26 February 2013

jukin with jacoby

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." - Emma Goldman

jacoby mid-squirrel
While the late 19th century/early 20th century revolutionary political activist was certainly not talking about American football in the above-referenced passage, long since the days of Storyville and Harlem, dancing has always played the role of subversion in American culture.  Though football has never been known to question much in the way of authority, dancing in the spirit of true postmodern expression serves to revere, revise or mock authority (and usually all three simultaneously), or at least peers and/or predecessors.

I bring this up because it was announced yesterday that Baltimore Ravens wide receiver and New Orleans native Jacoby Jones, fresh off his starring role in the Ravens Superbowl victory in his hometown, would be one of the sixteen contestants to star in ABC's Dancing With The Stars.  In case you weren't aware, I was born in Baltimore and despite at present the great distance from my homeland I remain a proud and loyal Baltimore sports fan.  Rest assured this will not be the last mention of anything Ravens or Orioles related in this space.

So in honor of the MVP-calibur #12, we're here to showcase his electric moves and hopefully he can incorporate a few of them into his Stars competition.  I know now that PITS will be covering (and watching) Dancing with the Stars for the first time ever.  Stay tuned for that but until then, let's get on with Mr. Jones' bad self:

This first dance is popularly known as the Chopper City Juke but is arguably a 1990's New Orleans dance known as the Beanie Weanie.  The first video features Jones busting a move post-touchdown:


The next video is an example of the Beanie Weanie as demonstrated by this random dude, whom I thank for the tutorial:


This following video is the official video for the Choppa City Juke and offers viewers a how-to:


After viewing it easy to understand one's confusion as to which dance Jones is performing.  There is also confusion in the nomenclature.  The Choppa City Juke was popularized in the NFL by Mike Sims-Walker and Chris Johnson, both natives of Orlando.  Choppa City refers to the city of New Orleans so I remain at a loss how Orlando can claim the Choppa City Juke at least with the Choppa City prefix but I'll defer to any of my readers to properly enlighten me in this regard.  As such, Sims-Walker and Johnson have both performed this dance throughout their careers.  After the Philadelphia game where Jones did the above dance, he was quoted as saying afterwards “I kind of did something like that when I played in Tampa. It was a little different twist to it...(t)hat’s how everybody knows I’m happy. I come in and I’m singing and dancing and I go about my day.”*  Choppa City Juke or Beanie Weenie?  I'll let you the readers decide...

Regardless, there are plenty of examples for us to choose from of the Juke, be it from New Orleans or Orlando, and they are all awesome.

So speaking of awesome and back to Jones, here is the entire catalog of his touchdowns and dances in the Baltimore Ravens 2012-2013 Championship Season condensed into slightly less than three minutes of viewing pleasure.  Enjoy.


You will notice that he starts out jukin against the Eagles, appropriating Deion Sanders' Primetime touchdown dance in reverence to the Hall of Famer against Sanders' old Dallas squad, while overall employing several variations on the juke theme, most notably this one here with mocking effect:


This comes against the Ravens biggest rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Jones' touchdown was ultimately the difference in the game and his celebratory post-touchdown tour de force begins as the Choppa City Juke and then midstream incorporates The Bennie Biggle Wiggle made popular (in NFL circles anyway) by Steelers receiver Antonio Brown before reverting back to finish and flourish with the Juke.  Brown, as the rest of Pittsburgh that day, must've felt sick watching this.  I, on the other hand, will never grow tired of the video or the memory.

Of all of his scores and dances the coolest to me is the Giants touchdown dance where he shakes his lower body along with the upper body and arms herky jerk.  This touchdown play however did not stand as it was ultimately overruled via replay.  No matter, style points here at pie in the (big) sky count and they will on Dancing as well.  You'll also notice that after scoring on the Mile High Miracle under such drastic circumstances, all Jacoby could muster was a simple jump bump with fellow teammate Anquan Boldin.  Lastly, Jones' final touchdown and dance of the Baltimore Ravens season is most appropriately the Squirrel Dance which served as fitting tribute to Ray Lewis, who made that dance famous over the course of his seventeen year Hall of Fame career.  Maybe you've seen that one once or twice by now.

