Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

New York is screaming Christmas this evening in all of the unpleasant ways I dislike, the fake glitz and glamour, tinny music, anxious and irritable passersby, the myriad things that make the season a garish shop-extravaganza rather than time to slow down a little and notice the beauty of miniscule details. Or it was until I stepped into Starbucks, where the music seems muted by comparison to what's blaring  off of the streets.

It's probably not bad at all, actually, I should keep some perspective. I had a gorgeous Thanksgiving weekend with my family upstate, as my previous posts indicate. Relaxation, laughter, the incredible feast associated with a harvest festival of bounty and gratitude and delight. Family and friends, hobbies and music, good reading and games. Yesterday was the first time I actually haven't wanted to come home since moving to the city.

Not that I don't love New York with every cellular fiber of my body. Not that I don't adore my little home, and my never-what-I-expect neighborhood. Not that I didn't have an absolutely spectacular day at work, with awesome colleagues and tremendous partnerships. But I love my family, and without them the city is a little lonely.  Without the 8 people who mean most, 8 million strangers are a little lacking.

Good thing my friends invited me out to play, or I might get maudlin.

the drowning deep

One of the reasons I love music is because it tells a story.  It's a soundtrack and a score, mood-setting and the hint of inspiration on the air.  When I got home this evening after a crazy trip that took two hours longer than it should have, I spent some time surfing YouTube for entertaining videos.  I found a terrific fanvid for Torchwood, set to Vienna Teng's Harbor, which I've never heard before but am totally mesmerized by.

We're here where the daylight begins
The fog on the streetlight slowly thins
Water on water's the way
The safety of shoreline fading away

Sail your sea
Meet your storm
All I want is to be your harbor
The light in me
Will guide you home
All I want is to be your harbor

Fear is the brightest of signs
The shape of the boundary you leave behind
So sing all your questions to sleep
The answers are out there in the drowning deep

You've got a journey to make
There's your horizon to chase
So go far beyond where we stand
No matter the distance
I'm holding your hand

Sail your sea
Meet your storm
All I want is to be your harbor
The light in me
Will guide you home
All I want is to be your harbor

You're only one once

Earlier this evening we celebrated the first birthday of my twin nephews, Liam and Rory.  The evening, in photos:

Post-nap, pre-party giggles with Pip

Presents!

Trying on new clothes with Money (Mommy)

Freddy: "Why are they playing with my new Thomases? They're too little!"

A Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake from Grammy and Pappy

(Liam went right for the blue frosting, fingers first.)

War paint! Liam quickly became our own little William Wallace.

.3 seconds before Rory double-fisted the cake into his ears.

Bathtime, but the blue still lingers!

Rory's making a break for it!

Clean and happy after bathtime, sporting new jammies from Aunt Donna

Playing with the new ball game from Aunt Mer

Freddy: "You mean none of them are for me?"

Random

I've spent the last two days visiting with family, engrossed in conversation about everything under the sun, eating vast quantities of really fantastic food.  Typical Thansgiving weekend celebrations -- although my Nana's pumpkin pie is quite possibly the best in the entire world, and I pity those who don't have the opportunity to enjoy it each year.  I've spent most of the time with crochet hooks and yarn in my hands, furiously stitching through the pile of Christmas gifts I'm working on, which are in most cases still balls of yarn and paper patterns.  This evening I finished items for three of eight people on my list, and can't wait until Christmas so that I can share photos and show off the details.

Except that I have five more people to make things for, and less than thirty days in which to get it all done -- so I'm rather hoping for a magical stretching of daily hours, so I can fit more in.  Good thing I'm taking Fridays off between now and the end of December; I'll need the extra stitching hours!

Since I can't actually talk about or share images, here's one of my favorite photos of home:

From Favorites

That's one of the trees in the backyard of my parents' house in Malta, NY. I'm rather hoping for major snow in the next twenty-four hours, so I can see snow-tipped branches before heading back to Brooklyn on Sunday morning.

Giving Thanks

My last two posts were about thankfulness of a nontraditional sort; today being Gratitude Day, it's time for the more expected bits.

I'm thankful for my family, scattered wide and far though they may be, and for the hard-won wisdom that blood may tie you to kin, but a family of love is tied far deeper.  And that, while most children irritate and annoy me endlessly, my little dudes are the best, most loving, funniest little miniature people in the world.

I'm thankful for my friends, scattered farther and wider, separated by continents and oceans, and for the new ones I've made in my new town.  It's been a big, hard year for many, and a year of shifting priorities for some of us. I'm especially thrilled to have seen Emily and Nicole (girl, you need a real website) and Phoebe as often as I did and that the "twenty years of friendship" celebration continues through year's end.

I'm thankful for my amazing job that I love more than any hobby or general notion of "fun," for the opportunity to do great, big things every day, to (however slowly) effect change in a way that improves life and health and opportunity for vast numbers of people here in the States and eventually around the world. I'm thankful for tremendously smart, motivated, fun-loving colleagues who work harder than any other group of people I know, and for continuous opportunties to grow and develop and change.

I'm thankful for my new city, for the drive and the energy and the bustle and the opportunity, for the best and the worst of humanity on view at every street corner. I'm thankful for the courage and opportunity to have packed up and moved to a place where it's tremendously difficult to eke out a living and tough to make friends, and to be succeeding reasonably well at both.

I'm thankful to be growing older with some modicum of grace (I think?), with the knowledge that forgiveness is tough to offer but worth it, that grudges and anger and resentment are worth letting go of even when they seem like comfortable companions. I still need to work on finding value in "dealing with stupid people," but that may take the next ten years; I'm thankful to have found a few scattered shreds of patience to help me along.

So, people to love who love me, security and opportunity and adventure, and personal growth and development. That's a LOT to be thankful for.

...what we stay alive for.

Tonight I'm glad for those qualities of life that are anything but frivolous.

Irony, and the subtlety to appreciate dry wit and wry humour.

Desire -- the power to ascertain the difference between what is and what we would like to see or be or do or have -- and the presence of mind to work for our aspirations.

Science, Music, Art, and Story, the products of human creation that make our world -- by which I mean the past and present and future human civilization, and not precisely this planet earth -- more beautiful, and by virtue of their origins cast a clear lamp on our baser natures, inspiring us each to become our best selves.

Hope, the power to work for a tenuous promise, believing that what we do and think and say and give and dream and strive for matters.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

- Robin Williams as John Keating, Dead Poets Society

That Leaves of Grass is my travel reading.

I'm grateful to be alive and human and educated and fortunate, and to know how miraculous each of those things truly is.

The Whirl of Gaiety

I'm glad for frivolous things. For the luxurious joy that comes from an item or a pastime or an expression that has no purpose but to provide pleasure. For erudite clothing catalogs and jangling-ly musical cat collar tags and brass hooks that screw into ceiling beams and carved picture frames and twinkling lights on Christmas trees and lipstick and demi-bras and ballet-neck tees and cloth napkins hemmed by hand and fresh cut roses and 13-piece brass bands. And rhymes I don't notice until they're already made. For walking and talking and laughing and getting lost and getting found and hot cider and sweet tea and warm cookies. And ponies.

I'm glad for serious things, too, but that's a subject for another day.

Aviatrix

I'm reading Amelia Earhart's "Last Flight," the chronicle she kept of what was to be her equatorial round-tbe-world solo flight in her red and gold Lockheed Electra.  I've always been half in love with her, but this read might put me over the edge.

"On the left side [of the pilot's seat] there was another little cabinet in which were stored my tools. I don't use hairpins so I have to carry regular tools!" (p 12).

