Blog is just a four-letter word

i won a writing contest!

2011-12-22T11:43:00.004-05:00

The challenge was to write a short (<250 words) story about what's going on in this image by photographer Catherine Sebastian. The contest was judged by author Martha Frankel.
Here's the photo, and my entry:

©Catherine Sebastian/ CSP Images

In Yellow

She always loved him in yellow. In Venice, when he stood up and took off his jacket and sang an aria from Rigoletto. That jacket, handloomed tweed of wool and silk, sitting at the bottom of the boat with the moon pulling yellow from its weave, that same jacket they would spread on the grass in a secluded patch of Parco delle Rimembranze and make love. In his kitchen in Cambridge, equipped with minimal tools, where, in his yellow floral apron that he claimed once belonged to Julia Child, he turned out a meal of such delicacy that no future meal could ever measure close.

That was the yellow she loved him in. Before she knew he could sing, and cook; before she knew he could kill.

The piano wire is still hanging from his hand. His shirt lustrous through the numbing water of the pool, her consciousness vague after the garotting, she looks up and sees, finally, that yellow makes his ass look fat.

_________________________________________________

I can't tell you how nice this looks on my wall. Thank you Catherine. Thank you Martha. It was a blast!

free wishes

2011-09-02T11:41:00.002-04:00

There's a guy around town we call Jogger John. Because he runs, everywhere. He's one of the local street people who's been here forever, and people tell of being out on dark country roads in the middle of the night, far from the middle of town, and having John run by.
  John keeps the town streets clean. Not in any official capacity that I know of, but he's always out there sweeping and moving trash into the proper receptacles from where lazy people dropped it when they were done. The local eateries give him coffee and food when he comes in, but he never stays with it, always takes it outside, weather or season no matter. He keeps their storefronts clean and is always happy to do a requested odd job.
  I was sitting on the patio of yum yum noodle bar a few days ago, before they were open, receiving donations to bring to the people of Windham who lost so much in the recent hurricane, and John came by and said hello and went inside. He came out a minute later and asked, "Want half a flower?" holding out an orange bloom missing half its petals. I told him that I'd love half a flower, and asked what happened to the other half? "I was making wishes, and stopped halfway through" he explained. "Did they come true?" I inquired. His eyes widened and he whispered, "I was dumbfounded." Then he placed the half-bloom on top of a pink flower growing in the patio flower garden, and ran away.
  Say what you want about people like John, but for me, I think the world needs more people willing to give half their wishes away.

you call this a blog?

2011-08-28T00:20:00.003-04:00

take your place on the great mandala

2011-04-11T00:42:00.001-04:00

Today in the car a song by Peter Yarrow called The Great Mandala came on the radio. It was a live version, with Richie Havens and Peter, Paul and Mary. Tonight I am obsessed with it and played it for Tony and the boys. It’s not a new song, and I’ve heard it many times over the years. I’m not sure what struck me about it today, but I know that I am living in a time of three wars with two military-aged sons, and maybe it hit me a little harder because of that. The vocals are beautiful, but the lyrics are aggressive, sad, haunting, and with no satisfying resolution. “It's been going on for ten thousand years”. We talked about the building of tension in the music, also without resolution. It keeps us tense and wary.

The Great Mandala (The Wheel of Life)

THE GREAT MANDALA (The Wheel of Life)
Peter Yarrow- Pepamar Music Corp.- ASCAP

So I told him that he'd better shut his mouth
And do his job like a man.
And he answered "Listen, Father,
I will never kill another."
He thinks he's better
than his brother that died
What the hell does he think he's doing
To his father who brought him up right?

Chorus:
Take your place on The Great Mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time.
Win or lose now you must choose now
And if you lose you're only losing your life.

Tell the jailer not to bother
With his meal of bread and water today.
He is fasting 'til the killing's over
He's a martyr, he thinks he's a prophet.
But he's a coward, he's just playing a game
He can't do it, he can't change it
It's been going on for ten thousand years

(Chorus)

Tell the people they are safe now
Hunger stopped him, he lies still in his cell.
Death has gagged his accusations

We are free now, we can kill now,
We can hate now, now we can end the world
We're not guilty, he was crazy
And it's been going on for ten thousand years!

Take your place on The Great Mandala
As it moves through your brief moment of time.
Win or lose now you must choose now
And if you lose you've only wasted your life.

insomniac thoughts, nyquil dreams

2011-04-04T11:57:00.002-04:00

My heart is throbbing faster in the ball of my foot as I wonder again if I should just poke it. It’s probably not true insomnia when you can’t sleep because you’re obsessing about what’s imbedded and healed over in your foot. But no matter, true insomnia or not I am awake, coughing the last residue of a cold and trying to remember what it was I stepped on. I’m sure they’ll ask me this in the emergency room, or in the doctor’s office, and I don’t want to seem idiotic or anile when they do, so I think about what I could make up and then I realize that how could everyone possibly know what it is they stepped on unless they planned it, and who plans to land on a sharp object that can become imbedded in your foot and that you’d then try to get out even though you know full well that you put it there? Not me. I don’t know what’s in my foot, but I know that it’s only half of what was once there because I pulled the other half out three months ago I just don’t remember what it was. I’ll leave that part out of the story. I’d better poke it again. I’d better just leave it alone so as not to cause infection, but then I remind myself that it’s already infected on the inside. Maybe it’s better to poke it, let the sickness out and put some polysporin and a bandaid on it, and be done with it. I’d better leave it alone.
Now I’m coughing again and with each cough my foot reminds me that it has a foreign object imbedded in it. I decide to take some Nyquil to stop coughing and get to sleep and lope off to the bathroom and am faced with the decision of Nyquil Cold & Flu or Nyquil Cough. I don’t have the flu so I go with Nyquil Cough even though the Symptom Selector does not have checkboxes for obsessive thoughts or healed-over splinters. I pour the sticky red shot to the top of the plastic measuring shotglass and down it in a few sips. It’s kind of nasty but far from the worst thing I’ve had to swallow and already I feel a bit of a glow coming on as I make my way back to bed. I know that there’s a finite amount of time between when the alcohol and antihistimine make me drowsy and the dextromethorphan keeps me awake, so I try to settle in but my foot is still beating and now that I’m feeling a little more relaxed I start thinking it would be a good idea to poke it. A little. I am gentle, because if I have to go to the emergency room or the doctor I don’t want them asking me why I allowed wolves to try to remove the splinter. I draw blood, not what I expected, so I dump some hydrogen peroxide on it and crawl under the covers where the Nyquil Cough takes me on its Original Cherry flavored dreams.

