3/28/07
Onion-Scented Air
Ah, Spring! The magical season when the warming zephyrs carry, through newly opened windows, the scent of onions from the sandwich shop at the other end of the alley! Onion is a very potent, searching sort of smell. There's probably a taxonomy of potent smells, with burning tire somewhere near the top, but onion is up there too. You know how nature abhors a vacuum? I think the onion regards air that doesn't smell oniony as something to be similarly abhorred. If you work in an office, you know what I mean. Someone brings in a hoagie with onions and unwraps it, and instantly—voomp!—the entire office smells of onions. I'll have to ask some of my scientist fishing friends why that is. They'll probably say something about esters, I imagine. I wouldn't know what an ester was if I fell over one but esters just always seem to be mixed up in situations like this.
Well, I was wrong. No esters involved. That's why they're scientists and I'm not. But sheesh—the reasons onions make you cry is because you've got a dilute solution of sulfuric acid in your eyes? Damn! I guess that explains that.
3/27/07
Customs Inspection
I try to understand, and to see things from the other person's point of view, and to know that people in different cultures express things in ways I don't catch unless I'm taught about them. I really do. For instance, let's say you want to fish or hunt in Montana. It's useful to know that out there the ranchers who don't want people fishing or hunting on their land will paint red or orange stripes around their fenceposts. If you don't know that, and the rancher sees you, he may fire a warning shot or two in the air. (That's another way of saying "no trespassing.") It's important to know these things.
And in France, people in shops typically don't smile at you and don't break out in big smiles if you smile at them first. They smile at friends as much as anyone else does, they smile at children, they smile a fair bit, actually. But they feel that a person you encounter in a shop is simply not your friend, and to smile at them is to pretend, in the French view, to be a friend when you're not. They appreciate it about as much as when an oily used-car salesperson says he'll give you a special deal because he likes you. So you don't smile at the French for no reason if they're strangers.
And in the Philippines, you should be careful about saying you'd sort of like something. They treat what we see as a casually expressed wish very seriously, as if it were a deathbed request. I was there a few years ago for a conference, and I said on my last day that I felt bad because there was a certain type of pie I hadn't had a chance to try—a coconut cream sort of thing they make there, actually. Well, it was like I'd announced the building was on fire. About six people started running around saying they knew people who lived out in the country, not far, like two hours away (so they said) and they lived next to one of those pie places and they'd bring me some of the pies and they start whipping out cell phones and making the complicated arrangements for this. I was horrified. "No! No!" I kept saying. "It's really OK! Please don't bother!" A colleague from the States who'd been there a time or two already knew this was futile, and leaned in to say in my ear, "Just let it go." So eventually the pies came. They really weren't very good. Long story short, I now understand to keep it to myself if I want something in the Philippines that I can't get for myself.
So yeah, I try to understand how other people see a situation. I try to put myself in the other person's place. So why, why, why can't I keep it in my head that other people sometimes like cream or milk in their coffee? Personally I like it black, but I've seen other people use cream or milk about eleven kajillion times, this is not an obscure bit of knowledge for me or anything. But the truth is I've had people over to my new place a reasonable number of times in the two years I've lived here, and I don't think I've once remembered to get cream. Once, maybe. I don't know what ails me regarding this. I had some friends over the other night who've shown me lavish hospitality for many years, and I remembered minutes before they were to arrive that I should have gotten cream. Sure enough, comes the end of the evening, and I'm asked for milk. A reasonable request, right? Well, I say apologetically that I have some old milk I got weeks ago to make cornbread with. But, I add, it's past its date and I'm sure its not good any more. Well, these folks are sophisticated but also outdoorsy and down to earth, so they quite sensibly gave it a sniff to check on its possible overripeness. Well, people, it was a lovely evening generally but it gives you a pang, it really does, to see your guests sniffing the food you offer them to see if it's gone bad or not. They really shouldn't have to do that, you know? If you like people, and you offer them food, they should be able to trust that the food offered is free of putrefaction. The question really shouldn't come up, if you're doing things correctly.
But there you are. I'm still working on nailing down this cream/milk thing. I have other factors in place, and others still to go, in my entertaining skill and equipment set. But it's funny how things can work out, like a stopped clock being right twice a day. Just yesterday another invitee was saying that she couldn't have cow's milk or any of its derivatives. Well, I thought, no problem there.
P.S. I'm sorry for the patchy blogging, I've just been busy and frazzled and tired by 8 p.m. lately. Funny thing is, the numbers indicate that this humble blog seems to become more popular the less often I write. There's a conclusion there that I'm not sure I want to draw.