I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do

While cleaning yesterday and cooking today, I've been listening almost exclusively to a friend's playlist -- one that I hijacked for myself and then adapted a bit.  A different group of musicians than I usually listen to, let alone pair together -- Chumbawumba, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Barenaked Ladies, T.I., Nickelback, Jace Everett -- combined with tracks from Wicked and RENT and the Resurrection version of Jesus Christ Superstar (starring the Amy Ray as Jesus).

I like what happens to my thought-process when I intentionally change up the external influences on my internal monologue.  I'm feeling incredibly animated and talkative right now, though whether that's because I've altered the bits of other people's thoughts that I'm puzzling over or whether I'm finally getting back into the balanced groove of time-with-others vs time-with-myself -- I'm not sure.

Ponderings aside, when it comes to music I'm always surprised at what lines my mind sticks to, worrying over phrases and sentence structure and composed meter and implicit meaning like hangnails.

Too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost

Well if that's love it comes at much too high a cost

 - Wicked (This line is the heart of the entire show, for me)

It's just like deja vu, me standing here with you
So I'll be holding my own breath

- Nickelback, Gotta Be Somebody

But I don't tend to worry 'bout the things that other people say
And I'm learning that I wouldn't want it any other way
Call me crazy but it really doesn't matter

- Barenaked Ladies, Life, In a Nutshell

Suspended under a twilight canopy
We'll search the clouds for a star to guide us

- The Fifth Dimension, Up, Up and Away

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue

- The Rolling Stones, Paint it Black

Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

- David Bowie, Major Tom

What have you been listening to today?

Title is a line from my favorite song, Savage Garden's Affirmation, which I add to almost every playlist I create.

It's not that easy 'cuz my time is often decided for me

One of the few drawbacks of living alone is that when a household crisis rears its head, there's no one to whom I can delegate part of the "dealing with it" work.

Earlier this week we had some problems with leaky drainage hoses running from two of the dishwashers in my building. Due to age and normal wear and tear, the hoses cracked, creating a leak that slowly flooded the basement and garden level flat.  My landlord spent the day in the building with plumbers, replacing hoses, reaffixing parts, resetting the appliances, and cleaning up the mess downstairs, and by 8 on Tuesday night when I got home from work, everything was fine.

Fast forward to yesterday. I came home from work laden down with groceries, thrilled to have a quiet night with no obligations ahead of me.  It had been a busy, stressful week and I'd planned a full weekend of work and play; I wasn't feeling fabulous, so made a quick dinner, read for awhile, and went to bed.  Before turning in, I thought nothing of straightening the kitchen and running the dishwasher.  Bad idea.

At 1:26 this morning I woke up, bleary-eyed and still with a dizziness-inducing headache, to a hideous scratching noise on the wall of the hallway outside my apartment.  For a moment I panicked, thinking I'd locked one of my cats out and she was desperately trying to get back in by clawing her way through the wall. (Knowing Stumpy, that's a legitimate fear; the crazy little beast could claw her way through granite.) I stumbled out of bed and to the door, flipping all of the locks and wrenching it open -- to find my landlord and downstairs neighbor systematically dismantling my doorframe in an effort to get in to my apartment to turn off the water valve.  They'd been calling me for four hours -- and I'd turned the phones off so I could sleep -- and thought I was out of town, leaving a flood behind.

Once I got over the shock and found the lightswitch/my glasses, they came in and we surveyed the damage.  There was a gigantic puddle of water stretching all across the kitchen and into the bathroom.  My cats, behaving like unruly three-year-olds, had batted all of their toys (including the ones they had to pull out from underneath the sofa) into the puddle, and then scratched paw-fulls of litter out of their litterbox to follow.  The cupboards beneath the sink were flooded and the trash can, which had been positioned (fortunately? unfortunately?) under the sink right beneath the intake valve for the hose, was full of water.  Sam and Devon moved the dishwasher -- and the stove, for good measure -- well away from the wall so we could see the problem.  The hose that Sam had so painstakingly observed the plumber reinstalling had been wrenched out of its fittings by the force of the water raging through it.

Solving the problem would be easy; turn off the valve, stopper the fittings, coil the hose, and don't use the dishwasher until Sam could arrange for someone from Frigidaire to come service the unit. I believe his exact words were "screw the average plumber," but I can't be certain -- I was barely conscious.

Cleanup was anything but easy.  Have you ever tried to scrape a metric ton of water-logged, clay-based cat litter off of a tile floor?  I'll leave the process to your imagination.  Suffice it to say that 8-hours later my cats have new toys and new food and a new litterbox filled with a fresh layer of new corn-based litter, several trees worth of sodden paper towels are filling two garbage bags sitting outside awaiting trash day pick-up, I've scrubbed down the oven and dishwasher completely, have thoroughly dried the kitchen cabinets (with a hair-dryer once the water was sopped up), shopped to replace everything that once lived beneath the sink, used an entire bottle of Mrs Meyer's concentrate (that would be ten bottles-worth of double-strength cleanser) to scrub every surface in both rooms, and have something resembling a clean and sparkling flat.

I've accomplished none of the tasks I actually need to finish before Monday, missed the Brooklyn gallery tour this afternoon, rescheduled tomorrow's date for Tuesday, and am still exhausted -- but there's a teeny-tiny violin playing a terribly sad song for me somewhere; I'll buck up and stop listening to it soon enough.  The good news is that my pre-holiday top-to-bottom housecleaning is finished. Now I'm going to sit still with a great deal of paperwork and try to be productive.

How was your Saturday?

The world between a pair of paper covers

Alexander McCall Smith is one of my favorite fiction writers. His novels are like pie; sweet and hearty and dessert-like in the best ways, able to be enjoyed practically effortlessly, but with some good-for-you ingredients baked right in.

I first started reading his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, about Precious Ramotswe of Botswana, Africa, and the assorted family and friends she's collected about her, and the way that she uses compassionate common sense to solve everyday "mysteries" in a world where the qualities of life that she has always known and loved and respected are quickly becoming old-fashioned and fading away.

Then I found the Isabel Dalhousie series, starring a modest-about-it independently wealthy philospher who struggles to reconcile the irrationale desires of the people around her with what she logically knows to be true.

Most recently, though, I've found the 44 Scotland Street series, a set of novels that follows a motley group of individuals who happen toshare flats in the same building throughout their daily trials and tribulations, and the way that their lives remain inter-related even when they no longer share a common address. There's Pat; a pretty but flighty university student, who moves into Edinburgh proper when she finds flat space available with Bruce; a dashing young man who is quickly revealed to be an egotistical narcissistic, ass who can't see
for true what contempt the world holds him in. Their flat is across the hall from that owned by Domenica; a blue-stocking cultural anthropologist who struggles to keep a sharp tongue under the tight reign demanded of those who should "merely observe" without impacting the behavior of those they study.

Domenica's dearest friend is Angus Lordie; a lonely and deeply sympathetic painter who inhabits The Cumberland Bar and Big Lou's Coffee Shop in equal measures, always with his faithful, beer-guzzling dog Cyril in tow.  Angus' friend Matthew is a gentle man who's never quite succeeded at any endeavor he's attempted, and takes small comfort from the fact that his family fortune ensures he need never work at all. Matthew's latest scheme is an art gallery, which he's purchased and stocked with the work of local talent, and which he staffs with an Art History student from Edinburgh College -- young Pat from 44 Scotland St. Pat's history of falling in love and allowing herself to be taken advantage of by highly unsuitable men brings out all of Matthew's gentlemanly protective instincts and despite an appalling lack of chemistry, they begin dating. With Pat to manage the gallery, Matthew spends more time with Angus at Big Lou's where the two men struggle to protect the proprietress from her too-trusting nature and those who would swindle her.  Together, the three mourn the fate of young Bertie, the six year-old child prodigy forced into Saxophone lessons, private Italian instruction, and daily psychotherapy sessions by his domineering, horrific mother.  Together with Bertie's mild-mannered, adoring but beaten-down father, Stuart, the family inhabits the first floor of 44 Scotland St.

