heading home again

Blog update

2010-12-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

This blog will be moving! in the next few weeks it will become a part of a larger blog/website on WordPress. It's not finished yet, but I've got big plans, including starting a second blog, and yes, posting more often.

In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter and FaceBook -- and watch this space!

Vacations are funny

2010-08-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

This is the perfect kind of house for this kind of family vacation. Each couple has their own bedroom and bath. For some reason, Dave and I were given the largest! and I love it. There's a spare room with pyramid bunk beds, but no one is really using that much. Still, it's handy to have. We have a private pool and hot tub, and Dave and the kids, Maddox, 4, and Lily, 11, have been in it for an hour or two this morning. Dave's sister, husband, and niece, are off at a local art show. His mom is lying down, I think. I am blogging and doing a bit of work here and there, as needed.

And that's how it goes. We don't have to move as a pack, although we are a small enough group that we like to. I go to bed most nights around midnight (I watch Buffy on my laptop and Dave watches Six Feet Under on the DVD in our room) after reading a bit. The sun rises around 6:30am but the curtains are thick and heavy and block it all out -- I feel like Buffy throwing back the curtains at the end of season three and almost burning up Angel -- and Dave and I wake up around 8, usually. I make my way upstairs and make a cup of tea, and look out at the horizon, which stretches far in all directions. People gradually make their way up and we make breakfast and chat quietly. I love this time the best.

The mornings are spent hanging around the house and the pool, or going to the ocean or the sound -- we have both a newborn and a senior, so we stay close to home most of the time -- and then we all eat lunch and either nap or swim or whatever. We've gone back out to swim in the afternoon, or for a bike ride, and then someone does a little grocery shopping and starts dinner. After dinner, whoever didn't cook, cleans up. We've played games -- last night was a mediocre round of Settlers of Catan -- and Wii and watched TV, and talked, and hung. We're all pretty zonked at night. I am spending entirely too much time on the computer, but hey, it's my vacation too, right?

And the food we're making is great! After the first night, when everyone got in late and ordered pizza, and the second, when we went out for what was seafood for most of us, we've each taken a night to cook. Sarah made spaghetti, salad, and garlic toast. Lisa and Wes made burgers and pigs in a blanket and salad. Dave and I made rice and beans and burrito fixings. He made his excellent cilantro pesto that wowed everybody. Here's the recipe:

Cilantro pesto, per Dave

1 bunch of fresh cilantro
Olive oil as needed, probably not more than a half a cup
Juice of one lime
Salt and pepper
1 garlic clove

Clean the cilantro and chop off the stems -- just use the leaves. Put it and all the rest of the ingredients into the food processor. Buzz until liquid. Use for tacos, burritos, or put in chili. This freezes well if you put it into ice cube trays.

Kids these days

2010-08-19T12:38:00.001-04:00

I'm so tired of hearing about the kids these days -- and the parents that raise them. How we don't have the family of the 1950s, everyone eating together, quietly, one meal, same time, nuclear family, blah blah blah. And I almost didn't read this article because of its lede, which is all about that comparison. By the way, I got this from Alternet but it's originally from Psychotherapy Network.

I think the answer to the hedline, "Does today's liberated, chaotic family work better than the 1950s model?" is a resounding 'yes!' Of course it does. What kind of children do we want? I don't want 1950s children, no offense, I want empowered, involved 21st-century children. These are crazy, chaotic times, we don't have nearly the support and resources that they did in the 50s, and I want my child to be as prepared as possible for crazy chaos.

I think to me that means, above all, having certain core values, and to be extremely clear about them in daily life. I want her to value love above all. I'd like her to be kind, and have a sense of humor, and to have an idea that we are all in this together, we are all sentient beings, we are all connected. I also want her to have a very clear sense of her skills and talents and interests, and to imagine being able to achieve them, and to have the discipline to try, and not to be afraid of hard work.

Yes, of course I want to have dinner as a family as much as possible, of course I don't want my kid to be online 24/7, of course I want her to read and think and interact with her world. Being a modern family doesn't mean all that gets tossed out the window, although it does mean that it might not happen every single night. Maybe what gets tossed is the idea that anything is permanent, that the game isn't rigged, that you will be rewarded if you perform, or do what you are supposed to. I don't want my daughter to cheat, but I don't want her to be a good girl, either. I worked hard as a fact-checker and my reward was more fact-checking. The boys would come in and be bad at it, and they'd get sent out on the plum reporting assignments. I don't want her to do what I did.

This is an interesting article, once you get past the opening, and get into writer/therapist Ron Taffel's specific observations about how we've entered a new era. The families of the 1950s, he writes, "were stuck in beliefs about how a family ought to be, the way communication should happen; they were committed to outdated formalities between parent and child. So was I! After all, I revered 'the village' of my childhood, but there was a price for that order: many of us now grasp how little our parents knew of us, and we understand how much of ourselves we were unable or unwilling to reveal across the generational divide . . . We must let post-boomer parents and their children, fellow-travelers that they are, teach us where we need to go."

I like his conclusion, that families today want to be known to each other, even teenagers and parents. I sense that from my family, my child, who isn't yet a teenager and so far isn't very troubled. But I do recognize her in some of these anecdotes, and just like I want to be a 21st-century librarian, I want to be a 21st-century parent. Boy, it sure is hard work.

Me on Emily Bazelon on Phoebe Prince

2010-08-19T11:49:00.004-04:00

This article was suggested to me as an alternative view of the South Hadley bullying that resulted in Phoebe Prince committing suicide last January. It's Emily Bazelon writing in Salon, and she posted it about a month ago. There's lots of comments in the blogosphere. My thoughts:

-- it does sound like the criminal charges are overkill. I have heard anecdotally that the South Hadley schools have turned a blind eye to appalling bullying for years, however, so maybe this will at least get their attention.

-- I don’t know much about the D.A., Elizabeth Scheibel, but she doesn’t come off very well here. Pottygate? Really? C'mon.

However:

-- Despite her protestations to the contrary, Bazelon sure sounds like she’s blaming the victim. Of course someone who commits suicide is unstable! That doesn’t mean she wasn’t bullied. And why all this stuff about how she was chasing all these seniors? They allowed themselves to be chased, they responded, why do they get a pass — he was having a bad break-up, he had had a hard year — and she gets blamed? I think the age difference is significant, that and her newness to town, and her being from a different country, as well. A freshman isn’t equal to a senior.

-- I don't know, but it sounds like Bazelon doesn’t have children. I have felt this way in the past when I read her writing; it’s cold and lawyerly, and there’s very little empathy or humor. I don’t get the sense that she’s ever taught or had responsibility on a smaller scale than Yale. It’s all so intellectual. She says it’s complicated, but she really has no idea.

Bazelon does a great job reminding us how complicated this story is, and how little most of know about what actually happened. It's a good reminder for me not to sit in judgment of anyone in this story -- well, anyone, period -- until I've walked in their shoes for a time.

Vacation brake job

2010-08-16T19:51:00.001-04:00

So we're in the Outer Banks -- no, I think we're in Cape Hatteras, south of the Outer Banks. Waves were huge yesterday so we went to the sound today. But among our party is a newborn, well, two months, so we aren't doing much beaching. Just in short spurts. We are us three, Dave's mom, niece/two sons/husband who just left, unfortunately, and his sister and her husband. We were supposed to include his nephew and girlfriend but he had to work, the bum.

The weather is just outstanding, warm, clear blue, mostly cloudless skies. We have one of those big family reunion rentals and it's really great for these kinds of vacations, although it sure sucks up resources. This things are huge, with tons of bedrooms, each with a king-sized bed and private bath, a game room, a media room, pool, hot tub, decks all around -- you know the deal. The top floor is mostly a kitchen/dining/eating combo. Every room has a TV and DVD, unfortunately, but I've finally figured out how to plug in my iPod, and we're listening to my Hawaiian mix. Nice.

We took two days to get here; that's the other drag: It's very far. We went to visit my friend Mary at her new home on the Eastern Shore on the Delmarva Peninsula (Cambridge), and picked up her daughter at the Bridgeport ferry on the way, where she was coming back from visiting her grandmother on Long Island.

We went out to dinner at Snappers that night, sitting on the deck next to the creek and eating broiled crab and french fries, and drinking endless iced teas with her friends Anne, Terry, and Little John. Lovely! Really nice evening, and we laughed a lot. Anne has been renovating her lovely old home nearby and she had just that very day finished her bedroom. It was incredibly stunning, and you can see what the rest of the place is going to look like when she gets done.

And the next day we hung out, visited, had a great morning, got in the car, stopped for gas--and Dave found a nail in the tire. Okay, no biggie, look, there's Mr. Tire, let's get it fixed. I almost drove past the place and swerved to take the turn. Better safe than sorry, right? A thousand dollars--no, I lie, it was only $990--and four hours later, we finally left Cambridge for our beach rental. It's a looooong drive, I gotta tell you. Our second day in the car, having dropped a lot of money on a brake job we were hoping was necessary and wasn't a rip-off (but what can you do, truly?) we were not in the mood to be driving. Still, traffic wasn't bad, and the rest of the family only beat us by a couple of hours. We got in a little after ten.

And oh, it's worth it. They had pizza waiting, which we devoured, and then all took a splash in the pool at hot tub for an hour, everyone making it to bed around midnight. The next day, yesterday, Sunday, we all slept in a bit, even Lily, and late in the morning we all went to the ocean for an hour or two. It's right across the street and over a small dune. But the waves were enormous and there's no lifeguard this summer, presumably because of budget cuts. Signs all over warn you about rip tides. These waves were crashing really big. We were standing in the foamy white water and you could feel the strong tug of the wave, pulling you back out.

We weren't there long when several emergency vehicles drove down the beach, first a truck pulling a jet ski, then a couple of ambulances. None of us went out very far; no one went into the actual waves. They were really, really big, everyone thought so. We left pretty soon, partly because we had the baby. Dave saw the authorities raising a red flag as he left, indicating a ban on swimming. Later I read that a man had drowned, but that was the weekend before at a different island.

Then we all went home and had a nap. Lovely! We ate out last night, and everyone went to bed early. It's a funny life, this family vacation resort home thingy. It's nice, really. Nice to see everyone, nice to be in such pretty surroundings. Today we went to the sound, which doesn't seem to get more than five feet deep for a half a mile. Maybe not that much, but a long way. Again we didn't stay long. The routine seems to be that we swim a bit, spell Sarah with the baby, and then come back, wash off the sand and salt in the outdoor shower, and jump in the pool for a bit.

Tonight we had spaghetti and garlic bread and salad. If we can stay awake we might play a rousing round of Settlers of Catan (best board game, ever!). Or we might just go to bed. Next the three of us are off to family camp, another really fun time, completely different--three-sided cabins, sleeping bags, outhouses, mountains and a lake. So we'll drive home Friday-Saturday, do laundry, repack, and head north. Phew. Hard work, all this vacationing.

A rant about kids and reading

2010-08-04T11:01:00.002-04:00

My rule about Lily's reading: Anything she wants. Period. End of discussion. Some of the comments after this Times blog post about summer reading suggest that only "good" books should be allowed. Or, anything they want! (as long as it's age appropriate). Huh?

It's not that I haven't pulled my hair out as she reads (and rereads and rereads again) the Warriors series, or the Clique series -- blech! ugh -- or any of the other yucky stuff out there. When she picked up Twilight at a friend's a year ago, and loved it, and wanted to read the second one, a dear family friend was appalled. "You're too young for that, Lily!" she said. I just shrugged. I don't censor my kid's reading. She can read whatever she wants. Period.

My reading life changed when I was nine and reading (probably the fabulous Laura Ingalls Wilder for the 37th time) in my room late one afternoon when my mother came in and casually tossed Animal Farm on my bed. "You might like this," she said. I read it right then -- it's short -- and it changed my life. I started reading everything Orwell had ever written. A lot of it went over my head, but I loved 1984, (although it was hard to read the torture scenes and I kinda skipped the political treatise by Emmanuel Goldstein), and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and his essays.

I was also nine when I read a letter to the editor in an Archie comic by a kid who went to a school called Summerhill, in California. I immediately wanted to go there too. My mother told me the original school was in England and gave me A.S. Neill's book, Summerhill. I barrelled through that too -- it's mostly short chapters with short scenes and the theory is written simply and concisely. That changed my life too, and I immediately started thinking about education and open classrooms and tradition versus modernity, and all kinds of things. I told Mrs. Benz, my fourth grade teacher, that I knew what she was trying to do -- run an open classroom -- and that it wasn't working. What a brat! But I was right. When I was 11 years old I read The Godfather, much racier than Orwell or Neill, and while some of it was kind of shocking (and some I didn't quite understand), the story was gripping and the characters fascinating.

In a way, I got so much attention for what I was reading that my ego got wrapped up in what a sophisticated reader I was, and how much I read. And perhaps as a result, around age 13 or 14, I kind of stalled out, I hit a bit of a wall; the thrill was gone. I couldn't quite finish a book because I was trying to live up to this idea of myself as a voracious, adult reader. So I largely read stuff that was either over my head or just not interesting to me.

To make matters worse, I knew what I was supposed to be doing: I remember arguing with a friend's father, when I was a high school freshman, about his 8th grade daughter's reading. He wanted her to read literature, whatever that is, and all she wanted to read was mysteries. I took the position that what she read didn't matter, that the important thing was that she was reading. He got quite annoyed at me, as you might imagine, and I don't think I had any affect on either of them -- I don't think she was ever much of a reader. So thinking back, I can see that I knew the theory, but I found it hard to apply it to myself.

Eventually my mom mentioned something about kids rereading books that are very easy for them, books they had read when they were younger, and that's an important aspect of the process of learning to read, a way of reinforcing reading skills. (Along the lines of what my friend Nick Noyes says, "Before every period of tremendous growth is an equal period of regression.") And that helped get me out of my slump -- that, and I went to high school and had plenty of great reading to do for my classes. Reading Pride and Prejudice in Walter McCloskey's 9th grade English class helped hugely to re-inspire me.

As an adult, I've read less at times, such as when I was in a lot of emotional turmoil, or when I was in college, or my first grad school. But I always read, and after I finished grad school I started a book group. That was in 1990, and it's still going; they read great books. I am in another one here, on my block, which has been around for more than 40 years and the discussions are great. I was afraid being a grad student again would deter me, but nope, it might take me longer to finish a book, but I still read. Right now it's Wolf Hall -- it's incredible, you were right, Mum -- and I read maybe a half dozen other books this spring and summer, both fiction and non-.

To be honest, I do 'fess up to some ego about what Lily reads. When she was very little, like 3 or 4, I was a bit concerned because a couple of her friends were reading and she wasn't. But my mom was clear and firm, gear down, Sash, and so was our dear friend Margaret Furber, who, like my mom, was a former elementary school teacher, and simply said, she will learn to read. Don't worry. True, Lily has always loved books -- at two years old we could put her to bed with a few picture books and say, turn the light out when you're through, kiss her goodnight, and leave. And she'd look through them for 20 minutes or so and then go to sleep.

And once she did start reading the words, I'd get a little wigged out about her reading all those crappy series, like Sweet Valley High, ugh. But I kept my mouth shut, mostly. I'd read aloud to her the books I wanted her to know -- Lois Lenski's Indian Captive, The Book of Three, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Gentle Ben, Tom Sawyer -- and I'd complain to my mom or her teachers about how she read the same books over and over, and they were stupid and not challenging, and they'd quite gently give me the same line: Don't worry, she'll move on, trust the process, stay out of it. Sure enough, she has.

I rarely wig out about Lily's reading now, although I do loathe the Clique series. We try to get to the library often, and when we do we pick the brains of the librarians about what to read. She's in two book groups, one at the library and one at school, which I'm also in, as it's for parents and kids. Plus, we're reading two books for family camp later in the month, well, one is for kids+ (The Hunger Games) and the other is for adults and interested teens (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down).

So, if Lily wants to read The Godfather, I say, via con dios. Read whatever you like. She loves to read, she always has a book going, summer, winter, doesn't matter. Dave reads books, non-fiction. We all read newspapers and magazines. We are a reading family. Oh, and about Twilight? Lily started the second one, New Moon, and put it down after just a few chapters, saying, "I'm too young for this. I'll read it when I'm older." That's my girl.

Blog updates

2010-08-02T20:37:00.000-04:00

In case you hadn't noticed, I tweaked my blog layout a little:

-- I added my recent Tweets to the side, and there's also a link to follow me on Twitter.

-- I moved my photos into a folder on Picasa and left a link on the site. I'll post new ones in the blog and you can find them at that link.

-- I added a search field. I don't know if anyone else cares but I love being able to go, where was that entry about why we moved? or Ralph Nader? Or Chance? And now I can find it really easily.

-- I also wrote some stuff! How's that for a change? I'm hoping to post every Sunday but we'll see.

Fellowship

2010-08-02T20:31:00.001-04:00

So now starts the driving season. Just as the semester was ending in May I was awarded something called the Dean's Editorial Fellowship by the GSLIS program at Simmons. It's quite an honor. I'm hired by the communications and curriculum department to work on their monthly publication, InfoLink, the quarterly Library & Information Science Research, and other tasks. I'll be driving to Boston every Tuesday for the next three semesters, starting tomorrow, and I gather if we all still like each other next summer, it's renewable for another year. That means this is what I'll be doing for the rest of my GSLIS experience.

As I haven't really started I don't have much to say about this fellowship yet, except that it'll be really interesting and educational, and I'm looking forward to combining my journalism skills with my nascent library ones. I like to write, and it's nice to get paid to do it. And I am definitely thinking about the commute. I've been a pretty constant presence in Lily's life since Wondertime closed (wow, that was ages ago! January 2009, two days after Obama was inaugurated) and this will be an adjustment for all of us. But the fam is solidly behind me. We talked about it before I applied, and once I had the interview, and then when I was offered the position (it's always very exciting to be offered a position, even one that's temporary and part-time). Dave and Lily said yes, we can manage, yes, try it, yes, you have to see. I love my family.

Their support reminds me of what I heard once: God doesn't say no, God says yes. "Yes, but not now. Yes, but it won't look like that. Yes, but I have something better in mind." I still marvel at how this whole library thang is working out. I applied on a hunch that I might enjoy it and I knew I didn't want to get my MBA, or become a lawyer; I almost didn't go but then they gave me a merit scholarship; I find that I do enjoy it, somewhat to my surprise; and I am doing well, also somewhat to my surprise. My classmates are great -- varied, smart, with wildly different interests and experiences. Ditto my professors.

I realized last week that in two years I'll have my MLS and Lily will be going into high school and, in fact, although I don't intend to move, we could relocate, if the perfect job appeared. Two years is a long way away, but the nice thing about this program, maybe about grad schools in general, is that I have hope. Plus, it's really fun, and the stuff I'm learning is really interesting. It's great to have a future again.

Take reference first

2010-08-02T19:50:00.000-04:00

I've lifted this from my GSLIS blog because I really like it and I don't want to lose it. It's about the required reference class that so many people dread, or hate, or both. I loved it.