3/25/07
You Can't Please Everyone
As I rolled toward a particular intersection today I thought about a story that went around town a year or two. The intersection is in a boggy area, and right there is almost always where I first hear the spring peepers every year. If you don't know, they're tiny frogs (they could sit comfortably on a nickel) that sing like crazy early every spring. They were singing today, and I heard them for the first time. There's a nature writer in our region named Charles Fergus who writes prose that is solidly informative, clear, and has a certain lithe, muscular grace typical of the best of the breed. The peepers, he said, are "among the best known and most beloved of the harbingers of spring." He might have said that's how most of us feel, at any rate. A couple of years ago, the story went around and found its way into the local weekly about how one township office had taken a call from an irate newcomer who was experiencing his first spring evening in the country. He considered the calls of the peepers (they're looking for love, it being springtime) to be an intensely annoying racket and he wanted a stop put to it.
What, the township employee asked, did he want them to do? "Well," the caller spluttered, "isn't there a noise ordinance?"
The township employee's response was never made public but I'll venture to speak for him or her. In my reporter days I attended many township meetings and heard many ordinances debated and voted into law. Sometimes they had to do with noise, I imagine; I do remember one about how bright your lights could be. They tell you how long you have after the end of a snowfall before your walk must be shoveled, that sort of thing. And in general they wisely recognize that their authority governs only human behavior. The animals are ruled by a different body of law, and those peepers today were obeying both the letter and the spirit of it. It's spring, and the peepers are doing what peepers do. They're small, but they can make their voices carry a very long way, when they put their minds to it. Most of us know and love the rackety little harbingers. If you don't, though, save your own breath and don't bother calling the township. They're just not the controlling authority here. The peepers will call to one another, no matter how you might feel about it, because it's spring.
3/22/07
Just Take a Few Deep Breaths
Sorry for the absence, but at least it won't be unexplained—I'm busy. Just regular old busy. So busy, in fact, that I'm letting go, letting myself fall behind in a calm, surrendering way, much the way a person who's been shipwrecked must struggle in the water for a while and then, becoming exhausted and realistic, simply slip beneath the waves. No drama, just resignation.
The good news is it's because of a quarterly newsletter that I volunteer to edit and design and I'm almost done. You wouldn't think that it would be so much work, but it is, at least if you want it to be a decent effort and not a joke. A fellow laborer in the publishing vineyards was discussing this with me one time and we agreed that it's hard but doable to make most things pretty good. "You can't make everything perfect," is how she put it, "but at least you can make it so that it doesn't suck." This simple credo has inspired me to take one more crack at a task more often than I'd really care to admit. In olden days, people used to inspire themselves with the Latin word Excelsior, which means "higher." Longfellow, the state of New York, and Stan Lee have all used it. Myself, I just look at what I've just created, admit to myself that it sucks and doesn't have to, and start over. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a newsletter to reduce the sucktitude of. Talk to you soon, though.
3/19/07
I Mean, Be Reasonable
I'm really busy today, but I thought it was important to briefly mention two common-sense arguments regarding supernatural beings, one in favor of and one against.
First, the against. Ghosts—there are stories of them from almost the beginning of history. But fewer now, right? And why? If there were really ghosts, the number of people who don't lie easy and go roaming about, looking for purloined golden arms or just feeling grumpy about being beheaded, well, that percentage, rather, would be more or less constant over time, right? And the population of the earth has risen steadily since the ghost stories first started showing up. So logically, there'd be more and more ghosts all the time. There'd be so many floating over any good-sized town these days that you could turn the lights out all over and they'd cast a soft glow you could read the paper by. And a hospital that's been around for a while? Forget it! They'd be everywhere.
But they aren't. So I'm just not sure about ghosts.
Now vampires, on the other hand. On the face of it, OK, yeah, I'm dubious. There have been people who've pointed out that even if one vampire was making other people into vampires, there'd be this geometric progression and soon everyone would be a vampire. That's one side of the argument. The other side is this: In different parts of the world you find a similar characteristic of vampires—if you throw seeds on the ground they have to stop and count them. Now why, why, why would someone who wanted to tell a tall tale embellish it with this strange, obsessive-compulsive disorder style trait? It's as if they had all these scary qualities except for one: they adore barbershop quartets, say, or collect Hummel figurines. It's ridiculous. But it's there in the tradition. To me, that's a pretty strong argument that they're real. The mathematical thing about their infecting people, so to speak? Shoot, that's easy to explain away—maybe it just doesn't work quite that way. We don't know everything there is to know about vampires, remember. Any reasonable person would admit that.
