Hike You!: The Office Chair on Broadway

There are certain streets in Rockford you only really get to know by walking them.

Broadway is one of those streets. It isn’t part of every walk we take, but when we stretch things out and make a longer circuit through the city, Broadway often becomes part of the route. Walking it is different from driving it. At thirty miles an hour, storefronts become scenery. On foot, individual windows begin to announce themselves.

One of those windows belonged to the old Zant Office Equipment building.

Inside was a unique office chair.

Not an especially dramatic discovery. Not a monument, historic building, mural, or spectacular piece of architecture. Just an unusual chair sitting behind glass in a former office-equipment store. But after passing it enough times, the chair began to seem less like inventory and more like a survivor from another era.

That is essentially how Hike You! works.

The project grew out of six years of walking Rockford and paying attention to things that would ordinarily be passed without a second thought. Ryan Davis photographs what we encounter. I write haiku from those encounters. Sometimes the subject is beautiful in the conventional sense. Sometimes it is strange, neglected, funny, accidental, or so ordinary that noticing it at all becomes the point.

The chair in the Zant window had a particularly strong personality.

Something about it immediately suggested the American office of the 1980s: fluorescent lights, beige walls, wood-grain desks, metal filing cabinets, shoulder pads, coffee that had been sitting on a burner since 7:15 in the morning. It seemed to belong to a world of interoffice memos, Rolodexes, landlines, carbon copies, and people being summoned into somebody’s office.

And once that atmosphere appeared, the haiku followed.

The typography became part of the joke. Rather than treating the poem as something floating serenely over the photograph, the lettering participates in the period. The font belongs to the same imagined office world as the chair. Image, poem, and design all lean toward the same slightly absurd memory of corporate America.

That combination is important to Hike You!. These pieces aren’t intended simply as photographs with poems printed on them. The photograph provides one way of seeing the object. The haiku provides another. Sometimes the design itself becomes a third voice.

And then, occasionally, the city adds another layer long after the walk is over.

The Zant name has recently wandered back into my life in an entirely different context. I’m currently collaborating with Michael Zant, a member of the Zant family, on a salvaged-metal opossum sculpture for another Fall ArtScene exhibition at the Rockford Public Library. Michael constructs animals from discarded and reclaimed metal; I’m contributing the accompanying haiku.

There was no grand plan connecting these things.

Years ago, we walked down Broadway. We noticed a strange office chair in the window of Zant Office Equipment. Ryan photographed it. I wrote a haiku. It became one of the pieces in Hike You!

Now I’m working with a Zant on an opossum made out of salvaged metal.

That is Rockford.

Walk around it long enough and the city begins folding back on itself. A name on an old storefront becomes a person you work with years later. An obsolete office chair becomes art. Scrap metal becomes an animal. A street you have traveled hundreds of times produces something you had never noticed before.

None of this requires going very far.

It only requires going slowly enough to see it.

Hike You!
Thomas L. Vaultonburg + Ryan Davis
Fall ArtScene 2026
Rockford, Illinois

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My Absolutely True Alice's Restaurant Story

I grew up with Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant Massacree." I knew the song. I knew the movie. I knew about Alice and Ray living in the old church and Arlo getting himself into trouble because of a large quantity of garbage.

This becomes relevant.

I met Jenny at Castaways, a dive bar in Rockford that my brother and I owned. She came in with a group of women who were organizing the Rockford Rage Roller Derby, and I believe she was something like the fifth woman to join the league. Castaways became their unofficial headquarters for a while, and Jenny was one of the people who started turning up regularly.

I didn't know it then, but our orbits were on a collision course for the next fourteen years.

After Castaways closed its doors, I was between lives. Jenny had done some posters for the Rage, and I remembered liking them, so one day I contacted her on MySpace.

This was when contacting someone on MySpace was a perfectly reasonable thing for an adult to do.

I told her I was working on a children's book called Atrocious Poems A to Z and asked if she might be interested in illustrating it. "Working on" is probably generous. I had an idea for a children's book called Atrocious Poems A to Z, which is not exactly the same thing as having a children's book called Atrocious Poems A to Z.

Less than a week later, Jenny sent me an illustration for the first poem.

"A is for Asparagus."

It was perfect.

This presented me with an immediate problem because now I actually had to write the book.

So I did.

Jenny and I began spending more time together, and eventually I learned that she and her husband Dan lived in an old Lutheran church in Pecatonica, Illinois.

The first time I walked into the place, I knew immediately that I had entered Alice's Restaurant.

Not metaphorically. I mean there was the church.

It still had its stained-glass windows. It still had a stage at the front where sermons, performances, announcements and whatever else Lutheran congregations do from stages had once emanated. The building was enormous, but Jenny and Dan essentially lived in only two areas of it. Most of the rest of the building was still just this cavernous old church surrounding the relatively small portion where two people were actually conducting their lives.

And I had seen this movie.

I knew where this kind of thing could lead.