June 23, 2010, 8:00 am

Take reference first, or as soon as you can. Do not be afraid of this class, it’s really great. But it is a lot of work, so pace yourself. Here’s some advice I got going in, along with a few suggestions of my own:

Take reference first. That’s LIS-407 reference/information services to you; I call it the organic chem of library school. You will use everything you learn in all the rest of your classes, and you will make some of your closest friends in this class. Bite the bullet and take it first or very early in your library school tenure.
Do not fall behind. The course is front-loaded, which means that most of the homework comes in the first nine or so weeks. If you do the assignments on time, you’ll have the last couple of weeks to cram for the final exam, and you will want that time to make sure you really know the 250 print and databases.
When you do fall behind, as of course you will, catch up as soon as you have time. There are a couple of breathers in there, including the mid-semester break. If you neglect your studies you’ll just pay for it later. You can sleep when you’re dead.
Get your source system down early in the semester. Will it be in Word? Excel? Zotero? BentoBox? Delicious? Choose your poison and keep it current. Mine was in Word, and I studied by making shorter and shorter lists. Finally I had just a sentence or two about each and that’s what I took into the exam with me. It felt old-fashioned but it worked for me.
Write down everything the teacher says about a source and make sure you have it in your source notes.
Ditto about the text book. Make sure you read it; it’s very chockfull of source information.
Get together a study team, however loose, and study the sources together. Ours kind of fell apart but I had two guys I could always check with and vent to, and they with me.
Get to know your classmates. Someone said to me, you’ll be close forever because you went through reference together. Not necessarily true, of course, but I am certainly close to a couple of my reference classmates, and we will always share this bond. Don’t fight it.
Less is not more in the reference queries. Our class had six query assignments, 10 questions each, asking things like, “A breathless Simmons student bursts into your library asking for a copy of Hamlet, the one that has John Gielgud in it. What do you do?” I found I got better marks when I fully answered the question, playing out the scenario — “well, Gielgud was in two, does she want the Olivier or the Branagh? Does she want a DVD or a videocassette? We have this one on the shelf now, or we can get that one via inter-library loan if she has a couple of days,” etc. (Was Gielgud even in Hamlet?)
Ask questions as much as you need to, in class and out, of the teacher, your classmates, other teachers, other students. Ask, ask, ask. Everyone who has taken reference will be happy to share their experience.
The exam goes really fast. You think you have loads of time but in fact you do not. Don’t dawdle. Oh, and you might bring earplugs. I lost valuable moments closing the door of a nearby classroom.
Not every library school teaches reference in such a hands-on way, but our teacher told us that after about a decade in the academic library business, she could verify that Simmons grads know their reference sources better than other library school grads. I found that comforting during the ordeal.
Stay Zen about this class. Breathe; relax; keep it in the day; take it one step at a time. This too shall pass, little grasshopper.
Know that even if you hate reference and never want to see another query again, at the end of this class you will possess and be able to use crucial research skills that will help you get through all the rest of your GSLIS classes.
And if you do like it, there’s always the higher-level reference classes, such as LIS-413, LIS-430, and LIS-454, which my teacher referred to as reference on steroids. I’ll see you there.

Ode to the Park Slope Food Co-op

2010-08-02T11:47:00.003-04:00

Every so often the NY Times likes to run a snarky article about how controlling and smug the Park Slope Food Coop is. This one is an example, although it's not as whiny as some of the blogs, and sites like Gawker. The folks posting there complain about having to work, and missing shifts, and being suspended, and having make-ups. They often call the members -- always the other members, not themselves -- entitled and self-righteous. The bottom line is that they want the cheap, fantastic, mostly organic food the coop sells, but they don't want to pay for it, in either money or labor.

So I am here to say, I loved the co-op; four years after moving away I still miss it; and in the 15 +/- years that I was a member, it had the largest effect, by far, on what I ate -- in a very good way. The coop's mission is to sell good food cheap, and the way to do that is to buy in quantity and cut labor costs. So it expanded its square footage and it added members. Something like 80 percent of the labor is by members, in other words--unpaid. That's the part some people like to complain about.

But here's the thing they don't understand: Forget its hippy-dippy origins, or any idea of collectivism or cooperatives: The coop is just like Costco. It's a private buying club. Anyone can join, and the price of admission isn't $50 a year, it's labor. The payoff is cheap, good food, much of it local. Apparently 15,000 people think it's worth it. I know I sure did, and in addition to the food, I made friends, had incredible conversations, practiced work skills, learned a lot about grocery stores and my neighborhood and local politics and food politics, and also music, and parenting, and the latest fiction -- all those conversations people have when they're working together. It's a (cooperative) Costco, and if you don't want that, don't join. But if you do, here's some tips toward a more enjoyable experience:

-- Allow me to repeat that: You don't have to join. And if you do, and you don't like it, quit. No one put a gun to your head. Stop spoiling it for everyone else.

-- Quit yer gripin'. In my experience, the people who complain about the place are the entitled ones. They want their cheap food but they don't want to pay for it. They want to stay out clubbing until 2am but not have a hangover in the morning -- or not have to work that 8am shift. Sign up for a 4pm shift, if clubbing is important to you. Granted, some members can be obnoxious and rule-oriented, but that's a reaction to a certain entitled population that thinks it can get something for nothing. When I was there, the office folks could make me crazy with their rigidity, but one of the best things I did was work in the office for about a year; I saw what they were up against. I understand how complicated this thing could get, and I applauded them -- from a distance -- for their efforts.

-- Stop acting like the coop owes you something. Shopping on Saturday afternoon at any grocery store is hell, why should the coop be any different? They don't have your favorite peanut butter that week? You're suspended? Cry me a river.

-- Having trouble making your shift? Switch. There's no requirement to work in the store. Work in the office. If you work in customer service, maybe you want to do something different, write the newsletter, or take inventory, or stock dairy. Among my several jobs, I chose to be a shopping squad leader because I really wanted to practice some of the management skills I'd been learning.

--- Find a squad you can make and a leader you can work for. Not every squad leader was as strict as the stated rules--I never gave two make-ups for a missed shift, especially if the (reliable) squad member called in advance. It wasn't necessary and it chased good people away. If someone was consistently unreliable, well, then, I might give two shifts, as required, or I might even ask them to shape up or find another squad; we're trying to do some work here. I also always gave regulars the jobs they wanted, which was usually check-out. I would kick make-ups off to do stocking or other less-enjoyable jobs. As a result, we had a tight, reliable squad that enjoyed working together.

-- You don't have to work regular hours. You can work on a project, like the monthly meetings, or the newsletter, and keep track of your hours. It means learning a bit about the different jobs, maybe waiting until the one you want is available, and otherwise doing some legwork, but so what?

-- The reason there's all these rules and instructions is because people only work 2.75 hours every four weeks. They forget, especially if they are new, and especially if they are consistently late, or absent. Show up, show up on time, learn your job, do it without a lot of drama, and get your cheap food.

-- Along those lines, remember that this is a multi-million dollar a year business -- $40 million last year, I gather -- with 15,000 members, it's not a hippy-dippy woo-woo place to get some brown rice. There have to be rules, and a certain rigidity, and apparently it works. It's been successful, as it's the longest continuously running worker-run coop in the country. That's a big deal.

God bless the Park Slope Food Co-op. I haven't been a member since late 2006, and things may have changed. But I'm sure this little bodega is still an anchor to the community, still a model for all of us, still a crucial response to big box stores, a living, successful example for alternative ways of eating, working, shopping, and living.

thank god for swimming

2010-07-13T11:32:00.009-04:00

I had the best swimming lesson of my life yesterday and I can't believe how my swimming--and my life--has changed in just those 45 minutes. Kim Bierwert is the coach at Smith College, which is near us, and he's amazing. I've been coached by fantastic, elite swimmers, but this was way above all that. I guess I'd have to go back to the swim training class I took at Wellesley from the swim coach there. She was awesome--this was better.

A little background: Maybe I've written this already, but getting exercise outside of the city is really hard for me. I completely underestimated how much walking I did in New York--and I was a bus and subway junkie--and how alluring a car is here. It's so fast. It's easy. It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And dry, did I mention dry? I could get soaked walking around NYC.

I seem to workout in phases. Last year it was months of hot yoga three or four times a week. A few months before that I had a trainer I saw weekly, and we didgym stuff, like weights and treadmill. In my early 30s I ran upwards of 30 miles a week at one point. Central Park is fantastic for running. Working at Sports Illustrated was very conducive to exercise and working out: A group of us ran most lunches: Central Park was just a few blocks away and SI had showers. At one point I took a 10-week speed class at the NY Road Runners' Club, and just running splits for an hour a week cut two minutes off my rate, from 10 minute miles to eight. But then I left SI for LIFE, and I left the Upper West Side for Brooklyn, and it all became a lot harder. I ran a bit in Prospect Park, also an excellent running park, but soon we'd moved a few blocks down the hill, and running around the streets and up the mile just to get to the park was a drag. Eventually I developed a bone spur, so running was out.

I fell into swimming when a friend's sister mentioned her Master's team. For two+ years I left my apartment at 5:30am three mornings a week to ride from Brooklyn to John Jay College off Columbus Circle to swim with Red Tide. We'd get in the pool by 6:30 to swim 3000 yards, give or take. I was always in the slowest lane, but my Wellesley class paid off. Boris, our Soviet-era boy-wonder coach--not an Olympic competitor, but almost--and our other coaches really taught me a lot. Saturdays I'd often go all the way to W. 136th Street in Manhattan to swim with the team at City College. Those were two-hour workouts, and boy was I tired at the end of a four-day swim week.

For those who don't know, Masters swimming was started so people could keep swimming competitively after they got out of college. Today not every Masters swimmer competes, but it always entails regular workouts with quality coaching. Swimming's not like running, you can't just go to the pool and do a few laps. I mean, you can, but the drills and the yardage and the stroke critique you get on a team are essential to being a strong efficient swimmer. You just don't need that to run, although lots of people do have teams and all. And of course lots of people just swim, even strong swimmers. But while a serious runner doesn't necessarily need a coach, the same could not be said for a serious swimmer. (Do you agree, Mike?)

At any rate, then Lily was born and taking two hour-long subway rides didn't work. It was too complicated, what with me nursing and Dave working. I couldn't continue and there were no nearby pools or teams. Eventually they built a YMCA in Downtown Brooklyn and started a Masters team, which I tried for awhile, very excited, but did not like the coach. I quit before he did and then we moved north.

Buffy P.S.

2010-07-10T18:51:00.003-04:00

What I like about Buffy is how she kicks ass, and is vulnerable too. She always gets up to fight again, and yes, this being TV, she always comes back to win again. She's got the witty comeback and she's way strong and fast.

But I realized last night that I've been watching way too much Buffy when we went to see Winter's Bone, a really bleak movie with a very strong young woman trying to take care of her family. It's incredible, incredibly bleak, but also hopeful, and this young actress is in every scene. At one point she gets beat up and I'm embarrassed to admit my first, reflexive reaction was, okay, now kick their asses! and of course she doesn't, and it hurts, and she takes some time to recuperate. Nope, this is reality, this is true; Buffy is a fantasy, and when you get hit in the face most people don't bounce back up with a witty comeback.

Really great movie.

IMDb on this movie.
Wikipedia on this movie.

BA -- Buffy Anonymous

2010-07-08T14:09:00.011-04:00

Okay, I'm addicted. Not sure how it all happened, but happened, it has. Here's a link to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in case you don't know what I'm talking about. I started watching in early May for lots of reasons, but partly because I know so many smart, interesting women who love it. "Love" is too weak a word. Adore, feel passionate about, lovelovelove, choose your verb.

In the past I could never been able to watch Buffy because I got too scared. Thinking about that now kinda makes me laugh, but it's true. At first I made Dave watch with me--no, at first I made Lily watch, and we both got creeped out. She stopped but I made Dave watch a couple with me. Soon I could watch alone if Dave and Lily weren't too far away.

Episode 5, "Never Kill a Boy On a First Date," was okay for me to watch alone-alone, when D&L were at school/work, but when I tried episode 6, "The Pack," I couldn't do it. My friend Lisa said, don't watch that one alone! and came over and did her laundry while we watched and she told me all the things she loves about Buffy. That day may have been what got me hooked: The premise is that a demon (I was about to write "an evil demon," but are there any other kinds?) inhabit Xander and some other kids who become more and more like feral hyenas. They attack the principal, and the next scene shows Buffy hearing about it, saying, incredulously, "They ate the principal?" I couldn't stop laughing, and it still makes me laugh. [Gee, I haven't blogged in so long I've forgotten how to write.]

Here's a list of the episodes so you can keep up.

From then on, I was sunk. The story starts to unfold, as you Buffyphiles know, and you get to know more about everyone. Angel, Buffy's great love. The first "Big Bad" -- there's so much Buffy lingo and shorthand you need a dictionary if you haven't kept up, but that's why the internet was invented, for Buffy fans. The Scoopy Gang. Giles, Buffy's Watcher, and his potential girlfriend, Miss Calendar, the Roma. Oz. Cordelia.

This is one of many sites that discusses the Buffy lexicon. Here's the Wikipedia entry on Buffy slang.

My Buffy addiction took a huge leap this week when I discovered I can watch it on my laptop over my Netflix account. They stream every episode. I am sunk. I watched most of season 3, episode 7, Revelations, during my lunch break in my all-day library management class yesterday. I was halfway through the big fight scene at the end when class started again. Bummer. But I watched the rest of the episode during the next break. Dangerous stuff.

One thing I don't see a lot of online: The Buffy - Harry Potter Comparison. Lots of parallels.
Both . . .

. . . are the Chosen One, the savior of all humanity.

. . . were normal children until they reach adolescence, when they discover their true callings, along with their extraordinary abilities.

. . . live in two worlds at the same time, one magical, one ordinary, that don't mix -- until they do.

. . . have boy and girl sidekicks (Willow and Xander; Hermione and Ron); the girls are brainy, the boys are goofy.

. . . have a gang of followers, which have cool names (the Scooby Gang; Dumbledore's Army).

. . . have an adult watching over them (Giles and Dumbledore) but they have to strike out on their own too.

. . . have one Big Bad trying to get them (well, Buffy keeps killing hers).

. . . largely take place at a high school.

. . . have cool weapons and spells and animals.

. . . have other-worldly villains with weird heads.

. . . have platinum-blond villains with English accents who eventually become somewhat friendlier (Spike; Draco).

. . . have a boy/girl friend they can't be with but they still pine for (Angel; Ginny).

. . . have best friends with troublesome love lives who fall for each other.

. . . have parental units who resist their calling but come around, eventually, somewhat.

. . . were written at the same time in the late '90s, independent of each other.

. . . have rabid internet fans, fan fiction, etc.

. . . are still immensely popular.

I don't think either stole from the other. I think they were both onto something. Here's a couple of websites comparing them both. One and two. This is the great: the Buffy theme set to Harry Potter clips.

Simmons blog this spring

2010-07-05T20:31:00.002-04:00

Here's my two latest postings for the GSLIS blog:

take reference first

and

summer semester

and

out of school

Apropos of nothing

2010-06-03T17:51:00.009-04:00

-- June was an incredibly hard month for all of us. Lots of stress, too many things to go to at night, projects due, assignments, emotions, life. Sixth grade spring is not fun, according to my teacher friends, and it stays stressful -- all those hormones do crazy things to your emotions -- until the beginning of eighth grade. Ugh.

-- So it's 88 in my house, at 8pm, and my cat is spread-eagled in front of me, begging to be stroked. It's too darn hot!

-- This was an assignment for my reference class this spring. My local library, the Fabulous Forbes, posted it for me. It's my subject guide on deaf and hard of hearing in the Pioneer Valley.

-- Lily might try playing with the Florence Community Band. She had a wonderful school band concert in early June, including a solo that just sounded so sweet! I was really proud (she plays the flute). Anyone can join this community band, it seems. Nice!

-- I am in the middle of a class on library management and as one of my first assignments. I took the Myers-Briggs. It turns out I'm an INFJ -- people can change, who knew? The last time I took this, 25 years ago, People Who Knew told me I was an extrovert. If I ever was an extrovert, I no longer am. Apparently the accepted wisdom is that you can't change, but that's just wrong. Or else I've learned who I am better than 25 years ago. Librarians tend to be IN's by the way.

Just for kicks, I looked up my astrology chart and the subsequent description sounded a great deal like the Myers-Briggs. Interesting.

-- Lily's blogs:
http://whatsthenewtrendatschool.webs.com/
http://ilovewolvez.webs.com/

-- Lily's summer camps:
IMA girls rock camp - she did the exploratory camp. way cool, lots and lots of work.
NCMC chamber music camp - lovely. Their concert was Friday afternoon and they just sounded lovely.
Shakespeare camp -- this sounds good. I like the Hampshire Shakespeare productions, and the private school where they hold the camp has great facilities, I'm told. This is the middle two weeks in July.
DASAC -- check it out. Another summer camp on a well-endowed private school campus. This has a great rep and it's so popular they have to hold a lottery every winter. Lily's in and very excited.
Then we go to the Outer Banks for a week with Dave's family, followed by a week at Family Camp again. Nice!

-- And my kid is now a seventh grader! She was way sad at the end of school, in part because she said goodbye to her beloved science teacher, who is moving back to New York City because her husband got a tenure-track position at Columbia. Better you than me! I told her. I love New York but I sure don't want to live there.

More TK, as they say in the magazine biz.

Laundry

2010-06-02T22:16:00.003-04:00

The reason I moved to the country.

Well, maybe not the only reason. But a big part of it. I wanted to hang my laundry on a line. I wanted that scratchy feeling of air-dried -- sun-dried -- bath towels. I wanted to hang up my clothes on a warm sunny breezy morning and have them dry before I was finished. I wanted to have that fabulous fresh air smell in my sheets.

When my realtor asked me why I was ambivalent about the house, I told him I didn't see a place to install a laundry line. He laughed, and at my request, gave us this line as a selling present (what a weird thing, a selling present, or whatever they call it).

It sat in the garage for the first year. We weren't sure where to put it, and the woods were so close to the house, and the pachysandra so thick, there wasn't really room for it in our yard. Back, only, the front has too many trees, not to mention pachysandra. But then Dave got the bright idea to take his mother's lawn mower -- she has a yard service now and doesn't use it -- and mow down all those nasty vines. The pachysandra is actually receding a bit, and he immediately put down grass seed. And now we are getting grass in our back yard! Wow!

In the meantime, our friend Peggy suggested, since we didn't know where to locate the thing, that we put it in a bucket of cement -- she had just the bucket for us -- and let it stay portable. The only problem is that the center pole is meant to be partly in the ground, and if we leave it in the bucket, the lines to hang the clothes are so high I can't reach them. There's two parts to the pole, though, and Dave took out one of them. Now it's so low, pants almost touch, but most stuff is okay.

Oh, and the other problem is, we never bothered to take it down last fall until a branch fell on it and smushed the bars. Dave put a split on them and made it almost as good as new. Good thing we made it portable, though, as I've decided I want it out the door off our kitchen instead of the garage. I bring the laundry up from the basement through the house and out onto the deck and down to the yard, but that's okay. I like being able to see it from my bedroom, or the kitchen; it's a good reminder to bring it in.

We had had a line just off the porch to a tree, but it was so tall, and it wasn't on a pulley, that I couldn't reach most of it. This works better. Dave is thinking about attaching the second pole and bringing the entire thing close to the edge of the deck. Then I could stand on the deck near the grill and hang laundry from there. I'm not so sure that's a good idea -- for one thing, I doubt I'd be able to rotate the thing to the other side of lines, never mind reach the middle ones -- but if it did work, I'd be really happy.

Still, this is fun. It'll need to get raised up a bit eventually, but for now Lily can reach it pretty well. She helped me hang some clothes on Monday -- don't hang my bras out there, Mama! -- and then helped me bring some of it in. This was a big, big load, full of lots of tiny stuff, like socks and underwear, so it took forever, and a million clothes pins (I used almost all of the three packs I had) to hang it up. Taking it down is easier, of course.

And then folding it is lovely. It smells good, it feels good, it's really dry, and and really warm. I can't wait to hang my sheets.

the school update

2010-05-24T12:48:00.008-04:00

So I've finished my first semester! Yahoo! It went great, in the end, and I am delighted to be referring to reference in the past tense. The beginning of the term I was so overwhelmed I wasn't sure how to make it -- thank god cataloging wasn't that demanding at first. But, as Anne Lamott says, you just have to take it all bird by bird, one step at a time, the only way you can do it. In this case, week by week, assignment by assignment.

My first semester down, thank god, I will never have another" first semester back in 20 years" again. I ended up with good grades, some nice new friends, a part-time job on the circulation desk at my local library, some important new skills, the beginnings of some other new skills, and a sense of belonging that is priceless. I can see myself making the transition to this new field and I find myself spending less and less time comparing journalism and journalists to librarians and library science. Similar fields, but not at all the same, and frankly, librarians are a lot more fun and take themselves a lot less seriously than journalists. I can't imagine the journalists I know dressing up and doing precision book cart drills, for instance.