That's it for today. I'm really very busy but as I said, this seemed important.
3/18/07
Fowl Means
OK, gotta finish up a few work-related chores here but I actually did something mildly interesting today, which was to go out to a small local farm that currently runs itself on the community supported agriculture (CSA) model. You pay a flat fee in the beginning of the year, and all during the growing season they give you stuff. If it's a really good year, you get more stuff, if it's not so good you get less. At the supermarket, they raise or lower prices depending on how the crop goes, so it works out to be the same thing. And most of these CSA outfits are as organic as they can realistically manage and that's good too. But mostly what interests me is that the stuff is fresh. Fresh is good. Fresh matters. A combination of subtle things makes the difference between delicious and dull, and fresh is high on the list of those things. Variety is another reason to like small, local farms. These outfits can grow things that can't handle the rigors of industrial agriculture. McCoun apples, for instance, have thin skins and bruise easily. If you throw thousands of them into a huge metal container the size of a truck and try to ship them three thousand miles from the tree they grew on, they bruise. Another difference is that these CSAs can pick things at the height of ripeness, because you pick up your new batch of produce every week. The food doesn't have to spend two or three weeks or more traveling thousands of miles and hanging out in warehouses. They get picked, put in a bag or box, and handed to you. Which means that you can have a ripe tomato. There is no substitute on this earth for a ripe tomato.
And finally, this approach enables the small farms around here to hang on and survive. See the houses sneaking up behind the farmer and the chicken? That's the story of my county right there. If I can buy a dozen fresh and poison-free eggs produced by that chicken and others like her, and take them home and make an omelet, and thereby help keep those houses pushed back for a while longer, then that's what I'm going to do. In fact, that's what I did.
3/17/07
Wised Up
Well, I'm taking a little intermission from a Saint Patrick's Day tradition—corned beef and cabbage, Guinness, and The Quiet Man. The beef and beer are as real and homely as you can get, the movie—well, like all movies, it's an illusion. This particular tradition was established a long time ago, when I was living a different life in several different ways, and it makes me smile, looking back. You can't and shouldn't live in the past, but then again, can you live without it? If we banished every memory that could make us wistful now and then, I suppose we'd all be amnesiacs.
And besides, it's a delicious meal and a very engaging picture. Maureen O'Hara moves like a wild animal. The story is based on an ancient myth about two gods fighting for the love of a goddess. But mostly it's just fun and witty and playful and reminds you that folly makes the world go 'round. And so do illusions, even after you know them for what they are. I guess there are people who feel wised up and realistic because they reject anything that smacks of sentiment. But I think the realer wisdom is to know you'll sigh sometimes, and smile, and remember how wrong you were once, and how right it was to hope and believe and give the illusion a chance. It's like Joni said, I guess. I've felt this way for a long time, and I guess I'm not likely to change my mind about it soon. But I've paused the movie, and I've got to get back to it, and if you're celebrating St. Paddy's day I hope you have a good time.
And now the movie's done. A good time had by all. They have a kind of curtain call at the end, and the actors are presented on screen in twos and threes, and they smile, and nod, and wave at you. It's a little spooky, really—the film was made 55 years ago, and they're all long dead, the smiling nodding wavers. But it's nice, too. You can tell they were all pretty pleased with how it came out, and you can hardly blame them. Honestly, if you're not a terminally hip person, or owlishly serious about things—Joyce Carol Oates, I'm looking at you—you ought to see it some time, it's fun.
I wanted to get just a few Guinnesses—typically they're sold in four-packs—but the first place I went only sold them by the case. I thought about it, and decided that there are worse things than having a good supply of Guinness around. So I loaded the fridge up with it, and after three or four helpings of corned beef, washed down as I had to with the stout, the refrigerator is heavily stocked with Guinness and so am I.
3/14/07
Blogorrhea
Sorry for the uncomfortable silence lately—I just haven't had much to say. There's nothing much edifying or inspiring going on in the news lately. And now the weather's raw and nasty again, after a brief flirtation with spring. And for the last few days I've just sat in front of my computer, putting words together to accomplish a variety of mostly mundane tasks. The most interesting thing I've done lately is write about a local 18th-century highwayman. I'm doing a young adult book about him. It may encourage young men to read, and to learn something about American history, because he was a pretty rowdy guy and spent most of his day pointing flintlock pistols at people. That's kind of fun.