now and then

2011-03-07T22:40:00.002-05:00

“I know you,” I whispered, taking the girl’s hand and guiding her to where the bikes were. She didn’t speak, but allowed me to lead her past the pile of gravel to the little concrete building in the middle of the field.
  “Is the Apple Rock trail really still there?” I asked. It was hot, and my hair was already stringy and sweaty from my short ride to Bearsville. She nodded in answer, looking past me and into the woods, where I remember the head of the trail was.
  Her hair was longer than mine, just past her shoulders, and parted on the side. There was a snarl in the back that looked like it might become trouble if it didn’t get brushed out soon. You know the kind, like a ball on the back of your head that’s there because maybe you forgot to brush it in the morning and then you went swimming and rode in the car with the windows down and went to bed without brushing it all day. Before you knew it you had that snarly ball that you tried to hide with a bit of smoother hair but unless you really got in there, and that usually meant your mother’s involvement, unless you really got in there and combed it out strand by strand you ended up with another short haircut or a bald patch in the back.
  I have a 21-speed mountain bike that hasn’t gotten much use over the years. I thought it would be fun but discovered that riding in that weight-forward hunched position hurt my wrists, which had been abused with too much production weaving and the winding of too many bobbins on a vibrating bobbin winder.
  Her bike was small and sturdy, and rusty in parts. It had only one gear and only a back brake. The seat was torn and there was something that looked like hay sticking out through a hole on the side. She didn’t seem to care. She picked the bike up from the ground and threw a tan and muscled leg over the back, straddling the seat. She was wearing cut-off shorts and a faded sleeveless cotton t-shirt, and her legs were covered with scratches and scrapes in different stages of healing. There was a streak of chain grease above her right ankle and her flip-flops looked like they might fall apart, the piece of rubber between her first two toes pulling out of the sole.
  She took off, not bothering to sit on the bike seat and just pumped across the field toward the woods. I rode after her, adjusting the bike’s speeds with a smooth little clicker on the handlebars. In moments she was at the woods line, and she turned around to make sure I was following. I remember this trail in my bones, its levelness, the path with stumps and roots and an occasional rock imbedded into the hard dirt, and I know I can ride it even now, after 35 years.
  I catch up with her and we enter the woods. She’s riding fast, again 20 yards ahead of me, her hair flying behind her and bits of dirt and wood scattering under her tires. She turns her head and sees me from the corner of her eye and on the next flat relaxes into her seat and stops peddling, coasting now as she waits for me to catch up.
  I know up ahead is the stream and I wonder if it’s possible that the same fallen tree is spanned across it like a bridge as it was so many years ago. “Are we going to cross?” I ask, out of breath. She nods and we dismount. There is no tree, and I can see that the stream is shallower now than it was, and easy to ford. The girl picks her bike up and holds it out in front of her, and plunges into the cold, knee-deep water. I follow her, carrying my own bike, without bothering to take off my socks and sneakers. My pants get wet to my shins and the damp wicks up to my knees, but it’s hot and I don’t care, it’s water, and everything will dry.
  From here I know that a quick cut right would bring me up through the Glasel’s property and I’d be on Broadview in no time. Then just the few short hills before Canon Circle, the street my best friends lived on, and the brutal quadriceps-pounding 45-degree last quarter mile to their house.
  But that’s not where we’re going today. We got back on our bikes and stayed on the path, the girl riding easily through the woods, like she was at home, like she knew these woods, every tree and rock, every hill and turn. Ahead I saw the place I’d wanted to revisit, sitting tall and gray but smaller than I remembered. We called it Apple Rock then.
  The girl didn’t leave the path or get off her bike. I leaned mine against a tree and walked across the stones right where the stream curved. I sat and stared at the rock, letting the conversations and experiences of my childhood sweep over me, no sound but the running stream.

2010-12-02T20:28:00.001-05:00

mary kate

2010-09-03T00:06:00.002-04:00

Countless things spool through my mind when I think of Mary Kate. Today, the day after she died, I’m thinking a lot about that; that she died. More frames reel, and something keeps coming back around: her hands. Mary Kate’s were working hands. Holding books as she read to everyone’s kids, the fragile juggling of double-pointed needles turning out endless beautiful wool socks for her family. Hands that were happiest in the dirt of her gardens.

My woolgathering thoughts move to a tree in her front yard, some sort of Scottish tree that just doesn’t grow in this country, but some old Scot who’d owned the house before her grafted it onto a tree stump that grows happily here. It’s an amazing tree. A climber like none I’ve ever seen. As a tomboy growing up in the woods of the Catskill Mountains I’d clambered my share of limbs, and none of them came close to the perfect climbingness of that tree.

Mary Kate was never not making something with her hands. When I was filling plastic eggs with store-bought chocolate, she was creating little Easter animal figures out of wool and felt and embroidery thread. At Christmas she gave me a tiny baby elf of wool, sleeping in its walnut-shell cradle. She made the kinds of things that take your breath with their delicate sweetness. Each of her four children has a collection of these beautiful treasures crafted individually with her love and her hands.

Her gardens are unparalleled beauty. They are perfect cottage gardens of herbs, perennials, strawberries and fruit trees. Some have tiny stepping stone paths, others are built on little hillsides; terraced steps of perfection. She knew exactly what each plant was, and what it needed to thrive. She knew this about her children too.

I’ll remember Mary Kate with her hands in the dirt, and now the dirt will receive her back, and if I were dirt I’d welcome her home.

i write like

2010-07-14T21:18:00.003-04:00

I write like Stephen King. And James Joyce. And Chuck Palahniuk, Stephanie Meyer, Dan Brown, Jonathan Swift, Arthur Conan Doyle, and David Foster Wallace. Depending on the day.
I plugged a dozen or so of my blog posts into http://iwl.me/ to “Check what famous writer you write like with this statistical analysis tool, which analyzes your word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers.”
Sarah Palin writes like Dan Brown. F. Scott Fitzgerald writes like Jack London. I think I’ll just stick to translating paragraphs to Japanese and back until reaching equilibrium. Here’s the first paragraph of the “happy man” post below.

The young man, speaking in front of the joy and laughter in the history of Keno, Kitou Yamuyamunudoruba voice planting sister gesticulating week. "He was always happy," said Nina, "but he is walking down the street in front of the car. It is my fear.”

See, isn’t that more fun?
http://translationparty.com/#7626136

you can syndicate any boat you row

2010-07-09T12:43:00.000-04:00

I was driving with my niece and her 10 year old daughter and my almost-five nephew a few weeks ago, around the windy hilly roads of West Saugerties and Woodstock, and I’m not sure how we got to singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat in 3-part round, but we did. Mimi has a beautiful voice, and Kat has her mother’s musicality, her voice sweet and true. Mila and Kat sang one part from the back seat, Mila hanging on well even when the song got complicated. Mimi and I each sang one of the other parts. I was tickled at how good we sounded, and I wished I had done this with my kids. Yeah, I used to sing to them when they were little, but once I wasn’t rocking them to sleep that stopped. I’m self-conscious about singing (thanks Mr. Blish!) so you won’t hear me breaking into song unless you’ve smuggled yourself into the trunk of my car. Probably not, anyway.

the happy man

2010-06-30T20:48:00.001-04:00

I was planting a tree with my sister outside of yumyum noodle bar a few weeks ago when a young man walked by, giggling and gleeful, talking and gesticulating to the voices in his head. “He’s always that happy” Nina said, “but sometimes he walks out into the street in front of cars. That scares me.”

I saw him later, two miles down the road. He was bopping along, red dreadlocks bouncing about, still carrying the bag he had earlier, and still engaged in the vibrant interactive monologue with his invisible, perhaps even sentient friend, or with God.

“He’s always that happy.” When my mind goes, if it goes before my body, when it goes, that’s where I want it to go.

but the dentist has reclining chairs

2010-06-10T15:42:00.006-04:00

Today at pt a woman was effusing about the Toyota dealership in Littleton. Included in your stay is a wifi lounge, lunch voucher, and a gym. She says she shows up at 11:30, works out, cools down in the lounge, and then has lunch. I think the Camry needs an oil change but now I'm realizing how pathetic my life sounds when a Grand Day Out is at a fucking car dealership.

note for david

2010-05-26T13:41:00.002-04:00

Dear David,

I’ve been thinking a lot about that log lodged resting in the current of the Millstream, hoping you’ll go back and spend a bit of time shin-deep in the cold glass water with your camera and your artist eyes. The tenacious green growing from the sturdy stump, both ends clean cut by a power saw, deserve to be celebrated in metaphor and silver.