An old friend from journalism school said to me a few months ago, library school is perfect for you because you love books so much. I thought that was interesting, to be seen as a lover of books, which I am, of course. But also, the comment introduced the notion that not everyone is a lover of books, and that seems odd to me. Doesn't everyone who is literate and involved in the world of information read books? Well, no, I guess not.

People are starting to pass along articles and books about libraries, in that thoughtful way that people do. And I am now a sort of expert among my non-library associates about the world of libraries, books, and information. Are books going away? Are libraries becoming obsolete? Can we eliminate postal service entirely? Why do we still have phone books? These are some of the questions and comments I've seen raised recently. The short answer is, don't be ridiculous. Have these people not heard of something called the digital divide? I think these questions reveal a lot about the many vast differences in class experience in this country.

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project writes a lot about the digital divide. Here's a link to their April 2009 report on the digital divide. And here's from their website:

In a national survey between November 30 and December 27, 2009, we find:

74% of American adults (ages 18 and older) use the internet -- a slight drop from our survey in April 2009, which did not include Spanish interviews. At that time we found that 79% of English-speaking adults use the internet.

60% of American adults use broadband connections at home – a drop that is within the margin of error from 63% in April 2009.

55% of American adults connect to the internet wirelessly, either through a WiFi or WiMax connection via their laptops or through their handheld device like a smart phone. This figure did not change in a statistically significant way during 2009.

Those are huge numbers, but what strikes me is how many people are not included; those are also huge numbers. In this part of the country, and I'm sure elsewhere, it's really hard to get internet access beyond a dial-up. The cable and phone companies don't want to lay the lines for broadband because the number of users they expect to gain is small compared to their costs and they won't make the profits they desire. Personally, I don't think dial-up counts as internet access, it really just means you have email. That's not insignificant, but it's not full access.

The federal government is required by law to make all its laws and materials available to citizens. In the past that's meant printing everything and putting it all in federal repository libraries. Much of that information is migrating to the internet, however. So the folks who don't have a computer, or broad band, go to their public libraries. And guess what! Public libraries -- where usage is skyrocketing, by the way, and they aren't just coming in to use the internet or take out movies, they're taking out books, paper and cardboard books, in record numbers -- are being forced to cut back their services and hours because of budget cuts. I was told that people looking for disaster benefits after Hurricane Katrina had to file online (and using Internet Explorer! They couldn't use Firefox, or Safari, even. That's like saying you had to call on an Erikson phone. It's just wrong). So what do you do if you don't have a computer, or internet access, or the skill to use them, and there are no other options. You're outta luck. Don't get me started on how hard it is to live here without a car. Yuck.

But I digress. My point is I have learned this spring that information in the world, whatever its form and location, whether online or in print, is expanding exponentially; that millions of Americans (never mind people in other countries) do not know how to access it (much of our time in reference class was relearning the poor searching skills we picked up from looking for stuff on Google); and that at the same time that access to all kinds of information becomes more and more crucial, it is being restricted by closing libraries and paying for costly internet connections and computer hardware, never mind learning how to use the stuff.

There's lots of work out there for people trained in library skills. I'm excited to be joining their ranks.

Blog catch-up

2010-05-24T11:38:00.013-04:00

Hello, faithful reader,

Didja miss me? It's been more than a month since I've blogged, and this time no one complained. Oh well! I am happy to be back. I missed it. Lots has been going on, and often I find myself thinking -- I have to blog about this! but then I don't.

First of all, bears: We had our first sighting of the spring in April, a mother and two cubs. They like to walk the stream next to our house. We have tender skunk cabbage and other tasty tidbits. We've seen them several times since, the latest being last night. Lily was on the screened-in porch and saw one of the cubs out, alone. We felt all proud -- our baby is growing up, out on his/her own for the first time! I gather the cubs stay with their mothers for two years, and this one, while clearly still a youngster, is definitely getting more independent. Later, Dave showed me fresh scat, right on the path behind the house. Very exciting.

Friends said they didn't want to go camping because they were afraid of bears, and I said you just have to put your food and garbage in the car when you leave or go to sleep, but otherwise you should be okay. When people say they're afraid of the bears, I feel a mix of, don't bother! and, should I be more worried? No one who's lived here any length of time seems to fear them much. They respect them, don't get me wrong. They stay inside when bears are around, and most people store their garbage carefully and take down their bird feeders in the spring. But no one panics when they walk in the woods, say. I think the bears are really shy, and if they hear me in the woods they go the other direction. When I walk alone I sometimes carry a bear bell and ring it from time to time.

But most of the time the bears are just the bears, a fact of life, wild but accustomed to living near humans, more shy of us than we are of them, to be treated with respect but not panic. A bear expert here told me you were safer around bears if you didn't let them know you were afraid of them. Stay away from the mamas and their cubs, and from a mating pair. Otherwise, you're good to go. And no one has been attacked here in something like 150 years.

The cat: She escaped! But she's back. We had a party for a friend after her UMass graduation (PhD!) and someone forgot to close the screen door to the back porch. I let her out onto the porch the next day and she must have been ecstatic to see the door to her cell just hanging open. I didn't notice for an hour, but bless her, Chance came when I called her. She came out of the woods behind our house, slinking along on her belly, the way she does when she gets outside, like she doesn't want to be seen. I just scooped her up and brought her in, no worse for the wear except for a small slug clinging to the fur on her underside.

Lily and I took her to the vet for her annual check-up and got this new comb for her and it's AMAZING. It's called the FURminator, here's a link, and we recommend it to anyone with a cat or dog or rabbit or whatever. It thins the undercoat, and Chance loves it. We can't do it too often, she's getting bald -- not really, but it takes out gobs and gobs of hair and it all goes everywhere and you throw away great handfuls of the stuff. Kind of icky, but it better that than on the sofa or carpet.

Chance is very excited that the weather is nicer and there's more to see outside. She's been spending hours in one of the basement windows, looking outside. She hangs there and the back porch, both very exciting for her. Nice cat.

Lily is doing great at school and is really turning into a lovely flute player and musician. She's had several concerts recently, including two choral concerts. One was with a local group called Whole Children, which provides fun and services for special needs kids. They hired Joan, her choral director, to conduct the Whole Children kids and general population kids, like Lily, in a chorus to sing along with Dan Zanes. The show was a First Churches, in downtown Northampton, on Mother's Day. Lily and a boy named Aidan introduced Dan. Afterward he stuck around for photos and autographs. As Joan said, Dan is a real class act. He sang a few songs to kick the show off, but he knew this was all about the kids, the kids, the kids. There was a wide variety of experience and skills. At least one was non-verbal. And they had a gas, you could tell, by how they sang and danced and hung around after, focused and joyful. Lily loved it.

Here's Lily with Joan, her amazing conductor, and of course, the dude in the pink suit is Dan.

One more Lily image to put here: She was invited to a space-themed birthday party a couple of weeks ago. So she decided to go as a glam Star Trek alien. How 'bout this! A lot easier than a robot or something.

Simmons blog link

2010-05-24T11:23:00.003-04:00

My Simmons blog bio and entries (see the list at the bottom) is here.

I'll be posting every couple of weeks or so during my summer class. I'm taking the required library management course, which meets all day for the first three Fridays in June and the first three Fridays in July. So it starts on June 4 and my job now is to read as much as I can to get ahead.

I'll try to post the Simmons blog links as they come up, but if I forget, go to that link above, or the one listed on the right side of this page.

Two funny aha's

2010-04-17T06:56:00.004-04:00

My stepfather gave me a great CD of Rosemary Clooney, and it has this song with these lyrics:

Do You Miss New York?

Written By: Dave Frishberg

Since I took a left and moved out to the coast
From time to time I find myself engrossed
With other erstwhile denizens of the apple
While we sit around and take L.A. to task
There’s a question someone’s bound to ask
And with this complex question we must grapple

Do you miss New York?
The anger
The action
Does this laid back lifestyle lack
A certain satisfaction
Do you ever burn to pack and return
To the thick of it
Are you really sick of it
Like you always say
Do you miss the pace
The rat race
The racket
And if you had to face it now
Do you still think you could hack it
When you’re back in town for a quick look around
How is it
Does it feel like home
Or just another nice place to visit?
And were those halcyon days
Just a youthful phase you outgrew?
Tell me
Do you miss New York
Do you miss New York
Do you miss the strain
The traffic
The tension
Do you view your new terrain
With a touch of condescension
And on this quiet street
Is it really as sweet as it seems out here
Do you dream your dreams out here
Or is that passé
Do you miss the scene
The frenzy
The faces
And did you trade
The whole parade
For a pair of parkin’ places?
And if the choice
Would you still choose to do it all again
Do you find yourself in line to see Annie Hall again
And do you ever run into that guy
Who used to be you?
Tell me
Do you miss New York?

Me too

I had two funny aha's yesterday. One of Lily's teachers, whom we adore and are trying to get together with for dinner, is moving to New York City. Her husband got a tenure-track position in his field, astronomy, and hey, you really can't turn that down. They'd lived in Brooklyn for some time, or at least she had, so she knows what she's getting into. But in just, what two or three years here, she's built a life and is so close to the other two teachers on her team (Lily's teachers) that she's dedicated her travel book about Ireland to them. She was practically in tears talking about it, how much she doesn't want to go, how much she loves it here, her friends, her community.

And I realized I would never ever want to move back to New York City. Nothing against it, y'all, I'm not dissing the Great Apple or anyone who lives there, it's just that I have so thoroughly landed here, and all that it means--my drive to school takes my breath away every time I do it--that I just do not, not, not miss New York City or my beloved Brooklyn. I'd love to see my friends, and truly, that's what I miss:

I miss people who know me very well, who've known me for many many years, decades of years in many cases, or whom I have connected with so deeply that it feels like decades. I miss those looooong chats about kids and work and careers and college and family and getting older. It's lovely to have friends like those.

As to my second point, I was heading up the road to have lunch with my dear friend George, an old friend from New York who fits the above bill but whom I simply do not see enough of, and about 50 yards ahead of me I saw a young black bear lumber across the road. My first thought was, "Bear!" and my next immediate thought was, "big dog," but that was more out of instinctual fear, I think, than reality. I knew that was a bear, a youngster, but a bear, nonetheless.

The road to George's is lovely, treelined, narrow, and as you come up in to his town it opens up into farm land and you get one of those dime-a-dozen but always spectacular views of mountains, in this case the range east of the river and north of Amherst whose names I don't know. George has the perfect, most wonderful house, and we talked and talked about life and work and the old days and what everyone else we'd worked with was doing, and family, and what it's like to be a transplanted New Yorker living here.

As I said goodbye I told George I will always be grateful to him for urging me to move here and making me feel both welcome and like it was actually doable. He noted how hard it is to get someone out of New York in the first place, but once you do, you don't look back. At least he hasn't: He said he hadn't been there in four years. Wow! We go back at least a couple times a year, and also Dave's mom lives on Long Island. But I can see our visits getting longer apart, especially as Lily gets older and once--I'm betting money on this--she goes to college there. She still has the place in her blood. We took her out too soon for her taste, although she really likes it now, now that she's settled in her new school and has some friends.

The cusp of spring

2010-04-13T23:02:00.003-04:00

It's just coming. The parking lot behind Thorne's downtown is full of white blossoms--are they cherries? I don't know but it reminds me of Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn right about now, the callery pears all in bloom all at once, and just for a single week. My favorite week of the year. Lily and I would stand looking down at about 7 at night and try to come up with words to describe it: goose down. ice cream. pillows. clouds. Lovely, in the soft street lights.

And here we have lots of forsythia, and the magnolia behind our house is bursting into purple-ish booms, and daffodils and a whole bunch of stuff I don't know the names of. I got a delivery of mulch today from Lashway, the whole nine yards, as they say, a big truck load, and the back tilts up and up and up and the mulch pours out. In the fall Lashway brings us a couple of cords of firewood and in the spring we get mulch, which we split with our neighbors. I need to find someone to deliver topsoil so I can fill in the holes in my yard. On Sunday I gathered a wheelbarrow's worth of twigs off the front yard and barely scratched the surface of what's there, but it was enough kindling for several fires.

Spring is here, solidly, and the weather is spring-like: that new green emerging in the trees, the flowers, the crisp mornings and sunny afternoons, the blue skies, and the occasional cold rains. Last week was positively hot but this week it's been cold enough in the mornings that I light a fire to study by. It takes the chill off.

I've decided that when I study I need it warmer than other times because I am sitting still for so long. I sit in the hot air blowing out and Chance comes and sits on the table next to me and presents her belly to be rubbed, knocking over the salt shaker in the process. I used to throw her off but she just comes immediately back up, so now I don't bother. It sure is nice to be loved.

Scary foxes

2010-04-13T22:50:00.003-04:00

I was walking out of my bookgroup last week -- it's a block group for the most part, so the commute is great -- and heard a terrible shriek. What's that, someone asked. It was about 10 o'clock and the night was very dark and there are no streetlights on our cul de sac; people bring flashlights when they visit each other at night, and I leave on the light at the end of my driveway as much for courtesy as for convenience. The sound was disheartening to say the least.

A bird, I said, trying to sound confident. No, no bird, not at this time of night, someone said. Pause. That's a fox.

Huh? A fox? A fox? We have foxes? Foxes make noises? Turns out they make a lot of noises. Here's a link to fox sounds.

This one was a scary sound, disconcerting enough that I had to force myself not to run home, but walk calmly. It sounded like it was coming from my house, or immediately behind it. I told myself the only fox worth being scared of is a rabid one. But hey, what do I know? I was happy to walk in my door.

I think this was the sound I heard, the territorial cry. Doesn't sound so bad on my computer right now, but imagine it right outside your door. At any rate, I am reminded of it now because we just heard it again tonight, somewhat further off in the woods. It gave us all the creeps and Lily was particularly wigged out. She said Chance was fascinated, staring out the window. We have cats around here, and fishers, and coyotes. Someone could easily have been eating someone else, but who knows. Who wins in a fox-cat fight? I'm sure the fisher and coyote win. Another reason we don't let Chance out at night.

Brave new librarian world

2010-04-06T10:07:00.001-04:00

latest admissions blog is here.

Librarian humor

2010-03-28T18:28:00.002-04:00

My reference professor sent this link to us. It's called "Peep Research: A study of small fluffy creatures and library usage."

These people have too much time on their hands.

Leking in the moonlight with Dave

2010-03-28T16:44:00.007-04:00

I never appreciated moonlight before moving to the country. I loved the moon, to be sure, what's not to love. But I didn't know about a moon so full you don't need a flashlight, or the reflection of that cold white light on the snow.

We went on a walk in the back 40 on Friday night, Dave and I, to see the mating dance of male American woodcocks. Those are birds, and the walk was organized by the Broadbrook Coalition, which takes care of the conservation land behind our house. Check this out:

This wasn't ours, but this is what we saw. About a dozen of us, including our fearless leader, a phd birder, and several naturalists. I was paranoid about getting cold, so I wore longjohns and mittens and a warm hat. We wrapped red cellophane around our flashlights for the walk home, but we didn't really need them, with the moon. I know those woods pretty well now, although we drove to a different trailhead, we didn't go in behind our house. We got to the dam and went past it and into Cook's Meadow, which has three meadows, really. It's great to be with people who know what they're doing -- I saw hooded mergansers, which are a kind of duck, and a bluebird. A real live bluebird.

We got to one of the meadows and hung out until dark, when the woodcock made his move. There were three of them nearby, actually, all with this peent noise first, then a wild flight up and around, then a plummet to the ground, all with different calls. The females watch from the sidelines and if they are suitable impressed, off they go.

This certain type of bird courtship is called a lek--we were lurking at a leking, an aviary singles bar, in essence. Way cool.

Commuting

2010-03-28T15:23:00.009-04:00

I have a new weekly commute: Driving to South Hadley, where Simmons rents a couple of classrooms and time in the library from Mount Holyoke College for its western Massachusetts library science grad students. And man, it is lovely. Saturdays are my long day, when I have two three hour classes with an hour in between. It's fine, but long. By the end of the day, I'm pretty whipped. But it's a fine commute, one I'm lucky to have.

Yesterday I pulled out of the driveway around 8am, a little early for my 9:15 class (it's a 20 minute drive). But I wanted to print some stuff at the GSLIS (graduate school of library and information science) office -- very nice perk, free printing -- and catch my reference professor at her "office" hours at the local cafe, the Thirsty Mind, before our class at 9:15, a nice service, on her part.

I had my thermos of green tea, my bottle of cold water, a little bag of almonds, my laptop, and my backpack with my various notebooks and pens and such. The sun hadn't been up that long and the light had that wonderful crisp early-morning quality. It was about 20 degrees--we've been having an unseasonal cold snap; in like a lamb and out like a lion this year--and my iPod was set on shuffle, with Dar Williams' Alleluia cued up first.

Alleluia, indeed. Alleluia, God! I cranked it up and sang along loudly, feeling a bit like a teenager. I'm off to school, I'm at the beginning of a new career, I have tons to do, but I'm working hard and doing well. The sun is still low in the sky, it's going to be a gorgeous clear day, and I am on the cusp of a new career that's exciting and fun and best of all, incredibly interesting and stimulating. Life is good.

Lately I've been flashing on a vivid memory of 20+ years ago. An April Saturday morning, my final semester at Wellesley. Twenty-seven years old, a bit of a late bloomer, and blissfully happy at Wellesley. I had just been accepted to Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, the fulfillment of a dream I'd had since I was at least 12. I was moving to New York City in September! Another dream coming true. I was sitting in the fabulous kitchen of my fabulous rent control apartment in Central Square, Cambridge, listening to Scott Simon reading the headlines at the top of Weekend Edition.

He finished, the theme music came on, all bold and powerful, he said, "today is Saturday, April Whatever, and this, is Weekend edition," all dramatic-like, and I burst into tears. The theme music to my life, my new life--who knew what the future held, exactly, but it was going to be journalism!--and I was on my way. Who knew, I could be working with Scott Simon in a year or two.

This is a little like that. The sun was shining and I was driving down route 47, a twisty, lovely road that follows the Connecticut River south for about, oh, seven miles, through farmland, asparagus fields, corn, hay, horses, cows. A mini-golf range that Lily's been to with friends. A marina on a little inlet of the river, at which point I always entertain a fantasy about keeping a boat at one of their slips.

A little further is a 15-foot sign post with several white markers placed on it, including one nearly at the top: flood markers, with dates on them, the last one was in the 1980s, so not so long ago. Then past trail heads and the road up Skinner's Peak. I've got the river on the right of me, to the west, and I'm curving around Skinner, to the east, on my left. Skinner, the farthest west mountain in the half dozen of the Holyoke Range--unless Mt. Tom across the river is considered to be part of that mountain family.

The road takes me down a couple of dips, across something called a brook that right now, with the spring thaw, looks like a small river. Private homes, some town playing fields, and into South Hadley and the campus. On the way home, the river's now on my left, and depending on when I leave school, I can see the most stunning sunsets, the vast stretch of reds and pinks and oranges lighting up the hills behind Easthampton and Northampton. I could look at the river for hours, and if I weren't so afraid of flooding, especially with global warming, I'd love to live near it, and really get familiar with it.

This is way different from the D train, or the dreaded F, which I did for a couple of years. Those have their pluses -- I can't read on my commute, and I don't get to see stuff like this, below, after Michael Jackson died. If anything, this is what I miss about New York City. But still, I wouldn't trade back. I love my new river.

2010-03-28T14:57:00.002-04:00

My latest blog for Simmons is here. And the last couple are here and here. I'll try to be better about posting the links on Thursdays, when they go up.

And this is wonderful:

Bears, milkshakes, and iced tea

2010-03-16T16:23:00.005-04:00

Three sure signs it's spring. It's spring! It's nearly spring, at least. I first started writing this entry a couple of weeks ago, and the signs are just growing stronger, tonight's predicted low of 16 (!!!) not withstanding.