I see a lot of visitors here from around the world—18 different countries just in this month. And one visitor is from Iran! Very cool, welcome. You may all have noticed that there's not a lot of politics or religion or culture wars or any of that stuff here. I'm like a bartender who won't let his patrons argue about that sort of thing—we run a nice quiet joint here, where people can have drink in peace. This isn't one of those arguing, name-calling blogs. I may vent some personal pique, now and then, but it's not about groups. I've never been to Iran, but I'd love to go. I'd want to go to Isfahan—I've always liked the sound of it. Isfahan.
The truck that dragged the man to death the other day went right past where I get my hair cut, and I was up there yesterday and they were still talking about it. I expected that, but the woman who cuts my hair still gave me a chill. She said she'd seen more than she wanted to see, and then she left the silence hang, and I hesitantly asked what she meant. "They were out there with shovels and bags," she said. Shovels and bags! Brrrrrrr.
3/13/07
Look Both Ways
Early this afternoon, I saw a helicopter slowly circling overhead, and wondered what it was, since I hadn't heard any sirens or seen any smoke. I didn't think much more about it, beyond hoping the incident wasn't nuclear or associated with the plague, and went back to work. But after a while I decided that since I'm sneaking out to do some fishing tomorrow morning, it would be good to hit the park and practice some fly rod casting, so I headed up town.
On one block of the main street I saw a fire truck hosing down the road, and I asked a guy who had stepped out for a smoke what had happened. What he told me gave me a chill: Further up the road, a man had been hit by a truck and dragged. It was close to 200 yards, as far as I could tell. The man pointed out into the street and said it had left a "drag mark." It was one of those memento mori moments for me, certainly. The medieval people would paint pictures of healthy young people dancing with skeletons, with the idea of remembering that death was always near. Us, we don't do that. We get pretty freaked out about bald spots and crows' feet; death seems far away. But it isn't. As I left him, I told the guy to be careful crossing the street, which he agreed was wise. I might also have told him to quit smoking, but he probably already knows it's not good for you. But it doesn't kill you ask quickly as a truck will, so it's easy to kid yourself.
I kept on, walking farther than usual because I didn't want to walk across the line the poor guy traveled. And then I went to the park. There were families out there, playing on the swings and sliding boards. One young mother asked me if I was practicing my fly casting, and we got talking. She has at least two avid angler friends who've moved out west, she said. Then for a while I concentrated on casting, and she concentrated on teaching her daughter how to swing on swings—you push your legs out moving forward, and pull them under you coming backwards, and you slowly build up momentum. The mother talked happily to the child about how it was spring, and warm, and baby animals were being born. For a moment I thought of asking if they'd heard about the accident—this is a small town, after all—but guided by what little wisdom I possess, I decided against it. They'd hear soon enough. For the moment it was warm and sunny, and it seemed better just to let it stay that way.
3/11/07
Daylight Saving
Oh, jeez, I'm sorry to have been away so long, but I've been recovering from a bout of gluttony about which I'll say more later tonight. Right now I have to run errands, but I was standing on my porch, just looking around, and I had to come up and report on the seasons having changed because that's just what bloggers do, it seems. It's 51 degrees F. out, and for the first time in months I saw people across the way chatting across a fence. Two other people were in sweatsuits; one jogging, one walking briskly. It won't technically be spring for a week or so, but it feels like it. Spring stereotypically arrives with birds and blossoms, of course. Personally I associate it with rivulets of water that make the turf soggy and the bare earth muddy. You can imagine that water flowing down to the starved roots, starting up the long-dormant machinery of grass and flower, bush and tree. But another sign of spring, quite simply, is people, out and about. I always imagine them at their doors, yawning and stretching like bears emerging from hibernation. I don't know what's going on at your latitude, but on this one0 it seems we've survived another winter.
3/7/07
Losing My Memories
Well, the other day I'm calmly scrolling down, deciding whether it's time to archive a month or two of these maunderings, and the page comes to an abrupt halt. Abrupt, because nearly six weeks of entries were missing.