Love,

Monique

don't weep for me

2010-05-25T12:19:00.002-04:00

I visited my grandparents’ old Willow neighborhood yesterday. The house looks very much the same; dark brown paint, no new buildings or additions, just the house with its screened in porch and the garage. I was surprised to find the bridge across the stream still without railings; just a couple of stacked 8x10s to keep the cars from going off into the drink. It’s still a one-lane bridge, about as rustic as they come.

The Desidarios, first house on the right, have built a small gathering place between the house and the stream, with chairs and a fire pit. There was nothing more fun than when the Desidarios came up on summer weekends and we were in Willow visiting my grandparents. We rode bikes, swam, and tubed morning until night and it was a precise recipe for long-held perfect summer memories. I was so happy to hear that the house is still in the family and that the kids and grandkids of my childhood summer friends continue to build their own memories.

Mrs. Toby’s house looked different. More and thicker landscaping, maybe another building? Mrs. Toby was old when I was a kid. Older than my grandparents. She was the only full-timer in the neighborhood on the party line. One ring for us; two for her.

The Desmond's house seemed lower or smaller to me, and a different style. They were another of the summer families with kids; Bruce and his sister. Bruce was a tough kid. He would get sent home occasionally. He always pumped too high, pulling the foot of our swing set, with its little concrete footings, out of the ground. One time he got his hand caught in one of the chains and ripped a couple of fingernails too short and bled all over everything. The Desmonds had a really cool treehouse, just a partially covered platform on the edge of the dirt road of a country 1-mile oval. There was a nail sticking out that scratched a deep four-inch long groove into my back as I slid down the wall. The scar today looks like something awful happened.

I learned how to drive on that oval. We had a late-forties Willy’s jeep, a vehicle so awesome it needs its own chapter. My older brother taught me. He was 12 at the time and had been driving a few years. The clutch was stiff but I was a strong kid, and I still remember the magic of the throttle and the feel of the steel start button. Man I wish I had that jeep today.

i am a guest sometimes

2010-04-27T21:28:00.001-04:00

I guest-blogged a book review of Mennonite In A Little Black Dress...
http://memoirreviews.blogspot.com/

summer of love, decades of sex

2010-03-31T16:54:00.004-04:00

Billy Action was a backgammon and card playing Lothario in Woodstock in the 70s and 80s. Maybe beyond, but I left in ’84. He went out with Gayle, who owned Yink Ink, a company that made hand-painted clothing. Yink was a code name for sex, coined to obscure conversations her parents might overhear. Gayle told me once that she giggled inside every time she heard her mother say the word.

I can only guess what precipitated these t-shirts, but Gayle had the brilliant idea of printing a few dozen and giving them out to everyone who would be at the weekly softball game. Billy played for Woodstock Wonders, a team sponsored by Albert Grossman, baron of Bearsville. The games were played at the Rec Field late afternoons and weekends.

The players for both teams and all the fans came to the field that day wearing their shirts covered by jackets. The front “Yes” with the thumbs up was visible. At some cue, everyone took off their jackets and turned around, revealing the “I Slept with Billy Action” side. Even a dog on the field was wearing one. Somewhere in the quag of my closet I have a photograph of the moment. It’s not a very good one, but I’ll dig around and post it when I find it.

i cave

2010-03-11T09:59:00.004-05:00

I went into a cave yesterday. I shouldn’t go into caves. I know this about myself. I shouldn’t go into caves because once when my younger son was two he got stuck in one of those horrible plastic tubular playground things that for people like me is more like a catheter to hell. I’ve always been a bit claustrophobic, but that day in the bright blue and red pipette cinched the deal. He was lost and scared, and wouldn’t follow his brother out, but needed me to come in and rescue him. I considered for a moment leaving him there, but I really love that kid, so I did what every mother would do; climbed through the burning fires of polyvinyl chloride damnation to save her child. It may have seemed less dramatic to the onlookers, but they didn’t live it.
Why did I go into the cave? Because it was big. Bigger than an airplane. Bigger than an elevator. Bigger than any tubular playgound I’d ever seen. I convinced myself that it was the word “cave” that was getting to me. I watched the movie about the cave. There were so many happy people oohing at stalactites and ahhing at stalagmites I was sure I could be one of them. We took a 10-minute trolley ride through the jungle to the mouth of the cave. Which looked like the mouth of a giant claustrophobic-eating monster. I’m sure the happy people thought so too, and in we all went, because we’re brave like that.
A few hundred feet into the cave I slipped and fell on my ass, banging my elbow and worse, my camera, on the slippery monster-throat walkway. The guide helpfully suggested I be careful, obviously having noticed I was a happy and carefree spelunker with a devil-may-care attitude about the perilousness of the circumstances. “This is me being careful,” I explained, backside wet but otherwise fine. In body.
In retrospect falling was an astute tactical maneuver. My advice, should you find yourself claustrophobic and in a cave, is to fall down. You will spend the rest of your cave walk worrying only about remaining vertical. When you walk through the room of the cave where the millions of bats are surely sleeping and will not suck your blood or get caught in your hair, and you are gagging from the stench but terrified to let go of the railing even though you just stuck your hand in a fresh glop of guano, you will be too busy to think about your claustrophobia. And you will have me to thank for that, no co-pay, no paperwork.

woodstock writers festival

2010-02-17T12:56:00.014-05:00

I went to the first annual Woodstock Writers Festival and all I got was this lousy totebag. Oh, and four days of workshops, readings, and panel discussions with a remarkable and generous group of authors; belly laughs, inspiration, new friends, and great advice.
Opening night wine and dessert tapas with Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, a book on my to-read list moving closer to the top because who can resist lines like, “I hate hiking in swamps with convicts carrying machetes.”
Saturday morning Nina and I went to the writing workshop with Abigail Thomas, author of Thinking About Memoir and other books. There was a certain — what — ironic congruity? in sitting at a memoir workshop in our first Woodstock childhood home, now the Woodstock Center for Photography. Our parents owned the old Café Espresso, our living quarters in the apartment upstairs. My sister and I sat in chairs that would have been behind the bar. Huh, whattaya know.
I missed the reading by Maria Bauer, author of Beyond the Chestnut Tree, a book I read 25 years ago when Maria gave Tony and me a copy as a wedding gift. I lived in a cottage next door to her summer house in Woodstock. It’s my favorite of the places I’ve lived, partly because it was when I first suspected I was not going to die tragically young in a firey crash on my way home from Deanie’s some drunken Quaalude-rippled night. I digress.
I loved the workshop with Laura Shaine Cunningham because the woman is so god-damned happy. And not just because she is a best-selling author, either. She’s made a deliberate effort to let go of angst and get out of what she called, “writers’ debtors prison.” I sharpen my shiv and dig, even if it’s just to break out of an illusion. One of the exercises was to describe the prior morning.