At first the similarities were amusing. Arlo had Alice and Ray living in a church. I had Jenny and Dan living in a church. There were artists and unconventional people involved. There was a general feeling that ordinary residential architecture had somehow been rejected as insufficient for the situation.

Then I learned another little detail.

Arlo Guthrie and Alice Brock had written a children's book together, Mooses Come Walking.

Jenny and I were writing a children's book together.

Now, I am willing to tolerate a certain amount of coincidence from the universe. You have to. Otherwise you start becoming the kind of person who finds messages intended specifically for you in the license plates of passing automobiles.

So I let that one go.

Eventually Jenny invited me over to mow the lawn.

This is one of those sentences that doesn't sound particularly important when you say it, but in retrospect there aren't that many people in your life whose lawn you begin mowing at an abandoned Lutheran church.

Shortly after Jenny and I had become very close, Dan, who had been the city manager of Pecatonica, got a job in the oil industry in Houston. They were moving to Texas, and they were moving fast.

So fast, in fact, that they hired me to clean out the church.

This is where anyone familiar with "Alice's Restaurant" should begin experiencing some concern on my behalf.

There was a lot of stuff in that church.

Some of it had apparently been sitting in the basement for decades. There were books. There was paperwork. There was glassware. There were assorted objects whose usefulness had expired so long ago that nobody was quite sure what their usefulness had originally been. Much of it was already moldy and unpleasant before I ever touched it.

I hauled it out.

And hauled it out.

And hauled it out.

Eventually I had everything that needed to go outside, bagged and ready for the city to collect.

Jenny and Dan were headed for Houston. The church was cleaned out. My work was finished.

Except it wasn't.

Because a thunderstorm came through.

The rain soaked the garbage.

Now, garbage that has been sitting in the basement of an old Lutheran church for several decades is not improved by the addition of water. Nobody has ever opened a bag containing moldy paperwork, old books and miscellaneous church debris, poured several gallons of rainwater into it and said, "There. Much better."

The city of Pecatonica took one look at the situation and declined to take the garbage.

It would have to be rebagged.

And this was the moment when the universe stopped being subtle.

I had grown up listening to "Alice's Restaurant." I knew exactly what happened when Arlo Guthrie had to get rid of the garbage from Alice's church. I had been aware of the parallels from the first time I walked into Jenny's church.

But up until this point, they had been cute.

Now I was being sent back to a church to deal with a municipal garbage problem.

There are billions of people on Earth. Most of them will live their entire lives without having this experience.

I drove back to Pecatonica.

I bought industrial garbage bags.

And I spent about half a day taking decades worth of rain-soaked, moldy Lutheran garbage and putting it into new bags so the city would agree to haul it away.

No police officers arrived.

I was not arrested.

There were no aerial photographs.

There were no twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows.

Nobody asked me whether I had rehabilitated myself.

I just rebagged the garbage.

Eventually the city took it away.

As far as I know, this leaves Arlo Guthrie and me as two of the very few people in American history who have found themselves involved in a complicated garbage-disposal situation arising from an old church occupied by unconventional people, with the added coincidence that both situations somehow involved children's books.

Arlo got a song and a movie out of his.

I got Atrocious Poems A to Z.

Jenny spent the next two years in Houston. When she returned, we began our life together. So unlike the movie, this wasn't the end of anything. It was the beginning.

But before any of that could happen, the garbage had to be picked up.

And apparently, if you live in an old church, there's only one kind of person you should call when that happens.

Arlo Guthrie wasn't available. 

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Flesh Wounds by Thomas L. Vaultonburg | Zombie Logic Press

Flesh Wounds may be Thomas L. Vaultonburg's most autobiographical collection. Written between 1997 and 2004, the poems emerge directly from the years following his mother's death, a period spent working behind bars, in restaurants, strip clubs, country clubs, sports bars, warehouses, and eventually in a tavern he owned with his brother.

Unlike many collections that spend years being revised and refined, Flesh Wounds feels immediate. These poems were not excavated from decades of notebooks and polished into literary artifacts. They were written close to the experiences that inspired them, preserving their rough edges, contradictions, and emotional honesty.

The collection takes its title seriously. The wounds described here are rarely fatal. Instead, they are the daily injuries of ordinary life: failed relationships, dead-end jobs, bad judgment, loneliness, humiliation, lust, disappointment, and self-inflicted damage. Yet the poems refuse tragedy in its conventional form. Again and again, humor appears where despair ought to be. The speaker is frequently reckless, often cynical, occasionally self-destructive, but almost never self-pitying.

Bukowski's influence is evident, particularly in the attention paid to working-class life, bars, sex, and failure. Yet Flesh Wounds is ultimately less interested in romanticizing excess than documenting it. The bartenders, waitresses, drunks, lovers, managers, hustlers, and dreamers who populate these pages are not literary archetypes. They are people observed at close range during long nights spent serving drinks and watching human beings unravel.