1) The bears are back. That's a sure sign of spring. A couple of weeks ago, Dave saw a mama and two yearlings, not quite cubs, but not full grown, either. Apparently they mate every two years. They were across the stream --- our house is built on mud, by the way, and would not have been built 10 years later, when the wetlands laws were enacted -- just strolling and snacking. Our neighbor gave us a call too, to make sure we'd seen them.

We've seen them several times since, always the mama and her two cubs, always traipsing that stream, usually in the beginning or end of the day. Last night was dusk. One time I was driving Lily to school and she'd forgotten something, and while she was in the house searching for what turned out to be in her backpack, I saw the bears strolling by. "Look!" I hissed as she came out of the house. "Bears! Get in the car, now!"

They don't scare me, and these are all tagged and sort of our local bears, but I don't want to mess with them. They're more afraid of you than you are of them, the wildlife experts tell us, but two things you don't want to mess with: a bear with her cubs, and two bears mating.

Oh, and among our early spring chores -- put away the snowblower, get out the rakes -- taking down the bird feeders is at the top of the list.

2) Iced tea. I ordered an iced tea last week! Wow! It was warm and springy out and the iced tea tasted great all the way down.

3) Lily got a milk shake. Now, this is not a sign of spring for her. She will have a milkshake any time of the year. But this felt like a special occasion, the bears back, me with my iced tea, so she got a milkshake. It was gone in about 30 seconds.

I have a collection of spring songs, free to anyone reading who asks me for it.

Why I don't apologize for voting for Nader

2010-03-05T08:16:00.014-05:00

In case you didn't know, I'm going to confess it right here: I voted for Ralph Nader. Not just for the 2000 election, but for the two following that one, as well. That's right, I did not vote for Obama, although voting for the first black president was really tempting. But much as I love Obama's story, his wife, his kids, his mother, his name, even, and everything he stands for socially, I did not believe he would stand for change political and economic change. And I'm very sorry to say I still don't believe that.

Okay, now tell me everything terrible you've ever thought about Ralph Nader. Take your time. Get it off your chest. I've heard it all before -- when I say I voted for Nader, most people just want to rant about how awful he is, and how he lost Gore's election for him, and how he said the Democrats were just like the Republicans. Few are at all interested in hearing why I actually voted for him. That's okay. Take your time. Feel better? No? Me neither.

Here's the thing: I am glad I voted for Nader because it's so clear to me he was right all along. Unfortunately. I guess I'm writing this because of this article, but it's been percolating inside me for some time now. I cried when Obama made his acceptance speech in Chicago on Election Night. I couldn't believe that this country, founded in racism and made rich and fat off the blood of blacks, was actually electing a black man as president. It was a profound, momentous moment, and I was thrilled to witness it.

But just a few days later, when he started announcing his cabinet, I was back to being glad I voted for Nader. I voted for change, and Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Arne Duncan, Tom Vilsack, and Janet Napolitano do not represent change. And that scares me, worries me, makes me really fear for the future, because the stakes are higher today than ever before, at least in my lifetime, and the situation has gotten far worse in the past year.

Here's Chris Hedges in that article:
"We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney [2008 Green Party presidential candidate] an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives."

Clearly the people who are disappointed in Obama and business as usual are not just far-out lefties, whatever that means. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter. Daniel Ellsberg blasted Obama on Here and Now (scroll down to Ellsberg; the comments start at about seven minutes in) for lying to us about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He compared him to Johnson and Nixon and called for the release of the contemporary version of the Pentagon Papers. Very strong statement. Much of the left, whatever that is, has been criticizing the president ever since he got into office.

Back to Nader: I think it's easier to blame him than admit that, as I've said often, our country is broken, our system, a 250-year-old response to a 17th century monarchy, is outdated and old-fashioned. (I've been thinking lately that maybe the solution isn't tossing the whole system, but just getting rid of the Senate. Why not? England disenfranchised the House of Lords. We could easily lose the Senate, and expand the House.)

I wonder if the people who blame Nader have ever read anything by him. His book, Crashing the Party, is a very different take on the 2000 election from the reports in the media. There's a lot of debate about whether he actually cost Gore the election, and the first question is, Why didn't Gore win his own home state? And the second is, What makes you think all the Nader votes would have gone to Gore? He also points out that he had massive rallies, 20,000 people in Washington, D.C., and the Post never covered it.

Third parties are crucial to the American system, and the Democratic and Republican parties have colluded for 25 years to keep them out, beginning with taking control of the presidential debates away from the non-partisan League of Women Voters in 1987 and creating stringent rules about who can debate. Requiring a candidate to poll at 15 percent when the media won't cover them isn't fair.

Often people will come up with a stupid comment Nader made, and then expect his supporters to defend or explain it. And Nader can make stupid comments--he missed the whole thing about LGBT rights and marriage (although I wonder if gay marriage is a misguided use of energy. I don't know a lot about it but many of my gay friends are really annoyed about all the energy going into it).

But why is it that Nader, and others threatening the status quo, are so often held to a higher standard? Why do we think someone in his position has to be perfect, but others get a pass? We can all think of a million things Clinton, Gore, Kerry, etc etc did or said poorly. Why? Much of the recent damaging legislation that is destroying our economy came from Bill Clinton: NAFTA and deregulation of financial markets, not to mention abolishing welfare, the telecommunications act (we have that to thank for one or two gargantuan media companies owning most of the media in the country, the ability of one company to own both a TV station and a newspaper in one market, and the collapse of newspapers), defense of marriage, and the anti-terrorism act that increased the federal death penalty significantly. Why do I want to vote for that?

The one thing I'll give Clinton is that he raised taxes on the rich, and guess what, the economy took off. I think Clinton's first election is the only time I ever voted for the party candidate; I always voted for a third party candidate, and I've never been sorry.

So here's the Nader quote about the difference between Democrats and Republicans, according to an online quote site: "The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference." And you know, here's the thing: He's right. He may not have been as right at the time, when he said it; the Dems still counted for something vaguely resembling liberal. Maybe the Democratic party of old was liberal. Every now and then someone says to me that Nixon was more liberal than Obama, but all that means is that Nixon signed more left-wing legislation. Nixon was facing a far more liberal Congress and he lost a lot of battles. He would have been far more right wing had he had the opportunity. And that Congress, as left as it may have been, did not give us national health. Despite how he's being lumped into the mix as a president who tried to reform health care, Nixon resisted an extremely liberal Congress that wanted to go much farther, and he won.

By the way, I started writing this about a month ago, and now I write in the wake of the health care bill just signed. I don't know. I don't see this as a liberal bill--the comment I keep hearing is about the absurdity of the Dems going to the mat for a Republican bill. Maybe that's my biggest disappointment with the Dems, how polarized the country has become, and how they bear responsibility for that. The Dems voted for the Patriot Act, they voted for the Iraq war, and they're allowing the Afghanistan war. These wars have cost Massachusetts alone
$27, 567, 373,000 and counting. And my library has to cut $22,000 this year, two percent of its budget. That's a sin. That's a crime.

I voted for Ralph Nader because I want the corporations out of our government. "The banks own the place," that's what Senator Durbin said, and voting for the Democratic Party of the last 25 or 30 years will never change that equation. I voted for change. The change I see is only getting worse, not better.

Now we resume our regular schedule broadcasting. Thanks for listening.

Meryl Streep and ABBA

2010-03-03T09:17:00.002-05:00

I'm in love with Meryl Streep. And A. O. Scott. And ABBA. Not necessarily in that order. This is Scott's wonderful appreciation of the wonderful Streep from the Times last week. That scene in Mamma Mia, where Streep first sees her old girl friends and does that funny little dance at the end of the dock, that just kills me.

I love that movie in general, and to see Streep in all her overalled glory just cracks me up. She's a heckuva singer, even though or maybe even especially because she's not known for her singing -- I think it was IMDB that said she nailed Winner Takes It All in one take -- and she has great timing. I love the Greek chorus thing--of course it's taking place on an island somewhere in Greece, right? -- and to see all the local folks singing behind her? Hilarious. This is what IMDB says about that:

The story is set in Greece. They are a Greek chorus. An undercurrent of the film is to structure the story as a Greek comedy (like Aristophanes), including patterns of strophe and antistrophe,a chorus representing the common people,and costumes matched to moods of the characters, including masks and the phallic props typical of Greek comedy.

Out for Reel here is an LGBT group that brings movies to Northampton. They have an annual tradition of hosting a Mamma Mia singalong, complete with celebrity judges awarding prizes for best costume. This year Lily and I went, I guess it was the first day of classes for me, so I was fried, and it was a gas. The audience was mostly women and girls--we found ourselves sitting next to our friend Erika and her sister, coincidentally--and everyone was in a great mood. "Ohhh, Mamma Mia! Here I go again, why, why, how could I resist you?" with Meryl rolling around on the roof. "Does your mother know?" with the wonderful Christine Baranski. "Take a chance on me" with Julie Walters, another great. "Honey, honey." All the fun stuff.

Which brings me to ABBA. So I ask you, what's not to love about ABBA? Huh? Is there anything? I dare you to say it. There's a great quick video quote here from Pierce Brosnan (but you have to scroll down to find it) (he's in Mamma Mia) (apparently he said yes to the movie before he even knew what it was about, because he knew it starred Meryl Streep) about how everyone loves to hate ABBA, curse ABBA, dis ABBA, but we've all sung them, danced to them, gotten an ABBA ear worm that refuses to leave for weeks, we've all been there.

I decided to succumb to my inner ABBA-loving self in about 2004, maybe the fall of 2005, when I was at an event at PS 261 and someone had set up a karaoke machine. We were in the cafeteria, I think it was the fall festival so there were all sorts of activities going on. Dave and Lily wandered outside, and all of a sudden I hear this great big voice singing Dancing Queen. I didn't know the words, didn't really quite register that it was ABBA, even. But I looked over and there was a big crowd around the TV screen with the lyrics. I'd never seen karaoke before, and I had to see what all the fuss was about, so I wandered over. And I see this little, little blond girl, fearlessly belting out the song. She was in kindergarten, probably five years old, and boy could she sing. I couldn't believe it. She knew the song cold and she was having the time of her life.

If I'd had a camera I would have taken her picture and put her on the cover of the PTA newsletter with a hedline about, remember this kid's name, she's going to be big. And of course I don't remember her name, oh well. She is going to be big, though. Her father told me later she was a huge ABBA fan and I confess that I beat him out a few months later at the annual auction for an evening of ABBA music presented by Losers' Lounge. He was going to take his kid. I was going to go myself.

After hearing that kid I bought an ABBA gold CD--two disc set; they had a lot of hits--and started listening to it a lot. Lily got into it too, and when Losers' Lounge decided to present them that spring, worlds converged. Our dear friend David Fischer used to get together a group of folks to go hear the LL a couple of times a year present a show of covers of one band -- Stevie Wonder, punk and new age at CBGB's, David Bowie (great night), Talking Heads (another great night), and yes, ABBA. One of the guys who plays with them -- they are doing the Carpenters like, this weekend, so run, don't walk, to see them! -- is David Terhune, and his kids went to PS 261. He offered not only two tickets to the show but free babysitting by his wife, as well. Our bid won and we went out with David Fischer et al. -- and got a nice shout-out from David T. during the show -- and had a fantastic time.

The show was at Joe's Pub, so we had dinner, chatted, and then when the music came up, we sang and screamed all night. The idea is that they provide a house band, actually it's two bands combined, complete singers who dress appropriately (the ABBA boys and girls wore long blond wigs and outrageous white jumpsuits and fringe and stuff, very seventies), and they do lots of songs. But the band also plays for guest artists who sing one song, and you never know who you might hear. My favorite is Broadway star Michael Cerveris, who always played with them.

So we sang and sand, and at the end we were all saying good-bye on the sidewalk, and David Fischer said, but no one really likes ABBA, right? It's just a big joke, right? I protested wildly. Any band that made a million bucks a day at the height of their career was much more than a joke. They were all you heard in the clubs at one time. I had a brief stint in clubs when I lived in Cambridge in the early eighties, I went out a lot, at one point. And I heard a lot lot lot of ABBA.

And I always thought they were bad, a joke, stupid, over the top. And all the Spanish stuff -- Chiciquita? Fernando? What's with that? But you know, in my old age, I think they're hilarious, fun, catchy -- too catchy -- and really great to sing along to. Perfect karaoke music. Listening to them allows me to let loose and have fun, be goofy, sing really loud, get really silly. It's fun to like them. It's most fun of all to crank them up at home and dance around the kitchen with Lily. What's not to love?

So, thank you, Meryl Streep, for saying yes to your inner ABBA, too, and helping us all lighten up a bit.

my admissions blog is up

2010-02-28T20:27:00.003-05:00

Click here.

and wish me a happy birthday -- I'm 49 today! I've been saying I feel mortal, but not old. I think it's time for another tattoo (got the first for my 40th). The question is what -- and where. Something to make me laugh.

"This Book Is Overdue!"

2010-02-23T10:48:00.007-05:00

A gift of the library gods: I stumbled on The Dead Beat, a book about obituaries and the people who write them, when I was volunteering at the Hadley library in December, and lo and behold, it turned out to be by Marilyn Johnson, a former colleague of mine at Life magazine. I know firsthand what a wonderful writer she is--I'll never forget fact-checking her lovely profile of Lady Bird--and the topic was about an aspect of journalism, so I took the book out and really enjoyed it. It's smart and funny and such an unusual, far out topic. Who knew how interesting obits could be, not to mention their authors!

So I looked Marilyn up on FaceBook, natch, to tell her and say hey, and come to find out that her second book was about to come out, and it was about librarians! How cool was that! I ordered five copies, mostly as gifts, and on February 2 her book, This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybarians Can Save Us All, came to my house. There's very few writers I'll preorder from -- Rosemary Mahoney, both because she's my old friend and because everything she writes is extraordinary, and Harry Potter, of course. This one was very worth it: hilarious and inspiring and wonderful, and the perfect book for a nascent librarian to read. It renewed my faith and gave me hope that perhaps all is not lost in this crazy world, not as long as we have librarians.

Check out this from the first chapter:

"Librarians' values are as sound as Girls Scouts': truth, free speech, and universal literacy. And, like Scouts, they possess a quality that I think makes librarians invaluable and indispensable: they want to help. They want to help us. They want to be of service. And they're not trying to sell us anything. But as one librarian put it, "The wolf is always at the door." In tight economic times, with libraries sliding farther and farther down the list of priorities, we risk the loss of their ideals, intelligence, and knowledge, not to mention their commitment to access for all--librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy, and they're right. Librarians are essential players in the information revolution because they level that field. They enable those without money or education to read and learn the same things as the billionaire and the Ph.D. In prosperous libraries, they loan out laptops; in strapped ones, they dole out half hours of computer time. They are the little "d" democrats of the computer age who keep the rest of us wired.

In tough times, a librarian is a terrible thing to waste."

page 8 from:
Johnson, Marilyn. This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. New York: Harper, 2010.

I love that and it's really what I'm about. Not for me any more, the cynicism of journalism, the competitiveness, the drive to look clever and smart and hip. I'm too old for that and I was never hip. I just want to be useful. This book is so reassuring about the power of libraries and librarians. It's smart and very well-written. Marilyn inserts herself just enough as a character but really lets the librarians tell their stories, all the different sorts. If you like libraries, or reading, or technology, or anti-technology, or just a good yarn with interesting characters, don't miss this one.

new blog

2010-02-21T07:40:00.002-05:00

So I'm blogging weekly for the Simmons admissions page. My post goes up on Thursday. I'll link to the site on the side of this page, too.

Asking for help, aka librarian anxiety disorder

2010-02-18T14:10:00.003-05:00

I am learning that most people have no idea what they are looking for, when they go to a library, and they have no idea how to talk to a librarian--and often, that they even can ask. Apparently there really is a condition called librarian anxiety disorder, and I have totally had it, in the past. When I see the kinds of questions people ask a librarian, real and imagined, I think--who knew you could ask a librarian all this kind of stuff!

Did you know you can go to a reference desk and say, I really enjoyed Harry Potter, or Amanda Cross, or A Tale of Two Cities, or Maus, what else is there out there? And they will say, oh, I'm glad you asked! Let me tell you, show you, show you this long list, take you to the stacks and have at it. It's called a reader's advisory and it can be as simple as that list or as complicated as, "I'm doing research on how the U.S. Constitution is an outdated antique that should be thrown out entirely; most countries in the world have revised their constitutions since the end of World War II, and of all the 150+ new ones since then, all have parliamentary systems, none have our reactionary 250-year-old system, originally devised as a response to the 18th century British system." I sure want to write that article, but is any of that true? A reference librarian sure can tell me.

I am volunteering at my local library and yesterday the woman who is supervising me gave me a list of real questions patrons had asked her and her colleagues. The first one was someone wanting information about the guy who known for using a certain drug that has three letters and was particularly popular in the ‘50s and ‘60s until it became illegal, and the question that was posed was, who was the guy who invented DNA?

It's like the patron thought they had to figure out the answer before they asked the question, something I've suffered from my whole life, in a different context. And what happens is the librarian has to dig and dig to get at the real question. This is a part of the human condition, one of the librarians tells me. He's been in the biz for 30 years and he says that when he's on the other side of the encounter he still poses questions that way, much as he knows he's not supposed to.

That is, if people even know they can ask. Librarians, and reference librarians in particular, are amazing, and we should all bow down and give praise for their existence. I'm reading "This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All" by a former colleague from LIFE, Marilyn Johnson, and it's a very exciting field right now. I'll comment more on that book when I've finished it.

By the way, I am blogging for the Simmons admissions office and my first post is up. I'll be posting every Thursday. And if you click on my name or photo it takes you to my bio. Tell me what you think.

Caroline, Or Change is in Brooklyn

2010-02-12T15:28:00.008-05:00

Attention Brooklyn (and NYC): "Caroline or Change" is playing at the Gallery Players in Park Slope through Feb. 21. DO NOT MISS IT.

If you are within the sound of my voice you should run, not walk, to the Gallery Players' production of Caroline, or Change.

I'm sure the production will be excellent, because Gallery Players always does a good job. But more than that, this is one of those not-to-be-missed shows. It's sung-through, created from the brain of Tony Kushner (book and lyrics), with music by Jeanine Tesori and first workedshopped at the Public Theater in 1999, directed by George Wolfe. It came back the Public in 2003 for a few months, and not much later moved to Broadway, in 2004, for a short run.

Caroline is the black maid of a Jewish family at the end of 1963 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The mother of the family has died and the stepmother, for various reasons, tells Caroline that when she finds pocket change in the clothes of the nine-year-old boy, Noah, she can keep it. The themes are big, big, big: race, class, anti-semiticism, JFK, the civil rights movement, music, kids, family, grief--you name it. As the Wiki entry says, the music is a whole mix of spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Klezmer, and folk music, and even a little Christmas music. Aniki Noni Rose won a Tony for her portrayal of Emmie, Caroline's older daughter.

I listen to it often, and it still gives me chills and brings me to tears. It's at the Gallery Players through Feb. 21. Dave and Lily are going to visit Grandma on Long Island next weekend so they're going to see it on Friday night. I sure wish I could see it too, but I have school.

If you don't make this, but you should, get over to the Gallery Players some time soon. They do excellent productions, often with Equity actors, on a shoestring. I've never been disappointed with a production there.

The Gallery Players is the theater that gave me my first gig as an assistant stage manager in 2005, god bless them, the job that led to production stage manager with the wonderful Henry Wishcamper, who recommended me to Will Frears, which led to my getting my Equity card when I got hired (with money!) for Will's production of God Hates the Irish at the fabulous Rattlestick Theater in the West Village. But that's a different story.

You call this a snow day?!?

2010-02-10T17:55:00.003-05:00

We have been ripped off this winter, those of us in the Connecticut Valley. We moved here for a reason, at least I did--snow!--and there has been so little it's pathetic. We keep getting these storm watches and snow warnings, and then we get nothing. We get all revved up--Northampton, UMass, and even Simmons College, canceled classes today--and there's nothing. I don't blame anyone, not even the weathermen, certainly not the people closing all these places. How could they know?