So there you have it.  Jones' touchdowns and dances served to honor the great ones like Neon Deon and belittle his competitors like the Pittsburgh Steelers who struggled all season and failed to qualify for the playoffs.  Meanwhile, Jacoby's team won the Vince Lombardi Trophy and thrust the colorful Mr.  Jones into the national spotlight.  The spotlight as bright as it was on the first Sunday evening in February and the one awaiting him on national television beginning Monday, March 18th.  Let's see if Jacoby's moves on the gridiron translate to the dance floor.  We here at PITS certainly believe in #12 and will be watching, rooting and reporting accordingly.

25 February 2013

while you were out drinking (the official PITS weekend in review, vol. 1)

and then this happened:

"A prominent Brooklyn assemblyman defended himself on Monday after attracting attention for wearing blackface to a party he hosted this weekend to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim.

The assemblyman, Dov Hikind, a Democrat who has been a longtime power broker in the Orthodox Jewish community, wore an Afro wig, orange jersey, sunglasses and brown makeup or face paint as part of a costume that Mr. Hikind said represented a “black basketball player.”'

Read the whole story below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/nyregion/hikind-defends-wearing-blackface-to-purim-party.html?_r=0

21 February 2013

celebrating el hajj malik el shabazz & black history month


On February 21, 1965, less than two months from his 40th birthday and a year removed from his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.  He was in the process of writing a new chapter of his life post-hajj, which is precisely why he was taken out.  The world is worse off for his loss considering what a more politically seasoned Malcolm X, as venerable statesman and illustrious champion of his people, could have done and helped to achieve by influencing and shaping domestic and international politics over the past 48 years.  Despite his life being tragically cut short, in 39 years he accomplished many things yet his two greatest legacies were reconnecting the American Negro to his/her African past and for restoring the collective dignity and self-respect of his downtrodden people.   

It’s why boxer Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali, why poet LeRoi Jones changed his name to Amiri Baraka and moved uptown to start the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School in Harlem after his assasination.  The Black Arts movement spread across the country and with it, the Black Power Movement.  It’s what he’s getting at in this short video clip below:


The essence of Malcolm’s argument here is that it was time for the American black population to wake up, shake off the yoke of ideological and physical oppression of white supremacy, discard the dysfunctional legacy of self-loathing and self-sabotage brought about by their slaved and jim crowed past, reconnect with the motherland of Africa and stand up to their white oppressors.

Malcolm Little went from petty street criminal (Detroit Red) to Nation of Islam (NOI) spokesperson (Malcolm X) to champion and redeemer of black humanity (El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz).  He was the late bloomer who shone so bright and so quickly and so unrepentantly in opposition to the powers that be that he ultimately paid for this rapid ascension with his life.  He was a great man worthy of veneration and scholarship.  

I credit Malcolm with cracking my untapped and unsuspecting psyche when first reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964) in 9th grade.  He turned me on to thinking critically though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it as such if you had asked me then.  He turned me on simply by looking at things from a different perspective.  Since then, I’ve spent some years studying and training myself to think critically and engage society in a discursive manner.  I have made some progress but there is always more to learn and more to do and that is what I would stress to any student of mine studying in any academic realm or plying any artisan trade.  Never stop learning. As the late great Max Roach (and let us never forget Max Roach) was known for saying, you got to put in that time.  In other words, devotion is not borne overnight.

What specifically registered for me when I first read the few speeches of his I could get my hands on was his assertion that there is a “corrupt, vicious and hypocritical system that has castrated the black man” here in the United States of America.  Malcolm's words here were as bold and true as the sun is hot and bright.  The force of clarity he spoke with always impressed me and this clarity indicated to me he was well-read even if he was not an “accomplished” professional intellectual. Back then, there weren’t many accomplished African American intellectuals.  This being the Post-war consensus Era of McCarthyism of the 1950's that turned into the hosing of protesters and firebombing of black children in churches of the civil rights era of the 1960's.  It is important here to note that Duke University, the home of Mark Anthony Neal (a contemporary scholar worthy of your attention) is currently celebrating its 50th year of having black students in the student body!!!(!!!) http://spotlight.duke.edu/50years  I mention this to reiterate to the younger generation that American social progress that may be taken for granted in 2013 is only most recent.  Separate and unequal was the America Malcolm grew up in, that our parents and/or grandparents grew up in and this is the same country we were born into.  It is this collective conscious of American history that informs our society culturally today whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