What distinguishes the collection is its dual perspective. The narrator is both participant and witness. He is drinking with the crowd while simultaneously taking notes on it. He is implicated in the chaos he describes, but also detached enough to recognize its absurdity. The result is a voice that can be savage one moment and unexpectedly tender the next.

Viewed alongside later books such as Submerged Structure, Flesh Wounds captures an earlier version of the author: angrier, less guarded, more reckless, and more willing to place himself directly at the center of the story. If Submerged Structure often observes the world from a distance, Flesh Wounds lives inside the collision.

The lasting achievement of the collection is its refusal to separate beauty from damage. The poems recognize that some of the funniest stories, strongest attachments, and most revealing moments emerge from periods of profound disorder. Flesh Wounds is not a celebration of self-destruction, nor is it a warning against it. It is a record of survival written by someone who spent years standing close enough to the fire to know exactly how hot it was.

Buy Flesh Wounds By Thomas L. Vaultonburg At Zombie Logic Press

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"Venus 2000" By Rockford Artist Joe Tallman

Last weekend we went to Joe Tallman and Allison Wuest's show at J.R. Kortman here in Rockford, and I saw this piece that really knocked me out. Since my heart surgery I'm always drawn to works of art about the human heart, or in this case, the robot heart, which in my case has even more applicability. Jenny got me this piece for my birthday and had it framed by the resident genius at Mainfraim. Aside from it just being a wonderful piece, I like that three different local artists and gallery owners can share in the benefits. I think we should all make an effort to buy from people we know in our own neighborhoods. 

"Venus 2000" By Joe Tallman. See more from Rockford artist Joe Tallman here. 

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I Am Rockford History

In a Midwestern city not too far away in a future far, far from now, Zombie Logic Press became part of Rockford History.

The only issue I have is the story is dated 2907, and while I might not mind living a 1000 year life, I'm not sure I want to do it in Rockford, or after a trump administration. One of my conciliations is that I never believed I would live until fifty, and I as I approach fifty it's certainly no certainty I'll get there. This latest book is meaning more and more to me the more I think of it.

Before my heart surgery I really didn't make a lot of preparations for my death. A few. I signed a power of attorney form and destroyed some old journals I didn't think anyone would want to or need to read, but I just couldn't do it. Almost four years later I still haven't prepared for my death, even though the realistic odds of it happening at any time are 1,000 times greater than yours.

When Jasper was younger I'd be with him and I'd think "If I died now I wonder if he'd remember me." It was always a constant reminder to be who and what I'd want him to remember me as if I didn't have all the time I wanted to create those memories with him.

Now he makes books more complex than the one I'm about to release. And the twelve year old has written two novels.

He made a functioning pop up book all by himself. 

Finishing off Atrocious Poems A To Z was difficult for me. I didn't really have the energy or vigor I needed to drive it home, but I did my best. And maybe I'll still get a couple more cracks at it.

Buy your copy of Atrocious Poems A To Z 

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Unfinished Business: The Story of Atrocious Poems A To Z

In Gestalt Psychology there is a clinical term called "unfinished business." Unfinished business is defined as the unexpressed feelings that are associated with distinct memories and fantasies. These feelings may be resentment, rage, hatred, pain, anxiety, grief , guilt, and abandonment that are not fully experienced in awareness, linger in the background, and are carried into the present life and cause preoccupations, compulsive behaviors, wariness, and other self- defeating behaviors. Unfinished business will persist until the person faces and deals with these denied or alienated feelings.

For me one source of unfinished business was always the children's book we were tasked with writing and illustrating in my fifth grade class at Mary Morgan Grade School in Byron, Illinois. One would think someone who later went on to become a writer and publisher out of love for the written and printed word would have been excited about such a project, but I was not. I do not know what all-important things I did to distract myself the weeks before the book came due, but two days from the deadline I had almost nothing written. Having almost no ideas at the time that didn't revolve around playing baseball or watching monster movies, I decided to do what I thought was easiest and most rudimentary concept: an A To Z book. Just fill in the empty spaces with whatever nonsense came to mind, right?

I set off to work, and a couple days later had finished my first book, The Monster Dictionary. Complete with illustrations that I put about as much effort into as the poems. And it showed. So much so that after being generous and giving me a B grade, my teacher penned this note, and this is where the Unfinished Business began...


"B. Not colored. Excellent ideas! if you would have put more effort into this project; the school could have sent this idea on to the Library of Congress."

I leave her misapplication of the semicolon in for historic authenticity.

Being lazy and unambitious is something I've always been good at, and it's never bothered me too much, but something about that note kept coming back to haunt me. It wasn't so much that I hadn't made an effort, it was more that I did eventually become a writer, and a publisher, and I felt like I owed it to myself to give this project the effort it deserved. 

The poems I felt like I could do on my own, but I needed an illustrator. By this time I was forty years old and the General Manager of a dive bar underneath a bridge in Rockford, Illinois called Castaways. A bar where three women had formed a roller derby league called the Rockford Rage in the bathroom one night. The paperwork to join the league was signed right there at the bar, and one of the earliest skaters to join is now my creative partner and real life mate Jenny Mathews, who is one of the finest illustrators in America.