We sit and watch all these places all over the eastern seaboard getting hammered, places with no snowtrucks or sand and people who don't ski or have warm gloves. The ritual of a snowday is one everyone I know looks forward to, adults and kids. All bets are off, you get to stay home all day and make cookies, or sleep, or Wii, or watch movies. You are with your family, you can bundle up and go outside and make a snowfort. If you're really lucky you have a potluck with your neighbors. If you're really, really lucky you wake up and the trees are heavy and at least a foot has fallen overnight.

And then when you do go back into civilization, there's a certain quality of the air, a very blue, cloudless sky on all that fresh snow, the freshly plowed streets, seeing your neighbors, getting into the woods or on the slopes to enjoy the stillness and the light. There's nothing like a full moon on snow. I never really understood how light can be cold until I saw that. "I'm being followed by a moon shadow"--what the heck is a moon shadow? Now I know.

And then, in late February, when everyone is sick of it, and it's sugaring season and everyone comes out of the woodwork on the weekends, to stuff themselves with overpriced pancakes and fresh syrup. Then it's the mud season of March, and early April. But we start to get buds then, and even some flowers, and the birds come back, and the clocks change and we get our light back. It's all so worth it. But I have to have a solid, snowy, cold winter to make it all worth it. Otherwise it's just cold and rainy and muddy for three winter months and who wants that.

Productive snow day

2010-02-10T16:41:00.005-05:00

So no snow today, well, it's coming down now, at last. Lily had the day off, but so did Dave, so I took off this morning and drove the 20 minutes down to Mount Holyoke College (MHC) to get my print sources done.

What "getting my print sources done" means is, we have a list of, say, 25 different dictionaries, from the OED to Merriam Websters 11 to Black's Law Dictionary to a slang dictionary. We have to find the exact volume and edition--they're all available in the Mount Holyoke College reference room, although if we can find them elsewhere that's perfectly acceptable--and review it, briefly. Look it over for a few minutes. There's an acronym, LURES, to look at encyclopedias, that I find useful:

Level of user (high school? grad student)
Updating policies (every decade? monthly online?)
Research aids (bibliographies, maps, charts, etc.)
Electronic availability (CD-ROM? website?)
Special features (a music dictionary with a CD in the back, with music clips, e.g.)

And lest I'm not being clear, we have 25 dictionaries this week, and 25 encyclopedias, mostly in print, so I have to be at the library. We had 25 sources last week, and most of them were online, actually. In the end we'll have 250+ we have to know for the final. Yes, that's a lot.

Anyway, the room at MHC is gorgeous, a Harry Potter Great Hall-style high vaulted ceiling with several huge lattice wood arches that span the arch in several places, lots of light from the high windows that line the walls. They have that old fashioned, kind of melted glass that I can't remember the name of and am too lazy to look up. The room is more modern and warm that HP, it's lined with bookshelves, carpeted, with big open spaces and tables and comfy chairs. It was pretty full today, with people working and eating and reading.

I worked with my iPod in, listening to Caroline or Change (!) for awhile, until my classmate Graham came and we doubleteamed it. We're part of a five-member study group that hasn't actually met altogether yet, but maybe we will some time. Actually what happened was, he was my Library Slave and got all the books and brought them back to our table for us to review. I did one round of picking, but then I got behind, and he'd finish first and take back the stuff we'd used and pick up a new stack for us to review. We took our notes and chatted from time to time. I still have a few more dictionaries to do, but I feel much better now.

Lily helped me put together a 3-ring binder last night, with subject dividers and name tabs. She made me labels for each section of references, things like dictionaries, encyclopedias, business, gov docs, indexes and full text, stuff like that. When we ran out of dividers and label tape Dave even took her over to Staples and got some more. It was wicked fun and I felt like, okay, maybe some of this will rub off on Lily. (Now I have one more thing to role-model--being a student!)

I've made Word files out of each list of topics, about 15, and I am annotating each item. Each of us in the class is assigned two to four every week, and I'll include their comments too, of course. But it's important for me to be able to look at them too, so I can say, oh, The Encyclopedia of Judaica will be a good place to start for that question on the origins of Passover, or try the Dictionary of Symbols for an interesting take on Jung.

Being a reference librarian appears to be something like a general interest reporter--you have a set amount of skills that you use to find information about topics ranging from tide pools to Anika Noni Rose to the origins of grokking to different types of crosses.

What this all means is, today was a good day. Even though I'm behind, I am starting to see what the task at hand is, how it all falls together, and what is being expected of me in the semi-weekly assignments and the papers and the final. In the final we will have 75 minutes to answer 50 questions about what sources would answer a particular query. It's open book, at this lovely reference library at MHC, and if I know my stuff by then, it will be total gas. I'm looking forward to it.

Britannica vs Wikipedia

2010-02-09T16:06:00.008-05:00

Among my reading for reference this week is a discussion of Wikipedia versus the Encyclopedia Britannica. I actually really appreciate both encyclopedias, but found this statement a bit astonishing, at the top of one comparison article:

Searcher readers, especially those of us who went to library school, remember the hushed reverence with which the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the last published in the U.K., was spoken. Here was a classic work of scholarship that was so definitive, so monumental, that it was still unmatched decades after its completion in 1911.

--Berinstein, Paula, Searcher, 10704795, Mar2006, Vol. 14, Issue 3
(I'm learning about the importance of citation, and how to find websites that do it for you.)

Even before I learned that the 11th edition wrote in favor of the KKK, didn't include Marie Curie even though she'd won two Nobels, and wrote in favor of eugenics (yup, I've been reading the Britannica entry in Wikipedia), I assumed it would be Eurocentric and 19th century in tone. Hard to defend those statements ever, never mind in the late 20th century.

Having said that, I vote for both, as very different animals, both extremely useful and both with limitations. As long everyone is aware of those, why not use both? This debate seems like a prime example of this information revolution we're going through right now--what is knowledge, who owns it, who defines it. The old way says only certain people with certain methods can answer those questions. The new way says that everyone should have the right to have a voice in defining it--it's mushier, but certainly more egalitarian, or at least attempts to be.

I find it fascinating that as our society becomes what I might call more financially feudal--more money in increasingly in fewer hands--we are simultaneously increasing our individual insistence on defining for ourselves what The Truth is. Turns out that everyone's is different, which makes things a tad complicated. You could write a book about this stuff!

Pictures of Chance

2010-02-07T21:02:00.003-05:00

The bottom two were taken by our friends Ruth and Jay, who housesat for us last summer. I love them. The photos, I mean. And Ruth and Jay, of course!

The Learning Curve

2010-02-06T07:52:00.003-05:00

"Learning Curve" sounds like a good name for a band. Maybe a newly formed band. At any rate, I am on one, and it is so steep it's practically vertical. I hope and assume and trust that it'll flatten out eventually, but it can't be too soon. Not only am I back in grad school, but I'm in a field I know nothing about except as a user, added to the fact that education is now so online, there's a lot to adjust to. Phew.

So I spent most of my days this week studying and thinking about studying and playing around on the computer and trying to make up systems to learn something I don't know a thing about yet. I am taking reference, the dreaded required class that I call the organic chem of library science. It's a three hour weekly class and then at least 20 hours a week of homework. I spent, oh, four hours on the reading. I spent, who knows, 10 hours on answering the reference-type questions -- a harried student from UMass runs up to your ref desk and says she needs a copy of Harry Potter book six in Spanish. So you have to dig through all the online catalogs to find it and get it for her. And yes, the questions get much more complicated than that.

All my turn-in homework is done, hat I have not done, and what's making me anxious, is reviewed the list of 25 sources we need to be familiar with--databases, reference books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, periodicals, etc., in print and online. I wrote up the required one and posted it to the Wiki for class (an adventure in itself) (thank god I've done my non-credit technology class already), but I haven't reviewed the rest of the list and I'm panicked about that. We have to know 250 of them for the final. Eek!

There's so much noise in my head I find it hard to concentrate, so I do things like blog instead of study. So this morning I meditated for 10 minutes. If I do that every day for a week I'll feel a bit better, that and get to the pool or a yoga class or even a brisk walk. Pray for me!

library ethics

2010-02-02T14:25:00.002-05:00

Librarians have a strict ethical code and they take it seriously. As a former journalist I tried to follow similar principles, and many of my colleagues did as well. But I've never heard of or been taught an industry-wide suggested code of ethics for journalists, and I suspect that field might be doing better, in certain ways, had they adopted one. The most I got in grad school was one or two non-credit lectures, a dog and pony show, really, courtesy of Fred Friendly, and believe me, he was no George Clooney.

"The search for consistency is flawed from the outset"

2010-02-02T08:43:00.005-05:00

We wanted all of his life to make sense, all of his choices to be good choices. It’s the sentiment of a child to want your parent to be consistent at all times. And one of the conclusions we came to in making this film is that the search for consistency is flawed from the outset, and that real change happens in inconsistent moments, in gray moments, and that the only way that we’re going to move forward as a nation is by not being afraid to act in those moments.

Sarah Kunstler, on the NPR show Tell Me More, 11/19/09

I love this quote more and more, every time I read it. It's from one of William Kunstler's daughters, who with her sister made a documentary about him. Her words are so helpful to me on several levels--as a parent, a citizen of this troubled country, and a human being trying to be a better person. She reminds me life, personal growth, communication, and as she says, change, is really all about shades of gray and ambiguity. It's scary to be uncertain, but what I have found is I feel safer when I trust in that small still voice and make my decisions and take whatever action, based on listening to that.

I am learning to trust in that voice more and more, and how I hear it is through prayer, meditation, listening to others--really listening, not sitting at the edge of my seat waiting to shout my story--being in the woods or on the water, floating in a canoe, helping other people, trying to see other people the way God might see them. That last is very Quaker:

Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.

George Fox

Fox was the founder of the Religious Society of Friends (ain't the internet wonderful?)--Quakers--and this is from quakerquotes.org, specifically from this link.

I love that. I attended lots of Quaker meetings when I was in my teens and twenties, and what has always stayed with me is that phrase, "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone." Sometimes it's more academic than realistic, the idea that God, or the Light, or whatever you choose to call it, is in everyone, and that my task is to see that and respond to that. But I do try to remind myself that everyone is always doing the very best that they can--ha, even me!--and that helps to keep me out of resentment and anger and fear.

Library school is cutting edge

2010-02-01T13:03:00.005-05:00

What I've realized so far is that library and information science offers some of the most diverse training I could hope to find. I can do anything with library science -- our director out here spent the summer working in Belarus, there's a big Asian connection, and some folks are in Managua now, working with their librarians. I'm not sure what you do, exactly, in other countries, but then, I'm not sure what you do in my local library either!

Library science is hugely international, developed and developing. Think information organization and transfer and plain old ownership. Who owns the information? Librarians are on the cutting edge of technology, that's for sure. I am starting to learn the tools of how to find the information I need; my need is less for the information and more how to find it.

What I like is how I can do anything with this: art, music, drama, corporate, medical, but also school, public, international, teach, research, not to mention archives and preservation--how do you archive and preserve a digital record--and I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out.

Who knew? Wild stuff. And a perfect transition for a journalist.

One last story: A guy in reference class said he decided to become a librarian when he was writing a short story that took place near the public library in New York City. He thought it would be nice to mention the trees out on the street near the library, so he filled out an information request on their website. A day later he got back what was a thick packet of information. The librarian had gone outside and noted all the trees, their size, bark, and leaves. H/she'd spoken to other librarians about the trees, and more. My classmate said, that's when I knew I wanted to be a librarian too. Love that story.

Being an older student

2010-02-01T12:44:00.005-05:00

So it's been 20 years since I was in school, and boy, have things changed! It's all computers. We didn't have email when I was last in school. We still used typewriters on occasion. People still read books and went to the library to take out the reserved readings.

Today the syllabus and specific assignments and many of the readings are all online, not to mention discussion groups and chatting with your professor between classes and lots and lots of resources. I can take notes directly on my laptop, and I intend to. The teachers mostly use Powerpoint for their lectures, and you can also take notes directly on those print-outs. I find it all utterly overwhelming, which is why I am blogging instead of at least doing some reading. I am scared to start actually trying to find my reference assignments, so I guess I'm avoiding it. Ugh. I'll get over that very soon--I'll have to!

For now, I'm just trying to keep up with the homework. I'm stressed and it's only Monday. Last week I finished my TOR, my noncredit online technology class, thank god, so I now have some basic information under my belt. I spent much of the week loading up on some software offered by Simmons, souping up my computer, learning where and how to log into all the various web pages offered by the school. Wish me luck. And I'll be delighted to talk to you--in early May.

Grad school, the first report

2010-01-29T11:31:00.018-05:00

Here's the stats:

Who: Simmons graduate school of library and information science, or GSLIS, pronounced Giss-Liss. I am taking classes at GSLIS-west, the satellite campus at Mount Holyoke College. It's been going since 2001; in addition, Simmons recently started offering two masters degree programs in children's literature and writing for children at the nearby Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. Love to take those, but first things first.

The other "who" is a really interesting, eclectic mixture of men and women, in ages from early 20s to late 50s, it looks like. People come from as far away as Albany, Brattleboro, Keene, NH and Branford, CT, and as close as Amherst and Northampton (that'd be me). Many of us have little or no previous library experience, but others have quite a lot. Everyone has really interesting experience--their work includes musician, former textile company owner, curator, teacher, journalist (yours truly, but there's at least one others). For the most part I've only met the people in my classes and the dozen or so of us who are entering this semester, and so far it's very white--I've seen two black people so far. Well, this is western Massachusetts, after all. But Simmons has a very strong emphasis on diversity, by which I mean not just increasing diversity in the school but in the rest of the world as well. They have specific initiatives along these lines, and I believe I can take courses in working with diverse communities, as well.

One professor suggested at the beginning of class that we listen as we introduce ourselves and consider who we might want to work with; they've been stressing collaboration already, which is right up my alley. Other generalizations:
--Librarians love acronyms, and you have to speak up if you don't know what OPAC or LC is. I'm not taking reference, I'm taking 407.
--Librarians like to kick back and have a couple, so says a couple of folks I met, but as a friend says, they say that about teachers too, and other professions.
--They are personable and friendly.
--And I can tell you that, based on the few I've been meeting lately, they are smart, current, curious, diligent, focused, and chatty. Love that. Feels like my peeps, like I've found my new home.

What: Note that the degree isn't just in library science, it's in library and information science, which means there's a lot of computer work. Technology is a required core class for everyone. I'm taking reference, and information organization, aka cataloging.

When: I'm taking two classes, three hours each, on Saturdays, starting Jan. 30 and ending May 8. Intense, yes. Also focused, fun, overwhelming at times.

How: Same as always--one day at a time. Once class, one assignment, one reading. Gotta stay in the present or else I'll freak out. I'm strictly limiting my outside commitments, now. I've canceled yoga in my house on Tuesday mornings. I am leaving Sundays and nights free, as much as possible, for Dave and Lily. It's going to be tough but they can able to handle it--probably better than I can!

What else: I'm very anxious about the work load. Everyone moans when I say I'm taking reference, which is a required, detailed, labor-intensive course. I'm avoiding doing it right now! The other course is information organization, which in a previous life would have been called cataloging.

Here's what I've learned so far: There's nothing like library science to make you realize how radically the world is changing. We are in the middle of a revolution as profound and significant as Gutenberg. I learned on Saturday that the title page of a book, the page with all the copyright and printing and ISBN information, hasn't really changed in 500 years. It's essentially in the same form it was when it was codified within about 50 years of the invention of the printing press. A digital card catalog essentially looks the same, has the same information.

But it certainly doesn't need to.

For instance, all the information on a catalog card is very specific, in a very specific format, and I'm sure part of its brevity is because of space constraints. A key word is not the same as a subject heading--in fact, there are five enormous red volumes, issued by Library of Congress catalogers, that denote what a subject heading is. I think I have this right. Subject headings come from a controlled vocabulary. So, for instance, if you want to find books on World War II, the most thorough and efficient answers will result in searching for World War, 1939-1945. "Senior citizen" recently changed to "older people."

Catalogs--originally called card catalogs, right, but what's a card catalog today?--have been around 100+ years or so (developed as the world got smaller and people were actually more able to share books and information) and are set up to be searched in the old, very specific way, when everything was done on paper, last name then first name, for instance. But when I go to search an online catalog--and of course they are all online now--I instinctively want to input the first name then the last, and maybe a few key words; I have learned how to search from Google. And Google has a fantastic algorithm for searching; it's fairly successful most of the time.

So what's going to happen? Are we all switching to what I am calling in my ignorance the Google search style? People are writing dissertations about this stuff and I find it way, way cool. I would love to take this class,

LIS 421 - Social Informatics "Social Informatics" refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization - including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change and the ways that the social organization of information technologies are influenced by social forces and social practices. This graduate seminar is for students interested in the influence of information technology in the human context, including cultural heritage, professional concerns, and social inequities. The course introduces some of the key concepts of social informatics and situates them into the view of varied perspectives including readers, librarians, computer professionals, authors, educators, publishers, editors, and the institutions that support them.

Not that you asked . . .

2010-01-25T17:00:00.003-05:00

. . . but this letter to the Times last Friday captures my current feelings very well.

To the Editor:

Re “Obama Weighs a Paring of Goals for a Health Bill” (front page, Jan. 21):

President Obama now indicates that he may shift positions on health care reform and throw the notion of universal coverage under the bus.

That would be another miscalculation. From the moment he chose his cabinet, Mr. Obama set a course of nonprogressive ideology, defined by corporate-friendly policies and double-edged social policies that please nobody.

He miscalculated on health care reform, ignoring polls showing that a majority of Americans favor a single-payer system and instead counting on a Democratic majority in Congress to pass a compromise. His attempt to usurp corporate opposition by letting insurance and pharmaceutical companies shape the legislation was a slap in the face to millions of voters. Nobody wants a health care bill cobbled together by Congressional sellouts and corporate lobbyists.

By failing to lead our nation in a new direction, Mr. Obama has given rise to a tidal wave of reactionary conservatism while at the same time alienating his base of progressive support. Indeed a shift is in order — toward the kind of reform that the president’s soaring rhetoric promised during his campaign.

Steve Blank
Middleton, Wis., Jan. 21, 2010

Harry Potter, you've got mail

2010-01-24T21:33:00.011-05:00

I was in the kitchen about to head out with a friend for a walk in the woods about 3:30 today, when all of a sudden I saw a great swath of wings flying by the bird feeder wired to the deck. I guess I've learned something being here: I instantly thought: hawk! Tthe wings were too big and too tan to be one of the song birds that we typically see behind our house.

In the couple of seconds it took to think this, the wings swooped out of sight below the kitchen window and then reappeared, gliding up, as the barred owl, for so it was, landed on a branch in a nearby sapling and stared down at the bird feeder, waiting for dinner to present itself.

It was huge. It was silent, and it just sat there, blinking oh so rarely in that awesome way, turning its head around like Linda Blair to check out the menu options in back. I don't see any cats around, I said to my friend, but it certainly could have grabbed Chance if she'd been out there. Take a sparrow if you like, but please, don't take the cardinals!

It sat there for about 10 minutes while we ooo-ed and aww-ed, and I snapped some photos through the glass. My friend went out the front to get her dog; I turned away for only a moment, and it was gone. As Frost says, "for once then, something."

Talking to Chance

2010-01-23T10:42:00.013-05:00

A friend told me recently that she had worked with a woman named Dawn Allen, who is something called an animal communicator. Dawn was very helpful in giving my friend insight into her diabetic cat. So naturally I decided I wanted to see what Chance had to say. I am here to report that it was really fun, really helpful, and if you are at all inclined and have the money, go for it, especially if you have a problem with your animal (I gather she communicates with all kinds).

Dawn and I talked on the phone this morning for a half an hour, mostly about Chance. I described the cat to her and told her we think she's a little bit over three years old. And I explained that I wanted to know about her overall health and happiness, and I wanted to hear how she felt about us getting another cat or dog. Dawn listened and then said she'd be quiet for a couple of minutes while she talked to your Chance, and then she would tell me what she said.

