The end of the Armitage Heights Clarion.

Hi everyone, Marisha here. You're probably surprised by the title of this post -- so am I, trust me. Where to even begin?

This has been a crazy month here. Maybe not as crazy as the Winter Parade riots or when Sherman disappeared in Ireland, but crazy nonetheless. Like I said, I'm not sure where to even begin.

So I'll start with the show in Minneapolis that was written about Armitage Heights, sort of a dramatization of the Christmas Island trial (who were called "Moon Island" here). I actually took some vacation time last weekend to fly out to the Twin Cities myself and see what it was all about. I'd wanted Sherman to come out with me, but since he's returned from Washington at the end of Hillary Clinton's campaign, on which he was serving as senior youth advisor, he'd been lying low. So I went out by myself, planning to stay for about a week. I had some old friends from college that are in grad school at Madison that I wanted to visit while I was out that way.

The show, "Don't Crush Out Heart," was good, but confusing. It was a "radio show," apparently, though it didn't seem to be broadcast on the radio. The fellow they had playing Sherman, a very talented musical theater actor named P. Chris Bierbauer, was spectacular. The woman playing me (Jenny Adams) was excellent, though my character seemed to have been extensively altered. I was portrayed as being 23 years old, naive and kind of whiny -- not exactly the way I picture myself. The band "Moon Island" was great; frankly, the songs were quite a bit better than the real Christmas Island's ouevre, all things considered. It was a great experience.

I talked to the company afterwards, a group called Electric Arc Radio. They were some very interesting and wonderful people. In fact, I'm currently writing to you from Minneapolis. But more on that in a minute.

Anyway, while I was in Minneapolis, two very notable events occurred back in the neighborhood:

1.) 3rd Ward Seat Vacancy. The first was that Chick Cavalcanti, my boss and the 3rd Ward alderman, had a severe heart attack -- this was last Monday, October 20 -- and was hospitalized. Chick was in a coma for a few days, but when he came to, he of course announced that he had no choice but to resign as 3rd Ward alderman. Mayor Underdahl temporarily appointed -- of course -- Sherman as his replacement, and called a special election for December.
So Sherman is my boss again. It was assumed Sherman would run for his old vacant seat in the special election. Not so. This is where it gets complicated.

2.) The Mayoral Race. There is also a mayoral election in November. Underdahl, the Democrat, was thought to be a shoe-in earlier this year, but his administration has recently become the object of some serious scrutiny for ethics violations and ties to a few radical Esperanto separatist groups. He's running a tight race between a well-financed but widely-disliked Republican challenger, 8th Ward Alderman Reeves Sinderman, the smarmy Mitt Romney backer who regular readers might recall from the Dublin guest blogger fiasco of some months ago.

So a week ago, Sherman announces that he is entering the mayoral race as an Independent candidate, on a fusion ticket with dotcom billionaire and zeppelin magnate Rockwell Katz for County Commissioner. Underdahl and Sinderman are both so unpopular, and Sherman has such name recognition from his various escapades as Alderman (in addition to serious funding from Katz) that he's now polling between 35% and 38% in a three-way race.

It seems entirely possible that on November 4, Sherman Larson will be mayor.

Which leaves the special election for 3rd Alderman seat up for grabs. With Sherman announcing his mayoral run as Independent, the Democrats have been left in a lurch. The best they've been able to come up with is 28-year old Blake Timlin (above left), a shy, boyish mumbler who is fresh out of an internship with the City Council Transit and Bicycle Paths Subcommittee. The Republicans are running a paleolithic local millionaire, Branch S. Nickelbine IV (above right), who was primarily known as an advisor to right-wing martyrs the Johannsen family. He's running on a reform ticket of extreme budget-cutting, and the first thing he's vowed to cut is funding for this blog, which he calls a "treasonous, ribald, elitist joke at the expense of the hard-working citizens of the real Armitage Heights." He's running ahead by fifteen points so far. I know Blake Timlin, and he's a nice guy, but there is no way I'm working for him if he wins. Which he almost certainly is not. He tried to ask me out on a date once at a Democratic Party benefit, and he spilled Cabernet on my dress, then ran into the bathroom and left me to clean it up. I think if I was working for Blake Timlin, there'd be a lot to clean up after.

So here I am in Minneapolis -- I'm gone for one week, and suddenly Chick is retired, Sherman is shoe-in for mayor, and the Republicans will hold the 3rd Ward aldermanic seat for the first time since the 1980s. Suddenly I seem to be out of a job!