Each volume improves on the prior one, with the most hysterical comedy lurking just off the page, for Smith is an expert at choosing just what to say, and what to share by implication and a lowering of the curtain on the stage.  Light-hearted personal drama designed to make the reader laugh and and dialogue inspiring us to ponder a few conundrums (what is piracy in the 21st Century, exactly, and what is an appropriate response to it from an educated populace?) provide a lovely escape to a place not all that far from home and the everyday.

Sidenote: I'm thrilled to be pulling out all of the Christmas texts for bedtime short-story reading over the next month!

Bad is good and good is bad, sacred is profane

One of my favorite stage musicals is Jekyll & Hyde. An expansive story  that insists on grayscale when the premise is a black-and-white dichotomy, harmonies so close you can't squeeze between them, a boring  ingenue who isn't quite as boring as she seems at first glance set against a fascinating "dark lady" who's not nearly as dark as she would have us believe, a chorus of minor characters who are gloriously  dark-comedy, an incredible pyrotechnics show surrounding a hidden-mirror transformation just right of center stage, duets and quartets sung by characters who never meet, and approximately ten  zillion subtle intricacies that make us question which character or opinion or line or note or syllable or breath is supposed to be "good"  and which "evil" with every listen. Not to mention Linda Eder, whom I adore, and saw in the first National tour and with the Original Broadway Cast.

It's a show that's not without serious flaws, chief among them too many subplots, some not meaty enough to hold attention during a *very* long running time.  And yet, having heard the concept album (come on, Colm Wilkinson and Linda Eder? Be still my heart.), having fallen in love with and pretty well memorized the orginal Gothic Thriller version, and having seen the Broadway version and listened closely to the "original cast" recording (which I loathe), I can't help but be disappointed by how thin the "new" story seems in some places.  And I will never forgive the renaming of "Lisa" to "Emma", even if it was done for the purely practical reason of being indiscernible from "Lucy" in the more cavernous theatres.  (But then, I never forgive intentional loss-of-subtlety, and believe that talented actors should be more than capable of compensating for difficult language.) I do like that there are fewer "oh, if only" ballads in the final version, though.

I've been unable to not listen to it of late; was my soundtrack through several plane rides, several subway rides, a coding project or two, and a mad sing-dance around my apartment this evening.  It fits the 'nothing's absolute' mind-funk I've been in lately, and suits my terribly black mood of the last two days.

And for all that, I've never read the book. I don't think I even own a copy, actually.  Shall have to rectify that sometime. Soon.

Musical Theatre folks, what are your opinions?

Somewhere I know there's a someday that's just for me...

Entertainment and Ethics, What Fun!

When I was living with my parents last autumn, they completely hooked me into their weekly television line-up. While I'm not hugely invested in many things now, NCIS is still at the top of my must-see list every week.

Stealing (with permission!) a commentary format from my friend Sam, here are Lissa's 3 Things About NCIS. (Click in to read them; blind jump used to protect those who prefer to avoid spoilers, though I don't think there's much that's actually spoilery.)

1940s

Woke up to no water this morning, and just learned that my landlord will be spending the day in my building trying to determine why the poor guy in the garden level flat experiences a flood whenever the rest of us turn on a faucet.  Trying not to fret over how I'll wash my hair tonight if he doesn't manage to fix it today.

In other news, having reached the halfway point in NaBloPoMo, I find that I'm running thin on things to write about. Today's post is thus a response to a "Writer's Block" question courtesy of Livejournal.

If you could go back in time to another decade, which decade would you choose and why? Would you want to return or stay there?

Without hesitation I would choose the 1940s. There was just such an overwhelming sense of self-reliance throughout the Western world, pockets of bravery and help-thy-neighbor regardless of the cost to
one's self. A strong work ethic was one of the general hallmarks of the era, and that is possibly the most important social constructs for me -- I have no patience or sympathy for people who don't want to work
for what they want. There was incredible excitement about discovery, too -- aeroplanes, scientific research and medicine, the burgeoning of social theorism and its implications for art and literature and sociology. It would have been a fantastically rich time to be alive and culturally aware.

Of course, part of my love of this decade comes from my historical fascination with World War II, and from overly romanticized films shot in black and white. I'm sure I would be horrified at the reality of being a woman and a lesbian then, considering the present social climate, though. So I would most definitely return to present day. (I wouldn't mind manipulating temporal shifts to completely erase the years that W held office, though.)

Myrtle

My walk home tonight felt like I was part of a film set in 1940s London, when those who could were fleeing the city to avoid the blitz. A line of people got off the train, most of us wearing walking shoes, and woolen winter coats, most carrying packages -- groceries, dry cleaning, briefcases -- and heading home for the night. It was very dark by 6:30, and the trees lining the street and throughout the park were denuded, their leaves covering the sidewalks in a shifting carpet. The streetlights in my neighborhood are old fashioned, gaslight style, or globes, all with a soft white or yellow glow that conceals as much as it illuminates.

It was lovely, in a nearly make-believe way, but nice to come in from, too.

I bought myself flowers on Saturday. I'd been thinking about it for a month, usually on my way home from work the night before I was to board an airplane bound for somewhere far enough away that I wouldn't have a chance to enjoy them prior to the inevitable death that accompanies chopping the stem from the roots.

On my way through the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, I saw people everywhere cradling enormous bouquets of super-fragrant Eucalyptus. It was raining - more of a hazy mist than an honest rain, just enough to coat the leaves with a touch of moisture. I was thrilled to learn that my favorite farm, Wilklow Orchards, was supplying the bunches -- their products are fantastic, and remind me of Lakeside upstate. When I moseyed to the table after volunteering with FGCP, I collected an enormous bunch and toted it home with my cider,  doughnuts, and pears (I'll snag the spiced tomato jam for spreading on hot-from-the-oven bread next week).

True, Eucalyptus isn't a flower, precisely. But it's a gorgeous plant, has a wonderfully fresh, healthy smell, and creates a stunning arrangement atop my jelly cabinet, easily seen as soon as I open the door.

Baking Day

My new favorite cake recipe is one that I first made in early October, as a harvest-themed Birthday Cake for two dear friends who were visiting.  It's warm and rich and hearty and inviting, and because it's apple-and-cinnamon based, it works well as dessert or breakfast.  And it keeps beautifully -- tastes even better the second day than it does the first.

Apple Dapple Bundt Cake, adapted from Food.com

• 2-1/2 c flour
• 1-1/2 t baking powder
• 1-1/2 t baking soda
• 1-1/2 t salt
• 1 T cinnamon
• 2 c sugar
• 1/2 c brown sugar, lightly packed
• 4 eggs
• 1 t double-strength Madagascar bourbon vanilla
• 1 c apple butter
• 4 c firm, tart apples (Greening or Granny Smith -- sweeter varieties make the cake much too sugary)
• 3/4 c pecan halves
• 1/2 c powdered sugar, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a large Bundt pan; set aside.
   
   
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon; set aside.
   
   
3. Combine sugars, eggs, vanilla, and apple butter; mix with a wooden spoon to uniform smoothness.
   
   
4. Peel, core, and dice the apples, tossing the dice directly into the sugar mixture. Stir together until the apple pieces are evenly distributed.
   
