Tag Archives: Mark Baumer

The Masses

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Years ago, I worked with a guy named Ken. Ken was world-weary and cynical. We hit it off.

We’d both landed at a company with a dubious past during a transitional time in our lives. I was in a cycle of dead-end jobs. Ken had his own issues he was trying to create distance from.

For whatever reason, he saw things about me that I hadn’t yet realized—namely that I had more talent than I gave myself credit for. He was always telling me not to sell myself short. Back in 1996, no one else was offering anything positive in terms of building me up. Coming from him—someone who had no truck with fools—this meant a great deal to me.

He and his live-in girlfriend didn’t have children. They took a real shine to Mark. I’ve learned to read how people relate to young children (and animals) as a sign of their intrinsic worth. Ken had two mastiffs that he loved like children.

Ken had some legal issues and eventually, he disappeared. He called me late one night a year after I’d lost touch with him. He was living in Oregon at the time, working at Home Depot. We talked for about 35-40 minutes. It was the last time I heard from him.

I often wonder what became of him. I don’t know how to get in touch with him. In a world of digital bread crumbs, he made sure not to leave any. He also burned his personal bridges. A man who basically became invisible.

Ken had a favorite saying about people: he’d look at me, frustrated with the managers at the piddling water treatment firm we were both doing sales with and say, “Baumer, the masses are asses.”

The past few months, I’ve heard him in my head saying, “Baumer, the masses are asses.” I can’t disagree with him.

Lonely Like the Blues

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For the past two summers, I’ve felt like a ghost. Sitting alone at home for long periods of time, forgotten and lonely. Invisible, really.

I just read two books about loneliness. When you are lonely, what better thing to do than study the state that you are immersed in? Or, maybe not.

Well, the first one, by Johann Hari, dealt with depression, but it delved into the roles of loneliness (and trauma), rather than the chemicals in our brains, for causing so many to be depressed. I won’t argue for or against his premise. His book has caused a shitstorm in certain circles, mainly those places where pushing pills for every malady is the solution. My reaction after reading it was, “meh.”

The second book, by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, had more resonance with me. This was mainly due to the state of loneliness that I regularly find myself in.

In 2014, after a break-up with his girlfriend at the time, Mark went through a period of loneliness. I’ve pieced some of this together after his death. It was why, I think, that he made such a push the last years of his life to get out and engage with others. He even recognized the importance of doing this from a health perspective, which is what Cacioppo and Patrick spend time unpacking in the book. Their findings indicate that prolonged bouts of loneliness can be as harmful to health as smoking or obesity. They also demonstrate the therapeutic aspects of social connection. Continue reading →

Gifted

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Back in 1996, Nada Surf had a major hit with their song, “Popular.” It was a take down of the fickle elements of high school popularity.

The band easily could have become just one more one-hit-wonder littering the pop-rock landscape. Their record label wanted another “Popular” and their follow-up didn’t have one. Then, like happens often, the A&R asshole at the label began imposing his total creative cluelessness on the true creatives who made up the band. This process never results in anything positive, and yet labels have been doing this kind of thing, forever. Elektra dropped the band mid-tour, while they were in Europe. So much for “developing talent,” A&R schmuck!

To Nada Surf’s credit, they persevered. This meant touring whenever they could to rebuild U.S. interest in their band, while taking on day jobs to pay the bills. Then, Let Go, their third record, and the true follow-up that they wanted to make to their debut record found a home on tiny Barsuk Records out of Seattle, Washington. The band got solid reviews and here we are, 15+ years later and Nada Surf are still going strong. Continue reading →

A Year From Now

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People love making plans. Dreaming can be fun, and looking ahead might be “the American pastime.” If not, it’s something that most of us do, like we’re guaranteed a future pregnant with certainty.

This weekend I read a story on the war that most of us have forgotten about in Afghanistan. I empathize with the soldiers and their sense that this war seems to lack a purpose or an end game. I also thought about those forced to live, waiting for a bomb to fall on their heads, or to having soldiers kick in the door under the guise of looking for “the enemy.” I’m pretty sure that for both the soldiers and the natives, planning for the future seems like a moot point. Life for them simply becomes an act of survival.

What Does the Future Hold?

I know a bit about what happens when one’s life gets flipped upside-down. One thing that goes away is the certainty (and a certain arrogance) that you actually control the ability to look out into the future. The present is affected, too. Then, there’s the tendency to hearken back to the past and the preference to “live” there. Continue reading →

Writing Fatigue

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It’s rare for me, but I’m struggling a bit with my writing. Perhaps this has something to do with writing nearly 200,000 words about my only son, who I’m no longer able to commune with.

Sending out something this personal and connected to my grief journey is daunting. I’ll eventually learn whether anyone thinks my book is any good. Quite likely, I’ll have to weather a season filled with notes of rejection. I just received one this week.

Actually, I’m not tired of writing. I’ve developed a number of drafts detailing how shitty some people have been to Mary and me over the past 19 months. They’re honest that’s for sure. But I’m positive these assholes couldn’t handle having a mirror held up for them, showing them what fakes and phonies they are. So instead of posting, I’ve just been filing them away.