(1899)
What African Americans have had to overcome historically and strictly symbolically-speaking, to restore their pride and dignity and what alternately passed for white entertainment is disgusting, degrading and impressive in its scope: The old minstrel show of Jim Crow, minstrelsy in general, the Black Sambo, shucking and jiving, Stepin Fetchit - all images depicting the black as a dandy, but the dandy as dumb and comically (i.e. commercially) valuable.  Behold the magical coon!  This uniquely American history is as vast as it is virtually unacknowledged today.  Many white folks don’t consider the racial history of America.  Americans have been aided and abetted by a power structure that prefers our history wiped clean like a blank slate lest we remember the original sin that America was conceived upon.  Whitewashing is a political act the State enacts against its citizens (and therein citizens sometimes engage in themselves with encouragement from the State) and it is up to artists to reinforce the images of a history that must never be forgotten.  It is who we are for better and for worse.  Most Americans want to live in a colorblind society – yet for every genuine expression of people hoping for such, there is also an ideological scheme at work that plays to such naïveté, that stirs racial resentment even further for the "how dare they" aspect of re-conjuring these offensive images and implicit (mis)characterizations.  Make no mistake, this is an orchestrated effort against the citizenry to quell any legitimate dissent all the while maintaining the status quo which simply means to keep their money and political influence in perpetuity.

the dancing sambo (1940)
If any citizen assumes the ideology of the State nonpareil, then one is nothing more than a tool of the state, a mouthpiece and a lackey flag waver – I believe nothing in life should be accepted nonpareil – except for love.  And even that will get you into all kinds of trouble as evidenced by the grim reality of Malcolm’s demise 48 years ago to the day. Make no mistake, Malcolm was not born a hater, he merely and strategically matched a society’s propensity to hate him and his people commensurately.  It is also important to distinguish that reacting is the not the same as provoking.  The following passage is taken from a speech given by Malcolm on February 14, 1965, one week before his assassination:

"Why, he's advocating violence!" Isn't that what they say? Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see where one of these things has written into it that I'm advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I've only said that Black people who are the victims of organized violence perpetrated upon us by the Klan, the Citizens' Council, and many other forms, we should defend ourselves. And when I say that we should defend ourselves against the violence of others, they use their press skillfully to make the world think that I'm calling on violence, period. I wouldn't call on anybody to be violent without a cause. But I think the Black man in this country, above and beyond people all over the world, will be more justified when he stands up and starts to protect himself, no matter how many necks he has to break and heads he has to crack.”

Don’t get it twisted.  The mock outrage of the whites of those times convinced no one outside of blind racial allegiance or (senti)mental weakness.  As Malcolm said, if he was as violent as they claimed him to be, he would’ve been put in jail.    

One of the most admirable aspects of Malcolm’s personality was his love of books and passion for knowledge.  His desire to read even in the dim light of his jail cell remains a strong political statement following in a tradition of fellow African American social and political activists.  This pathway to knowledge through literacy has always been central to the struggle of African American people since the days of the prohibition of literacy amongst the slave population.  The best example being the story of the great Abolitionist Frederick Douglass who taught himself how to read as outlined in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845).  To bring things current – fundamentally capitalist as we Americans are, we find ourselves in a results oriented society that doesn’t always value the process of knowledge acquisition rather merely aggrandizing the economic bottom line.  Today we teach our children to tests instead of teaching better ways to empower them through independent problem-solving skills. 

Too often in American society, fellow citizens follow only the bouncing ball of consumer culture, get caught up in the solipsism of immediate gratification; of material wealth and petty drama and internalize everything the way an infant wants things their way, right now.  American society mandates more exquisite consumers not more exquisite thinkers.  This is something that needs to change if our society should continue to improve for the next generation. 

There is little subtlety and nuance, if any, in satisfying the immediacy of urges, from smartphones to fast food to pornography to the media and its slash and burn news cycle. And this is the cultural climate in which our children come of age today.  Make no mistake, all of these “conveniences” come at a cost.  Costs associated in how we mentally calibrate and physically function in relation to them i.e. how we’ve been socialized as well as costs in terms of the method and means of production.  How can we as Americans sulk over hourly rates (and I can give you a good answer but I won’t) when just below us geographically in our own hemisphere lies a nation so economically disadvantaged such as Haiti where men and women subsist on less than a dollar a day.  Perspective is always key and perspective is one thing that the powers that be don’t want you to maintain. They want to blind you with their razzle dazzle, the bling bling, the streets paved with gold.  Now of course there is some truth to that archetypal “rags to riches” narrative, moreso than any racist and genocidal narrative such as Manifest Destiny. 