I asked her if she'd be interested in collaborating on a children's book titled Atrocities From A To Z about things that kid hated. She said yes, and I sent her the first poem from the book, aptly titled "A."

A few weeks later she sent back this illustration.

It was perfect.

Then she moved to Texas.

Then we wrote a book titled The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company long distance and Atrocities From A To Z was put on the backburner.

Then she came back from Texas and we became a couple. And a scant eight years later, almost forty years after I began it, Atrocious Poems A To Z went to the printer last week. 

Is the business finished now? Can I call up and tell Fritz Perls in the afterlife that we're good?

Maybe.

But there's one last order of business I feel like needs to be finished, and that is the business. I'd like to encourage you to order a copy of Atrocious Poems A To Z. In the poems I've tried to address issues that sometimes can seem trivial to adults, but cause great anxiety for children, like vegetables, inoculations, sharing, monsters under the bed, floors made of lava etc. I have tried to be light-hearted in the poems and provide a jumping off point to discuss some of these anxiety-producing situations. Also, it was important to me to try and incorporate some lessons on literary form, theme, and devices. 

Of course the best part of the book are the remarkable illustrations by Jenny Mathews. I think we've made a really fun and interesting book and I'd like to encourage you to order your copy now.

And, yes, I will be sending a copy to the Library of Congress

                                               
                                                                        

Update: Oh, here's the part I forgot to say: my book ended up on the walls of a major American museum. 

Photograph by the great Ryan Davis

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Buy American, Buy Zombie Logic Press

Out of curiosity I picked up a few of the most recent children's books Jack has gotten. Every one of them that was Disney or Marvel or Minions or anything in the popular culture was printed in China. What pennies per unit did they save doing this? And why are we taking them seriously when they sell us that they are the pillars of our economy and true patriots? The opposite is true.

They literally have to go out of their way to NOT use American printers in order to save a few pennies.

I'm a publisher myself, so I get emails and calls from those same Chinese printers. And make no mistake, I'd like to save on my printing costs any way I can, but how is it worth it to save pennies? 

I like working with a printer I can call if a crisis happens, or if I'm just feeling anxious about an impending project. Its nice to know your books were printed in Minnesota (Bookmobile), Ohio (Book Masters), or Michigan (Edwards Brothers Malloy). Maybe it adds fifty cents, maybe a buck to the cost of a book, but I have to believe all that comes around when we support each other at our trades.

I mention Edwards Brother Malloy because my latest book, Atrocious Poems A To Z is currently in the printing process. I'm in that delicate part of the process where I have surrendered all control over the project and must trust that they will make the book look exactly as I envisioned it when Jenny and I were working on it for these past eight years.

And you know what, I have absolute faith that they will.

Trusting in our neighbors to be skillful and committed to their work is the crux of what Buy American is all about. It's not a chore or a task, it's a privilege to enjoy the products that we make together in our own communities. 

 Atrocious Poems A To Z Illustration D

This is a goofy poem, I realize, and an example of the theme of Atrocious Poems A To Z, which is "Poems about all the things kids love to hate."

I'd love to have a promotions department and distribution pipeline to finish the process of selling and shipping the book now that I have spent eight years working on it, but every small business owner out there know that ain't the way things work.

We're literally competing with giants that use tax loopholes and Chinese labor to make it difficult to compete. We all do five or six jobs. Which is why is crucial to support each other. Buy local. Go to your local hardware store instead of Home Depot. Eat at a restaurant owned by a member of your community instead of a chain restaurant. Shop at the farmers market instead of Walmart.

Sure, it's more inconvenient, but you can see the results almost immediately. 

Atrocious Poems A To Z is a book that takes the problems and challenges of childhood seriously. VERY seriously. Some might say too seriously. By taking a comic approach to everyday issues children face in lighthearted poems and whimsical drawings we hope to present a jumping off point where children and parents can discuss topics like bullying, sharing, dealing with siblings, anxiety etc. It was our goal to ease into these topics employing comedy, sensitivity, and an understanding that although children may see these "atrocities" as the end of the world, they are really things we have all gone through and just a natural part of growing up. 

As you can see, I'm also the sales department. I don't like selling, but it's part of my responsibilities. I'm not asking for contributions, I'm asking you to consider buying a product made entirely here in the United States of America. I might even take your money and go give it to the authentic Mexican restaurant on the next block, or the local garden center, or Mead's Meats, or the Muslim immigrants trying to make a go of it with a convenience store in my neighborhood. 

Pre-order Atrocious Poems A To Z to ship June 10th. 

Zombie Logic Press

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How the Russians Can Help Me

I have noticed lately that the Russians have been taking a great interest in what it is I have to say on a variety of topics. Not sure if they're just ego surfing, bored, or casting a net wide enough to take in my inchoate musings. 