After a minute or two of silence, Dawn said, with some surprise and delight, "This is one of the most well-adjusted cats I've met lately! She says she is very happy living here, she's comfortable in any room, she is happy to be here. She likes how she's handled and she's fine with anything, within reason." Any kind of handling, she meant.

The negative news was not so bad: Chance misses the summer and the windows being open and the fresh air. She doesn't have enough to look at outside. She doesn't like the smell of our heat, which could either be the new woodstove or the forced air from the furnace. I told Dawn about the woodstove and commented that she always sits in the chair in front of it. And Dawn said, "She likes to be warm! These are minor things, not life-altering. She really likes crunchy food." I gather she doesn't care for the stuff we have now, she prefers something we used to have. I had Lily get her this cat treat called Greenies and as Chance went over and devoured them, Dawn said, "Oh, yes, she really likes those!"

Other comments: She would love to go outside, she's a very outdoorsy cat and loves anything about the outdoors. But she's not sure she would like to go on a leash; that could be enjoyable or frustrating. She attacks our legs because she doesn't have anything else to hunt, and she felt bad about almost knocking Lily down the stairs the other night, she certainly wouldn't want to do that. She likes to play with us, but when I play roughly with her, like when I put on the leather oven mitt and we wrestle, she says it's a fine line between fun and aggression. She feels bad when it goes to far, she feels like we've been in a fight. She doesn't want to fight with me. She does love to play with any of the toys, however, like the mouse on the string, for instance.

She is open-minded to the idea of another animal, either a cat or a dog, but it really depends on the animal. There was something about how she doesn't mind dogs visiting unless they're annoying but my notes aren't clear there.

Why did she dig out all the soil in those three large pots the other day? "That was really fun! Yes, the litter box was dirty and she doesn't like that." But mostly because it was fun. She drinks the plant water and nibbles the plants because she likes to. Again, she's very outdoorsy.

As for the Japanese soaking tub, which she seems fascinated by and has fallen into a couple of times, Dawn said,"Sometimes she gets carried away with exploring and experimenting. If we were to make a really shallow tub, or bowl, she'd like to play with that. But it's not like she's not longing for fun. She finds her own fun."

About her eye, which was punctured before we got her, occasionally it feels sticky, and perhaps that's when we notice that it's tearing. She can feel the eyelid stretch over the eye, which isn't normal, or comfortable. But that's the worst of it. She is surprisingly tolerant of our wiping it clean and she feels really healthy overall.

I asked Dawn to please convey to her that we are thrilled that she chose us, we really love having her as a part of the family, and if there's anything else to please let us know. Also, does she need to talk to Dawn another time? "Of course she's thrilled you feel that way," Dawn said, "she is really a family cat. She loves everybody in the family. She has no specific need to speak with me, she conveys herself and explains herself very well." That's sure the truth! And hey, I was happy with that response. It occurred to me as I asked this that the response could easily have been that Chance needs to speak with me every week for $50 for 30 minutes. Thank goodness it was not.

So since I had a couple of minutes left I asked Dawn about Felicia, the Seal Point Siamese that I got when I was 11 who became my mother's cat when I went to college. She's been dead for 20 years or more, and Dawn said she could try to communicate with her but it wasn't always successful.

I explained that my mother felt bad because she hadn't taken Felicia to the vet every year, so had missed that the poor thing had an abscessed tooth. People were much more casual about animals (and other things) in those days, and she didn't know that was something she should do. Once she figured it out she ended up putting Felicia down, because she was also dehydrated, and it wasn't clear she would survive the hydration process, never mind the subsequent tooth removal. My mom still feels bad about that, and wishes she'd just paid the money. I think she still misses Felicia, who was a really important part of her life. And perhaps this is coming up because we have Chance--everyone who comes here says, what a great cat! that's a great cat!--and also she and Don are thinking about getting a cat themselves.

So Dawn was quiet a few minutes, and then she said, "It's so quiet, so sleepy, I wasn't quite sure I was talking to anyone! But what I'm getting is that Felicia says the past is the past; she is at peace; she is fine. I thought from the way you described it that the home was neglectful, but she says it was a very good home, that she was appreciated and loved. Her health experience was internal, not external, and she doesn't see humans as responsible for that.

She felt she was well-cared for and appreciated. She kept your mother company, that was her job--and she was really good at it! It didn't occur to her that your mother didn't do enough."

She certainly was good at it. Dawn and I discussed how veterinary dentistry is a whole new field, and isn't dentistry in general taken much more seriously, in the last 20 years? I don't remember being told to floss until I was in my 30s, but Lily is told to floss every day and we insist on it. I felt much relieved to know that Felicia bears us no ill will, and that she felt loved and appreciated, because she certainly was. And of course I am delighted that Chance is so happy here, because we adore her.

Is it hokey? Is it nonsense? Who knows? I remember hearing a friend tell a story about how once, when he was having a really hard time in his life, he dreamed that he was drowning and someone tried to reach out to save him. And when he told a friend about it the next day, she said, that's odd, I had a dream last night that someone was drowning and I tried to help him. My friend concluded that there is more going on than we realize. And that has been my experience too.

I was reassured and comforted by my conversation with Dawn today, and that's all that matters. Draw your own conclusions. By the way, she offers workshops. You can go to her website and see if she's coming to your town. You can develop your own ability to talk to your animals.

First Night Northampton

2010-01-18T16:26:00.006-05:00

Just a quick note to say that one benefit of being unemployed is that I didn't have to work on New Year's Eve. I got to spend it with my family, instead, going around to First Night events. I like to brag that I went with friends from high school to the first First Night, in Boston, in 1976, and it was indeed a gas, although it was so cold we left around 10:30 to go home and party.

(I also went to the first 4th of July on the Esplanade, with the Boston Pops playing the 1812 Overture, complete with cannon booming and fireworks over the Charles River. It was my mother's idea. We got there with a blanket and some food around 4:30 that afternoon and sat in the Oval between the stage and the river, so we would have a good view of the fireworks. These days people line up hours in advance, and it would be days in advance if the city let them. By the time I went back two years later, the Bicentennial and it was wall-to-wall people.)

At any rate, First Night Northampton 2010 was mild, gray, and full of kids and activities and music and art. Wicked good fun. We heard Lily's flute teacher, Sarah Swersey, and her musical partner, Joe Belmont, play wonderful guitar and flute. We saw the Paintbox Theater, kids theater, perform their version of Mother Goose, complete with slides of several drawings (Jack and Jill, a strong mouse, and others) by Lily herself up on a huge screen.

The best of all, though, was the Yoyo team from A2Z, which bills itself as a science and learning store. It's a great, great store, and the best part is they teach kids how to yoyo really, really well.
The show included a pretend competition with very funny mom judges--"I loved number two's green sneakers!" "He has a wonderful haircut!" A teenager actually threw a stringless yoyo from a string it was riding on all the way from the back of the 490-seat theater down to the stage, where it was caught by another teenager on his string. This was a big deal and got a rousing round of applause, even without the prompt of the scantily clad woman who out every now and then with a big applause sign.

My favorite, though was when current national champion, Eric Koloski, acted out a movie ad, creeping around the stage dressed in all black with a ski hat over his head. The voiceover, complete with action movie music, announced that it was 2029, Massachusetts had been taken over by robotic aliens, and the only one who could save them was Eric, with his yoyos. The movie's title: "Robo Yoyo in Noho." And the sequel, "Robo Yoyo in Noho part II: Doublefisted" (he's famous for working two yoyos at once). Hilarious.

I saw lots of things in Brooklyn, but I never saw a yoyo team with a national champ being silly and funny, and an applause lady getting lots of laughs, and while there was tons of community there, it was usually centered around a school or a workplace or a church, not the entire town. I didn't really have the sense of the whole community coming together that way to celebrate their town, which is what it felt like.

the snow and cold, such as it is

2010-01-18T09:05:00.013-05:00

I have some friends who would love love love to live here. They'd love the mountains, the rivers, the politics, the music, the food, the people -- all the things I love about it. I say to them, you should move to the Pioneer Valley! And to a person they say, nope, couldn't do the winters. Too cold! The obvious rejoiner, of course, is that with global warming it's not nearly as cold as they think.

(Our local paper is the oldest continuously publishing paper in the country and recently, among the snippets it runs from 20-50-200 years ago, there was an item from 100 years ago that talked about harvesting 14 inches of ice from the Connecticut River and storing it for the local school to use during the year. I don't think I've ever seen the Connecticut frozen over, or any river, really. It just doesn't get or stay that cold any more.)

But this has happened often enough with enough different people for me to realize that some of us just love winter and cold and snow. Maybe you had to grow up with it, but it's sure in my bones, and the cold and the changing seasons are a primary reason I wanted to move here. Personally I'm more of an observer of snow than a participant: I tend to look out at it from my Japanese soaking tub, steam rising around me, or through the doors to the deck next to the blazing woodstove. But I do like to snowshoe and ski, and I've written a lot here about how I have measured out by my life in produce--maple syrup in February, asparagus in May, strawberries in June, tomatoes and corn in August into the fall, pumpkins and root vegetables and apples in October. Like that. Like that.

And in the winter? Snow! Skiing, snowshoeing, skating, sledding, wood fires, hot soups and stews. And eating the frozen vegetables and soups and applesauce and tomato sauce I spent several weekends making. I hear people say it's too much work, all this cold and snow. I appreciate central heating and while I love my wood stove I have no need to split all the wood I need to heat my home. But getting two or three cords in the late summer and stacking it over a few weeks doesn't feel like work. I enjoy carrying in three tons of pellets, one 40-pound bag at a time. I like coming home these days and bringing in an armload of wood, or spending an hour one morning carrying wood to the porch and then filling up the pile next to the stove in the living room. I guess this is how a gardener feels about digging and planting and weeding. It ain't work. It's fun.

So it stinks now that it's warming up. The maple syrup industry is getting hammered from the poor weather and Asian long-horned beetles. The tomato blight took out much of the Valley's crop this summer. The Valley is famous for their tobacco but those farmers lost 80, 90, 100 percent of their crop this summer.

And we woke up this morning to a couple of inches of wet snow. Every time I get a snow emergency email from our fair city, I get excited -- snow! But this winter has been so disappointing. Either there was no snow at all, or there was just a couple of inches. This nonsense we have on the ground and in the branches this morning was pretty for a couple of hours. It was enough that the city plowed and Dave had to shovel the end of the driveway -- gotta time your driveway-clearing, so you don't shovel where the plow dumps it over and over. But it's wet and heavy and now the temperature is over 35 and it's starting to melt. We're not supposed to have mud season in January.

Everyone here in my corner of the world is really disappointed that this winter has been such a let-down. Florida, you got our cold weather this month and we want it back!

small towns and libraries

2010-01-16T10:14:00.010-05:00

My excuses for not blogging: three days of hosting Christmas and a week of recovery afterward, so I got out of the habit. Getting sick -- stomach thing for two weeks and a cold in the middle. Lazy. Facebook. Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. The challenge of FaceBook is to be as concise and pithy as I can in my status, unlike bloviating all over my blog. And no one gets into a dialogue on my blog, whereas the right status update can generate quite a discussion.

Enough excuses. Now's the time to write. I've had my tea, Lily is upstairs playing with a new sleep-over friend, Dave is at the Hill Institute registering for beginning carpentry (for him) and beginning sewing (Lily). The Hill Institute, which offers kindergarten as well as adult and youth classes, is amazing: cheap, great instruction, really nice teachers. People line up two or three hours beforehand to register for their classes. He and Lily will really like those classes. Dave's also going to go to CitizenSchool, hosted by the mayor's office. That'll be 10 weeks of learning about city government, taxes, budgets, all kinds of things. So he has a really interesting spring coming up.

When he signs up for things like carpentry and CitizenSchool, when I can drive over to the vocational high school for my H1N1 vaccination and be done in 10 minutes, no wait, I reflect on what he said this week: We live in a small town. Actually he said we live in a train set town. We have a grocer, a fruit stand, a bakery, and also a jail, a courthouse, a school, and hey, we even have a train! With any luck we'll have Amtrak coming through here in the next few years. Cross your fingers. It's just like those Lionel villages. Kind of hilarious.

The Bermuda Triangle of the end of year holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, is now over. The weather is kinda yucky (see next post), and I have my own interesting spring coming up. I start grad school in two weeks. In case I hadn't mentioned it, I am about to start at Simmons College for library science. Simmons, which is based in Boston, has a satellite campus here on the Mount Holyoke campus, and I am starting with "cataloging" and "reference" (dum dee-dum-dum) (everyone sighs at reference and talks about how intense it is and how much work). That's all day Saturday, two three-hour classes, from the 30th until early May.

For a couple of months now I've been frequently asked if I am getting excited, which just kind of make me laugh. Not! Jeesh, it was months away! I had to get through the holidays first, and the rest of life!

But now it's starting to get real, and yes, I am really getting psyched. That's partly because in an effort to get up to speed I've been volunteering at the Hadley library, the Goodwin, a really nice, small-town library, for a few weeks now, and I also just started last week at the Forbes, the main branch in Northampton. Between the two I can start to see what my life might be like as a public librarian. Hadley is a small town, which the library struggles to serve on limited funds. It's a lovely building, and has fantastic services, given its size and budget.

The Forbes is a big library in a small town, with a gorgeous, large building, extensive city and area archives, as well as the usual services, which include DVDs and CDs these days, but also Kindles and ukeleles! Three each to loan. How cool is that! The Forbes is cataloged using the Cutter system, the precursor to the Library of Congress. Only four libraries in the country use this system, which was invented by the Forbes' first librarian, Charles Cutter. TMI, I'm sure, but it's kind of fascinating to me and will be useful to know when I start classes.

Much as I love libraries, I really have little idea what a librarian does, but I'm learning. And I've been helped and inspired over the years by so many different ones, at so many different libraries, that I am delighted to be joining their ranks. I don't think I've ever met a librarian I don't like. They all seem to be friendly and engaging and smart, smart, smart. If I can generalize at this early date, they love books, information, and their work. They love bringing people together with what they need to know, or don't even know that they need to know, maybe.

I really can't say much yet, it's too soon. When people ask what kind of librarian I want to be I say, employed. But I went to Simmons wanting to be a public librarian, and to be able to volunteer at the Forbes and the Goodwin is to catch a glimpse of what might be my future. I'm ready. Bring it on.

Christmas Eve Eve

2009-12-23T17:38:00.013-05:00

Okay. The house is clean, clean, clean. Straightened, dusted, vacuumed, mopped. Bathrooms clean. Our sheets clean (as of Sunday). All guest beds made, except the blow-up mattress. Might need more blankets, although the pellet stoves can really heat a room up. The fridge is stocked, and the extra seltzer, cider, extra vegetables, etc., sit in the garage, along with the defrosting turkey.

We put the tree up on Saturday, thanks to Lily, who unwrapped every ornament and hung almost all of them. Stockings are hung. The presents are all wrapped and under the tree, including the Yankee Swaps I picked up. Laundry is washed, piles of it. We have enough chairs, although I don't think we have enough table space. Eating the big meals will be interesting.

Last night, in the bitter cold, Dave and Lily hung some icicle lights in front of our house, bless him. Not his idea of a good time, but ever since we moved here, and maybe even before, Lily has been begging for decorations. No matter the holiday she wants 'em, although Halloween and Christmas are the two biggies. Our neighbors do lovely lights this time of year. I can't be bothered--last year we didn't even have a tree--but I know it's important to Lily.

So last week she and I picked up two 10-foot strings (we're talking very modest lights) at the local Goodwill for $2.5o each and Dave got some electric cords and hooks. It actually looks kinda nice. Oh, and they were on all night because we didn't remember to turn them off until 10pm last night, when we were in bed and going to sleep. No, we didn't get up to turn them off. So this morning he set it on a timer so it goes on at 4pm and goes off at 11pm.

About the tree. I asked my extraordinary gardening neighbors where to get a tree, and they sent me to Northeast Trees in North Hatfield. We could have a pre-cut one or cut one ourselves, or they would cut it for us. They like the Fraser firs they get every year. So we walked out onto this snowy field with lots of stumps around, found our fir, and called over the guy on his tracker, who pulled out his chainsaw. Apparently we are still city folk, because none of us was interested into borrowing their saw and hacking away at it--and carrying it in too. Not even Sasha Ingalls Wilder here.

We waited for our tree back at the gate, inside a greenhouse with a woodstove that kept the heat at least above freezing. I bought a homemade bouquet thing of boughs and bows and pinecones. When the tree arrived, it was shaken vigorously in this funny machine to get off the loose needles, bundled in string ($2 extra), and handed off to us. We bungied it to the roof and drove home, carefully. Worked pretty well. And I know it's fresh, right? Now we just have to remember to water it.

And now we wait. Right now the three of us are in Dave's office, our backs to each other, on our computers. Frank Sinatra is on the iPod: For once in my life, I have someone who needs me. We'll have some dinner, maybe watch one of the movies I borrowed at the library for the week, go to bed early.

Tomorrow morning we'll load up the woodstove and sip tea and hot chocolate while we open our presents as a family, the three of us. We'll eat something yummy for breakfast, and later, get whatever groceries I forgot to buy today. I'll make some corn bread to go with my niece's turkey chili, and wash lettuce for the salad, and fret about where everyone is going to sit. I might go for a swim at the Y, or at least a walk. Dave might make pie.

Lily will undoubtedly play with her presents, especially the new Wii games she's getting. I will try on my the New York sweatshirt I bought myself at Union Square the weekend before Thanksgiving and wrapped on Sunday. Dave will hang his bird-call clock, after rolling his eyes at me for getting it, but I will remind him that everyone who lives here has to have one and it's probably the law. My sister and kids and dog, and my mother and father, and stepmother and stepfather, will arrive in the afternoon, and at dinner we'll toast another year gone by.

I suspect I have crossed the line where I have now lived more years than I have remaining, but I intend to enjoy the passing of time, watching the snow fall, bringing in wood for the fire, feeling the bitter cold in my bones and then soaking in the Japanese tub to revive them. With a luck I'll get to watch the days grow longer, knowing this too shall pass.

Red cars

2009-12-18T14:33:00.003-05:00

Lily and I have a new running joke: red cars. I seem to be beset by them, in a bad way. Two days ago, I was tailgated by one when I was going 35 miles an hour on route 9 in Northampton, a 35 mile-an-hour zone. As I came up to the lights by the hospital the car honked wildly and then moved over into the lane next to me, although several cars behind me. As we pulled out at the green the cars in front of her zoomed ahead and she was directly behind me again. Ugh. I made a quick decision: I put my blinker on and moved over to the curb. She zoomed past and was promptly stuck behind another car going the speed limit. I lost her in downtown Florence traffic; I hope she arrived safely, wherever she was going.

#2. The next day I was going north on I-91 and a red car — I don’t know my cars and I don’t want to learn them, but it looked like the same kind and the same woman and it was certainly the same color -- pulled right up behind me in the left-hand lane. I have learned that I don’t need to hang out in that lane, that I should always move over. When I get into these situations I remind myself that driving is never about my ego, that it’s always about safety, mine and everyone else’s. So I moved into the right and the driver zoomed past.

#3. Coming up North King Street toward my neighborhood, just past the Damon Road intersection, the road goes from two lanes to one as it goes under I-91 and the left-hand lane turns into a turning lane for the Big Y shopping mall. It’s a dicey spot, because some cars in the right take the entrance to go north on the highway. So as you come through, you’re wondering if the car in the right is going to speed up for the highway or to try to race past you for some reason. And it’s not clear who has the right of way, the car in the left or the car in the right. If I’m ahead, I think I do, and if I’m behind I slow down, or even if I’m even. This time I could see the yes, red car in my rear-view mirror in the right lane trying to pull ahead of me. I stepped on the gas and pulled ahead. It just seemed safer than slowing way, way down to let them pass, but it’s always a judgment call.