Scheiss! said I to myself, but in English. Scheiss! Scheiss! Scheiss! I knew what was wrong—a few weeks ago, I decided to chill on the bed with the cat and the laptop and do an entry that way. I—um—piggybacked, shall we say, on a neighbor's wifi rather than go turn on my own. Sometimes this causes the FTP client I use to hang up and cut off the html file for this little diary, but when it's happened before I've known about it and fixed it. But this time I didn't. I tried everything to recover the information, but it's gone daddy gone. So for December 2006 and the first ten days of 2007, I've forever lost my notes about what I thought was important and worth thinking about. The loss for the world of literature is probably not as great as, say, the burning of the library at Alexandria. But you know, we're all trying to hold on to what we care about. My way is by writing down things I think are worth remembering. Of course, if I really thought they were worth remembering, I might just back them up once in a while, and we wouldn't be having this conversation, but there you are.
I went to the accountant today so they can get working on my taxes. I've actually always enjoyed these annual visits. The first time I went was many years ago, when I was a young musician type. I mentioned something to the accountant about not making much money, and he said, "As long as you're eating." And I've always since used that as a kind of baseline for how well you're doing. Are you eating? You are? Good! Then tomorrow's another day. But if you don't have food, you have a problem.
Another year I was a freelance writer, and come April or so I went to H.R. Block, and one of their temporary helper people was interviewing me. I hadn't done any estimated taxes, so I was looking at paying a fairly big lump sum, and evidently it bothered the preparer more than me. She asked me right off if I had any dependents. "No," I said. She visibly sagged, and kept on. But the amount I'd have to pay really seemed to bother her. We ran through all the other possibilities for deductions. Finally she asked me, "Are you sure you don't have any dependents?"
I really didn't, but I'm learning more about deductions, and how to work it all. I try to get better and better at it every year. This year I had at least seven different categories of deductions ready, I'd calculated precisely the percentage of the floor space my home office takes up, and thought about all that obvious stuff. But they go on and ask you about all kinds of things you'd never think of in a million years. Parrot feed? No, not this year. Zeppelin repairs? Can't think of any. Tire polish? Business-related facelifts? Ransom payments? No, no, and no. How about expenses related to my volunteer activities? Well, I thought, I go into the city for the Sierra Club executive committee every month. We meet at a Whole Foods store in Philly, and I get dinner there. Costs maybe seven bucks. Seven times 12 is 84. The accountant wrote that down. The way I figure, you have to eat dinner anyway. But the way the accountants figure is let's save this poor shmo another 84 bucks off his tax liability. "We beat it to death," the accountant said. She sits there and thinks and thinks and thinks, and all to save me money that the government would just waste on foolishness. It's a positive pleasure to go to the accountant's office, that's what I think.
3/6/07
Bad Neighbor Policy
No good deed goes unpunished, they say, and very often acts of charity, proffered by the kindest, most civilized, indeed the best among us, often go rudely spurned. By kindest, most civilized, and best I allude, of course, to myself. Yesterday it snowed, so I was out shoveling my walk, and quite a chunk of some of the neighbors' walks, too. Then I walked around to the alley in back of my house, meaning to put the shovel away. A dog came rushing the length of his fenced-in yard to bark at me. He barks at everyone. He's a pretty hostile dog. But today I stopped. I wonder, I thought, if I can befriend this dog? It was a kind thought, a civilized thought, the kind of thought the best of us go around thinking.
I stood near the fence. The dog walked in circles, baring his teeth, but wagging. I could see he felt ambivalent. I crouched, so as not to appear threatening. I spoke in a low voice. "Hey there, doggie," I said. "You want to be friendly, don't you? It looks like you're wagging. Don't you want to be friends?" I put my hand up to the fence, so that he might come over and take a tentative sniff at it. Then I heard a voice issuing from somewhere near. I couldn't see anyone.
"Get away from my dog!"
I stood up slowly. No, I said to myself. No, I did not hear what I thought I heard. I do not wish to believe that I live right across the alley from some paranoid and spectacularly peevish hag who peeps out at people from behind her curtains and squawks at them to get away from her dog. Much may happen to me in my life—I may be caught in a fire or flood, I may be kidnapped by terrorists and beheaded on video, I may contract hideous illnesses or fall from a helicopter or be eaten by piranhas but I refuse, I thought, I refuse to be yelled at by some officious neighborhood scold and told to get away from anything. No. That, I will not abide.