Mostly I'd just like to write about horror movies and watch the Leviathan we have unbound do what it is Leviathan does. There's not really an appropriate movie for that, but last night I watched The Shuttered Room, a 1967 take on an H.P. Lovecraft story, which shared about as much similarity to the Lovecraft story as most movies based on his writings do. It was also dubbed in Polish, running at double speed, and the scenes had been shuffled from end to beginning in many places. Which is to say it still made more sense than any of the Star Wars movies.

I saw I was mentioned in a French interview about poetry and punk rock in Rockford today. David Ensminger claimed I was a surrealist. I don't know what I am, anymore, but surrealism doesn't seem to be required any more. 

Back to the Russians. Not sure why you're here. Hell, maybe you just think I'm entertaining. I doubt that, but I must at least consider the possibility. We like some of the same things. We dislike some of the same things. 

Maybe you'll go buy some of my books at Zombie Logic Press

Wait a minute, I have to find a vaguely Russian image for the search engine...

One time I had borscht at this cafe at Colonial Village Mall. The whole thing has been turned into a prosperity church now. 

Maybe you are curious about what happens next and see that I have so far been able to predict that rather successfully.

I can tell you in all honesty that I have no idea what happens next. My work here is done. 



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Garbage Night In Rockford

With the grim news earlier in the week that police had discovered a body decomposing in a garbage can on Market Street, today's scuttlebutt that the remains had possibly been there for years gives new meaning to garbage night tonight. Jenny and I started dragging the cans to the curb last night then realized it was a garbage holiday because of the Fourth of July. 

Zombie Logic Press headquarters is a block away from the scene of the grisly discovery. Makes me feel glad I never won any of my races for Winnebago County Coroner.

Grateful that I never beat Sue Fiduccia in any of those times I ran for Winnebago County Coroner. I think I first ran for Winnebago County Coroner in 2004, but I can't remember. I decided not to run anymore now that Sue Fiduccia has retired. 

I have had two people contact me about poetry projects this week. But this week is about Jack's sixth birthday. I bought him a Super Nintendo with Super Mario Kart and the Five Nights at Freddys plushy dolls.  Pin It

Watching The Monster Club Again

The heat and humidity has returned in force, and I'm here at the apartment again for the night, and after five hours the air conditioner has barely put a dent in the humidity. It's enough to make a Shadmock whistle. 

We went to the fireworks display at Davis Park last night. Dragged Jack the entire way there in a wagon. At first he wasn't interested, but he ended up thinking it was awesome. We have to be vigilant about his ears because he has hearing loss in one ear. Had a taco, then we headed home. 

Watching The Monster Club again. tried to watch Dead Pit earlier, and I remember liking the colors in the past, but it was a German dubbed version and I couldn't get into it. I feel like I should read the book by R Chetwynd Hayes some time. Probably could be done in an evening. This is the only blog I'm working on today, and it has no point.

An unexpected thunderstorm would be nice. But I don't expect it.

If my mammy was a shammy, and my daddy was a raddy, I wonder what kind of monster I'll turn out to be. Saw some Thriller Video tapes on Ebay today that I don't have in my collection, but I'm strapped for cash. 

The Two Faces of Evil was the one I wanted the most

The Two Faces of Evil from Thriller Video

This is the only blog I still use the font Arial on. I was once quite fond of it. Now I'm largely indifferent. I really circled the drain this afternoon. All the gravity was sucked from my Universe and I almost went down the hole. But I held on. A few days ago I could have floated away, but I stayed here. I may have another cup of tea. 

oh, someone bought five copies of The Blood Dark Sea today, the book of outlaw poetry I just published, and I thought it was a mistake, so I contacted the customer and he said it was a legitimate order, he intends to give them away as gifts. A fine gift of a great book. 

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The Monster Club: There's a Two Drink Minimum, But That's Not the Bad News

The bad news is Count Dracula is the bartender!

Monsters rule OK.

I usually play The Monster Club on an almost continuous loop when I'm at the apartment. I have had the same VHS tape since 1991 when I made a copy of the Thriller Video at Video Outlet on Riverside Blvd. It was then a Taco Bell for a long time, and now, like every other building in Rockford, it is a payday lender. Also, Taco Bell was voted Rockford's #1 Mexican restaurant in a poll conducted by the biggest newspaper, and I couldn't make that up. 

Apparently this is a blog about the movie The Monster Club. This monster's genealogical chart I posted above is a holy grail collectible item for me as a Monster Club collector, and a couple of years ago I almost managed to buy it. I contacted the artist's wife, who also acts as his agent, and asked her if it still existed, and she said they had found it in the basement a few months previously after believing it was lost, and sold it to a private collector. I didn't have the heart to ask for how much because I probably would have been heart broken. She then added there were some original sketched of the ghouls used in the third story in the movie. I should have bought those, but I was so crestfallen that I had missed the chart by maybe weeks after so many years of no one caring that I went away in dejection.