Another Malcolm gem: "I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands even if he’s wrong than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil".  In essence, this is the complicated racial history of the U.S.A.  America was founded on lofty words yet with sundry practices that contradict outright those words declaring independence much less the universal rights of man (ladies?) vis a vis its citizens.  “Democracy equals hypocrisy” as again X would say.  For what its worth I don’t believe American democracy as a project is irrevocably broken but the point he makes is clear enough.  He boldly highlighted these obvious contradictions on a highly public and national level at a time when no one outside of Martin Luther King would.

State ideology, replete with signs, songs and slogans, has been etched into the collective conscious of this county and a large part of this symbolism centers around white supremacy.  This ideology is only constructed by the State to leverage one arbitrary group of citizens over another and for what? For profit.  So for me, to listen to Malcolm and to read his autobiography, I didn’t know the system back then but his rhetoric had me on his side.  He seemed more logical and real to me than the hooded dudes burning his family’s house down.  

Harlem
In a culture where symbolism informs us and we as adults are not properly equipped to critically engage it or at least acknowledge that fact, certain groups rose from the vacuum of Malcolm’s leadership to carry the torch of waking their country and its people up.  His legacy carried on through the actions of people that came out of that era, artists and thinkers and foot soldiers in the Black Arts and Black Power Movement.  What those twin movements were about was not simply about wielding shotguns, it was more about autonomous control of the black community – black self-determination.  It was a movement that Malcolm embodied when he called for blacks to stand up for themselves, to not turn the other cheek, and to have some dignity and self-respect.  Because at that time, American society was ruled on segregated measures that openly exploited the black community, as it did all other such non-heteronormative communities and were never to be acknowledged as any kind of normative (and normative as defined by that State).  There was no room for gendered, racial or sexual minorities in the first two hundred years of American history.  
 
So in this context and on this day in American history and in honor of Black History Month, it’s important to remember that reading is very much a political act, studying history is a political act.  Writing new histories is a political act to combat against the unyielding whitewashing of history.  So while we all may not be out there standing in the way of the Keystone pipeline or picketing the White House trying to force President Obama’s hand on climate change legislation or the practice of surveillance drone killings, there are still yet other ways to affect social and political change.  We must make these facts associated with the legacy of Malcolm X remain common knowledge, to not let them fall in the dustbins of our collective conscious going forward because doing so would be doing a great disservice to not only Malcolm but to ourselves as American citizens.  We must take our diverse collective history, tragic, triumphant, hopeful and maintain it and develop it further into a strength.   

We must never become debilitated by fear of judgment as it relates to the discourse of race relations in America.  If you're scared, say you're scared and speak up for yourself.  To America’s credit, nobody talks race as often and as well as we do.  In this country, thanks in major part to the efforts of Malcolm X, the honorable Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and poets like Amiri Baraka and other intellectuals like Cornel West, Melissa Harris-Perry and Michael Eric Dyson, we have been able to at least have conversations.  Clearly we are stronger than ever as we stand together and it is with this love that I write this on the occasion of Malcolm’s passing.  Love can overcome all but love has to be fought for like anything else in life, along with always fighting for the basic tenets of universal human dignity and respect.  Because as always there is still so much work yet to be done and we surely have not arrived as a society nor should we ever stop trying no matter the protests from those who just want us to leave things well enough alone.  No struggle, no progress.

Thanks for reading.

PPG

ps - Here is Malcolm's 'By Any Means Necessary' Speech given on June 28, 1964 where he announces the creation of the Organization for Afro-American Unity (OAAU).  This speech came roughly one month after his pilgrimage to Mecca at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem where he would be murdered the following February.


The full text of this speech can be found here:
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-american-unity

18 February 2013

under construction - blog & website programming note

For those of you coming here directly through my blogger page, you'll notice a bit of reformatting by way of tighter margins and my blogger profile sunk to the bottom rather than tabbed out to the right.  The reason for these changes are to embed this blog on the official webpage of yours truly, over (here) at :

http://peterthepieguy.com/blog.html

Stay tuned through my page for optimal aesthetic effect, more blogging to follow.


14 February 2013

for the love of betty


Lika-Krbava County Coat of Arms
The two most commonly asked questions I get from customers is where and how did I ever learn to bake such a nice pie.  The short answers to both is that baking is in my blood.  This familial baking tradition was born in the Croatian mountain town of Lika, where my great grandmother first plied her craft before moving with her family to the United States and passing down her knowledge to her eldest daughter Mary.  Mary was my Baba (Croatian for grandmother) and she passed her knowledge on to my own mother.  There is also commercial historical precedent here - Baba sold lemon meringue and coconut cream pies to her brother-in-law Paul's ice cream parlor in Gary, Indiana back in the 1950's.  I grew up thirty years later loving pie because of my mother's and Baba's incredible efforts and numerous offerings.  Yet this response remains one-sided and insufficient. Please accept the following lengthy digression as my official response. 