To do:
One load of laundry
Look at the bills, maybe even pay some
Wake up one Teenager
Leave by noon.
Coffee. Laundry in. The Teenager is given first call at nine with the hope that he’ll be out of bed by 10:00 with time to do kitchen chores before taking off for the day.
O for two.
Pack. What to wear to a Writers Festival? A tiny cut above my usual slacks and a t-shirt? Two t-shirts? Laundry in dryer. Time is on time’s side. It always is if I sit at the computer before getting my must-dos done. Sucked into e-mail and facebook and now I have an overpowering need to know more about turtles and now it’s an irretrievable hour later and I’m late but at least I’m all schooled up on turtles.

Panel discussion with Dani Shapiro, John Bowers, Marion Winik, and Shalom Auslander. I haven’t read the first two authors, but Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Winik is a brilliant little collection of essays about 52 people she knew who have died. Shalom Auslander’s book Foreskin’s Lament is nine miles beyond funny. Really fucking pissed off funny. Maddest at god but plenty left over for family too.
Here’s a response to an unremembered audience question.

Shalom: If you want to know what it’s like to be a writer, read The Hunger Artist by Kafka. You live in a cage, you starve, and no one cares.
Marion: Except they drag you out once a year for the Woodstock Writers Festival.
Shalom: Yeah, in a barn in the middle of nowhere.

Go out now and get these books and read them. I’ll wait.
Next up Martha Frankel on marketing. I hate marketing. Marketing is why I got out of marketing. But Martha makes it sound so fun! and easy! So now I have to learn to pimp myself on facebook, twitter, etc. Now I have to accept everyone who friends me, including that guy who self-publishes vampire porn written in the style of a seven year old which now I see is a brilliant marketing strategy. The hide feature is my friend, and if things get really bad I can block which is to say in Mother Frankel’s words, “He’s dead to me.” I know you’re right Martha but shit.
The next panel discussion was so good because I hated half of them. Hey eager writers, feeling good, and inspired? It’s time for the Cranky Negative Panel! (Wake up JB, you’re on the stage.) On the left were Bob Wyatt and Shaye Areheart, lovely helpful positive folks who I hope can be paired with different people in the future. The two on the right, married publisher and agent couple, seemed to say, “Hello. We are your barriers to publication. Go dig a hole and bury your book and stop bothering us with your stupid questions.” I loved Bob Wyatt’s riposte after a particularly long and gloomy response by the nattering nabobs of negativism∗ involving the impossibility of ever seeing even one of your vowels in print: “Or, you could land a plane on the Hudson.” Thank you Bob. And thank you Sully.
I read Chosen By a Horse by Susan Richards by accident, misremembering a book recommended by my sister. I’m not a horse person. I’m not really even an animal person unless it involves heat and side dishes. In Sunday’s writing workshop Susan points out that hers is not a book about horses; it’s a book about grief. It was poignant, funny, sad and uplifting. The book that is. The workshop was excellent. When I am stuck I will go back to minute observations. Speaking of poignancy and all that, why didn’t I guess that I’d spend so much of this festival welled up bordering tears? The audience readers were wonderful and so many of their stories ached. Note on next years fest: bring tissues.
Sunday night’s event was a reading and Q+A by Julie Powell, hosted by Martha Frankel, author of Hats and Eyeglasses. Julie’s is the I had an idea and I blogged it and someone noticed and I made it into a book and then Hollywood found it and Amy Adams played me and Meryl Streep was in it fairy tale. Julie landed her plane in the Hudson. I’m embarrassed that I have not read nor seen the movie Julie and Julia, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of this event. Martha Frankel is a thoughtful and funny host. I first saw her moderating a panel at the Woodstock Film Festival and thought I would like to have lunch with her sometime, if only she wasn’t such a recluse. For a good time, friend Martha on Facebook. She’s not that choosy and you won’t be sorry. Back to Julie, who has a new book called Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession that is maybe a little about her time interning at Fleischer's butcher shop in Kingston, NY. Julie is so damn cute it’s hard to imagine her taking down a side of beef, plus it hardly seems safe for a twelve year old to be waving big knives around, but I do look forward to reading this book. I’m sure it’s not about the meat.
Did I mention that Ruth Reichl read and answered questions? She did. She was her sweet and funny goddess self. I may write more on this later.
The next morning was a meet and greet brunch at Joshua’s. I ate, I schmoozed, I took pictures. That’s it for now. Find yourself at the Woodstock Writers Festival next year. The totebags are really nice.

∗ William Safire, for Spiro Agnew

http://woodstockwritersfestival.com/index.html

ooph.

2010-02-10T16:00:00.004-05:00

I bet that many of us not in the profession have random medical terms floating in our heads. I can tell an adipo from an adreno and I’d prefer an oscopy over an ectomy any day. I know medical colors too, like cyano, cirrh, and xanth. I remember ovo-, ovi-, ov-. But I didn’t know about oo (egg, ovum) or ooph (ovary, egg-bearing.) Ooph. Oeuf.

Where this is going is that I had an oophorectomy last week. When I first found out I needed one, I thought it sounded kind of fun and cartoony, like I was going to have a small Dr. Suess creature removed from my abdomen. It was less fun that that, but pretty easy as surgeries go.

My friend Donna emailed me, “I could cook you dinner like I'm making for my family tonight but I wonder if you really want a tuna fish sandwich with sweet pickles?” That sounded more like a dish to offer someone who was pregnant. I declined. This recovery is distinctly in the other direction.

I’m fine; please don't bring food, unless they are Rice Krispy Treats made with real Rice Krispies and fresh marshmallows. I like them just-made, butter never margarine, and a little warm, so please plan the baking and driving carefully, especially with all this snow.

the hand

2010-01-14T18:23:00.002-05:00

Once when I was about seven we were at the Berg’s house and I watched my first horror movie. The movie was about a pianist, a hand, and a pair of scissors. Or at least that’s what I remember, the terrifying part. The hand crawled across the piano, grasped the scissors, and stabbed the pianist. Why or how or if didn’t matter. It just was, and with help from my brother that hand with its gleaming scissors would become the single most terrifying thought of my childhood. A mere whisper of “the hand” would send me into a spiral of hysteria. I remember sitting with my mother in the bathroom while she whispered, “it’s okay; it’s not real; it’s just a movie; that could never happen” ad nauseum until I fell asleep exhausted in her arms and she would carry me to bed. But my seven-year-old heart knew that hand would come after me some night holding those big scissors to stab me again and again.

birthday wishes

2010-01-06T23:42:00.003-05:00

I was going through and clearing out a bunch of crap from my office area the other day and came across a birthday card my grandmother sent to my son Demetri a dozen or so years ago. She was in her early nineties then. He was seven.

Here’s a picture of the front of the card:

She had, no doubt, walked down to the pharmacy at Bradley Meadows to buy it. She might have grabbed a bottle of wine from the liquor store while she was out. She always remembered our birthdays.