I have the British quad poster, and the French poster, which has a snake on it even though there's no snake in the movie. The Thriller Video in Beta and VHS, the soundtrack, and the original book. Another item I recently passed on and regret is the graphic novel of the screenplay given to crew members at the wrap party. This one happened to be signed by Vincent Price. A bad choice not to buy it. We never remember the money, only the things we let slip away.

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The Untied Artists of Rockford

There's this very small building tucked in between two larger buildings on 7th Street here in Rockford, Illinois. For decades now 7th Street has been the street in our city known for prostitution and drug dealing. If you wanted to misbehave, you went to 7th Street. It is also remembered by older Rockfordians as a grand corridor of factories and furniture makers emblematic of their Swedish heritage and Rockford's glory days. The sound you hear me making is simulated masturbation, because those days are forty years behind us. Those grand building have been sitting and decaying for twenty-five years. A few developers own most of them, and allow them to sit and rot until they can find a way to get the public to pay them to create condos or a retail space that will soon become irrelevant because no one wants to go to Midtown because even if things are changing for the better all they remember is what they've seen on the police blotter all their lives. All of that back history related so I can say this...

This is the Untied Artists Building at 205 7th Street in Rockford, Illinois, America's 3rd most miserable, uneducated, fattest, and dangerous city.  For about a decade I have been walking by it and dreaming I'd buy it and have a creative bureau where all my favorite creators just punched in whenever they damn well felt like it and worked on whatever they wanted. Obviously that will never happen, but I can say in that past decade all of those people have done amazing work and I think they are all awesome. Oh, J painted this. I now own the Untied Artists Building, sort of.

I normally dislike small spaces and buildings, but for some reason this tiny place just captures my imagination. Last night J and I peaked in as we were on our way to Phoenix Traders to deliver copies of the latest Zombie Logic Press book The Blood Dark Sea by Dennis Gulling for his shelves. There wasn't much to see. I don't ever remember anyone being in there, or it having been open for any purpose, but of course one of the local vulture slum lords owns it and has no intention of keeping it up like a decent human being or offering it for sale so someone else can. To let the once majestic structures of a city like Rockford sit and crumble must be some sort of cosmic crime. Of course it's not the type of crime we prosecute in America. In fact, we celebrate vultures who prosper this way, because they succeed, if you call allowing neighborhoods to crumble for years, even decades so you can profiteer from them later being a successful human being.

I don't. But then again, I make things, and tend to evaluate people by what they create, teach others, and contribute to the general pool of ideas and objects that move us ever forward instead of backwards. Rockford is just one of those places that loves the past. And longs to return to a past that will never, ever exist again. The way forward is creativity, ingenuity, and accepting the fact that the world has moved on ,and as a city we need to move on with it.

What I'm pining for here was never more than a small pipe dream of mine. The adult in me knew I was never going to own a building where all my friends showed up and made whatever they wanted and people were going to give us money and everything would be a happy ending. But in that past decade those friends have been incredibly productive here in Rockford. Painters, photographers, musicians, poets, videographers, web developers, dancers, spoken word artists... so it turns out The Untied Artists Bureau is just a metaphor for the life I live already, and am so proud of and grateful for. And neighborhoods like Midtown and Downtown are now coming back. Soon we won't even be able to afford to live in the places we helped survive the darkest days of decay and paying for the sins of the past.

But that's ok, because we'll be somewhere else creating and dreaming and breathing life into places others left for dead. 

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Brother S 1500 Whisper Word Processor

Last free write of the day before I anticipate Jenny will show up and we'll head out to Spring Art Scene. I'm watch The Incredible Hulk on MeTV, and it seems like he's close to Hulking out for the first time. I wonder if the writers had a formula where they were required to make him Hulk out at least twice per episode. 

This is a Brother 1500 S Whisper word processor with an attached printer. I would like to have something like this even though I know there is no way to transfer these files digitally. Maybe I could just write up a few poems, print them out, and stuff them in an envelope the way Charles Bukowski did. 

I think I might have a tablespoon of baking soda before we head out. Sort of settle my stomach and prepare it for whatever carnage might be coming its way. Hard to tell at these art venues. Sometimes they'll be cool and have a few beers or a bottle of whiskey around, but generally its wine, which is an instant migraine headache for me. 

Set off the smoke alarm earlier making chicken wings. There was no smoke at all, I just just think it sense my panic whenever I cook and reacts. I jumped up and managed to grab it from the wall, and it stopped beeping after three sharp, shrill beeps. I ran downstairs with it and hid it under a stack of towels. Now I have to go down and get it. 

Bottom of the hour. I feel like someone is about to twist David Banner's arm within the next minute. 

"You want to fight? I'll give you a fight."

Bad idea, dipshit.

I have been wanting to watch this with Jack since it started airing on MeTV a couple of months ago, but I keep forgetting how early it is on, and tonight he's at grandmas. 