During the winter and spring months of 2009 before I became the Pie Guy I was just another dude struggling to make ends meet.  I had started dating a girl earlier in that summer of '08 and was desperate to impress her.  I was living on Missoula wages, which is to say I couldn't afford much in the way of formal entertaining so I decided the most economical and thoughtful approach would be to develop my cooking and baking skills.  So I cobbled together a chicken pot pie with help from my coworker Sandy and her perfect pie crust recipe.  Fortunately, the girlfriend loved it and a month later I baked her another and it turned out even better.  Yet despite this tangible culinary progress our relationship was reaching its terminal limit.  She would soon be graduating in May and was destined to move on to bigger and better things as I was left to myself, struggling to finish my own degree work and mired in a less-than-rewarding job with a newly sick dog.  

Betty Lou Vilnius came into my life in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2004.  At that time I was living in Kaunas, with another ex of mine, teaching English as a second language.  I taught most of my classes at night while she (the ex) worked the day shift which meant she came home each night by herself in the pitch black darkness of a Lithuanian winter to an empty flat.  It was only after a few weeks of this set up before I became convinced having a dog for her to come home to would be best.  Besides, she and I talked of getting a dog from the outset of our relationship.  We even went so far as to buy a collar and a leash and have a name ready, Betty, months before we would even meet her.  As fate would have it, a coworker tipped us off to her neighbor's litter of purebred American Pit Bull Terriers that were available up the road just a hundred kilometers in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital.  

I liked the idea of having a domineering animal presence in our home and out around the block yet she was open to the idea of adopting a Pit Bull more than I was.  I grew up with two Labrador retrievers, Clifford and Domino, while she grew up with a Shih Tzu named Mitzy.  Admittedly, I‘d been scared off by the media and its many representations of all things savage and deadly when it came to the breed so we both did a lot of research online and consulted with more than a few of our animal-loving friends.  We came away from the fact-finding process confident these dogs were not preternatural assassins as well as confident in our mutual ability to raise one properly having raised dogs of our own before.  The most interesting fact we learned about the breed was that its biggest purebred defect was its notoriously bad skin.  Undeterred and with no small amount of preparation, we took a bus to Vilnius and found our Betty.  Having long ago deferred naming rights to my ex for the first name, I chose Lou for her middle name in honor of the great baseball player, Lou Gehrig.  


Betty Lou Vilnius from the jump

We brought Betty Lou Vilnius home at six weeks old on October 30th and rather than hyphenating surnames we bestowed upon her 'Vilnius' to honor the city of her birth.  She was the tiniest and sweetest thing I’d ever seen and I was impressed by how close she clung to my side at all times.  From that day forward, when the ex was at work it was my job to raise and train our precocious pittie.  I was living the dream in a foreign country in love with a beautiful woman, happily teaching English to Lithuanian adults, with a puppy that adored us both all the while kicking it in a relatively posh flat in the Old Town neighborhood of Kaunas.  

The dream would be short-lived for as far as me and the lady friend went, despite having met on Valentine’s Day, our charmed and newly international relationship was slowly trending downward.  As things deteriorated interpersonally between the two of us, my bond with Betty became my saving grace (along with my newfound inclination to log all of my experiences abroad in a journal).  Roughly one year later when it all went down between me and my ex, she told me that Betty was mine to keep.  I certainly understood why she offered her to me in the custody battle (I did all of the dirty work) but I couldn’t understand how she could possibly give her up.  As it stood, I was the only person in the world responsible for that sweet little pit bull puppy cuddle attack and needless to say I felt beyond obligated to care for her.  

A large part of that care entailed tremendous vigilance and dedication as Betty developed horrible allergies over the course of the first year of her life.  It turned out she was allergic to dust mites, most trees and most grasses.  As a child I, too, was riddled with allergies and my unique ability to empathize with her plight was just another loving harpoon sunk into my heart reeling me in further towards endearment and devotion.  