Sherman has offered me a position in his administration, but I honestly don't have any interest in working in the mayor's office. Especially as an administrative assistant. I'm not even sure I want to keep working in local politics. I do hold two Bachelors degrees in Womens' Studies and Semiotics, and a Master's degree in Urban Planning and Comparative Literature, after all. Not to brag, of course. But it might be nice to consider a more challenging career path beyond the usual.

Good thing, too. Because how about this: when I was in Minneapolis, a friend in Madison I knew from the MFA program at Mishipeshu tipped me off to an opening here in town as managing editor with a small poetry journal. She went to school with their executive director, and recommended me to him. I interviewed, and they offered me the position right off. So weirdly enough, I am now writing to you not as assistant to the 3rd Ward Alderman in Armitage Heights, but managing editor of the Mill City Poetry Review in Minneapolis.

I expect when Nickelbine is elected, this blog will be shut down almost immediately and the funding diverted to abstinence-only sex education. I'll try to slip in before and post updates, if there are any; perhaps some of you would like to know what's going on with Sherman, Chick, the Kaos Krew, the right-wing twee-pop vigilantes Willy + Safire, legendary novelist Kimball F. Burin and Vietnam-based urban vigilante Dr. Thomas Jefferson Harding.

But this really looks like it -- the end of the Clarion, and the end of my time here in Armitage Heights. Just like that. Funny how life works.

Email me at marisha.e.ferguson (at) gmail dot com if you need to get a hold of me.

Upcoming ArtBuddies events schedule, November and December.

Law and Order's Ric Ocasek (left) meets Cars frontman Richard Belzer (right), at the Mishipeshu Center for the Arts.

Don't miss Mishipeshu Public Radio presents the ArtBuddies series at the Mishipeshu Center for the Arts! Every few weeks, MPR will be bringing together two great minds of our time and turning them loose to talk about whatever they want -- no gimmicks, no scripts, no limits, just fascinating conversation between some of the most interesting people in the arts today. These sessions will be moderated by Brad Lebree, contributor to such beloved public radio porgrams programs as SpinBack, Crosstalk, AfterWord, Lebensraum, The Alvin Blomgren Show, Vox Humana, Ecelectricity, Alvin Blomgren Presents The Buzz Treatment With Brad Lebree, Bookstorm, The Linkup, The Big Time, Sunday Voices, Sunday Voices: Saturday Edition, The Emphasizer, Audio Box, Station Break, Here Comes the Comptroller and the highly anticipated upcoming news and feature series Buzz Beat With Brad Lebree and Nancy Chakravarty.

11/3: Phillip Glass and Rick Dees
11/17: Peter Criss and Gore Vidal
11/27: Richard Belzer and Ric Ocasek
12/14: Joe Satriani and Joanna Newsom
12/21: Christopher Hitchens and Fab Five Freddy

Ted Norlander: "It's a lot like that episode of Thundercats."

An excerpt from a piece that award-winning memoirist and journalist Ted Norlander wrote for the Free Press this week. Of everything that's been written on Sherman's disappearance, I find it one of the most affecting. It shows yet again why Norlander is one of the most gifted writers of his generation, and even more, that this neighborhood has some of the most talented people in the world living in it. Sherman will be proud when he returns. - Marisha

Yo Sherm, where you at?

It is it not to my liking to have you missing in action for so long. It is not not to my not-liking, at the very least. Not-liking is a powerful and weird impulse. "Dig"? That's what the hippies would say. But these ain't friendly free-love 1967 hippies, no sir; the ones I'm talking about are the furious, the be-ruffled biker denim-pantsed motherfuckers from Altamont and Charlie "Ask Me About The Swastika On My Forehead" Manson. They want blood, and they want it now. When I ask if you "dig", that's the "dig" I'm talking about. Hippie fury, broseph, and that's no metaphor.

Do you remember that episode of Thundercats when Panthro gets lost in the Ro-Bear Berbil Village, and Lion-o and Jagra and Tygra can't find him anywhere, and they fear he has been kidnapped by Mumra and the Jackalmen? But really he just tripped over a rock or a something and he is merely unconscious and being tended to by the Ro-Bears? And there's a tearful reunion at the end when Jagra finds him, and all is right on New Earth again? It reminds me a lot of that. I hope this ending is similar to that ending, because that is what I want -- roll credits, created by Tobin Wolf, copyright 1987, a Lorimar-Telepictures Production, stay tuned for M.A.S.K. And then it's Zappetites for dinner. That is the ending I want.