   
5. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture, stirring until evenly combined. 
   
   
6. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, distributing evenly and smoothing the top.  Place the pecan halves in a single, even layer across the top of the pan.  (Pecan halves are far more effective than crushed pecans, as this will become the bottom of the cake after removal from the pan.)
   
   
7. Bake for an hour at 350 degrees. When finished, place the pan on a wire rack to cool for fifteen minutes, then remove to a cake plate. Sift powdered sugar over the top of the cake. Serve warm, with whipped cream, creme fraiche, or cold sliced fruits.
   

talent + skill + effort

I might have mentioned, once or twice, that I love music.

I wasn't yet two when Santa Claus placed pianosaurus under the Christmas Tree, promising hours of melodious banging to torment my poor parents. That was followed by a record player with a sing-along microphone when I was four, major anticipation of kindergarten music classes at five, mastery of the recorder and xylophone by eight, saxophone lessons that started when I was nine, placement in select and all-county chorales in middle and high school, a summer spent at music camp, private voice lessons and chamber choir all through college, performing with oratorio societies in my mid-twenties and picking up independent guitar lessons a couple of years ago. I have spent thousands of hours playing, singing, reading, and listening to music.

For all that, I'm not terrific. I have a great voice, and I've cultivated it well, but that's a talent far more than a skill.  I'm precise about playing instruments well -- I learn the correct posture and embrochure, and a variety of fingerings for all notes (rather than just the one that's easiest). I can pace breathing and the slightest change in volume and intensity quite well when I'm conducted by someone who's passionate about the piece, or when performing a solo. But I don't play or sing with any real understanding of theory. Fourths, Fiths, Minor Falls, Major Lifts -- I don't know what any of those elements are, or how they come together, or how the placement of one within a piece impacts the rest of it. I can't communicate with other musicians about them, or about any concept of craft, really, with a vast comprehension. I've learned what I know through mimicry -- developing an ear for what note intervals sound and feel like, developing muscle memory so that I can deliver a line or piece perfectly over and over again.

Example: Tece Voda, Tece is a Czech-Slovak folk song, written for three women's voices.  I've sung it many times with different partners, always on the contralto line (I have a soprano range, but a dark molasses tone that's well-suited for anchoring a trio or quartet of female voices), in both English and Czech. Pulling out the sheet music now and singing the intro a cappella this morning, I'm certain I've hit the key change and delivered the notes perfectly even without accompaniment or other singers -- because I sing the solo line, count the rests while hearing the piano accompaniment in my head, slightly drop my right shoulder, turn my head to the left, and come in with a voiced, half-step triplet-counted arpeggio on the contralto line -- as I've done hundreds of times before.  But even though I've taken dozens of tests and sat through multiple lessons and am staring intently at the sheet music, I can't tell you what key the piece is written in, or what the intervals between my line and the others mean (let alone what chords they create). I memorize and deliver, but with no knowledge of theory my power of improvisation is non-existent.

In my sophomore year of high school, a new band instructor was hired.  Tracy was a saxophonist, and I was thrilled to be able to learn from someone who saw my chosen instrument as one of actual importance in a symphonic or orchestral setting, rather than one to be glossed over.  She pulled challenging pieces of baroque and other classical music for the symphonic band to play and spent hours transposing horn parts to be played by the saxophone sections, so that we would be engaged in the music, rather than voicing 64-bars of tied whole notes at a time. She also started a true jazz band -- a 13-piece big band ensemble with 5 saxophones, trumpets, trombones, clarinet, piano, percussion, and solo voice -- rather than the four-piece sax quartet that had been our "band" previously.

I worked harder to master the work Tracy gave us than on anything else that I studied in the three years that she was my teacher.  Certainly harder than I did at Physics and Trigonometry, which I loathed, and English which came easily.  I regularly skipped gym class to spend time practicing in the instrument closet.  (I came dangerously close to being unable to graduate because of cutting that "class" every week senior year. Since I'd given up a year's worth of study halls to audit other classes, it was clear to every adult in that building just where my priorities lay; they were merciful and gave me a passing mark anyway.)

I also worked pretty much nonstop on the audition pieces for seat placement each year.  Junior year was the hardest; the sax players had to perform 16 bars of a brightly toned prestissimo that hit into the uppermost register, where the keys are palmed and difficult to voice with true clarity.  I worked at it for three solid weeks.  I played well at the audition -- not perfectly, by any means, but better than most of the others in the room, and quite well considering my natural talent and the fact that we hadn't really been coached on the line.  I was devastated when the seat announcements were made and I was placed fifth chair. I knew that I had played my best, that I had practiced harder and performed better than each of the people in the second, third, and fourth, and couldn't understand why I'd been overlooked.  I didn't cry in school that day (a pretty major feat considering that my emotional floodgates were barely dammed as an adolescent), just put my head down and concentrated on anything that wasn't music, and by the time I got home I'd convinced myself it was just another high school thing that didn't really matter. I don't think I let on to anyone how truly hurt and upset I was.

The following week, I was the only saxophonist to show up for my lesson, and Tracy took the opportunity to explain her rationale of seat assignments to me.

  "You played very well, and I could tell that you were working hard to master the piece. This is difficult stuff, and you did a great job; better than almost all of the other students."
  "Then why am I fifth? I have to play the second line, the lower notes, the boring rhythms. If I'm so much better, why can't I play in the first section?"
  "Because I need someone who is responsible and talented to sit first-second.  You're not fifth chair, you're first chair of the second section."
  I shrugged at her, and stared at the music on my stand.
  "You're a leader, even when you don't try to be. Other kids look to what you're doing, and they follow your example. You're responsible and hard-working, and that's what I want the saxophone players to be. That's why you're a first chair."

I didn't believe her. I wasn't pretty or popular like the kids everyone else claimed to look up to. I wasn't talented enough to ever be a star and demand attention. I was a super-smart nerd who didn't care if that wasn't cool. I didn't give a damn about being a leader, or whether anyone else thought that following me was the way to get ahead; I just wanted to be good.

Fast-forward fourteen years.

I spent the last week at a Leadership conference in Atlanta; the first step in a two-year program of personal development.  I met absolutely amazing people, some of the best and brightest minds at the American Cancer Society, all with extraordinary talents and skills; I'm thrilled to already call some of them my friends.

I've taken assessment tests, pored over feedback from people who know my work well and were generous with their time and willing to share it.  I've participated in activities and exercises designed to frustrate, designed to overwhelm, designed to bring out the best and the worst in us. I've thought about my current job and my career prospects, my talents and my skills, what I want to do and where I want to go and what's holding me back.

I still don't like this notion of being a leader.

I'd rather be exceptionally good at what I do, deliver the best possible results in any given situation, and improve on them 100% the second time around -- and that takes so much time and energy that I can't begin to figure out how I can manage anything else at the same time.  Behind the scenes, head down, not the center of attention or the most important person in the room. I'd rather do the job and leave the figureheading to someone else.

My coach indicated that I should probably work to expand my notion of leadership, to think beyond the public face associated with ideas. To come up with a list of behind the scenes leaders whom I look up to, from whom I learn.  I'll work on that, but it's going to be a long process.  Because when I get right down to the end question, I still just want to be good.

big tall terrible awesome scary wonderful

When you're way up high and you're own your own in a world like none that you've ever known, where the sky is lead and the earth is stone, you're free to do whatever pleases you...