When I first brought her to an American veterinarian more than a few of the technicians thanked me profusely for not giving her up for adoption.  Agape, I asked how they could even say such a thing.  The vet techs all stated plainly how most people give up dogs with allergies because of the time and money involved.  They suggested these families only wanted the “perfect” pet, not one with such obvious flaws as allergies that would, as in Betty's case, sometimes cause her to chew on her toes until they bled, scratch the fur off her ears and face, leaving her neurotic, sometimes angst-ridden and always totally dependent upon me to relieve her stress and suffering.  

Betty sparring with my foot
Suffice it to say, she’s been by my side ever since.  Having traversed back across the Atlantic, she was there as I studied for my graduate school entrance exam and she was there when I got my acceptance letter into the University of Montana’s Graduate Literature program.  She was there riding shotgun as we set our course for Missoula and she was there as I adapted back into academic life and she was there as I labored through drafting my Master’s Thesis in those dark and lonely winter months of 2008.  

Then sometime in April she got sick.  Despite seeming fine overall - we would go on our usual morning walks, our usual after work hikes and our usual late evening bike rides - she had been vomiting once a week for three or four weeks.  By Memorial Day weekend, I made up my mind if she were to vomit again I would have no choice but to take her to the vet.  Sure enough she threw up again that weekend and upon professional examination they discovered she ingested a rubber chew toy that was small enough to be eaten yet large enough to fail passing from her stomach to her small intestine.  This indigestible object dramatically increased her body’s white blood cell production thus causing the intermittent vomiting.  She had surgery immediately and was home within two long days.  On her first night home she was noticeably uncomfortable and the following morning she was lethargic and her stomach was distended.  Cash poor as I was then, I didn't want to take her back to the vet unless I absolutely had to.  

I had to.  I remember it all quite vividly.  It was a gorgeous spring day laden with spectacular sunshine.  Betty was lying sullenly in the grass in front of our house and I sat in a lawn chair beside her reading Chekhov's The Seagull aloud.  Reading Chekhov always makes me feel better so I figured it was worth a shot.  I don't know if Betty was upset more with anticipating another one of Anton’s classically morbid and tragic endings or with my hesitation to seek further medical attention but it wasn't long into Act III when she began throwing up what looked to be water – turns out it was bile.  With that I whisked her away to the emergency vet clinic where they told me the sutures from the first surgery had ruptured and bile was pouring out from her stomach and into her abdominal cavity.  The doc told me her prognosis for survival was 50/50 and I became an emotional trainwreck.  Fortunately, she came through the second and final surgery fairly well.  Of course fairly well still meant she was emaciated with yellowed eyes and you could see her spine and tailbone clearly defined under her loose skin.  Nonetheless, I brought her home on June 2 which was significant to me because that was the birthday of my first dog, the chocolate lab Clifford.  I like to think Cliff was looking out for us that day.  

Betty home from the vet (2009)
About a week prior to the first surgery, I was attempting to make career moves.  I submitted my two weeks/resignation letter to my longtime employer and was setting out to take a job with a political organization that offered a higher hourly wage, health insurance and most importantly, room for professional growth.  It was much to my dismay then when the director of the program did not allow me to go canvass because I opted to ad-lib my lines rather than stick to the script.  To me it was important to be honest and genuine and not robotic.  Yet the director wanted robotic and my career in politics was over before it began.  As it was, I then had to stare down the thought of calling back the owner of the company I had just unsuccessfully tried to quit.

This was also the day before I was to pick up Betty from the vet so I decided before calling the owner to plead for my old job back that I needed to go for a long walk to mull over what the hell exactly was going on.  I chose to hike out in the North Hills just north of Missoula and about two miles in along the Waterworks ridge and no closer to making sense of anything, I came upon a raven flapping its impressively large wings close above me.  It was almost directly on top of me some fifteen feet, soaring higher then lower then higher again against a forty or fifty mile an hour wind gust.  It rolled its shoulder, bowed its left wing down while the right wing went up and then the left wing went up as the right wing dipped down and so on maintaining its glide gracefully all the while facing the westerly gusting breeze.  At that moment I thought how I had never hiked against such a strong wind in my life and I stopped to take in the scene incredulously.  The raven did this for probably only a minute or two but it seemed much longer to me being transfixed as I was on its every movement.  

After this enormous blackbird flew away and thinking about it as I made my way down the hill headed home I came to the conclusion that this jet black feathered messenger was demonstrating to me how to hold firm in the face of such strong resistance and turmoil.  It signaled to me to simply go with the flow, to not only face the resistance but to thrive in it and conquer it.  I’d never been good at (and still struggle mightily with) accepting things in my life beyond my control and this was another such occasion but after witnessing that awesome raven I was determined then more than ever to refuse to succumb to the emotional weight life was heaping upon me. 