I used to listen to a lot of Tesla, who were if not a seminal influence on me, than at least seminal-ish. The song lyric I had written all over my Lee jean jacket walking down the ochre-hued hallways of Kendall Park Junior High School was from the excellent "Heaven's Trail (There's No Way Out)," from their equally excellent and criminally underrated Mechanical Resonance, and they went a little something like this: "You know there's nothin' like the real world / To get me down. / Nothin' like the world outside / That turns me upside down / Makes me feel like I'm headin' down a one-way, dead-end street." Ha ha, right? Wrong, bucko. Aside from being an incredibly powerful Marxist critique (or like, whatever) worthy of Roland Barthes, that spring to mind to in this situation, and it might for those who don't even know who the hell Frank Hannon is. What the hell is wrong with me that an important person is missing, and all I can think of is to quote Tesla? All I can think about is Tesla? But Tesla is what is important. Sherman is wearing a Lee jacket covered with song lyrics, too. And he's on his way to find his way out. "Dig"?





This piece has also been excerpted in the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Spin. Ted Norlander is also the author of The Shah of Iran Keeps His Cool Side Cool: Essays On the Bloated-Out Carcass of Trans-American Culture In A Period I Do Not Actually Remember Much Of, 1979-1987; They Said Simon Le Bon Was Right and I Have the Stopwatch to Prove It: Seven-and-Three-Fifths Months in the Life of the American Post-Indie Underground; Sorry About the Disco Upstairs: New Critical Essays and Restaurant Placemat Puzzles For the Youth of America, and the recently re-issued Kill Them Again: The Awesome, Screaming Death of Discourse in the U.S.A. and Twelve or Thirteen Other New Half-Truths. His first novel, Hommina Hommina Hommina, will be published by Harper-Collins in early 2008.

30 years of troublemaking. (Just kidding, guys!)

The first offices of the Free-Press, at 4220 Stanton Avenue in 1968. This building is now a P.F. Chang's Chinese Bistro.

Spring is finally here! I've finally been able to get my mountain bike out of cold storage and take her for a couple of spins around Lake Mishipsehu and Stanton Park! So if you see me out, be sure to say hello! There's also some great opportunities for outdoor dining -- check out the outdoor dining annex at triage (yes, it's all lower-case letters), the new restaurant at the new mixed-use space on the site of the old St. Aloysius Greek Orthodox Veterans Hopsital and Sanitarium.

The biggest party this weekend, though, will certainly be tonight's Heights Free Press 30th Anniversary Gala at the Evarts Avenue Tavern. In April 1967 in an old storefront on Stanton Avenue, novelist Kimball F. Burin, former Mishipeshu Herald journalist Gerber Schanfield, film and music critic Dan Lee Vondraczek, and entrepeneur Larry Forsyth released the first issue of the "Freep": fifteen mimeographed pages of political commentary (notably an attack by Burin on then-Police Commisioner F. Thompson Foster entitled "The Brownshirt in Blue"), reviews of underground records, new hippie poetry, a few wire reports primarily culled from Pravda, and an advice column written by an unnamed "blissed-out naked chick that's shacking up with Brother Larry" (she advises one letter writer to "turn on [his] lovelight and let it shine shine shine.") Looking back on it now, it seems impossibly quaint, but all the pieces are certainly in place for the "take no prisoners" attitude, surreal humor, rampant references to drug use, and in-depth writing that would become the paper's trademarks.

Of course, it's a long and complex history from there -- Burin left the paper in 1968 to focus on his novel-writing, Forsyth pulled his backing after joining the Moonies in 1971, and Schanfield was forced out in 1980 as executive editor after a running a series of articles detailing then-metro mayor Robert Snowden's supposed involvement in a cross-dressing ring. However, the paper has soldiered on, and has published nearly every noted local writer on the scene. The paper's eventual transformation from a mimeographed broadsheet to a slick, well-written, well-funded media giant is a true testament to the talent involved and the intelligence of the community. It has been a truly pioneering paper; for example, the Free Press was the first alternative weekly to publish an altered photo of President Reagan with a Hitler mustache (right).

Of course, I have been notably featured twice in the paper: once in 1988, when I wrote a brief review of U2's performance at the old Civic Center in Kendall Park (my only published music review!), and of course in 2005, when I managed to make the cover. Of course, they endorsed perennial Green Party candidate Dr. Thomas Jefferson Harding for the 3rd Ward Councilman seat in the last election, but I've always enjoyed working with the staff!