#4. Yesterday, as Lily and I drove downtown to go Christmas shopping, we came to the Dunkin’ Donuts on King Street, where the road turns from two lanes to a left-hand turn-only lane. The car on the right speeds by while the car in the turn lane hangs out until it’s clear. A car — do you need to ask what color it was? — in the turn lane by mistake or on purpose was trying to go straight and was stuck in between the car turning left and me, driving legally on the right. I gave a short honk on my way by so the stuck car didn’t try to pull out in front of me. They gave a furious honk back but I was already ahead of them.

And more. Yes, more. But I’ll spare you. So I explained all this to Lily, sitting next to me, and now it’s a gag between us. Every time some car did something dumb last night, I’d say, look, it’s a red car! She picked up on it quickly so that when we went to A2Z, the fantastic science and toy store, she was the one who noticed that the badly parked van we pulled in next to in the lot was red. Duh.

So now this morning I said, don’t go all red car on me, just get your boots on! This morning I actually drove her to school because it was THREE DEGREES outside, or something like that. Definitely longies weather, longies and Smartwool socks and boots, not sneakers or light shoes. And the knee-length down coat, not the ski jacket. Baby, it’s cold outside! Put another log on the woodstove insert and sit close.

"Splendidly happy"

2009-12-18T10:33:00.007-05:00

We were in Brooklyn this weekend for the first time since April and a close friend commented later that I seem splendidly happy. I so love that. We had met at a time when I was still bitterly saying, "I won't move to Northampton, no matter what!" and she watched go through the changes that brought me to the acceptance that actually, moving here was my heart's desire for both me and my family. Now that we're three years into it, I think it was the best thing ever for our family.

An old therapist used to talk about ambiguity and how important it was to see the grays. To whit: It was wonderful to be back in Brooklyn, and I am so glad I don't live there any more. I loved seeing my friends -- Eve from grad school and family hosted us, and we also saw Laurie and family from grad school, and Emily, and Ismene, our friend and the mom of a friend of Lily's, and Nadine, ditto, and Mike and Steph, Lily's godparents, and I also saw Kim and Shante. Phew!

But it didn't feel rushed and jammed this time, although I was a bit hoarse by Saturday night. Had a great steak at a bar called Alchemy on 5th Avenue, Latino rice and beans and chicken from Los Pollitos II and La Tacqueria (I just clicked on this link and there was a photo of my friend Sylvia, beaming at the camera!), an omelet and a bowl of tea at Le Gamin, and a lovely walk in Prospect Park on Saturday morning. I do love that park!

(Sometimes you just want to go where everyone knows your name, right? and walking the Slope streets felt so familiar and friendly. But here's the thing: I feel that way in Northampton now. I have friends, I am known and even cared for, I laugh here, I bump into people I know in the street, I feel seen. I am a Northamptonite. I like the cold, even though it's really cold. I like the snow, which stays a bit cleaner and fresher with fewer people and less pollution.

I love coming home to a warm house when there's a cold, driving rain. I like seeing the gray-white smoke curl out of our chimney as I back out of the driveway. I love eating winter soups and stews. I so enjoy a hot soak in the tub before climbing into my flannel sheets under the down comforter with two pillows. I love waking up to the trees heavy with snow.

The cat often comes sleep with me around one a.m. , but only on my left side as Dave doesn't like having a cat in the bed. Last night I was turned the wrong way and she gave a little mew and I sleepily rolled over and held up the covers so she could crawl under. I rubbed her cold ears and patted her as she purred me back to sleep. I woke up again a bit later and just having her there helps me fall back asleep.

It reminds me of when Lily was little and she would do the same thing. Only she was so small she had to get a lift up the side of the bed, or else she'd climb up the iron bars at the foot. Now that she's about 5-2 and close to 100 pounds there really isn't enough room in our bed for three, and she hasn't come in with us in a long time. I miss that. I wish we had room for a king-sized bed.)

But I digress. What specifically made me realize I am glad we moved was sitting in Gorilla Coffee on Saturday afternoon chatting for a couple of hours. The line to get served curled around and almost out the door. I remember walking by the night before they opened a few years ago and watching the folks inside meticulously putting little letters on a huge menu; the drink options were numerous. Now there are about six items and the letters are much bigger. The logos have all been redesigned and there are tee-shirts and mugs and there probably always were, but it just looks so much more hip. Everyone at the tables seemed about 12 years old, and hip beyond words, and the music was so loud I spent the visit asking my friend to repeat herself.

I so wish Gorilla success and best wishes. Darlene, the owner, was very helpful when I was thinking about starting a toffee business (called Three Sisters Toffee, with "pace yourself" as the tagline). I love her red scooter, and I love Gorilla. But if its changes are indicative of what life is like on 5th Ave. in the Slope, I am clearly way too square.

I've said it before: I miss my friends. I miss diversity, diversity of thought, gender, economics, food, culture, music, as well as race and ethnicity. I miss certain food -- bagels, NY pizza, fresh mozzarella. I don't miss the mayor and the way he's allowed developers to run rampant. I don't miss the DOE, or the corrupt and nasty MTA management. I don't miss the crowds and the buses and the crazy drivers and the speed and the dirt and the noise. It's the pace I don't miss, and the competitiveness, although I did try to stay out of that one as much as I could.

One final note: I was sad to see that Yogasana, the studio on the corner of our block, was gone, but happy to see they've just relocated. Made us wonder if Lazlo finally sold the building, as there's now a hair salon in that space -- just what 5th Ave. needs (not!), which he would have loathed.

Ah, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, let me in! But only for a visit.

First snowstorm

2009-12-09T13:36:00.004-05:00

We got a call at 6:00 a.m. from the town telling us that school was canceled for the day. It didn't look bad and I had to go out a little while later for something, before everyone was up, but I drove to the end of my street and came back. It was nasty and not stopping.

So I brought in firewood and turned up the pellet stove in the family room so Lily could play Wii when she got up. I am learning how to use a woodstove, to wit: The ashes weren't glowing and a half a log from the fire last night still sat there, so I figured it was cold. I did my usual, crumpled up newspaper and threw some twigs and small bits of wood on the ashes. The problem with not enough kindling is that the split logs don't catch unless the smaller stuff heats up and burns long enough for them to catch; I have made plenty of fires that flamed great until the paper and the twigs burned out and I was left with coldness. So with this in mind, I went out to the porch to get more kindling and when I came back the thing was in flames. I guess I had enough kindling to begin with, and those coals were just hot enough. I threw on some bigger pieces, and we had a fire going. Nice.

I meditated in the family room next to the pellet stove--it's very hard to find a quiet place in the morning here--and then everyone got up and hung around in their jammies for awhile. I shoveled a small path to the driveway and got the newspaper. Dave made an omelet and I had oat groats mixed with steel cut oats. Dave's office was actually open but he'd brought his computer so he could work from home, which he has done most of the day. Lily Wiied and I think finally had pasta for breakfast.

We'd heard the snow would turn to freezing rain, so around, oh, 10 a.m., when we saw the thermometer go from 30 to 34, Dave and I went out to shovel. He used the snowblower to clear the driveway while I shoved the front walk and the two decks. I was there in my sweatshirt and no gloves, for some reason, but it I quickly got warm and the lack of clothing was not a problem. It did help that I was wearing the fabulous hat my mother knitted for me, the I get complimented on every time I wear it. It wasn't a huge downfall, maybe four or five inches, but it was wet and sticky and very heavy.

After an hour or more of that, we came in and did what? Where does the time go? Does it all go to FaceBook? I'm not sure. At any rate, I sat too long in my wet clothes and got cold, so I drew a bath in the Japanese tub and had a blistering hot soak. Lovely! Dave took one too, but when Lily came home from her playdate around the corner, she declined.

And now I blog. I was in front of the fire and on the sofa reading yesterday's Times. Now Lily has a flute lesson and tomorrow the world grinds up again, a bit whiter, a bit wetter, a bit colder, that much closer to spring. Ugh! Who wants spring! I must have winter first! The nights are still getting longer and the air colder and the birds are back on the feeder outside our window and Chance is going nuts trying to get them. The first snowstorm -- and snow day -- of the year and all is right with the world.

House chores

2009-12-04T08:02:00.003-05:00

I've never owned a house before. Except for the first four years of my life, and the first six months of 1980 living on winter and spring crew at Farm and Wilderness, I have not lived in a single house. Most of my childhood was spent in a two-family, and every now and then I'd be reminded it was two-family, like when I was about 16 and sleeping in my third-floor room when three or four people came in, around midnight. They were visiting someone in the other half and came in by mistake.

I've lived in apartment buildings small, seven or eight to an entryway, and smaller, two or three. And while it's not exactly group living, sharing a building like that always means some compromise, some give and take in daily living, as simple turning down the music. When we lived in our condo on Warren Street our Chinese neighbors the floor above liked to make fried fish and the moment we smelled it we'd yell, "Incoming!" and race to the stove fan to get the odor going the other direction. Very nice family, just didn't like the fish smell.

We've lived in this house for two and a half years and so far we've had this work done: carpets, paint, windows, garage door fixed, second hot water heater, energy audit (and they are air sealing it now), tile repaired in the main floor bathroom, deck repaired and painted, various electrical work, new sliding glass doors, replaced rot on outside of my studio, storage room off the garage cleaned of mold and ventilated, new coat closet, laundry room and sinks installed, and lots of trees taken down and stumps ground up. I'm probably forgetting stuff. But it really adds up and the house is worth much less than what we paid for, given the lousy economy.

And I want to pay a touch more and put in a closet upstairs and build a wall around our bedroom, so we can finally have some privacy. I also want to replace the front door, and all the hollow-core doors that give us even less privacy in this crazy house. We need new carpet in the basement, and I want to install a ductless heater in my studio so I can use that space year-round (last spring and early summer was so cold and rainy I didn't really use it until July).

And next we need to turn our attention to the yard next, and that's a bigger thing. My sister Bondi suggested we put down some paths in the form of a certain stone she likes, and that will help make it manageable: We can dig up and work on a section at a time, as delineated by the path. So now saving money for stones. First we need topsoil to fill in the deep holes made by the stump grinder.

This is all in addition to the fix-it stuff that we--mostly Dave--have done around the house, like building the pantry, or making the linen closet. And of course the seasonal chores like raking leaves, shoveling snow, stacking firewood, and moving pellets to their storage room, and the daily stuff like vacuuming and laundry and taking out the compost and cleaning the kitty litter. A house demands a lot, and I can see the appeal of an apartment--smaller space, contained, don't have to pay for the hot water replacement, say.

Still, I love it. I like the tasks. I don't see them as distracting or a nuisance, I see them a routine, or even, a ritual. Stacking firewood is a way to stay in touch with the seasons. I don't even mind the cleaning, and I really enjoy laundry. I can't quite get my brain around the gardening yet, which feels foreign to me. I don't understand about light and soil and plants yet, I don't truly appreciate going in and changing them to fit my needs, and the idea of working on such an enormous palate--yes I think my front yard is enormous; I could never be a farmer!--feels overwhelming.

But that will come. So many of my hopes and dreams for myself and my family about this relocation have come true, and I trust that more will follow. It's been such a short time. I've never lived any place more than 14 years, and I want very much to stay here for many years, maybe even until we're as old as the Unnos, the previous owners, who were in their eighties, I think. Still, be careful what you wish for, right? It's working for me now.

The Gift of the Magi

2009-12-02T20:57:00.002-05:00

We're going to read this aloud at home in the next night or three, and I post it here as a public service, if you are so inclined. (Then maybe we'll try After Twenty Years, and A Christmas Carol, and . . . )

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI
by O. Henry

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice--what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

Courtesy of Project Gutenberg

Lunacy

2009-12-02T20:34:00.004-05:00

Did anyone around here see the moon this morning? Incredible! It was very clear this morning around 6:00 a.m. when I got up, and when I raised the bedroom shade and looked out the window I saw what at first glance looked like a very bright headlight coming at me through the trees. It wasn't a headlight or spotlight, it was the moon, hovering above the horizon, shining with such brightness it was lighting up the room.

Less than an hour later I was driving toward Lily's school and the moon was there in front of me for more than a mile until I finally turned west, hanging in the north sky right above the horizon. It was so huge and round and white and surreal. It reminded me of my single most favorite scene in Star Wars, the very first one. More than anything in that movie, the thing that took my breath away in, what, 1977? was an early scene in the movie, at the Skywalker farm at dusk, and you see Luke with two moons behind him in the sky. I laughed out loud. That's what made it otherwordly for me, in the true sense of the word. That's what made it seem extraterrestrial.

The light of our moon is incredible. Much colder, bluer than the sun, and more concentrated, of course. But that beam that does come through can light up a room. It's strong and a bit creepy and it blows my mind. I never noticed the moon in New York. I seem to say that a lot, but I really couldn't see much nature in the city, what with all the tall buildings, and what I did see didn't register.

We get a blue moon this month: December has two full moons, one this morning at 2:00 a.m. and one on New Year's Eve at 2:00 p.m. Cool! Great song too!

The Pioneer Valley at 1500 feet

2009-11-30T16:55:00.017-05:00

The Quabbin Resevoir, or part of it. It's massive.

This is Fitzgerald Lake, about a mile through conservation land from our home, which is right under the plane.

The flight crew -- David Cohen -- with the three of us, and his wonderful little plane, after the journey.

So Lily had a birthday in November and our wonderful neighbors gave her -- and me and Dave -- a ride in their plane. Well, just David, as there are just four seats. We planned on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and hoped the weather would cooperate. Indeed! It was clear, sunny, and the 25-mile-an-hour winds of the day before had totally died down. We were on!

David picked us up at 8:30 yesterday morning and we drove a couple of miles to the tiny Northampton airport. One of the things I loved right away was how by the book and safety conscious he is about flying. Being 2,000 feet give or take 500 above the surface of the earth is unsettling at best, at least for me.

I have to back up. David and Doris had dropped off an official-looking manila envelope a few weeks ago, complete with an award letter -- good for whoever is celebrating their 11th birthday on Marian Street! -- bar codes and a boarding pass. I casually handed it over to Lily when I picked it up that day, saying, this came for you, and she opened it and her eyes got really big. She said, with wonderment, Mama, I think I won something!

She was thrilled. She said, if David is flying do you think I can go into the cockpit? And when we drove up the the airport yesterday she said, I hope we get on the plane from the outside! It took Dave and David a second to realize what she meant, and then someone said, oh, you mean instead of the ramp? yes, we get on from the outside.

We pulled up in front of a long building with doors on it that looked like a metal warehouse. David parked and said, we're leaving from Gate 27B. And we found Door 27 and went inside. And there was a plane! A cute little yellow and white Bonanza, apparently the Lexus of its time. He flipped a switch and the entire door opened like a gigantic garage, and there we were, ready to head out.

Well, not quite. First he had an extensive check-list of things to go over, headsets to install, cushions to position. He checked the flaps and the gas in both wings and who knows what else, although he told us all about it as he made his way. He's recently retired as a professor and you can see he must have been a great one. Man loves his plane.

Eventually he hooked up a gizmo that pulled the plane out of the garage and we all got in. We spent some time adjusting seats and seatbelts and getting comfy. Then he taxied to the edge of the single runway and again, checked out all kinds of things.

Then it was time. He let us know in a kind way that we couldn't talk until we were at cruising speed, about 1500 feet. Then, we were off!

And it was so simple and free and also unbelievable. Dave and I were in the back seat and we kept looking at each other and miming elation, and "oh my god!" and "Wahoo!" Then we could talk, and we tried to enthuse and emote so he knew we were thrilled.

We flew from 1500 to 2500 feet, first over Northampton and our house, then across to UMass and the Quabbin, then south over Westover AFB and Springfield. We made our back up west of the Holyoke Range, and I could really see so much more of that curvaceous spine of mountains. Back over Northampton and we were landing and home, overjoyed, a bit nauseous the three of us, and speaking for myself, eager to go again. I think Dave should get his pilot's license, although David said, why not you? Not sure I'm up for it, but I sure am up for being a pilot's wife.

Small town Northampton hit us again when we saw our neighbor Alan as we filled up the gas tanks. That will never cease to amaze us, I think. We were home by 10:30, and somehow starving and thirsty. What a trip!

And how can I describe it? David said a couple of times, we live in a three-dimensional world, and at first I didn't get it -- don't I know that already? -- and then I did in a way I can't explain. I can only imagine what the astronauts feel, but being just 2500 feet above the earth gave me a perspective, a sense of the vastness of our Valley that hadn't registered before. We were so much higher than the mountains! A thousand feet-plus higher than Skinner and Tom. We could see forever, and there was something in me that wanted to go even further.

And yet, it was enough. I didn't have to see more--I didn't want to. Maybe because my stomach was churning and I was a bit anxious, despite how safe David had made me feel. Maybe because I felt too small, too insignificant, in a disturbing way. It certainly was disorienting and it felt great to be back on solid land.

I am now in love with the river, as well as the mountains. I thought, now I need to find someone with a boat to take us on the Connecticut River! I've seen maps and videos but still had no idea how much the river twists and turns, how much it bends. If I remember high school geology correctly that means it's a very old river. It has many islands and lots of peninsulas, including vast fields in Hadley that stick way out into the water. I had no idea.

Overall it was wonderful and a bit overwhelming and really an incredible experience. We're really lucky over here on Marian Street!

The mountains versus the ocean

2009-11-27T12:25:00.006-05:00

Just gonna need to this: Facebook is killing my blogging but I am again resolved not to let that happen.

I'm really noticing the changing of the seasons here, in a distinct, sharp way that I didn't notice in Brooklyn. All fall the song "When Fall Comes to New England," by Cheryl Wheeler, kept coming into my brain. I felt it getting colder, grayer, the leaves turning, my gratitude rising -- I'm so happy for the trees, but not just any trees, the glorious red of maples, and the deep yellow of what, beech? The Japanese maple outside our front door was incredible in its vibrant, almost glowing red. The air, the colors, the texture, the sky, the clouds, it all makes me feel more connected, more alive, more grounded.

Now fall is ending and we are moving into winter. The CSA is done, the leaves have all fallen, and been raked. (I really noticed them lining the sides of our street this year, ankle deep, for several weeks. We kept raking them but the leaves kept falling. We wondered when our neighbors were going to rake them up. Finally about 10 days ago the leaf blowers were out in force in the yards and street in front of their houses. Within two days they were all gone, forcing me to get out there too and finishing the last of ours. Aha, I thought, raking leaves isn't like snow, you don't have to get out there and start raking the minute it stops. The leaves will stop falling eventually, and that's when you rake. On the other hand, there's so many leaves it's very hard to do by hand if you are doing it all at once.)

Now my world looks much more like winter, with naked trees and everything brown and fading. The temperatures are in the forties and fifties, though, which makes me feel slightly uncomfortable: Shouldn't it be colder by now? Will this be another warm winter? Winter without the mercury dropping to at least the teens and twenties for much of the time doesn't seem like winter. I mean, the snow, being able to snowshoe and ski and just enjoy it is what makes the winter bearable. Still, I have removed all the screens from the windows, in anticipation of colder weather (keeps the house warmer) and brought out the bird feeder and hung it outside our bedroom window, well out of reach, I trust, from any errant bears.

It's funny, I don't see raking leaves or stacking wood or even shoveling snow as chores any more. It's not like vacuuming -- or worse, dusting -- relentless and dull. It's more like, I like to live here because I get to rake and stack and shovel. Granted, Dave does a lot more of all that then I do. Still, I wouldn't give those rituals up for anything -- and I do all the vacuuming, so maybe we're even.

I am continually struck by how much I notice nature here. I've said this before, but it still hits me that I moved here with some vague idea of being closer to "nature" and how the idea of that has changed and deepened and strengthened. A book I know says that every human has the notion of finding God within herself, an urge to find God, whatever that word means to her. I suspect I can add "nature" to that; I have a hunch that we all crave connection with the earth, trees, sky, water. It's taken me some time, and I've had to learn how to do that, how to get close to nature, whatever that is. But I can feel it happening.