So I looked around. Nobody was there. To the empty air I said, loudly, "I was just trying to be friendly! Sorry!" I said it in a way that made it clear, I hoped, that I wasn't sorry at all. But part of being a kind, civilized, among-the-best sort of person is that you don't stand around alleys, yelling cusswords at the empty air. So I went into my house and sat in my dining room. I grumpily scanned the art on the walls, some of it limited prints, other original, some of it made by yours truly. I looked over the book racks, groaning with classics, some famous, some more obscure, that I have read and reread over the years. I looked at the Japanese teapot, the ceramic pieces, the tiny planetarium there as a conversation piece. I thought about my history—the cup I won in high school for Latin, for instance. The volunteer work and charitable contributions. The international travel. And the fact that really, I'm a pretty down to earth person. I don't want special treatment. I just don't want nasty biddies yelling at me to get away from their dog. It just won't do.
So I'm writing my irritation down here. I remembered a passage from Mark Twain's Roughing It in which he describes traveling to Hawaii and while in Maui having several encounters with a boasting liar. At one point he writes, "And on my diary I entered 'another night spoiled' by this offensive loafer. And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company." That's approximately how I feel right now. You may imagine the curse for yourself. But be assured I've learned from this. I've learned that some people wish to be left alone and for the animals in their ménage to be left alone as well, and boy, that's fine with me. If I see burglars, wearing the traditional cap and raccoon-style eye mask, tiptoeing from the house bearing candelabras and strings of pearls, believe me, I'll regard it as none of my business. Smoke is curling from under all the windows? I'll stand on my back porch, key in hand, say "hm" to myself, and go in and pour a drink. None of my business. I suppose that in a few minutes or so the house would be an inferno, neighbors would be running down the street, the sirens would be wailing. But I'll just be sitting in my living room, with that drink, reading. I'm getting away from the dog. That's all the lady wants, and she's got it. See, one thing about kind, civilized, among-the-best type people—we can take a hint.
3/5/07
Slaps All Around
I'm a little concerned about our old friend the infamous W. It seems there's something going on today called Slap Your Irritating Co-Workers Holiday, and some people think the infamous W. qualifies for slapping. She's a perfectly pleasant soul, nobody says otherwise, but she has her quirks. I attribute the problem to a long period of isolation, myself. She lives in a rented house out in the country, and although she's mellower than the Unabomber she's almost as isolated out there as he was in his Montana shack. And somehow, in the long years working alone as a freelance editor, she became—how to put this delicately—rather a hothouse flower. She started acting a lot like your dottiest maiden aunt. Almost anything will strike her as remarkable, and when she's struck that way she'll say things like, "My goodness!" She lives out among a bunch of rich folks who sit around at their horse farms rubbing saddle soap into their riding boots, and occasionally volunteering to serve on the local garden tour committee. Over the years this started to seem normal to the infamous W. So it was with some concern that I heard, a while back, that she'd taken a part-time job at the local library. She was bound to come into contact with normal people there, and there'd likely be trouble.
Well, she's mostly accepted, I'm glad to report, but there's occasionally friction. On every job that ever was, people talk about their lives, and of course the infamous W. talks about hers. She talks about how she's got to stop on the way home and pick up some vacuum-cleaner bags because the woman who cleans her house will be in tomorrow. The coworkers' eyebrows go up. Then the infamous W. will make casual references to her parents' guest house. Or she will tell the coworkers how nice it is, on these cold winter days, that her new Beemer has heated seats. And I just cringe. The coworkers mostly don't have heated seats in their own cars, or cleaning help, or guest houses. These just aren't good subjects to bring up on the eve of the Slap Your Irritating Co-Workers Holiday.
The infamous W. understands she has a problem. She suggested the other day that I go around everywhere with her and give her a signal when she says things like that. "OK," I told her. "The signal will be when you see me slapping my head."
3/4/07
Violins in the Media
If you listen to classical music on the radio, you know there are at least two kinds of announcer, the sensible kind and the other kind, the ones with plummy voices who sound like they're wearing an ascot. Tonight, driving home from some friends' listening to a radio performance of Beethoven's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, it was the other kind. The performer was this young German named Christian Tetzlaff, and first the announcer called him a "preacher's kid," which seemed a little uncalled-for, and then tried to suggest that this gave him a special insight into the spiritual qualities of the work, whatever they might be. Tetzlaff yawned all that off, and then the announcer talked about how he he didn't use a million dollar Stradivarius or Guarneri, but rather a new violin made by a contemporary maker that cost $28,000. The announcer's tone suggested that for a concert artist this was like getting a violin at IKEA. But I got curious and did some checking, and I found that actually a high-end contemporary violin maker will sell you one of their top models for less than that. I think anyone, even a concert artist, has a right to expect that for $28,000 you would get a pretty good instrument. Contemporary violin makers can make an instrument for that price with quality that rivals the famous makers of the 18th century because, among other advantages, they're alive. And think about having a Strad worth one million dollars, or two, or three! I mean, you put a violin on your shoulder and hold it there with your chin. That seems to me a precarious way to handle something worth three million bucks. I'm not sure I'd want to be in the same room with one, to be honest. I'd be scared I'd back up to let someone by and knock it off a table or something. There'd be a crash, and everyone would freeze, aghast, and I'd turn and look, and for a long moment I wouldn't believe it, but there the Strad would be, in about eleven pieces. No, thank you—I've had that feeling enough times already. If the product won't take a lickin' and keep on tickin', it's not the one for me.