The anniversary corresponds, ironically, with the paper's recent sale to the Mishipeshu Media Group, LLC, who have vowed to keep the voice and spirit of the old Free Press alive and well into the 21st century -- and if you take a look at the recent articles they have run since the buyout, such as Snooze Alarm: Why Is the Legislature So Boring?, Hittin' it in the Heights: the Best Places to Get It On Around Your 'Hood!, and Get Your Dock Wet at These 6 Hot New Seafood Bars! you can see that they're just as dedicated to "edgy" writing as they ever were!

The gala will be held tonight, beginning at 8 PM at the Evarts Avenue Tavern, located at 3809 E. Evarts Avenue. There will be performances by Frost Creep, Teenage Law Student and a reunited The Dream of Horses, as well readings from Burin, the legendary "blissed out naked chick" advice columnist (in actuality, now the investment banker Katherine Mary Murray, who hasn't written for the paper since 1968) and popular and award-winning music and film critic Ted Norlander (left), who will read excerpts from his latest book, The Shah of Iran Keeps His Cool Side Cool: Essays On the Bloated-Out Carcass of Trans-American Culture In A Period I Do Not Actually Remember Much Of, 1979-1987 (called "brilliant and heart-breakingly insightful" by The New York Times and "the voice of a generation" by Slate.com). There will also be a few remarks by new majority shareholder and Mishipeshu Media Group, LLC chairman Ronald Malone. Billy Draeger of the October Revolutionists had been scheduled to give a solo acoustic performance, but his band has been scheduled to play The Jimmy Kimmel Show tonight -- way to go, guys!

Tickets are available at the Free Press's website for $25, or by calling Evarts Avenue Tavern at (436) 922-1928, or the Free Press's offices at (436) 661-0022 during regular business hours.

A birthday celebration for a literary giant.

The always outspoken Kimball F. Burin, pictured last year.

This Friday, the Armitage Heights Literary Society will be sponsoring a birthday dinner for the always controversial and much celebrated novelist, journalist, sometime politician and long-time Armitage Heights resident Kimball Francis Burin, who turns 77 tomorrow. The event will be held at 7:00 p.m. at the Stanton Ballroom in Armitage Square, located at 2300 Gilpin Avenue. Burin himself will speak, and that should be exciting, as he is just as outspoken as ever. In fact, he even referred to me on this very website last week as a "moonfaced, bed-wetting ward-heeler."

Burin has had an amazing life -- born in Brooklyn, he attended boarding school in New Hamshire, and came to earn his degree in journalism at the University of Mishipeshu, and has made his home in Armitage Heights ever since. He was appointed to this very position in 1971 during the troubled administration of Mayor Robert Freese, and resigned in 1973 to make a failed bid for the U.S. Senate. In that time, he has written dozens of celebrated works of fiction and non-fiction, including We Serve the Living (1962), Cruelty in Perfection (1975), and The People's History of Armitage Heights (1986), as well as helped found the Heights Free Press in 1967. In the interest of full disclosure, of course, it would also be relevant to mention his occasional columns for that magazine, many of which have been relentlessly critical of my term as councilman. "Single-mindedly critical and slanderous" were the exact words, in fact, of the 12th Circuit Court, who ruled in my favor last year regarding a lawsuit I brought against Mr. Burin for defamation.

However, this is not about Mr. Burin's history with me, but about his undeniable talent as a writer and public figure, which we should all be proud as a community to celebrate.

On a somewhat related note, please also be aware that members of the new Metro Council 3rd Ward Porter Weiss Memorial Novelist Laureate Search Task Force will be addressing the public on Friday evening at 7:00 p.m. as well, at the Armitage Square Women's Club, located at 2450 Gilpin Avenue. Refreshments and wine will be available, and commitee member and noted literate rocker Billy Draeger of the October Revolutionists will play a rare short solo set. There may also be a surprise special guest! The Women's Club can be reached at (436) 712-1232, or on the web at www.armitagesquare-wc.org. You can also click here for directions.

Metro Council 3rd Ward Porter Weiss Memorial Novelist Laureate Search Task Force.

Well, I am proud to announce that despite the sadness of Porter Weiss' passing, this task force to name a new novelist laureate is convened! I have gathered the best writers in the area to help choose the new literary face for the neighborhood, and I think you'll be stunned at the sheer talent represented by the names below. They are the best of the best, and Armitage Heights' rich literary tradition, dating back to such beloved 19th Century icons as Kendall Park-native Octavius Leander Teslow, is carried on through them.