~ "Giants In the Sky," Stephen Sondheim

Three years ago, I installed a wireless router in my townhouse just outside of Saratoga Springs. I moved around the house with my laptop and blackberry, inviting friends over to play with their iPhones, enamored with both the novelty of untethered access and what in intimated.  I knew in-house wireless was a harbinger of things to come, imagining a day when wireless connectivity to the internet would extend worldwide, free of boundaries like geography and lateral space.

Tonight, I am sitting in seat 34D on Delta Flight 1792 from Atlanta, Georgia to New York's LaGuardia Airport. Typing this blog entry, live and in-person, from 10,000 feet above the surface of the earth. 

I've just used the first half of my flight to submit my Benefits Enrollment selection for 2010 -- as mundane and non-novel a task as I can imagine from my slate of daily activities. How ordinary. How normal. How tremendously, awesomely, futuristically cool.

Home Organization

My upstairs neighbor had a thought-provoking Facebook status update over the weekend: How many shoes pile up by your front door by the end of the week? (Okay, it may be thought-provoking only if you enjoy domestic
puzzles as I do.)

I found it interesting because that's one of the house issues I don't have.  (Dozens of others, though...) Shoes -- and the dirt they track into a house -- are one of the things that drive me insane, so I step inside, take off my shoes, shake them off, and place them on the rack in my closet without letting them touch the floor elsewhere. When I have house guests, I'm constantly fighting the urge to snatch up a broom and sweep up minute amounts of dirt and dust, and the cat hair that inevitably finds it's way onto the floor thirty seconds after I put away the dustpan.

What are your housekeeping idiosyncrasies?

Book Review: Wandering Home

For the last few week's I've kept Bill McKibben's essay, Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks, in my purse, for reading on the subway.  This is the first bit of nonfiction that's inspired me to pick up a pencil and underline or notate as I read since I left grad school 6 years ago.  I've taken extensive notes on material for work, of course, but this is the first bit of writing in a good long while that inspired me to keep a collection of my thoughts as I read. Which says something for both the depth and compelling vision of McKibben's argument.

Bill McKibben isn't spoken of by the average person, or even the majority of environmentalists, as a hopeful, inspiring guy.  He's better known for damning treatises on the inevitability of peak oil and dire warnings against the dangers of genetic engineering -- serious, frightening topics that don't inspire confidence or self-reliance in a reader, particularly when delivered in the part chastise/part rant tone McKibben is fond of. And yet, this piece of writing is powerfully hopeful.  Wandering Home is a travel journal, chronicling a hike that McKibben made from Mount Abraham on the eastern edge of Vermont's Champlain Valley to Crane Mountain in the southern Adirondacks. His particular journey takes place within his mind as well as across the valley, across the lake, across the state line, up and down mountains.

We're introduced to people -- characters in the best sense -- whom McKibben has worked and lived with; farmers, Middlebury professors, writers, geologists, birders, trackers, and hunters, some of whom have never left the tiny towns they were born in, others of whom have traveled the world over to find home. We're treated to stories: the first hike McKibben made with his daughter, Sophie, when she was four years old and insisted on taking every step herself; the mad stage coach ride that Theodore Rossevelt took down Route 9N while President McKinley dying, arriving in Buffalo with Adirondack mud on his boots to be sworn in as the 26th President of the United States; the ending and beginning and ending and beginning again of hyper-local "industries" -- grist mills, bee supplies, tourist rafting.  There's the requisite disparagement of those who build enormous houses that ruin the ecology of an area, not to mention the view. (I'm guilty of this myself -- 6,000 square-foot city houses being built on tiny lakes surrounded by dwarf white pine look ridiculous, upset every environmental and societal balance, and automatically brand their residents as idiots who don't know the first thing about living well.)

But the best part of the book is the thread of questioning that runs through it -- what does Wilderness look like in a world where we've geomapped and GPSed our way through every secret nook and cranny, where satellite photographs wipe away the illusion of human "discovery"? How do we create, protect, and preserve space where nature -- the flora and fauna required to keep the planet in a state of balance that allows us to survive -- can evolve and develop free from human manipulation and intervention?  What does "rewilding" look like?  And what is our role -- the role of people and environmentalists -- in making it happen, or allowing it to happen?

If we're going to talk about wilderness ... we have to face the truth that it's a little hard to separate out the natural and the artificial, a little hard to figure out exactly where we're planting our feet. For instance: this afternoon Warren [] and I are standing on a little bridge above Dead Creek a few miles south of the waterfowl refuge. "You notice how the water is kind of mocha here?" he asks. "One reason is the clay soils -- the particles can stay in suspension almost forever. And those particles get stirred up all along the creek by carp fanning their tails." But carp are an exotic species, introduced [to Vermont] from afar. So is the mocha color "right"?

...over and over we kept returning to the same kind of philosophical conundrums. It wasn't just carp: Dead Creek was also host to a variety of other exotic and invasive species. "Ooh, water chestnut," said Warren. "We've gotten rid of that on the Lemon Fair River ... but there's still a little population over here in Dead Creek. The nut is an extraordinarily vicious-looking thing, like a caltrop. It gets stuck on the plumage and feet webbing of geese and ducks, they carry it from one body of water to the next." The scrubby meadows and hedgerows around Dead Creek were also filled with plants that, strictly speaking, Shouldn't Be There. Honeysuckle. Wild parsnip... Eurasian buckthorn...

So do you wring your hands over this, rooting for the dogwood and the prickly ash, rooting up the buckthorn? Or do you just decide that nature is whatever it is -- that since the world is in constant flux, there's no real damage that can be done to it? For instance, Warren pointed out a small elm tree. "As you know, they get Dutch elm disease when they're about twenty. But they start producing seed when they're ten. So they have a decade before the fungus starts to shut them down. As a result, we're getting increasing numbers of elm trees that get to be about that big. Not the big umbrella street-lining trees we grew up with. But they have this niche now. They're an understory tree -- that's just what they are now." Are we to mourn the passing of big elms? Celebrate the success of this fungus we helped introduce? Merely marvel at all the different strategems that evolution puts in play?

The problem, of course, is that human beings are invested in this planet. Unlike animals and plants and winds and rain, we have the foresight and understanding of cause and effect to realize that any actions we take will have consequence -- and we have a vested interest in figuring out how to stay here for a few million more years. (Those of us with kids do, anyway.)

What McKibben does with this essay is refrain from laying into his reading audience with a two-by-four, refrain from making a specific must-do list.  He admits to his own failings, iterates the excesses that are so blatantly common-sensical that they absolutely must be stopped, and revels in the beauty and the mystery and the possibility of an area where more people are working to create something meaningful and lasting and joyful than are trying to tear it down. He introduces points of debate, he rants a little and then writes on. He talks of balance. He talks of personal happiness and satisfaction, of where and how he's found both.  And leaves the reader to seek -- and create -- her own.

I have the great good fortune to have found the place I was supposed to inhabit, a place in whose largeness I can sense the whole world but yet is small enough for me to comprehend. If, when it comes my turn to die, I really do see again that view from Mount Ab[raham], I know it will contain all these things: farm, field, forest, mountain, loon, moose, cow, monarch, pine, hemlock, white oak, shepherd, bee, beekeeper, college, teacher, beaver flow, bakery, brewery, hawk, vineyard, high rock, high summer, deep winter, deep economy. Yes, and cell phone tower and highway and car lot and Burger King. This is part of the real world. But what's rare in that real world and common here, is the chance for completion. For being big sometimes and small at others, in the shadow of the mountains and the shade of the hemlocks.

What have butterflies ever done to you?!

I'm a big fan of smart entertainment -- to the point that I can easily forgive cracks that fall flat in the funny department if they're clever enough to set my mind a-puzzling. Thankfully, Doctor Who and Torchwood are ideal television fare for me; super smart, broadly referential, clever and fast paced, with a balance (between the shows) of gentle humor and dark wit, and all manner of giggle-inducing moments.