When I got home I called the old boss lady and she was gracious enough to accept me back without me begging.  The next day Betty came home and while she was a shell of herself she was most importantly put back together by the vet soundly (minus twelve inches of small intestine) and she was finally back on the long road to recovery.  Adding financial injury to karmic insult, I was left to foot the bill for the two surgeries which totaled approximately $1,200 dollars.  Being the man of few means that I was, my friends suggested holding a fundraiser for Betty (for me).  Offended, I immediately refused the idea.  Five minutes later I flipped my stance and decided I had no pride left to protect and I needed to pay off the bill.  

raven totem
In certain native cultures of the pacific northwest, sighting a raven signifies transformational change in one’s life.  Ravens have a versatile and complicated reputation for creating life yet also feeding off of death.  Ravens play the role of tricksters, shifting shape and going between the human and the spirit worlds.  I wasn't sure whether this bird was showing off or instead illuminating matters for me when I was up in the North Hills that day but one thing was for certain: my life was about to change transformationally.

One June 13, 2009 the Official Betty Lou Vilnius Benefit Fundraiser was held at my home, "the Church" of Missoula's north side of town.  The Church, as its colloquially known, has been strictly secular since the 1960's after having served as the original home for the Foursquare Baptist Church of Missoula.  With the help from my brother from another mother/roommate/landlord-Church owner and abstract painter extraordinaire B Stew, we rolled out the red carpet for the community and they turned out for us.  The Benefit was comprised of a keg of beer, a cake walk and a silent art auction featuring thirty-five pieces of art supplied almost exclusively from my fellow starving artist friends, some of whom I’d been living with at the commune-like Church (like B Stew).  

I was in charge of running the fourth and final fundraising component, the bake sale.  For my part I baked five pies to be introduced for public consumption for the first time.  It was only just a few days prior I made my first fruit pie comprised of my two favorite kinds of fruit – blueberries and raspberries – for Sandy’s birthday (my coworker who shared with me her pie crust recipe).  It was the hit of the office birthday party and I began to suspect I might be on to something.  On the eve of the Benefit as I was baking the five Blueberry-Raspberry pies I had an aha! moment which was to market them as The Betty Lou-Berry Pie. Thankfully, the pies turned out great and were most importantly well-received.  Nearly $1,200 was raised and for more reasons than the monies raised alone, it was that day when I realized how great and caring the community of Missoula is and how at home I felt in it.  

Short on cash as I was and with a nifty name for my latest and greatest creation, I decided the next step would be trying to sell them at Missoula's #1 Farmer's Market - the Clark Fork River Market.  The rest, as they often say, is history.  On July 4, 2009 I began by selling three – I believe I came to the market with two Betty Lou-Berry’s and one Strawberry pie.  They didn’t look all that hot but they tasted great and the crust held up perfectly as advertised.  Three weeks later, I successfully defended my thesis thus completing my Master’s Degree in Literature at the University of Montana and closing out a very important chapter of my life.  

Back on the pie end of things, over the course of that summer I expanded the menu to include Huckleberry (the local northern Rocky Mountain mountain delicacy), Flathead Cherry, Peach, Apple and Strawberry-Rhubarb.  By the end of that first market season I was selling out of five or six pies and today I sell out of a dozen or more each weekend at the peak of the summer season. Never intent to rest on my laurels, the following summer I began experimenting with gluten-free flours because my dear friend, Maureen, has Celiac disease and sadly up to that point could never try any of my pies.  A few weeks later after some more customer feedback, I began trying vegan pie crust recipes so that my pies could reach across all dietary and lifestyle boundaries.  I was soon selling gluten-free and vegan varieties of the Perfect Pie Crust and the crust in all forms remains my number one selling point.

A healthy Betty and me (2012)
Over these past four years I have baked well over 1,000 pies and there are a legion of Missoulians and Montanans who only know me as the Pie Guy.  Don’t get me wrong, I love being the Pie Guy.  It offers me the ability to interact with the lovely people of this gorgeous mountain town community and it also provides me with a nifty sobriquet to help frame some of my own fictional writing/storytelling.  But in the end, I wouldn't be here without my Betty Lou.  I certainly wouldn't have become the Pie Guy if she hadn't gotten sick and I am eternally grateful for her bequeathing to me the PPG franchise.