Here’s the inside of the card:

In case you can’t read her I’m-Old-and-English-is My-Second-Language-Anyway handwriting, she wrote,

“Dear Dimitri

G^dMère wish you very happy day for your Birthday —

Good kisses —

G^dMère"

boston book festival

2009-10-25T17:01:00.002-04:00

The new nasal pillows kept me up half the night. While not as obtrusive as the full mask, which was like having Darth Vader sit on my face and sigh all night, the new contraption is less nasal pillow and more vengeful nose plug. Both, however, are preferable to dying in one’s sleep, so I carry on as I carry on. I woke up two hours later than intended, looked outside at the rain, and decided to blow off the Boston Book Festival. Went downstairs and poured a bowl of Cheerios but because there was no milk I reinstated my plan and took off. I am easily manipulated, even by breakfast cereal.
The festival commandeered Copley Square, with events running all day in the Boston Public Library and Old South and Trinity churches. Vendor tents around the square sheltered publishing companies, free coffee, radio stations, etc. One tent had a lineup of authors each spending an hour signing books that were being given away. Yes, given away. Not crap books either; books by people you’ve heard of: Ken Burns, Jay O’Callahan, Barbara Lynch.
My favorite event was Writer Idol. Here’s the description from the website:

In this freewheeling session, a professional actor will perform the first page of your unpublished manuscript for the audience and a panel of three “judges.” Judges are agents and editors with years of experience reading unsolicited submissions. When one judge hears a line that would make her stop reading, she will raise her hand. The actor will keep reading until a second judge raises his hand. The judges will then discuss WHY they would stop reading, and offer concrete if subjective suggestions to the anonymous author. If no agent raises a hand, the judges will discuss what made the excerpt work. Though all excerpts will be evaluated anonymously, this session is not for the faint-hearted or thin-skinned! While judges will be respectful of the work, laughter and even scorn from the audience is to be expected. To participate in this session, bring THE FIRST 250 WORDS of your manuscript (fiction or non-fiction only, please) to the session. It must be double-spaced, titled, and clearly marked at the top with its genre. Participants will leave the manuscripts in a box at the front of the room, and manuscripts will be chosen randomly by the actor.

I don’t watch American Idol but due to popular culture salvo I understood that the panel included the Simon judge; lots of eye-rolling and stinging commentary, the Paula Abdul “nice” judge, and… you get the picture. Or maybe you don’t and if that’s the case don’t change anything. The difference of course was the anonymity of the writers. No need to parade that cliché-suffused spasm of a first page in person; the actor did that for you.
A few things I learned:
Don’t open with the weather.
Opening with your character just waking up is risky. By extrapolation, if you must open with your character just waking up, do not under any circumstances have her talk about or even notice the weather.
Your first few pages should not describe urine running down any leg. In fact, avoid vivid chronicling of all bodily functions. It might be okay to describe bleeding, provided it is from someplace that does not typically bleed — gashes, eyes, etc. Menstrual blood falls into the former category.

It was hard to listen without comparing my first 250 words with their first 250 words. Harder still was not staring at any person who stood up and hurried out after the judges' sometimes ruthless criticism. What I wanted to do was stand at the door and conduct exit interviews: “Why are you leaving?” “Was that your piece that just got skewered before the crowd?” “Why are you crying?” “Do you think you’ll ever write again?” I suppose it’s good practice for the rejection letters we all have to open.

I left the festival with a few literary magazines, a stack of books, some free and some purchased, all signed by the authors, and went straight to my friend Debbie’s for a lovely evening of sparkling toilets, delicious food and good company. I got home at 1:00 a.m. without the milk.

Freecycle Etiquette: A True Story and a Cautionary Tale (and an annoying line break.)

2009-10-16T15:08:00.004-04:00

I read through a few of my blog posts and realize that some of you might think that I am nice, and sappy. I offer this post in contradiction. Insert [sic] where necessary.

This one's for you Lizzy, 'cause Debbie's not good at clicking either.

Debbie and I belong to the same Freecycle List and exchange witticisms and clever wordplay on a variety of subjects, freecycle being the recent favorite. While many of the goods offered through freecycle are decent, usable, sometimes even valuable, there are the items whose owners don’t recognize are too tired to go any further than the trash. I bring you Suzi (not her real name) and her treasures of such dubious value that even the most rigorous of recyclers may flinch.

Suzi to Freecycle:
Offer:
2 Crazy Straws
2 Standard Pillowcases
Baseball Hat Cleaner

Suzi to Freecycle:
Offer:
3 Chloraseptic Sore Throat Relief Strips
4 Raspberry Drink Mix Packages (Just add hot or cold water)
(32 Minerals and Vitamin C) (A Dietary supplement)
Finger Nail Polish Remover
Sponge for Body Wash (Never used)
Toothpaste (Some used.) Didn't like the flavor.
I want it gone ASAP

Debbie to Me:
Come on!! D

Me to Debbie:
Thank God someone has offered this. My polish is chipping badly and Lord Knows I can't spend the 69¢ for a bottle. Gas up the car, we're goin' to Nashua!
Suzi, get a grip!
(Sure you don't want any empty margarine containers? Just slightly used...)

Debbie to Me:
Run--don't walk!
She also offered three strips of some cough-related thing, I think.
Interested? Three f-ing strips.
The height of bad taste, I know, making fun of freecycle. Can't help myself.

Me to Debbie:
HAH!
I think we need to start a compilation of the *interesting* things people think other people want. Again, there's a thesis in there somewhere...

Suzi to Freecycle:
Offer:
4 Folders
Want everything gone ASAP or it will go to Goodwill.

Me to Debbie:
OK, now Suzi's getting to the MEAT of her stash. Stay tuned...

Suzi to Freecycle:
Offer:
Reference Book 2 Volumes A-Z (Brand new) (I want it to go to a real good home)(I paid alot of them)
Electic Bands for stretching
5 Folders some used some never used must take all.

Uh-oh. Here's where Debbie’s aim goes awry. She hits the "reply" button instead of “forward” and sends these e-mails, intended for me, to Suzi.

Debbie to Suzi:
"FOUR FOLDERS...WANT EVERYTHING GONE ASAP OR IT WILL GO TO GOODWILL"
Threats now.

Suzi to Freecycle:
Offer:
5 Folders some used some never used must take all.

Debbie to Suzi:
Must be spring cleaning...in the fall. I love this: "Reference Book 2 Volumes A-Z (Brand new) (I want it to go to a real good home)(I paid alot of them)"
Whoa--more folders. Some used, some not: must take all. Is this a fucking joke?

Debbie to Suzi:
Still going--you were right. She is really getting down now. Stretchy band?

This is when Debbie calls me laughing hysterically which I take for crying and panic. With the laughing and the two feet in her mouth it is hard to understand what she is saying.

So, two questions: Should Debbie apologize to Suzi; and do you think that the 32 Minerals and Vitamin C is *per packet*, or is it 8 Minerals and Vitamin C per packet, times the four packets?