Over the weekend I watched The Shakespeare Code from the third series (short version: Doctor and Companion land in 1599 London, meet Will Shakespeare at the Globe Theater where he's putting the finishing touches on Love's Labour's Won (the lost play), and have to save the world when a group of three witches tries to seize the opportunity to wipe out the human race and steal the earth for dominion of their peers) and was overjoyed at all of the little snippets, the throw-away details, the bits of lines that I could barely catch from David Tennant's average annunciation run over with special effects noise.

• The moment when Will tries to cash in on an opportunity to flirt with the Doctor, and "57 Academics just punched the air." Remembering my grad school classmates and their obsession with Shakespeare's gender-bending sexuality, I nearly choked on my potato soup.
  
• The cadence of trochaic tetrameter employed by the Carrionites mimics those of Macbeth's weird sisters.
• The ruff gifted to WIll by the Doctor, and the insistence upon calling it a neck brace
• The various quotes and lines intimating Hamlet ("to be or not to be," "the play's the thing," the agony Will relates after losing his son and the mutterings about perhaps it's time to write of father's and sons") and the wright's own admission that some of his words are "a bit pretentious, no?"
• The "Dark Lady" title addressed to Martha, with an obviously Fair Lord sonnet employed (Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate) is just so sloppily-not-quite perfect that I want to throw things. "So now I have confessed that he is thine, And I myself am mortgag'd to thy will" would have been *much* more appropriate, if not as easily recognized by a general audience. (Yes, noting what could be better is part of the fun!)
  
• The unexpected meeting with Queen Elizabeth (the first!) and the time-travel crossing
  

The whole episode is one long running joke on itself -- while being quick-paced and visually referential, too (the mask in All Hallow's house, the camera angle over the Carrionites' cauldron, the sign for "The Elephant"), just the type of 42-minute TeeVee spree that I adore.  Watch here:

Home

I'm currently reading a thought-provoking environmental gem by Bill McKibben called Wandering Home.  I'll have a full review later this week, but one of the passages I read this morning while riding the subway caught my attention.

I think people who don't know the woods very well sometimes imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, an endless continuation of the wall of trees they see lining the road. And I think they wonder how it could hold anyone's interest for very long, being all so much the same. But in truth I have a list of a hundred places in my own town I haven't been yet. Quaking bogs to walk on, ponds I've never seen in the fall (I've seen them in the summer -- but that's a different pond.) That list gets longer every year, the more I learn, and doubtless it will grow until the day I die. So many glades; so little time.

 I don't think that this assumed, unimagined sameness is restricted to impressions that non-woods-lovers have of the forests in the mountains of the Adirondacks, but is instead the way that we humans catalogue the unfamiliar aspects of a very big world in our very small minds. The places that we can visit, so different from our normal habitats, can overwhelm with the scale of their detail.  Terry Tempest Williams writes of the minute signs of vibrant life within a desert that, at first (or fiftieth) glance of the uninitiated seems barren and uninhabited. I spend the first day of any vacation at the beach re-acclimating myself to awareness of what exists beneath the waves, stunned as my first view always is by the beauty and power of the surface. Becca, a self-avowed sky-lover, was completely overwhelmed by the closeness of the city when she visited me this weekend -- not because she's never been here before, but because being within the space is so outside of her element that it provides sensory overload.

I was thinking about this as I walked from the subway to my office this morning, and was stunned to realize, while my mind was wandering back through the passage I'd just read on the train, that a bit of scaffold had been removed from 6th Avenue, and that I had a new view of Herald Square.  That within that view, because of Daylight Savings Time and the altered angle of our orbit around the sun, and the fact that the quality of light was thus different from any I'd seen here before, the ornate architecture of the hotel across the square stood out in gorgeous relief, highlighted and shadowed and glinting in the pale autumn sunshine. Even the surfaces can have hidden depth.

Mornings like these always make me wish that I had a camera permanently glued to my hands, but in retrospect maybe it's better that I don't.  There's more work required to commit a scene to real memory, rather than the false memory that fills in around what's captured in a snap, things that perhaps weren't really seen the first time around, that exclude the vibrancy of what was actually observed. 

To be part of a place -- any place that we love and value -- is to know it deeply, and to be able to share it with others. That makes Home, as extrapolated from McKibben's essay, both larger and smaller than any of us may think.

Soup and Bread

I love to make soup. There is something so wonderful about adding disparate ingredients to a pot, adding spice and heat, and enjoying the deliciousness in a bowl and spoon later on. Apart from those made with split peas, I’ve never met a soup I didn’t like.
Today, I’m cooking up a big pot of potato-leek soup—but this ain’t no delicate, “ladies who lunch” bit of a taste served in a china dish. This is a selection of hearty, roasted vegetables pureed to perfection.

• 8 large potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped (I prefer Yukon golds)
• 1 sweet onion, diced
• 1 parsnip, peeled and chopped
• 3 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 purple turnip, peeled and chopped

1. Mix the above ingredients with two tablespoons of olive oil, sea salt, and cracked black pepper. Place them into a greased, shallow roasting pan, arranged in a single layer. Roast in the middle rack of a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes, stirring every ten.
2. While the root vegetables are roasting, de-grit, and finely chop 3 large leeks (white parts only). In a large kettle or dutch oven, saute the leeks with two tablespoons of minced garlic in olive oil over medium heat.
3. When the leeks have wilted, add the roasted vegetables to the pot. Add salt and pepper as desired, 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika (I prefer Spanish to Hungarian), and a tiny pinch of coriander. Stir to combine. Add enough broth to cover the vegetables (I use a 32-ounce carton of broth and make up any necessary difference with filtered water), place a lid over the pot, and set the heat to medium high. When the contents reach a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for an hour.
4. Blend the soup in batches (or use an immersion blender if you have one) until it is completely smooth, free from lumps and chunks. Serve in large bowls, topped with sour cream and minced chives, or shredded mozzarella cheese and parsley, or seeded, grated baby tomatoes.

This is a particularly starchy soup, so I usually have sliced fruit or braised greens with it, but I was also in a bread baking mood today. Since cranberries have appeared at the market in preparation for the holiday season, I made a loaf of cranberry-orange quick bread.

• 1-1/2 c unbleached white bread flour
• 1/2 c graham flour
• 1 c cane sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp finely shredded orange peel (I use dried)
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 c orange juice
• 1/4 c cooking oil
• 1 c cranberries, halved
• 3/4 c chopped pecans and almonds (mixed in parts to your taste)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees; Grease and set aside a loaf pan
2. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, orange peel and cinnamon in a large bowl. Make a well in the center and set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the egg, orange juice, and oil. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture all at once, and stir just until combined. The batter should be lumpy, but all of the dry ingredients should be incorporated.
4. With a rubber spatula, fold the cranberries and nuts into the batter, then por the batter into the loaf pan, scraping the sides of the bowl clean.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour, until a knife or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in a pan for ten minutes, then remove the loaf to a wire rack.

This bread is best after sitting for several hours; it’s possible to taste the baking powder bitterness if the loaf is sliced before being thoroughly cooled.

See more progress on: learn to cook. Really cook.

First published at 43Things

Pancake Party

Last night I had friends over for a pancake party. Apparently I'm ahead of the appointed calendar date for a Pancake Supper, but my best friend came to visit for a couple of days, and since Becca and I tend to geek out over the little things in fairly loud, embarrassing ways, and like to talk over food for several hours at a time, supping in rather than heading to a restaurant seemed like a better option.And I know how to make pancakes, so that's how I came by the menu options.