So let it be said that Peter the Pie Guy was founded on and continues to run on the love of Betty.  In fact, my marketing slogan for the Betty Lou-Berry is that it's made with blueberries, raspberries and lots of love.  Truth is, all of the pies I produce come from my heart.  A true Pie Guy can’t just fake his way through a laborious and tedious process such as crafting a pie dough.  Whether it’s for Betty's (sometimes numerous) vet bill(s), Maureen's own health, or my vegan friends health and good consciences, every pie I make is unique in its inability to be replicated exactly.

pie = love
Yes I do feel it more for my family and my friends.  Baking for them is one of the highest forms of love I can express to them.  Now I know how my mother and my Baba must've felt baking for the masses of Cvitkovich's and Clavin's back when I was just a child desperate to get that first or final slice of Cherry Pie.  This is not to say the pies my customers experience during the market season are any less special.  On the contrary, I believe that is what sets my pies apart from all others, I use the same ingredients (although selling point number two is dramatically reduced sugar) more or less but the quality of my work and the emotional sincerity I imbue them with shines through on each bite.  Seeing a customer swing from cynic to believer in the first bite is a prideful moment that cannot be simulated any other way.  Lastly, to be able to engage the community, to be a part of and support the local economy of market customers and fellow vendors is just one of the many sweet byproducts of the pie biz.

So on this Valentine’s Day, I think it is important to remember that sometimes you can’t choose who you love, sometimes they just come to you and you have no choice other than to embrace them with open arms and do everything within your god-given abilities to help them.  Such was the case with me, as guided by the raven of the North Hills, when it came to baking and to my shamanic Lithuanian Pit Bull (and Fizzgig too).

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody.  I’ll leave you with a song from one of my favorite artists who just so happens to be one of the greatest guitarists, singers and songwriters around.  I feel its appropriate for the holiday, for me and my dog, my business and all of my family and friends who continually bless me with their love.  Right back atcha.

Thank you for reading.

-Peter the Pie Guy







09 February 2013

places and spaces

Welcome to the pie in the (big) sky blog, coming to you live and direct from Missoula, Montana.  Today marks my initial foray into the wonderful and wide world of blogging.  While I do bake a mean pie, in this space I'll be covering various topics ranging from literary and cultural criticism to sports, music, politics and yes I will certainly be covering some ground on baking.  In my spare time when I'm not working or tending to my pets, Betty Lou the Dog and Fizzgig the Cat, I am a writer, publisher, co-editor and co-producer of a literary journal here in Missoula called Ҫ (pronounced sa-dee-ya).  I will have more on that later.

                                        RIP Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II
                                           (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013)


But for now, I'd like to begin by paying homage to the late, great jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd who passed away earlier this week.  As has often been the case in my life, I owe hip hop music for introducing me to him.  Over the years I've taken to studying hip hop and its many postmodern conventions and as a result I've taken to tracing the sources for a sample in any given song that I like, which then typically involves Rza (of the Wu Tang Clan) productions.  Yet in this case I tracked down a sample used by one of my other favorite producers, DJ Pete Rock of 'Pete Rock and CL Smooth' fame.  I first heard this sample back in high school when listening to their 1994 album 'The Main Ingredient' (Big ups to my brother Mike for introducing me to them).  On that album, the ninth track entitled "All the Places" remains to this day one of my favorite hip hop songs.  Pete Rock samples the first twenty seconds of Byrd's track and the rest is hip hop history.  Moreover, I feel the song befits the larger theme of Pie in the (Big) Sky and rest assured I will be sharing more music going forward.

Last but certainly not least I am a big fan of literature.  I agree with the modernist poet Ezra Pound's assertion in 1934 that "Literature is news that STAYS news".  This is ultimately why I came to Missoula to study literature here at the University of Montana.  In my graduate work, I focused my attention on the confluence of music and literature - especially jazz and hip hop in the novel and poetic forms.  Be it novels, poetry, short stories or plays I am fascinated by narrative and the role it plays in (re)producing and (re)presenting culture and the central role writers, poets and rappers play in the art of storytelling.

So in this space you may encounter some of the many artistic influences that have and continue to inform and inspire me - places and spaces traveled mentally and physically.  As far as where the pie in the (big) sky travels next, I'm thinking of something to say about the state of athletic affairs at the University of Montana or maybe just a little something for Valentine's Day, don't worry I promise not to get too sappy.  Promise.

Thanks for stopping by.

-Peter the Pie Guy