what i overheard

2009-09-08T10:44:00.004-04:00

Starbucks, a weekend afternoon. A man in a suit is sitting at the table across from me, looking anxiously from his watch to the door and back again. A woman approximately his age, mid 60s I’d say, walks in, looking nicely put together, and begins to look around. They make eye contact, and the man stands and approaches her. They shake hands and speak as they walk to the counter to order. I continued working; reading or writing for one class or another. They return with their coffees and sit. Their conversation, which I cannot help overhearing, is about the day, the weather, other mundane topics, but with a tenseness not fitting with the casual conversation. I think maybe it’s a job interview. After a few more minutes of stiff banter it becomes clear that it is not a job interview, but a blind date. I am now much more interested in their conversation.
Taking a chance that weekend afternoon, after who knows how many weeks or years of being single, widowed, divorced, they sat at this neutral and public place, over coffee, not too much of a time commitment in case it really goes bust, and took a gamble that I imagine must be difficult.
Now they’re talking about his digestive system. Something going on with that, but it doesn’t sound too serious. I find myself wishing him off that topic. No, not on a first date! Don’t bring up your colon on a first date! I am his fan, I am rooting for him, hopeful for him, and I wish I could coach him from behind her back; gesture my finger across my neck to signal cut that topic short. He stops as though he hears me, and says in best barroom cliché fashion, “Enough about me, tell me about yourself.”
She tells him about where she works; management, or executive secretary, or some such. Not a job she wants to spend a lot of time talking about, and she doesn’t, moving on to another safe if unremarkable point. They chat back and forth this way, and I find myself attending to my work but pricking an ear up if the conversation sounds like it might go somewhere. It is mostly first date-ish, sheltered and shallow and nervous. The date itself is enough of a risk; no need to push things. Not at that age.
The date starts winding down. Maybe one of them had to be somewhere, or maybe one of them built in an escape mechanism as recommended on match.com. The woman excuses herself to the restroom and picks up her handbag. The man politely stands as she does, having grown up in an era when that was still routine, an era foreign to most of the people at Starbucks that day. A minute passes. The man takes a sip of his coffee and looks at his watch. Not impatiently, just habit. He says softly to no one, “I really enjoyed myself today, and if you’d like, we could do this again sometime.” He pauses and looks down at his now-empty cup. “I really enjoyed myself today, and I’d like to see you again.” He shakes his head slightly. I am looking at his reflection in the window, trying to seem uninterested or out of range of his earnest rehearsals. “I really enjoyed myself today, and if you’d like, maybe we could go to dinner.” Yes, that’s the one. That tells her not only would you like to see her again, but you’d like it to be a longer and more relaxed time, I coach.
The freshened woman approaches the table. He stands again, and they agree that it’s time to be leaving. “I really enjoyed myself today, and if you’d like, maybe we could go to dinner.” She agrees. He will call her. They leave, the three of us happy and hopeful.

two $100.00 parking stories

2009-09-01T16:18:00.002-04:00

Spring, 2009

I’m taking a class at Lesley called “Fine Arts of Boston.” The class consists of going on field trips to artsy places and writing thoughts and reviews and making presentations and collages. It is not a big challenge but I will not be returning the three credits.
The first field trip was an architectural walk through Boston. Symphony Hall, Old South Church, Boston Public Library; check, check, check. Column, capital, entablature; check, check, check. Write a paper, collect an A, go to the Museum of Fine Arts. Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, still rivals after all these years. Photographic Figures in the new Herb Ritts Gallery (go!) Dürer, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Gauguin, and Renoir. Chuck Close, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, Susan Rothenberg, Andy Warhol, and Takashi Murakami oh I could go on.
Part three of the class is to be a field trip to the theater. What will it be? Pinter? Moon for the Misbegotten? Shakespeare? The Cherry Orchard? Edward Albee? Death of a Salesman? Oh we are ripe with possibilities. The chosen play? Shear Madness. Self-proclaimed “America’s Favorite Comedy.” We will go cheek by jowl with the folks swarming from buses, still damp from their Duck Tour boat rides and thrilled at the shopping possibilities at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Tickets are $34.00. Meet out front at 7:15.
Fine Arts of Boston. This conjures images; grand images; images of a city that writer Oliver Wendell Holmes dubbed “Hub of the Universe.” Shouldn’t we be more careful about what we dump into this “Fine Arts” pile? Should Shear Madness ever rest against the breast of Matisse’s Carmelina? Join Degas in a pas de deux? Have tea with van Gogh at Houses in Auvers?
It is with this backdrop that I bring you Two $100.00 Parking Stories:
First $100.00:
Got lost in Boston. I am one of the few who can do this despite having a GPS. It's a talent. Too late to have the nice dinner I was going to have before the play, I parked, fed the meter through 6:00 p.m., and went into a food courtish place on Tremont Street. At the Chinese take-out counter it was between the Corn Syrup Orange Colored Sesame Chicken, or General Gao's Gelatinous Mystery Meat. Went with the chicken. Ate half of that, chucked the rest, and stopped at Starbucks. It was going to be a long night and I was already tired, so I had a big latte.
Sussed out the theater. Still half hour before it was time to meet the group. Walked around a bit and noticed I had a parking ticket on my windshield: $100.00 for parking in a bus stop. After 6:00 it becomes a bus stop, says the sign that I didn't see. Neither, apparently, did the seven other people with tickets on their cars. Last time I'll ever park on Cash Cow Boulevard.
Drove around looking for parking. Nothing on the street, naturally, and I wasn't about to pay $30.00 to leave my car for two hours. I couldn't afford it at this point what with that hundred-dollar ticket. Drove by the theater and watched from the car as the group gathered in the rain waiting for the professor who had the tickets. I pulled up to one of my classmates and gave him the envelope with my ticket money in it and asked him to give it to the professor with my apologies; I wasn't feeling well and had to go home, I said.
Ticket to play I didn't want to see: $34.00
Parking ticket: $100.00
Bailing out and going home to sit in front of the TV: Priceless

Second $100.00:

Had class in Cambridge today, at Lesley on Mass Ave. at Porter Square. After yesterday’s pricey parking episode I decided to play it safe and use the Lesley lot. More expensive, but at least I didn't have to run out and feed the ever-ravenous meter monster his bi-hourly meal.
After class I went to the desk with my ticket to pay for my car to simply exist for four hours. "$15.00" requested the attendant, stamping my ticket. I counted my bills: $9.00. But my friend Donovan told me to always carry a $100.00 bill wherever I go. I pulled this out and handed it to the attendant. "Oh," he says, shocked at my affluence and the sheer madness shown in handing it to him, "I can't take that."
"It's American money" I contended. "I can't take it,” countered he. Well, I said, one hand open with the $9.00 on it, the other with the $100.00 bill on it, "you can have this.... or this."
"Okay, $9.00."

he's leaving home

2009-08-21T16:08:00.006-04:00

I’m writing his name in Sharpie on the towels he’s taking with him to college. When I first met Demetri I could have dried him with a washcloth, and today he’s packing the trunk of his 1994 Mercedes S-Class, grit still under his fingernails from getting it into tip-top shape, and preparing to drive it across the country. This country; the one that looks more formidable to me now, on the brink of having my oldest off on its roads, in its towns and cities, its red states and its blue states.

I helped him with his laundry, something I hadn’t done in years, and made sure he had a flashlight and some extra batteries and that his AAA membership was up to date. That’s all I can really do now; the rest he did himself, which is pretty much how it’s been the past few years. He’s big now.

I’m not sure yet how many ways I’ll miss Demetri. The house will be quieter; too quiet, probably. The piano will have no one who can really play it. The kitchen will be cleaner. I’ll miss his sense of humor. I’ll have to figure out how to use my camera. I will miss our night-owl conversations about life, cars, and balls of string. I’ll miss the King Tiny face.

When the kids were growing up there were lots of things that ended without us really knowing that they had. Yes, we celebrated when they were done with diapers and when they lost a first tooth, but we didn’t notice when they stopped making burglar alarms out of household items, when they stopped playing with Lego, and when they didn’t need us to get them juice any more. Had I known I would have savored the last time sitting in my lap. When they stopped saying things like, “If there were rioters, and they asked idiots, imps and scoundrels to help them riot, wouldn’t that be bad and very destructive?”