If you'd like to nominate a writer, contact the committee through the new website we've set up here. As they look through nominations and make a selection, I'll keep you updated. And of course, I'll be sitting in on the meeting, too!

Now, without further ado, your task force!


Marisha Ferguson, MFA in creative writing candidate, University of Mishipeshu.
You know my assistant Marisha.


Billy Draeger, literate rocker and essayist
Draeger's band, The October Revolutionists, have attracted lots of national attention for their witty, historically keen lyrics and album cover art. Recently, Draeger has begun writing columns for the Mishipeshu Free Press, dealing with the quirky history of the neighborhood and his own trials and tribulations as an up-and-coming rocker.


Jeffrey Moseley, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist
Moseley's first novel, 1988's We Are Living Here In Hanley Now, was a heartbreaking look at the neighborhood through the eyes of a naive young man and an eccentric cast of colorful characters around him. It won him the Pulitzer Prize in Literature in 1989, and was recently made into an Academy Award-winning film starring Giovanni Ribisi. His other books have been great, too.


Jennifer Lee Jasperson, Richman Award-winning novelist
Jasperson's first novel, 2005's Ring the Bell for Break Time, was a smart, charming and quirky tale of love, sadness and Chinese finger traps. It was an immediate literary sensation and propelled this 26-year old Bryn Mawr graduate into the upper echelons of bibliophilic fame. Her follow-up is eagerly awaited, and due to be completed next year.


Ted Norlander, senior music and book critic for the Heights Free Press
Norlander's fifth book of pop culture essays Kill Them Again: The Awesome, Screaming Death of Discourse in the U.S.A. and Twelve or Thirteen Other New Half-Truths was recently published in paperback. His previous books, including You Are Awesome, But Who Will Take Your Trash Out? (Salvos From the Front Lines of the War On Screamo), They Said Simon Le Bon Was Right and I Have the Stopwatch to Prove It: Seven-and-Three-Fifths Months in the Life of the American Post-Indie Underground, and Sorry About the Disco Upstairs: New Critical Essays and Restaurant Placemat Puzzles For the Youth of America, have earned him the distinction of being one of the most unique and insightful young writers on the scene today.


Art Norman, novelist and professor of creative writing, St. Rumwald College
Mr. Norman is the legendary author of dozens of novels, beginning with his first one, We Died Because They Told Us To, in 1947, and also including such classics of 20th century literature as Last Dance, Hatchet, A Death by the Sea, The Funeral of William Henry Harrison, Parlor Music, Midnight Mass, and Hail Thee, Mighty Caesar.

Porter Weiss, 1949-2007.

Porter Weiss in 1999.

Yesterday morning, both the Mishipeshu Herald-Leader and the New York Times reported the death of award-winning novelist and Armitage Heights native Porter Weiss, at the age of 57. According to the reports I've read, Mr .Weiss died suddenly in his home on Gilpin Avenue of a heart attack. This is a shocking and tragic loss for Armitage Heights and for the literary world.

As many of you know, Mr. Weiss was one of the most beloved members of the community. He was born in Hanley, grew up here, and made his home here for most of his life. His novels were brilliant, funny and strange, and almost all took place in the neighborhood. His first novel, 1985's The Armitage Heights Decalogue, was a landmark in contemporary fiction, a chronicle of the adventures of an unemployed writer named Wiley Porter, his mysterious relationship with a Chinese restaurant owner, and his subterranean journeys through the neighborhood and into his own psyche. His follow-ups, including City of Shadows (1987), Rainbow Village (1989), Here Comes the Night (1991), The Glass Mountain (1993), The Dreamers of Hanley (1995), An Illusion of Space (1997), and countless others chronicled his various obsessions: absent father figures, unemployment, crises of identity, and the mysteries of the human heart. There is an excellent feature on Mr .Weiss in the Mishipeshu Herald-Leader today that explores his work in great detail.

Unknown to many of you, however, is the fact that Mr. Weiss was the novelist laureate for the neighborhood, an honorary title bestowed on him by Mayor Underdahl in 2005. With Mr .Weiss's passing, we will need a new laureate. I have already begun work on calling together a task force, headed by my assistant Marisha, who is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Mishipeshu. This committee will be made up of some of the best writers in the area, and will be charged with seeking a new novelist laureate for our neighborhood.

Stay tuned for details! I'll start announcing who's on the task force soon!

In the meantime, a memorial mass for Porter Weiss will be held tomorrow at 11:30 a.m., at St. Amor of Aquitaine Catholic Church in Hanley, located at 3703 South Armitage Avenue.