Made a list of Outlaw Poets earlier today. Running Hulk. That's it. Baking soda time.

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More Late Night Notes From an Outsider Poet

Time for one last Rockford Files tonight, which may put the cap on season number one, which I have watched in one week. 

On Friday there is a Charles Bukowski reading here in Rockford, and I think I might read. The format is that one reads their favorite Bukowski poem, followed a poem of their own. I did some recordings earlier in the week and posted them on SoundCloud. 

Also today I finished the team page for the Rockford Pages outsider poetry slam team. Looks like it has decided to snow after all outside. Doesn't make much difference to me, I have nothing scheduled this week until Friday. Just watching Rockford Files, hanging out with the kids, and creating team pages for Yakima, Walla Walla, Crested Butte, Hell, and Buttzville. 

Jim Rockford is in Las Vegas. Driving a lime green VW bug. And he got hit over the head.  Pin It

My Original Club Devo Energy Dome

I saw Devo perform live on Fridays in 1980. I flipped my lid. I was only 11, so the full context of what was going on was largely lost on me, but even then I knew it was something that applied to me and whatever it was that I am. By the time I bought Freedom of Choice at the Lincoln Mall in Freeport the next year I was savvy enough to know that a lot more was going on than just "Whip It." Thirty-five years later I drove to the post office on Harrison Street to pick up an original Club Devo energy dome. There are others like it, but this one is mine. And that was the last time I will ever put it on my head. Whipped it good.

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Johnny Cash At San Quentin LP

     Bought this album today at Toad Hall in Rockford. Short story to demonstrate how times have changed. In 1991 I walked into Toad Hall and asked if they had this album. They hadn't heard of it. Today, twenty-five years later I heard not one, but two bands in separate locations play a Johnny Cash song, then bought this album from the very place where they hadn't heard of it all those years ago. I was living in the Park Motel the week that Johnny Cash died. I can't remember a celebrity death before or since that stirred people upso much. In those roughly fifteen years he had gone from becoming a legend to punk rockers and country music fans to a cultural icon.

     Cash was the lone exception of the Outlaw Country music gang that my grandparents allowed to be played in their home. They even banished the Eddie Rabbit song "I Love a Rainy Night" because it contained the line "It makes me high," but somehow John Denver slid through. Maybe it was the glasses. Nobody ever had the heart to tell them almost everyone in country music, even their beloved Porter Wagoner, was at the very least a pill-popping alcoholic. 

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Warren Zevon Excitable Boy Iconic Inner Sleeve

     My parents and aunts and uncles all had large record collections, but there are a few artists that for some reason none of them seemed to listen to. Warren Zevon is one of those artists. Of course I would have recognized "Werewolves of London" if it came on the radio, but most of his other music I never became a fan of until I was in my thirties. 

     Today I procured Zevon's "Excitable Boy" album at Culture Shock here in Rockford. The thing that jumps out at me is the inner sleeve is a really bold concept, whereas the cover seems really boring. The album itself is anything but boring. I'm really happy to have added it to my collection. 

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Castaways On the Rock and Zombie Night

This is the logo for Castaways On the Rock, the bar my brother opened in 2005. Maybe it was 2004. It's right on the Rock River in Rockford, Illinois. I think this logo was done by either Andrew or Ryan Davis, and we just used it like dicks because I honestly didn't even know how things like that worked back then. I, Thomas L. Vaultonburg,  have about a billion stories from this bar, but I'm not going to tell them. I was the General Manager there for three years. The Rockford Rage Roller Derby league was formed there in the ladies restroom. The Downtown bars sure did steal a lot of my ideas back then, and it was amazing that we were able to get a crowd of the young, hip, and culturally aware to cross the river and walk into a dive bar under a bridge. I'm proud of the work I did there, creating events like Zombie Night, and attracting creative and bright people. Getting 250 people on a Tuesday night to go to a bar they never heard of to watch a movie like The Stuff, Hard Rock Zombies, or The Story of Ricky O is no easy task. But we did it. And others imitated. 

Poster for Zombie Night, created by Andrew Davis. Those days were sort of my Camelot. Brief, but powerful, and filled with moment. 

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Taking Responsibility For Misery In Rockford, Illinois

For all actions there is an equal and opposite reaction. One of the laws of physics. Maybe. I'm not a physicist, but I'm certain I've heard that somewhere before. The poet John Keats had a similar concept for dealing with the negative. He called it negative capability, and the general gist of that is creation involves what you do with the empty, negative spaces the Universe offers you. You can see them as empty, dark places, or as opportunities to create something where nothing existed before. To do this one needs to ignore the boundaries and boxes we too often feel we're confined by. Blow up the paradigm. 

It's almost never in this life you're given a perfectly operating widget factory with no defects and all you're asked to do is sit in your office and press a button when you want coffee. No. No one ever hands you the keys to the New York Yankees and a blank check and says "just win." If you want to succeed at anything more than likely you'll do it from humble beginnings, without much help from anyone else, and often you'll encounter criticism and challenges from those who say either it can't be done, or it shouldn't be done.