I’ve savored the last few months with Demetri, and now it’s coming down to the wire. The trunk is packed. Towels are there. Flashlight too. Now I’m just waiting for him to say, “Mommy, if there was a seismograph for how much I love you, for the rest of the time the earth was here, someone would have to keep changing the rolls.” Then I’ll lift him gently off my lap, pour him some juice and he’ll be off.

facebook

2009-08-18T18:25:00.003-04:00

I wrote this in March.

I joined Facebook about a year ago. I have two teenaged children and I wanted to see what it was about. For a long time I stayed hidden under a pen name, until one person found me. Then another, and like a shampoo commercial from the seventies my “friends” list multiplied exponentially until I was soon “friends” with forty people, some barely acquaintances. Some had recently made guest appearances in my writing. A best friend from elementary school reminded me via my “wall” of a disgusting soda mix we used to drink. I had written of this concoction in my journal two months before.

It can get overwhelming at times, especially when people post photos of us as pre-adolescents, or unquiet teens, so young, so spirited, so naïve. Who knew then that Della would slit her wrists? That Natalie and Vicky would die of cancer, leaving young children to face monumental loss? How some of us would go to college, grad school, medical school, and become professionals while others floundered, never getting much traction. Are we all shocked to be on the cusp or over the edge of 50? We didn’t know then how much our teeth could hurt, how fat or farsighted we could become, or how dark could be the pain of losing a child.

I’m finding myself glad to be in the virtual presence of these kids. Yeah, for me they’re still kids, as am I. These are the barely-formed people who knew the barely-formed Monique, a perspective only they will ever have.

I’ll see some of them some time, I’m sure, during trips back home or to here or there. I’ll see them in their present adult forms, and hold up my mirror to see what is different and what is the same. What parts are essential to who we are, no matter the age and what parts change as we grow, wizen, age.

My assessment of Facebook, if anyone asks, is that sure, it’s great for today’s kids to network and share. But its real value is to those of us who have separated, and lost touch of our childhoods.

staples

2009-08-15T20:57:00.009-04:00

While driving recently with friends through Marin county we stopped in the little town of Point Reyes Station to walk around and find lunch to take with us to the beach. I became entranced by a rough knotty board, painted dark gray and nailed to the side of a building on the main street. It was a bulletin board, or was once. All that was left on it were small weathered corners of posters past, a profusion of rusty staples, and a couple of odd little drawings of faces or pieces of faces, painted onto thick rough-edged paper. It appeared that the board had been repainted, brushing right over a few posters.

This got me thinking about staples again. Staples in the context of history. What treasures have these staples held? What have they seen? What little piece of history, in the shape of a poster, has covered this small shard of steel, and that one? In my hometown of Woodstock, New York, there are telephone poles along the main drag rich with staples. According to wikipedia, “wood [utility] poles decay and have a life of approximately 25-50 years, depending on climate and soil conditions.”

I like to think the staples that held the posters advertising Paul Butterfield or Orleans; Johnny Average and Nicole, or Maria Muldour; or the post-Robertson Band playing at the Joyous Lake are still there, little tokens held close by the wood, part of a shiny and now rusty past.

i ramble

2009-08-14T11:37:00.006-04:00

Last Saturday, after the movie and the party, just when I thought I was going back to Nina's for the night, she arranges for me to be swept up and taken to Levon Helm's Midnight Ramble, compliments of Mark and Karen. This just doesn't happen often enough in the woods of Massachusetts and I spend a little time adjusting back to “Woodstock legs.” The ones that keep you upright through the unpredictable.

Oddly, the guests for the evening were Chris and Lorin Rowan, who played with brother Peter many a night in the late 70s at Rancho Nicasio, the nightclub in Marin County that you may recall from my recent San Francisco post. What are the chances that 30 years later I’d walk into a barn on Plochman Lane in my hometown and find them playing? They still play often at Rancho Nicasio too.

Next up Levon. To zealous and loving applause he comes out and sits at the drums. He looks frail, and starch white, his dentures now too big for his throat cancer survivor thin face. But when he starts drumming it becomes clear that he is still the old master; always on time; eyes and smile communicating with fellow musicians; he is Levon. On doctor’s orders not to sing, he played his drums for us pa rum pum pum pum, and his mandolin too. His daughter Amy and a few guys in the band covered the vocals brilliantly for him.

Song highlights for me were a honky tonkish Simple Twist of Fate. It Makes No Difference, out no doubt to Ezra, brother of Amy, who died a week earlier, a suicide story as sad as any. And Cassandra Wilson, with her sweet deep jazz voice taking a few verses of The Weight. That song hasn’t sounded as good since the Staples got a hold of it.

woodstock. don't try to understand it.

2009-08-13T10:08:00.004-04:00

Funny and interesting article, I thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/nyregion/13towns.html?_r=1

“For young people the only career paths are law enforcement or lawn care,” said Peter Cantine, an owner of the Bear Cafe, a popular restaurant.

And restaurant work. Don't forget restaurant work.

i see stars

2009-08-09T12:02:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was hot and sunny as I stood on line outside to see a film at the Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock, movie house of my youth. I haven’t seen a movie here since I left in 1984. It’s the same and it’s different. I don’t remember the walls being red pleated cloth, but the tin ceiling with its peeling paint is the same, although the layer coming off is unlikely one I ever sat under.

I helped upholster those seats in the 60s, when Sy Kattleson transformed a small church into a cinema. I didn’t know then that it was an indy theater. I’m not sure that label had even been invented yet. Theaters were theaters, and they played movies, and that was that. I remember the seats being black vinyl, each of us children helping an adult by providing an extra set of albeit small hands to hold the vinyl in place while staples were popped through. The seats are cloth now. More comfortable and better looking. Upscale, even.

My brother worked there as a projectionist when he was a teen. He was one of those A.V. kids who could repair a break in no time and get the movie back on the screen before the audience got restless.

I saw a lot of people I recognized from growing up in Woodstock, but no one I really knew. Just vague faces from an out-of-focus past. The movie we watched was a special advance screening of Taking Woodstock, a film by Ang Lee and James Schamus based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber. Lee and Schamus were there for a post-film Q+A, along with Michael Lang, brainchild of the festival, his face still as mellow and cherubic as it was 40 years ago. It was a sweet film, made sweeter by this cinema and this town and these people who have come to embrace their village bearing the name of, according to Mr. Lee, “the most important cultural event of the past 1,500 years.” It opens on August 28th. Go see it. It’s the feelgood movie of the year, nothing illicit required.

2009-08-07T23:21:00.001-04:00

Visit She Writes

san francisco

2009-08-06T18:37:00.005-04:00

I returned yesterday from visiting my friend Beth in San Francisco. I went with two other friends and we had a splendid, savvy-native tour. Good restaurants. Good parks. Good weather. Really good weather. Weather I would like to own. At the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market I ate peaches that made me think that perhaps there was a god. Illogically delicious peaches for a northeasterner who thought she understood them and is shocked to discover she didn’t. I could move there for the peaches, but that wouldn’t be the only thing. The strawberries were miraculous too.