3/3/07
Renewal of Faith
Kids have been getting a very bad rap since, oh, forever, and it hasn't stopped lately. There've been all sorts of news reports about how parental indulgence and educational self-esteem raising have created a generation of narcissists. Well, I certainly haven't done any studies on the subject, but the other night I went to the new music performance center of the local state college and I was delighted to find how helpful and pleasant the kids there were. I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go, but the kids would see me pondering the list of rooms and ask what I was looking for. It could have been that I had a camera around my neck and tripod under my arm, I guess. I've noticed some deference shown when I look like a photographer. I am the wielder of the image! Bow before me, mortals! Or maybe I seemed avuncular, or something. Or maybe, Occam's Razor and all, they were simply good kids.
I was there to take pictures of the college's gospel choir, and when I finally found the right room it was the same thing; the kids were welcoming, friendly, alert, just great in every way. They sang wonderfully, great harmonies, power and dynamism in the up-tempo stuff and a real sense of spiritual uplift in the slow pieces. The faculty adviser talked a lot to me about ministry and such, and I imagine that for a lot of the kids it was a similarly religious mission. But this college has a school of music, so a lot could be vocal majors making a special and exciting kind of music. I had no idea, and didn't much care. The leader looked like a sort of hip-hop rasta guy, but although he was willing to occasionally make a joke and get the other kids laughing, he had that room absolutely under control. He was no older than the rest, but he radiated authority. He may well have had a good measure of self-esteem, but he'd gotten it the old-fashioned way, by discipline and accomplishment, and he was showing the rest of them what he expected. Talking? Goofing around? It happens in every rehearsal, but if it went on for one nanosecond longer than was strictly necessary he quashed it. He monitored diction and pitch like a hawk and at the slightest deviation from what he wanted he stopped everyone and went over the measures in question until it was being done to his liking. And when it was going well, he let himself be carried along, and away. Or if he was acting it out, he acted it pretty convincingly. I had gone there tired, fighting a bug and feeling vaguely feverish and unwell, but I left refreshed, the way I imagine religious people do after a good church visit on Sunday morning. Not religiously, but just the way you do when you meet some good kids. You're hopeful, all of a sudden—convinced that they may not, as you feared, put you out on an ice floe sometime soon. No, they'll be polite, and work to high standards, and make great music. I wouldn't be ashamed of doing that consistently myself, if you really want to know.
3/3/07
Commercial Misadventures
I was talking to a friend about having slow sales, and later I remembered back to a one abortive business venture I got into when I was about seven. I had a vegetable garden that summer, and one day I took a picnic-table bench and put it out in front of our suburban house, and lined up about five tomatoes on it and sat down. My thinking was that people would recognize that I was running a vegetable stand and stop and buy them. I watched for quite some time (at least it seemed that way to me, seeing as how I was seven) as the cars sailed past. They didn't even come by very often, and when they did they didn't slow down. Eventually I took my bench and five tomatoes back to rethink my marketing plan. I'm doing the same thing now, actually. But it's nothing to get discouraged about. The tomatoes were perfectly good that day, and if that's the case you just keep trying different ways to get the message out about your tomatoes.
3/2/07
News Losers
Well, they could still pull it out but I'd say the Barbie Bandits have had their 15 minutes. The whole excitement was predicated on the idea that they were very young upper-middle-class kids, see, and it turns out that they're in fact 19, and one of them was on probation. For two days we (by which I mean I) thought they were probably rich young things, breathtakingly amoral, almost entirely lacking in forethought or common sense. Most of us are profoundly encumbered by the ability to imagine bad things happening if we just went ahead and did what we felt like doing. But a person who seems to have no such restriction on them may appall us on one level but on another may give us a little frisson of delight. They can do anything they feel like—it's as if they could fly, and we stand on the ground, watching them enviously. And if they're just like us—if they're seemingly from an affluent suburb, like people we know or the kids of people we know—well, there you are. Huge news story, no doubt about it.