Rather than just make a stack of ordinary cakes, I cooked to order.  There were two separate batter batches -- the first mainly buckwheat flour with a few tablespoons of all-purpose sifted through, the second an equal mix of spelt, all-purpose and buckwheat flours, double-sifted together -- both made with buttermilk. The first batch was proclaimed "very hearty," but the second was preferred for lightness and flavor.  Spelt flour creates a much thinner batter, so the cakes weren't shaped into the circular disks I associate with "the perfect pancake," but no one complained.

Since I was cooking to order, it was very easy to add extras into each cake once it was poured into the griddle.  We had Chocolate Chips (both dark and semi-sweet), Shredded Coconut, Pecans, Almonds, Dried Sweet Cherries, Lemon Curd, and Peanut Butter to choose from, and then butter, maple syrup, raspberry syrup, and orange marmalade available for topping. My personal favorite combination was the spelt cake with chocolate, coconut, and pecans cooked in, topped with a smear of orange marmalade -- but I believe everyone found a perfect combination of their own.

In planning the menu, Clay puzzled out, "The only problem with pancakes for supper is what do we bring for dessert? Ribs?" to which I answered, "Bacon." This of course led to the strangest, most delectable dessert to go with a dessert-y, cake-y dinner ever: chocolate-covered bacon.  I can't tell you exactly how he prepared it, apart from using an incredible, high-quality hickory bacon, and superb dark chocolate.  The chocolate might have been painted on rather than dipped into, since the rashers were clearly recognizable without globby chocolate bits distending at any point, but I'll leave Clay to share the preparation details.

Strawberry-apple juice spritzers, vanilla chai, and cabernet sauvignon finished off the edibles (since I completely forgot to set out the tropical fruit salad (strawberry, pineapple, kiwi, mango, papaya, and pomegranate seeds). Scrabble with made-up rules, seemingly random conversation jumps, nerd geekery, and Wii sports rounded out the evening, filling my little flat with laughter and fun.

Maybe I'll come up with a similar idea for the official Pancake Day.

Church = Fraud

On October 27, the Church of Scientology was convicted of organized fraud in France. I learned of this on my daily visit to the Wikipedia Main Page, and the thought of it has kept me laughing to myself ever since.  (It's been a stressful few weeks; anything absurdist and ironic and connected enough to something I despise would have done the same thing.)

I don't care much for spiritual mumbo jumbo (as I've said before), and my opinion of organized religion as a whole is pretty damning, but what still has me chortling over this is the notion that finally, someone, somwhere, had the chutzpah to call a spade a spade. There's irony, and then there's the blatant, abusive, hypocrisy of religious order:

• Catholic priests and monks take vows of poverty, and yet their career trajectory puts them on a path where "advancement" means placement as bishops, cardinals, archbishops and the papal head of state.  Those positions gives them access to the Vatican, a palace filled with gold, jewels, and rarities that are privately owned by the Church, the actual pieces of which and the knowledge thereof is more often than not hidden from the average outsider. And yet Catholic missionaries who are actually doing vital good works in the world have to beg for funds from the public because there's never enough money to feed or clothe or shelter or educate everyone in need. Hmmm. Scales seem a little imbalanced.
  
  
• That guy whom some people think was a God preached non-violence, and some of his followers stand in peaceful circles with candles and hope with all their might to the end of violence, but the most powerful among them have forever fought -- and are still fighting -- crusades in his name. And the priests and ministers standing with soldiers before they're sent to kill or be killed pray for strength and safe passage, from that same God, the one who said "thou shalt not kill."  (I'm all for peace, though I understand that war comes to pass and don't object to meeting despotism and genocide with violence against the perpetrators when necessary, and have the utmost respect for those who stand when that call is made. But the people in charge on this one have some inconsistencies to work through if they want to avoid  hypocrisy.)
  
  
• At various times throughout history, in all of the Christian denominations I know of, those with money can buy their way to power in a congregation. In the RCC in medieval Europe, buying sacraments was required; those who failed to pay the correct fee to be married, to baptise their children, to attend holy services, would be excommunicated and shunned -- and left to starve when no one in the community could acknowledge the existence of one cast out from the love of God without putting their own immortal soul at risk. And yet there's a lovely passage in the Bible about camels passing through the eyes of needles before rich men will ascend to the kingdom of heaven -- that's so often used to inspire people to part with their money and give it to the powerful within the Church.
  

That's the behaviour of a group of bullies on a playground, stealing a little kid's lunch money -- but worse, making the kid believe that it's all in his own best interest, and he'll someday be rewarded for sitting quietly and not standing up for himself.  The behavior of a gang, taking whatever they want as payment for offering protection.


Whether you call the rationale an outright lie or misguided belief (or actual, devout belief, I suppose), the actions taken by those in power are still fraught with bullying and manipulation. It's fraud. It's wrong.

I have no delusions about eradicating the irrational, much as I would like to; I know full well that humans hold onto the things that make them feel safe no matter how illogical.  But seeing abuses of power -- and the wholesale acceptance of them by half the world's population -- makes me feel angry, and sick, and quite, quite helpless to make a difference to anyone.

So, on October 27th, and in isolated moments ever since, I've been tickled by the thought that the people of France actually used the power of their justice system, in one instance at least, to label a Church's swindle for what it was. Even if they were just talking about money.

NYY

The New York Yankees won the World Series last night -- Andy Pettitte as the winning pitcher, Mariano Rivera with the save. As Mo zinged the last three pitches, I sat -- barely -- on the edge of my sofa, holding my breath, remembering what it was like to watch him from the stands in Albany when he was coming up through Double A, a skinny kid who was fantastic when he was on, but clearly uncomfortable on the field when compared with the more experienced pitchers.

What I love about the Yankees -- not just when they're winning, but all the time (I watched games with my Dad all through the 80s and 90s, so know a few things about losing) -- is how tremendously well the Yankees team plays ball, no matter which players are on the field. The guys on and around that diamond are incredibly talented professionals who work harder than anyone else in the league at becoming the best. They are powerful. They are precise. They demand the best of themselves and one another, and they deliver. That makes them a joy to watch, win or lose.

What I love about New York, about the quality of this town, is that being at the top of your game, being the best at what you do and constantly striving to be the best, playing like a champion, actually matters. If you're championship caliber at whatever you do, this is the place to be -- where your talent and work and achievements are considered your most valuable contribution. In sports, in art, in daily living, I want to be surrounded by those who are the absolute best at their particular business. With the work that actually matters to me, I want to be pushed and pulled and even taunted by people who are better at everything than I am -- so that the striving to improve actually means something.

The Yankees exemplify that attitude for me, and have since I was about six years old -- even through the 11-year stretch when they never made it to the playoffs. I'm thrilled that they won the Series, and thrilled that they get to celebrate with the champagne party in the clubhouse, the short news conference, the trophy presentation, and the ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes -- that makes a successful season for them, and they deserve the celebration. But what I adore and look back on -- and look forward to in February is the consummate professionalism and incredible effort at corralling talent that they exude.

Winning is just the logical conclusion.

NaKnitMo

Apparently November is the time for month-long challenges, and apparently I'm some sort of junkie for them. My most recent find is NaKnitMo, National Knitting Month. I'm not sure if there's some directive from an office of sorts, with an official charter, or if a bunch of knitters got together and said, "hey -- let's knit a whole
bunch!" Is one more or less official than the other? I'm hard-pressed to be sure.

