It is the toughest thing they will ever do.

Inside a Victorian house, set among the summer cottages and lakeside homes of northern Michigan’s sleepy town of Petoskey, almost 40 men wage war on addiction.

Among them is a 60-year-old with a lifetime habit of drinking; an 18-year-old with a drug habit that took hold fast and strong; and Joe Pritchard, a 39-year-old father of three from Jackson trying to rid his body and mind of the need for heroin.

“It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of pain,” said Pritchard, who was sent to Harbor Hall through the Jackson County Drug Recovery Court program.

Beating heroin is not a option. Addicts struggle internally, knowing they will square off with the disease for the rest of their lives. Police chase the drug, its users and its dealers.

Clips page

Posted by Aaron - 26/07/10 at 02:07:39 am

Check out the new clips page I created.

It houses some classic Aaron Aupperlee pieces of journalism from The Citizen Patriot, The Kalamazoo Gazette and The Desert Dispatch. Nearly four years of bylines condensed into one page.

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