That, of course, was yesterday. Today we learn that one of the Barbies was on probation. Huge points off for that—Barbie is never on probation, and most upper-class kids aren't either. Being on probation is lame and depressing and icky. The other kid may be 19, but in her mug shot she's got dark rings around her tough-cookie eyes—she's 19 going on 43. Nobody is at their best in a mug shot, but you can look at that young woman and think about trailer parks and meth and the whole hardscrabble lower-middle, working-class thing. She's not a sweet young thing from a moneyed suburb, is my strong suspicion. So there's no delightful horror at how wrong she's gone, given her prospects. As she might have seen it, with me wildly speculating here, her prospects were to work hard all her life for very little money, or to take a shot. It was a boneheaded plan, there's no doubt about that, and the shot was doomed, but these kids couldn't seem to think of a better one.
Anyway, don't worry, I'll keep an eye on this for you. The teller was in on it with them, and there might be some interest to be found in that, so we'll see. But I suspect the air will go out of this thing within the day. There'll be follow-ups, but they'll be unenthusiastic. There's no giddy thrill any more, no fascination. There's nothing fascinating about a couple of screwed-up kids from the wrong side of the tracks. It's just sad and depressing, and unless I'm guessing wrong here I suspect we'll just turn the page.
Oh, and darn it, I got the names wrong too. I said they'd be named Jessica and Ashley, and here they turn out to be named Heather and Ashley. Damn.
3/1/07
Profound Thoughts
The Christian Science Monitor has excellent trend stores, and I read them to improve my mind, but I think I need to read more of them. Why? Because they had a story about media violence, and the illustration was from Sony's "God of War" game, and it showed this buff warrior dude fighting some undead skeleton warriors, and all I could think was, "What, undead skeleton warriors again?" It's so tiresome, the undead skeletons always being hostile and malevolent. With every undead skeleton I've ever seen depicted in the media, that's how they are. You walk into a room where there's an undead skeleton, and immediately you're into it with him. Couldn't an undead skeleton be, you know, friendly and helpful just once? Couldn't it walk up and introduce itself pleasantly, and have some nice old-timey name like "Sally"? Sheesh. I never even read the article, just mulling it over. I did go to the website for the game, hoping to learn more about undead skeletons. I'm glad to say they had an age-limit thing—you have to enter your birthdate. Any kid who's dumb enough to enter a real birthdate that's under 18 or whatever shouldn't be playing a violent video game, we can all agree on that. I entered my own real birthdate with some trepidation, but the website did not, as I feared, flash a sign that said "ACCESS DENIED—YOU ARE TOO OLD." The game actually looked pretty cool, and confirmed my feeling that I'm wise to avoid video games because any decent one would have me addicted in about 11 minutes.
OK, one more trenchant observation, whatever that means, and then I'll have to do some real work. I was out of string, so yesterday I made a point of buying string. I looked and looked at the place in the supermarket shelves where they have glue and screwdrivers and so forth, trying to find a ball of twine, and not seeing any. But I kept looking, and finally saw there were three kinds of twine, but they're on flat spools with lots of wrapping. The spool has a little hook to hang it up with, like a tiny clothes hanger, and peeking out from under the hook is a little cutting blade. It's a value-added twine delivery system. "Hangs conveniently," the package says. I'm investigating this curious new object, like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I see a note: "Caution: not recommended for use where personal safety is involved." Which I suppose means that if you're a window washer or bridge painter, and you get to work and you find you've left your regulation safety harness at home, and you have some twine hanging conveniently on your person and you decide to try using a few strands of that instead, well, you were warned. I love those lawyerly warnings like that. I was reading the instructions for one of those cardboard windshield sun-blocking dealies one time, and it said, I swear to God, not to operate the car with the sun screen in place. What would we do without legal departments?
OK, one more thing, and then I've really really got to go. But It seems these two giggling young women went and robbed a bank yesterday. They wore sunglasses, the clever little dickenses, but I strongly suspect (get it? get it?) that they'll be talking to Daddy and his lawyer and then the police by sometime this afternoon. I also strongly suspect they'll be named Jessica and Ashley. But take a look, and tell me if there aren't about 1,734 people looking at papers and websites right now and saying, "Oh, my God! That's Jessica and Ashley!"
© Copyright 2007 by Matt Freeman. All Rights Reserved.