That said, this blog is about Rockford, Illinois, and the Misery Loves Company of The Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

No, actually this blog is about me. Someone I knew once gave me a St. Jude medallion because with the amount of hopeless and forsaken causes I champion they thought I needed all the help I could get. One time at Castaways, the bar my brother and I owned, we were literally working under three inches of water because of flooding, and I lost that medallion. A few weeks later it flooded again, and St. Jude popped up from the abyss I thought it had disappeared into. 

What's the point? None, really, I just detect an resemblance between the advertising campaign I designed for Castaways, a bar that had been largely forsaken and left for dead under a bridge, and the RACVB's campaign Misery Loves Company. Here's one of the radio spots I wrote.

When I wrote that spot I had been given what seemed like an impossible task. To get people to come to a dive bar under a bridge with a tradition of being seedy, unpleasant, and crowded with unfriendly drunks. Did my campaign work? Well, no, because it was impossible, but I can say 7 years later that location has been revitalized and made relevant again. I was charged with reversing a negative image and making it into a positive.

It's not easy to change public perception. Especially a deeply ingrained, negative public perception. I can understand what the RACVB was thinking when they devised the Misery Loves Company Campaign, but I don't think it works. Because words have meanings. And your audience tends to tune you out these days before you get to your punchline. If I say "Bill Clinton is a terrible womanizer and the best President we've had in recent history," what most people will remember is that I just admitted, or asserted, that Bill Clinton is a womanizer. Everyone who already believes that is going to use that to re-affirm what they already believed, and almost everyone else is going to be checking their Twitter before you finish with your message. 

Another reason I find the campaign to be a mistake is that the RACVB is trying to assume the role of the underdog, or the put upon little guy fighting the big machine, but these are the people who comprise the machine. At least the local machine. They don't understand the true struggle of people who are oppressed, forsaken, or marginalized by the prevailing system. they ARE the ones who messed it up in the first place, now they want to make a joke as if they're clever. And it rings as dull as a bell of lead. A better tack, in my opinion, would be to accept their large role in creating the very conditions they now want to lampoon, apologize, then promise to do better. Sure, humor can be part of that, but if my surgeon cuts off the wrong leg the last thing I want to hear from him/her is a joke. If you want to do comedy, hit one of the open mic comedy nights here in Rockford.

It's an added insult to an injury for which you were largely responsible.

This community needs Sully Sullenberger, not the Italian Cruise ship captain who needed to be ordered back on the boat by authorities. 

I understand the idea behind this campaign. Hell, it's almost identical to the one I tried to use to turn around a business with a long history of mismanagement, but in my campaign I wasn't saying my business sucked, I was saying it didn't suck. I didn't allow the listeners first contact with my product to be an admission of failure. After an admission like that your punchline is irrelevant. You already told us what you thought about your own city. 

Words have meanings. Here's another example from Rockford, Illinois.

Now this is just an unfortunate and careless thing to let people you're trying to convert see. True, I'm hypersensitive to the juxtaposition of language and images, being a poet, and I did see this banner about a million more times than your average Rockford citizen, but until you stop doing things like this you're going to be mocked. 

An old cliche says that all publicity is good publicity, even when it's bad, but mockery is never good. be defiant, yes, and people might take up for you because you're fighting back in the face of hopeless odds, but be a smartass when you're trying to evade responsibility and people will skewer you. And that's how this campaign feels to me and a lot of the creative types I know who actually work in this city trying to create and just doing our best to get by.

Maybe your campaign will be successful. I'd have preferred to see something like what the American auto industry had to do when they fessed up to making crappy cars and getting outworked and outdesigned by the Japanese for a long time, but the difference makers in this town don't seem interested in shouldering the blame for anything. The ship went down. You were at the helm. Apologize and start looking outside the myopic cadre of cohorts who seem to be exercising too much influence and using too little judgement to be trusted in the future.

Scrap this ill-conceived campaign, apologize, accept responsibility, then have a real meeting with the creative types of Rockford. The types of people out there populating the art scene, the music scene, opening stores and restaurants, small businesses of every type. You've ignored them for too long, and your tone deafness has led to this heaping on of criticism from the national media. The national media has no bone to pick with Rockford. They couldn't care any less. They're just reporting facts. And John Keats would advise you to use that assessment as a motivation to change the paradigm, flip the script, and make Shinola out of this mountain of shit.

2026 Update: what I could never say about this blog is my friend Andrew made a website shortly after this documenting all the real misery going on in Rockford, from the homelessness to the urban blight, and the weasel cocksucker who designed this moronic campaign came to his job at a news station and leaned on his bosses to either make him take the website down or fire him. He took the website down. But it was a weasel cocksucker move and par for the course for the corrupt Chamber of Commerce types we have here who still ignore all forms of real misery but their own while stuffing their pockets from the public coffer. 

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