We took a ride north one day, stopping at Rancho Nicasio, just off of the beautiful Lucas Valley Road, a nightclub/restaurant I worked at for a while during an interruption of my Woodstock years. I spent some months doing bookkeeping there, and house-sitting for the owners who were spending an extended visit with family back east. It looked pretty much the same, just cleaned up a bit. Thankfully the dingy dusty animal busts were still on the walls and the dark wood interior was intact. They removed the purple tie-dyed length of Christo’s Running Fence, a project completed in 1976 wherein he and Jeanne-Claude installed an 18 foot high, 24 and a half miles long curtain across the hills of Marin and Sonoma counties. It used to hang from the ceiling, billowing in the breeze of the fans. I wonder if the new owners knew what it was when they took it down, or if it was removed before they bought the place. I wonder where it is now, that 18 by 40 feet piece of cloth that had fleeting fame as part of a project that was deconstructed after 14 days and purportedly left no visible trace. I still think about it 33 years later.

woodstock in july

2009-07-28T18:54:00.001-04:00

My sister and I made a 16x24" Spongebob Squarepants cake this week for Mila, who turned 4 yesterday. I’ve never actually watched the show, but I do know of him, both through Mila and courtesy of my friendly neighborhood and worldwide media outlets. Jay Leno points out that although some may not know who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they do know who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

I'm no cake decorator as you've perhaps by now noticed, ("practice makes perfect," says Luc) but it was fun to turn flour, eggs, sugar, and butter into a giant cartoon sponge. When asked why Spongebob and not one of his beloved superheroes, Mila divulged a greater plan; next year is Spiderman, followed by Batman. I'm glad to have a nephew who thinks these things through and plans ahead. I've got a year to practice.

I present for your amusement a picture of the finished lovely, followed by the spoils, entitled Fear and Loathing in a Pineapple Under the Sea.

iceland

2009-07-23T22:50:00.001-04:00

I heard on NPR this morning that Iceland has applied for entry into the European Union. This makes me a little sad; as the NPR commentator pointed out Iceland has always been an ardently independent nation. The big world economic suck affected them in prodigious ways, decimating their economy and currency.

The things I love about the EU are the same things I dislike. Crossing borders is a breeze, but I miss the slowing to take notice that I am in a different country, with different customs, a different language, and different money. I miss getting my passport stamped.

Yeah, the euro is easier than having to exchange and keep track of different currencies, but I miss the individuality of the monies. The Italian lira, with its amusing number of zeros. The French franc that dropped a few zeros in 1960, confusing my poor grandmère. The one I miss the most is the Dutch guilder, especially the 50g note, with its beautiful sunflower splashed happily on the front. Here it is, in case you missed it…

I’ve never been to Iceland, except for a day spent waiting for a storm to pass at the airport in Reykjavik back when Icelandair to Luxembourg was the cheapest way to get to Europe. I’d love to really visit.

The language is complicated and permits such things as “Quirky subjects,” the idea of which delights me even though I have no idea of what it is even after reading the wikipedia entry. I'm impressed that geothermal energy supplies nearly 90% of the country’s energy needs. They were smart early on to tap this resource. We have resources too in the forms of wind and sun and we’ve all but ignored them.

I’ll get there someday. Hopefully soon enough to drop a few krónur.

peetrol

2009-07-22T18:43:00.000-04:00

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/pee-powered-cars/

“An electrolyzer built into a car would eliminate the need for a hydrogen storage tank, and with the right partnership, I believe we could have pee-powered cars capable of 60 miles per gallon on the road within a year.”
The right partnership. I wonder who that could be.

so long frankie

2009-07-20T13:48:00.000-04:00

I read an article in the New York Times Magazine years ago about what the afterlife means for a variety of people. Fran Lebowitz will use hers to return phone calls; Ross Bleckner will have his ashes mixed with paint to be used by his favorite 10 artists for a group show. My favorite though was from Frank McCourt, who died yesterday, and whose words we still quote with amusement in my house:

“My hereafter is here. I am where I'm going, for I am mulch. It's a great comfort to know that in my mulch-hood I may nourish a row of parsnips.”

McCourt deserved a longer life and a shorter death, and I’ll miss knowing that he walks and talks among us. Speaking to a group of students after the publication of Angela’s Ashes he once said, “I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.” With that he nourished a throng of unknowns to write their own “insignificant” stories, a generation of voices that might not otherwise have been heard. Parsnips indeed.

Endpaper; The Afterlife, As I See It
http://tinyurl.com/mh5jdd

winter, 1975; excerpt from something bigger

2009-07-19T23:35:00.001-04:00

Bob P. owned the apartment building I moved into, an okay landlord as they go. Second floor on the left, two rooms and a tiny kitchen. There were four of us living there. Me, my boyfriend Danny, Jim the Greek and his girlfriend who renamed herself “Free” after escaping a violent relationship. She was Hispanic, from one of the tougher neighborhoods in NYC. Free had a daughter in someone else’s custody, with whom she hoped one day to be reunited. Jim was a smart and literary alcoholic, who seemed to have come from a background that allowed him an education. He read poetry, plays, and classics, and was funny as hell. Too bad about the alcoholism; he might have been my favorite professor of English Lit, Contemporary Poetry, or Greek Theater. Jim later was shot in the stomach and spent a long time in hospital. Lived though. Not like some of us. He wore professorial specs and a Sundance Kid mustache, and baked amazing bread in that kitchen barely big enough to boil water.

The way we lived was spare. Clothes to get through the week, a pair of shoes, maybe two, and a few of our favorite books and records. No need for furniture. A mattress on the floor was plenty. No table, no chairs, we sat on the floor and read The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus aloud, each taking a part or two. I remember a few other people there. Alfie, a local playwright, Jed, a tall guy who cross-dressed and had a sister named Julia who threatened to call the cops on Danny if he didn’t stay away from him. Jed was a junkie, and Danny was an ex and future junkie, with a few clean years between states. Jed was flamboyant and loud, another drinker, and fun to be around. Once I saw him chasing a car down Tinker Street yelling, wearing four-inch platform shoes and a pink feather boa, carrying a glass of scotch. He was chasing his sister. I don’t know why.

lipodiesel

2009-07-17T15:03:00.000-04:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/surgeon-uses-human-fat-to-run-his-cars-1211431.html

Now if they would just make a device that removes it from your ass and funnels it directly into the tank as you drive...

Incredible exploding pressure gauge

2009-07-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

or, how to wreck four tires and a pressure gauge in one easy step.

I'm exaggerating. I did however inadvertently fill my tires to above 60 psi (max rated - 42) at the Mobile station in Groton, near where Old Ayer Road comes in. All that air for the low low price of $.75.

Today the car was driving funny, so I stopped at a gas station in Acton, took off the valve caps and and stuck them in my pocket, put in my $.75, and with the pressure gauge on the air hose checked the pressure of the first tire. 62 pounds can't be right, I thought. So I got my pressure gauge from the glovebox and checked it. It shoots out to 60, the highest psi measurable with this home device. Shit! thought I, and go to the next tire. 60, wow. I put the gauge onto the third tire and with a pulse the end blew off, springs and washers and little black widgets spilling onto the pavement. I used what was once the top of the gauge to release 20 lbs of pressure from each tire, but I think I need to get another gauge. Yeah that and don't go to the Mobile station in Groton anymore.

Next stop, Trader Joe's for groceries. I put my keys in my pocket and realize that I'm still carrying the vitamins that I never took this morning, so I go back into the car for my water bottle. I open it, toss a vitamin back, take a slug, and get ready to repeat when I realize that the fucking valve caps are still in my pocket, now mixed with the vitamins. I counted them. Four. Well that's good, I didn't just swallow a valve cap. I think I better add ginko to my vitamin regimen.