Possibly my recent lack of content development might also be associated with my personal physical challenges I’ve been living with this summer. SI joint pain hasn’t been fun. I am getting better, but if I do too much, I have setbacks. Continue reading →

Baseball Time Travel

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This past weekend, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York inducted another class of baseball greats. Their plaques will be added to the existing group of former players enshrined at the equivalent of the sport’s holy grail.

When we returned from Indiana in 1987, Mark’s formative baseball experience was centered on National League teams like the Chicago Cubs rather than New England favorites, the Boston Red Sox. This was in large part due to the influence of superstations like WGN in Chicago and Atlanta’s TBS.

We didn’t own a television for the first three years we were married. Then, in 1984, having a TV seemed important. We began watching Cubs’ games and Mark’s first professional game was attended at Wrigley Field in 1985.

In 1989, we crossed the river and began renting an affordable duplex in the town where I grew up, waiting for our first house to be built. We signed up for the cable package that happened to include TBS. We began following baseball on Ted Turner’s station. Mark became a fan of “America’s Team,” which is how Turner, the Braves’ owner, took to marketing his club.

If a film director was casting about for a movie set that epitomized small town America, he’d be hard-pressed to find a place more fitting than the village of Cooperstown, with a population slightly less than 2,000 year-round residents. Of course, on one weekend in July, the town becomes the destination for tens of thousands of hard-core hardball fans, who spend induction weekend rubbing elbows with greatest to have ever played the game.

Cooperstown, NY: The home of baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Continue reading →

Failures of Kindness

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I’m reading a book of short stories by George Saunders. The librarian that checked it out for me waxed effusive about Saunders. His stories are good, although they fall short of another book of short stories I just finished by Ottessa Moshfegh.

I picked up Moshfegh’s book because I got a Google alert and discovered something she shared about Mark in an interview for Vulture, including one of his 50-books-in-a-year as one of 10 works she’d take with her to a desert island. I’d never read anything by her. She was in his MFA cohort at Brown:

We lost this brave genius last year, and the books he gifted us while he lived are so wonderfully strange and honest and beautiful, I can’t believe he even existed. He was more than a poet or performance artist — Baumer’s life itself was a work of art. He was truly radical, and the most openhearted, unjaded human I’ve ever met.

That was kind of her. Continue reading →

Back From the Road

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I’m home from the road. I especially missed my better half during my time out on America’s highways. There were those times when I just wanted to share whatever I was seeing or experiencing along the way with Mary. Social media is great. Texts and phone calls allow you to remain in-touch. But looking into the eyes of that special someone is something you can only do face-to-face.

Back issues have been a semi-regular affliction in my life. No matter how diligent I might be about exercise and taking care of myself, I can bend down and my back will suddenly “go out.” It doesn’t happen all the time, but enough so that it’s become an annoyance.

My method for dealing with ongoing back situations has been to keep a skilled Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) on speed dial. I first discovered the benefits of osteopathic manipulation under the care of Dr. David Johnson. Back then (1987), his practice was in Yarmouth. He was always overbooked, and I learned to bring a something to read and get used to waiting 45 minutes (if not longer) beyond my appointment time. The relief he provided was always worth the wait. He left for a sabbatical and I needed to find another D.O. Fortunately, I learned about Dr. Louis Hanson in Cumberland. I was with him for 25 years, even after he closed his practice due the demands of the 21st century medical model, and joined a practice group. I was devastated when he died in a plane crash, pursuing his passion of flying single-engine aircraft. Finding a new D.O. became challenging. Continue reading →

Patience For the Ride

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Travel days are often “lost days.” By that I mean that the effort and energy required to get from point to point often delivers a net loss in terms of value.

I actually spent two days traveling back to Maine after leaving my Airbnb location in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

Tuesday was a long day of driving, traffic snarls from DC north, and just plain gridlock in NYC as I hit the Big Apple at rush hour. Then, creeping northward into Connecticut, battling the worst drivers and driving I’d witnessed on the entire trip.

My goal on Wednesday was to get north of the city and I managed to do it, balky back and all. My back’s been fucked-up the entire trip. Any significant time in the seat was followed by excruciating pain upon exiting the driver’s position.

I wanted to stop-over in Providence and see Mark’s tree in front of the library on the Brown campus. I hadn’t seen the tree since its planting last fall.

The benefit of my marathon driving day on Wednesday is that I was in Providence at 8:00 a.m. and I had some time in that space remembering my son before things got busy. It was very emotional.

Mark’s tree at Brown.

The plague in front of John D. Rockefeller Library

Continue reading →

Dad Goes For a Drive

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I spent most of Sunday driving across the Allegheny Mountains, passing through rural villages and hollers. At times the sheer natural magnitude left me breathless. Mountains symbolize something bigger than ourselves. When I’m in their shadow, I’m left humbled. It helps me to realize how insignificant I am.

Along backcountry highways, I knew that here, many supported Donald Trump. It was also impossible not to notice numerous gun shops and signs trumpeting patriotism. Being on the road is a reminder that we are living in a collection of states where people hold contrary views, with little to bridge the divide. I’m not sure I see that story ending well.

This sign should read, “Trump Country.”

Passing through the land of guns, God, and glory.

Late in the afternoon, I found PA-641. This is the road where Mark began walking after crossing the river from Harrisburg. He stopped at The Healthy Grocer. Continue reading →