Anyway. Even though I don't knit, I count crochet as a close-enough cousin to keep a stitch count. And I have enough projects on hooks that any incentive I have to make progress before my Christmas vacation is a good thing. (Pulling all-nighters on the longest night of the year in order to be ready for Christmas morning is somehow less than fun.) Time for gloves and scarves and sweaters and toys and blankets -- and socks, if I can ever manage them -- to emerge from the balls of wool in which they're currently hiding.

Current count: 2,418/30,000

From the Travel Files

I always thought that the older-than-middle age woman, dripping furs and diamonds, trailing an entourage of aides and assistants (called servants not such a once-upon-a-time-ago), and imperiously ordering commoners out of her way was a caricature. Apparently there's a grain of truth in everything; I met her this morning. If you can call being looked through and ignored while she elbowed her way into the TSA check-in line "meeting". It was all I could do not to chortle or guffaw as I - rather involuntarily - backed away and bumped into the Woody Allen lookalike standing behind me.

Seriously though, that can't possibly be anything but an act, and the amount of energy required to hold up that persona minute-after-minute - let alone for hours, days, or years - must age her fantastically beneath the plasticked facelift. Can't help but feel a little sorry for her.

Woody Allen guy's comment? "Guess the economy brings us all down a notch or two. Hope to God she's not on my flight."

--

Sent from my mobile device
"You people and your quaint little categories."
Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood, "Day One"
www.google.com/profiles/expetesso

West Winds

In Mary Poppins, Mary insists that she will only be with the Banks children "until the wind changes." She speaks of a proverbial wind, the prevailing attitude of the Banks parents toward their offspring, but films and magic being what they are, she's delivered and carried away when blustery winds lift her terribly dignified, superbly British black umbrella into the air.

I always craved proof of that idea, that we need only persevere until the tides of opinion and attitude and progress shift, and then momentum will take over and we can move on to the next project where our attentions are needed. I still crave proof of that idea, and on some days I'm optimistic enough to believe that proof might exist. (My favorite volume of poetry is one that I first picked up solely for the title, Mary Oliver's West Wind.  It truly is an insatiable craving.)

Today is one of the blustery, wind-swept, crisp, clairvoyant days when that seems possible. The light falls at a different slant, the winds seem to blow from a different direction, the world smells different. Everything -- a leaf on the sidewalk, a small dog's quivering nose, the direction of steam rising from hot bagels -- indicates that possibilities might be realized, that change is afoot.

Let's see what it brings.

Some trees were meant to reach

It's no secret that I adore music, that there's a constant soundtrack playing my head. It's a great combination of foundation pieces -- classical high drama like Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, anti-war and equality protest songs like Dar Williams' I Had No Right and the Indigo Girls' cover of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and Melissa Etheridge's Scarecrow, mid-90s swing revival scats like The Brian Setzer Orchestra's Jump, Jive and Wail and the Big Bad VooDoo Daddy's Mr. Pinstripe Suit, spotlight beacon Broadway standards like The Impossible Dream (Man of La Mancha), Seasons of Love (RENT) and I Could Have Danced (My Fair Lady), vocal showstoppers like New York, New York (Kander and Ebb), Don't Rain on My Parade (Merril and Styne), This Can't Be Love and The Lady is a Tramp (Rodgers and Hart), and queer anthems like Gloria Gaynor's I Am What I Am and Madonna's Papa Don't Preach -- overlaid by whatever is new and fresh and capturing my musical attention at the moment.

Yes, it's a bit cacophonous, and the anything-but-steady rhythm is as frenetic and syncopated as you would imagine that combination to be -- might explain why I have such a hard time sitting still and "doing nothing."  But it provides major drive and motivation -- rather like hearing every note of a symphony or big band orchestra, the tiniest tremolo of a piano accompaniment, and every flutter of vibrato from the vocalists underscoring whatever I'm thinking or speaking about or listening to. It provides constant forward momentum, rather like the racket of train wheels as they pick up speed; I often wonder if my rush to constantly increase the pace at which I do things is an attempt to mentally outrace the music, or why I'm obsessed with pacing in novels, films, and live theatricals.

Very rarely I come across a song that gets added to the list of those spinning in constant repeat within my brain. Today was such an occasion, when my friend Clay sent me a selection of tracks by Susan Werner, a singer-songwriter who is an incredibly fine lyricist. On the first listen, three-quarters of the way into the bridge when the guitar lines begin to thrum with a demand for movement and drive, I fell for this folk-ballad-turned-feminist-cry, and after the understated, breath-taking lyrical brilliance of the third verse I was completely won over.  So you have an inkling of what I mean:

LIKE BONSAI
From: Time Between Trains (1998)
Copyright © Susan Werner & Greg Simon

The lady at the greenhouse said, "That would be seven-fifty please"
You drove us down the gravel roads, I held it balanced on my knees
You said we'd keep it inside so the branches wouldn't freeze
And I asked you what would happen
If we let it grow
And you said

Some trees were meant to reach
Reach up for the sky
Some trees we trim to keep them pretty
Like bonsai

Winters and then summers and then I was seventeen
We packed up my fall sweaters and my possibilities
And we cried the day you left me at the university
And it was something I remember
As I watched you turn and go

That some trees were meant to reach, you said
Reach up for the sky
Some trees we trim to keep them pretty
Like bonsai, like bonsai

Some trees we trim back
Some hands we tie
Some wings we clip
Some feet we bind

Nineteen forty-eight it was and you were twelve years old
Dreaming about high school and you asked if you could go
And your mother said
"Even very clever girls are better off at home"

Some trees were meant to reach
Reach up for the sky
Some trees we trim to keep them pretty
Like bonsai, like bonsai

Some trees, yeah
Some trees
Some trees we trim to keep them pretty
Like bonsai, like bonsai, like bonsai, like bonsai

My musical habits being what they are, I memorized the lyrics and then plugged the song into Genius to generate a playlist.  Of the 100 songs by 29 artists that were generated from my library as a thematic match of sorts, there isn't a single one that I'm ever tempted to skip past when it pops up in shuffle mode, and some are among my most played tracks and included on multiple playlists. No wonder this particular song pushes so many of my This is Brilliant! buttons.  A taste of 25, for those intrigued by such things:

1. Like Bonsai, Susan Werner
2. And a God Descended, Dar Williams
3. Deconstruction, Indigo Girls (favorite Indigo Girls song of the 21st Century)
   
4. Refugee, Melissa Etheredge
5. Hallelujah, k.d. lang (favorite rendition of Leonard Cohen)
   
6. Elsewhere, Sarah MacLachlan
7. For Emily Whenever I May Find Her, Simon and Garfunkel
8. 32 Flavors, Ani DiFranco
9. This Side, Nickel Creek
10. Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell
11. The Best of What's Around, Dave Matthews Band
12. Come Monday, Jimmy Buffet
13. The Luckiest, Ben Folds (favorite "new" love song)
    
14. Johanna, Bernadette Peters
15. Songbird, Eva Cassidy
16. Drive, Melissa Ferrick
17. Blowin' in the Wind, Peter, Paul, and Mary
18. Into the West, Annie Lennox (hands-down best film theme song EVER)
    
19. My Favorite Mistake, Sheryl Crow
20. Around You, Ingrid Michaelson
21. Fairytale of New York, Pogues and Kirsty MacColl (sad/angry/hopeful Christmas song, anyone?)
    
22. Wreck of the Day, Anna Nalick
23. The Trouble With Love Is, Kelly Clarkson
24. There is a Tree, Carrie Newcomer
25. Don't Stop Believin', the GLEE Cast

 In case I haven't made it completely obvious: Susan Werner's Like Bonsai. Go. Listen. LOVE.