Along those lines, a friend said recently, "I think people are drawn to either the ocean or the mountains. I love the mountains," she said, "but I can't live without the ocean." I knew what she meant and as she spoke, realized I am a mountain person. I love love love the ocean, especially the sounds of the waves and the rich odors of the salty air and sea life. But it's too big for me, too open, too massive. I find the ocean unapproachable, in some sense; I can't immerse myself in it, I can only dip my toe into it, walk along its edges, enjoy it from a distance or with the help of others, like last summer when Kim and family took Lily and I on their boat to Fire Island. I'm a strong swimmer and I used to be a good sailor, but I feel like at this point in my life the stakes are too high for me to be on or in the ocean more than I do. Maybe I'd feel differently if I lived near it.

Now the mountains, on the other hand, are much more accessible to me. I see the ocean and I don't think Atlantic, I think, 70 percent of the earth. I see Mount Sugarloaf or Skinner or Tom or even the hills to the northwest of here, the foothills of the Berkshires and the Greens, whose names I don't know that just roll one after the other, rather than stand up showing off like the first three, and I don't think, Appalachian range (I'm a bit embarrassed about my ignorance but until someone told me this summer I had no idea that the Appalachian mountain range stretched from Alabama to Canada). I think, I want to go there!

I long to get to the top and look out. I need to be among those trees and smell the leaves and muck and occasional skunk or fox. I like the closeness of the forest, the way the trees grow, each one different, different shapes, positions, in different stages of life, all except the dead and dying growing toward the light, although even those have little green shoots of life sprouting out toward the sun. Everything wants to live. Everything wants light. Walking in the woods makes me feel alive and like I could live forever, and with my little sprout, I will. Being in the woods makes me feel closer to God.

We had two Thanksgivings this year, one last weekend, with Dave's sweet family on Long Island, and one yesterday with my friend Blair and family. Blair's my oldest, dearest friend from high school and it's a trip -- and an honor -- to sharing in this life journey with her. Our kids were pouring over our high school year book yesterday afternoon, looking for pictures of us. Never in my wildest dreams . . .

Yesterday, while the free-range local turkey roasted, the adults snatched a couple of hours and walked to the bird blind and the lake and even over to the pasture, and that on top of another long walk earlier and five hours of sleep the night before really wore me out. And we still had dinner to make and eat and clean up after and pies to cook and dessert to serve and games to play. (Our friends Peggy and Mary and their families came over for dessert and made it feel like a real party and even more festive.)

But Blair and David have such good energy and such good spirits, that by the end of the evening I felt like I had reclaimed the holiday, in a sense. I could enjoy the day with good food and conversation and even though I was exhausted, I wasn't stressed. It just happened, seamlessly, and with great joy. Sometimes I get so caught up in the family stuff I can't see the forest for the trees, if you will. So yesterday I was reminded that we are all just growing toward the light, each in our own way. I've a lot to be thankful for this day.

Three years this weekend

2009-11-25T21:25:00.003-05:00

We moved here three years ago Thanksgiving. The movers came the Saturday before, we drove up to Amherst on Sunday and met them there. Then we drove back to Brooklyn that night and spent the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday tying up loose ends. Lily went to school, her final three days at PS 261 (that thought still breaks my heart; I have never loved a school the way I loved PS 261), and her class threw her a goodbye party. Dave had a dentist appointment and I did, who knows what. Visited friends, had a dentist appointment also, I think.

That Wednesday night Lily and I drove out to Dave's mom's on Long Island and we had Thanksgiving, just like always. Then on Saturday night we packed our bags, said our goodbyes, and drove to our new home in Amherst, Massachusetts.

It's incredibly momentous, this kind of move. I don't think I fully understood that at the time. I can't imagine what my grandparents went through when they went from Budapest to Germany to the States in just four years.

My changes weren't instigated by World War II, but this was life-changing nonetheless, life-changing the way my wedding was life-changing, or giving birth was. I remember thinking, okay, now I am doing this, I am actually here at my wedding day, getting married, and walking through this time, and a similar experience with having Lily.

And here, to move from the place where just a few years earlier I swore I would never leave, to this utterly new land, new people, no job, no community and, for Lily and I, no friends. She likes living here, she says now, but at the time she said, I don't want to move, not one bit. And I know we broke her heart that day.

Everything is different, and in a way, nothing has changed. I am still me, which is oddly reassuring. Perhaps I thought I wouldn't be the same person if I left New York. In fact, I am still me, no matter what.

I just came back from picking up a poinsettia from a parent at Lily's school who was selling them for a fundraiser. Lily rode shotgun, giving me directions off the GPS. It took 20 minutes to go five miles and back, and we got gas on the way back. When we came home I parked at the mailbox and Lily got the mail. Then I put the car in the garage and before coming in picked up an armful of smaller sticks to use as kindling tomorrow when I restart the woodstove. All mundane, and none of it anything I would have done in Brooklyn, except maybe stop at the mailbox on the way into our apartment building.

We have company coming tonight, my friend Blair from high school and her family, and I spent the last couple of days dusting and vacuuming and mopping and straightening. I went to the grocery store and food coop four times, literally, in about 15 hours. Kept forgetting stuff. Ran into people I knew, chatted with, hung out a bit. Felt like I had enough time, that I could get it all done, that it would be okay.

And now my house smells good, like the cranberry pecan bread I also just baked, and a tinge of the incense that I burned to get rid of the smell of the bleach I used to clean the Japanese soaking tub, and the turkey stock I made today for the stuffing, and very faintly, Murphy's Oil Soap. I made toffee tonight, first time in a couple of years, and couldn't decide if I should put it in the big freezer in the laundry room in the basement, which is kinda full, or in my unheated studio. Dave opted for the studio, saying, it'll be 40 tonight, it'll be fine. So there it is.

Early this evening, as I was talking to Dave, I looked behind him out the window toward the street, and the trees had that stark, winter, empty, skeletal look, a row of them, oaks and maples, spread out against this incredible sky, this wintery, gray, kind of glowing white sky. It took my breath away.

Life is like that here. I still catch my breath at the natural beauty. Nothing is the same here, and nothing has changed. Or maybe what's not changed is that I still have Dave and Lily, and even deeper than before, perhaps; we've all been through something profound by moving here. When we drove away from Brooklyn that last time I played Dan Zanes's song Wonder Wheel and sobbed. Just sobbed. David Fischer had sent us a link to Iris Dement playing her song Our Town, along with Emmy Lou Harris, and we'd all three of us gathered around the computer and broke down over that one.

How can I say this. They can still make me teary, those songs. I love riding the Wonder Wheel, and I remember being up there one gorgeous night the summer before we moved, and how I could see the world extending to the horizon and beyond. Our Town says, "just like they say, nothing good ever lasts." Nope, it doesn't. But what I know now is, that's okay. I am okay.

It's good tears. It's okay tears, a sadness for what has been, for my life there of nearly 20 years, the friends, the light, the buildings, the tremendous life changes and the mundane daily nonsense that made up my days. The people, the people, the people. God, I love New York. But it was just time to go, and I'm glad we had the financial ability and the intestinal fortitude to make such a big change.

[I will say, it's also a sadness for what Lily lost, for the opportunity she missed by growing up in Brooklyn. I so wanted that for her. She would have had a great teenaged life there, I think, some great friends, some extraordinary experiences. But I also felt and feel strongly that a) if her parents are happier, she'll be happier, and we were going to be happier in western Massachusetts, and b) she needs this time here, in the country, where the rhythm is slower, the sky bigger, the silences longer. She can always have New York. She will certainly always have a life.]

Change isn't painful, it's the resistance to it that hurts, a friend said to me recently, and she's right. I didn't fight this change, and it didn't hurt. Saying goodbye hurt, but the change didn't hurt, if that makes sense. It was powerful. But it wasn't hard, it was wonderful.

And now, three years later, I can say this unequivocally: I don't want to move back. I wouldn't mind seeing my NYC friends more, or eating some fresh mozzarella and real bagels, to hear more languages, and see more skin colors. But I don't want to move back. I wouldn't move back.

Wild Things, you make my heart sing

2009-10-23T08:44:00.005-04:00

If you are interested in children, strong emotions, coping with loss, group dynamics, or puppets and special affects, run, don't walk to see Where the Wild Things Are. I've also read two recent excellent stories on Spike Jonze, the director. This is the GQ one, and here's the NY Times magazine. And here's a link to a Newsweek interview with Sendak, Jonze, and Dave Eggers, who cowrote the screenplay with Jonze.

This is what he says to GQ that I really love:

“As a kid, that was really scary and confusing—both the wild emotions in me and the wild emotions in the people around me,” he says. “Unpredictable emotions, positive or negative—you don’t know where they’re coming from, you don’t know what they mean. Especially negative emotions. Your own behavior—you don’t know why you’re acting a certain way and it scares you, or you don’t know why somebody else is acting a certain way and it scares you. Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.

I guess it’s anger, or sadness, guilt—or guilt for being angry, you know. Just the whole big mess that we’re sort of thrown into. Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that’s a hard thing to know. As a kid it can be really confusing, because it’s all new and you’re trying to sort of make your map.”

Be forewarned, it's not a kids movie, per se. As Jonze says, it's about emotions and how scary they can be. A parent said to me, it's not as scary as Coraline, but has its moments. The Wild Things are really wild, they howl and yell and rip up trees and do giant leaps and throw dirt at each other and cry and jump into a big pile and sleep. They have very real, very strong emotions that are right out there. It can be intense. That's what I loved about it. This movie, and the book, are very, very real, and that's a very, very good thing, especially when your kids is mature enough to handle it.

I insisted we go as a family and I think Lily got it and enjoyed it. She's reading the Clique books, god help us -- I see no need to censor her and promised myself I won't; I read The Godfather when I was her age -- and we had a little discussion about the differences between the two groups. "The Clique would go, 'ew, dust on my shoes!'" she said, imitating them in a funny voice. I keep commenting on how mean the Clique girls are. The Wild Things are not mean. Just BIG and WILD. Times a thousand.

I also read Lily that Jonze quote, above, and she talked about when she gets angry. She says she wishes she had a room she could destroy when she's mad and then it would be all picked up and perfect the next time she goes into it. I think we're getting her a punching bag for her birthday.

My friends said to see it on the big screen, and I agree with that. Definitely see it; don't delay. It's got very rich production values -- the sound, the color, the texture, the environment, the costumes. It's very evocative and powerful. I howled all the way home and Dave woke Lily up this morning by howling. HOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLLL !!!!!!!!!!

Fall in New England, Part III: Weather & Light

2009-10-19T11:06:00.006-04:00

BTW, as I was just on the subject of winter food and cooking, this is one of my most favorite articles on the topic of cooking for comfort, written by the extraordinary Regina Schrambling. Note the date. Note that she never once mentions what had just happened. In a way this is the best piece I've ever read about that event, ranks up there with Bruce Springsteen's The Rising. They both express the inexpressible, without ever getting into facts. There's a time for journalism and a time for art, and these are both the latter, the ever-elusive attempt to capture what we really feel.

The way the light changes almost overnight in the fall is breathtaking. It goes from a warm orange and red light to a cold almost bluish light. The colors are all orange and red around us, and yellow, and gray, and yes, even green, on the fields of winter wheat, and the evergreens, and the grass. But the light that shines on it is cold, and getting colder.

We hear Canada geese honking overhead as they fly in formation to wherever they are going. Lots of them hanging out on the lake near our house. The telephone wires were full of little birds today. Dave says the birds all came back on Saturday. The yard was full of chickadees, there were juncos and finches and woodpeckers. And of course those geese.

It was 32 last night and cold and rainy yesterday, finally -- late last week they'd started predicting rain for the whole weekend, but it only hit on Sunday. Mostly it's cold, in the 30s and 40s. Sometimes warmer, and you still see occasional shorts, but that's the New England sturdy thing at work; it's really too cold for shorts. I am waiting anxiously for the first snow -- the Hilltowns, just a few miles northwest of here, have already gotten snow that stuck to the ground. We've only had flurries in Northampton. Soon enough.

So now we rise in the dark, the sun just rising as Lily heads down the street toward her bus. She has to leave the house at 7:05 to make his first pass -- she can pick it up on the way back about seven minutes later, but better safe than sorry. Today no one set an alarm and I woke up at 6:52. Lily was driven to school, the sun glaring right into our eyes as we headed east to N. King Street, and then I made my way to the Evolution Cafe.

Now I spend time inside. Cafes are becoming my life again, or I load up the wood stove and sit at the dining room table with my computer and papers. Now I cook beef stew and watch the leaves fall in a flurry. Fall is rushing toward the death of winter, to be sure, but neither is endless and the promise of spring comes after that; even though last June put the lie to that, I still believe in rejuvenation. The longest day of the year is only December, after all. And meanwhile, there's nothing like the light of a full moon shining on a world of snow.

Fall in New England, Part II: Fire

2009-10-16T08:15:00.003-04:00

So the best thing we did last spring was buy a wood stove insert for our fireplace. I love having a fireplace, love having fires, but not only does 75 percent of the heat generated go up the chimney, it sucks the heat out of the room too. So the glamour has worn off and we got a stove this June, when the guys weren't busy.

I scouted out the various alternatives, talked to friends, and found Amherst Farmers Supply, with the very helpful Chad. He recommended a Pacific insert, I think this is it, or close to it. They installed a chimney liner and fixed our backdraft problem at the same time -- the fireplace smoke would get sucked into the pellet stove in the basement and make that room and eventually the house all smoky -- and installed this gorgeous stove.

We had a couple of fires before the summer heated up, just to test it out, and to burn off the new-stove, machine oil smell. We were not at all sure how much wood to get for the winter. We want to use it to heat the house but not exclusively, and we do have natural gas, which isn't that pricey these days. And we were daunted by the challenge of stacking and storing and bringing in all that wood.

In the end we got two cords, dumped from a dumptruck all over our driveway. It took us a couple of weeks to stack it near but not against the house (termites), with help from Mum! and Dave rigged up a plastic sheet over it to keep the elements mostly off. I gather lots of kindling when I'm in the woods -- you don't need this if you never stop using your fire, of course, but we don't run it 24/7. At least not yet. We have all that stored there too.

So now the drill is, typically, I come home and fire up the stove to warm up the house. We have a small wood pile on the screened-in porch. Then I usually take a load or two of wood from the big pile upstairs, keep that pile stocked, and bring in a couple of armloads next to the actual stove, too. The thing heats up incredibly, too much, and because our bedrooms are in a loft space, they can actually be really too warm at night. So we're learning how to feed the fire, when to stop loading up wood at night, so it's not too hot at bedtime.

And the fire is lovely! it does have a fan, which is a bit noisy, but I don't care. I love it, love looking at it, love the heat it generates. It's wonderful. I love bringing in the wood -- next year, three or four cords, for sure -- and it makes me feel much more secure, knowing I will be warm no matter what happens to the electricity (we've lost it several times already).

Fall in New England, Part I: Food

2009-10-16T08:00:00.006-04:00

Only it's turning into winter before my eyes.

A friend told me that when people move, like, move their families and all, they do it by their mid-forties and back to their roots. So this may not be true for everyone but there was something visceral tugging at me to move back home.

I love this time of year, it really hits me in my core. I love the changing of the seasons -- the light is so different now, colder, bluer, less of it. Days are shorter, of course. Air is colder. Everything is buckling down for a good sleep. The leaves aren't entirely off the trees but a lot are. We see lots of nut shells around, beech, I think we have, as well as acorns, and someone is eating lots of them.

The urgency of impending fall started in me as school was starting and I started cooking and freezing just after Labor Day. I now have a freezer full of several half gallon bags of strawberries and peach quarters, five pounds of wild blueberries, and a couple of bags of raspberries. That's the fruit. All homepicked and prepared, of course, except the blueberries, which I bought from our CSA.

I also made around eight quarts of applesauce, eight of tomato soup (just add cream), three half gallons of tomato sauce (for lasagna) and maybe 15 quarts of tomato sauce just for sauce. Dave made several bags of pesto ice cubes, and we froze basil, cilantro and dill by grinding it up with olive oil and putting it into a ziplock baggie, flattening it out, and sticking it in the freezer. When it comes time to put it in your soup you just break off a piece and throw it in. My only fear is we only have one sheet of each. But live and learn.

I went to Hatfield Beef, a local wholesaler who sells meat from Amish country in Pennsylvania to retail customers too, and got 10 pounds of wings, tips, ribs, stuff like that. I separate it into baggies and freeze it for a meal. That I can do any time but it's nice that the freezer is stocked. Not sure this is the place for healthy meat but I think so, and I really like the prices. We also buy local meat from the coop and our CSA.

We also have lots of single serving soups and stews that Dave and I can take for lunch, but we often do that with leftovers. That's not a fall thing, except that we now have soups and stews to freeze. We are eating heavier food now, with a little more meat. Even the greens are heaver, more kale, and spinach, that sort of thing. We could do one more bout of applesauce but it's supposed to rain and snow all weekend so I doubt that will happen. Who knows.

Family Camp two months later

2009-09-29T11:01:00.006-04:00

Family camp at Farm and Wilderness, which happens around the third week of August, has had a profound affect on me and on my family. We've gone three of the past four years -- walking those piney New England woods was one of the visceral events of that summer that made me wake up to the fact that it was time for me, us, to move north.

But more than that, although that's plenty. Going there rejuvenates me, helps me set priorities, organize and structure my life, figure out what's important. What's important is family, community, the Golden Rule, eating healthy, moving my body, being around nature, work, love, laughing, reading, relaxing, sharing. All those things.

So what happens when we get back is first a sense of, not quite the cold water in the face, but close. It's the real world, rush, rush, rush, words, noise, frequent isolation, anxiety. And also beauty and love, of course. But it's hard to remember those in daily life. So what changes, or more, what of F&W do I want to continue during the other 51 weeks? In no particular order:

-- washing my hands with soap and water for two rounds of happy birthday. And lots of hand lotion.
-- singing before a meal
-- a period of quiet contemplation every day
-- healthy, delicious food, mostly organic, mostly vegetables, not too much, well-prepared, eaten at regular times
-- everyone takes a turn in helping prepare and clean up
-- a good night's sleep every night
-- work, both drudgery and fun
-- moving around -- swimming, hiking, walking, rock climbing, biking, whatever
-- storytelling
-- good conversation
-- lots of different ages around -- children, teens, young adults, middle aged, older
-- offering to help, with children, the elderly, and others
-- sharing what I know, whether organizing a hike, baking sourdough bread, making friendship bracelets, talking about health care
-- learning from others about what I want to know, whether hiking, baking, friendship bracelets, health care
-- being in the woods and meadows
-- being around animals
-- lots of music, singing, playing, goofing
-- dancing regularly -- weekly is probably too much to ask, eh?
-- laughing a loooooooooooot
-- teaching and learning
-- doing group projects -- work, entertainment, maintenance
These sound like such cliches but they are all a part of the family camp experience. Can't wait for next year!

Hurrah to JFK!

2009-09-03T11:14:00.007-04:00

Lily was glowing when she came off the bus yesterday afternoon -- a free school bus at the end of your street is a very nice benefit to attending your local school, by the way -- and charged home, talking a mile a minute. She had already memorized her locker number and combination and knew how to open it -- the biggest worry. She had three email addresses from new friends -- avoiding icky kids being the second-biggest worry -- although she had to tell them she wouldn't email them until Monday, as she's been kicked off the computer as a penalty for lying to us about brushing her teeth, and was busted by the dental hygienist at her new dentist last week (!).

(Does it make it more palatable to say "penalty" instead of "punishment"? I am so opposed to punishment in general, and especially as a parenting tool. But I really wanted this lesson to sink in, and I was very disturbed that she lied to us. At any rate, that's the consequence.)

She didn't know the names of her teachers yet and she had no homework except to bring in colored pencils today. She found her classes pretty easily, and was really excited about her new friends. Unfortunately the band doesn't have many experienced players so there's no intermediate group, just beginner. But she'll be okay there, I think.

Last night the school had an open house "cookie social" to let parents come see their kids in their new environment. I was highly impressed that the teachers showed up too, and we met most of Lily's. We didn't have much time to chat, but I told them to work her hard, and they promised they would. They seemed to be getting a sense of her already. We met other sixth grade families, including her new friends. She opened and closed her locker about a thousand times, and rearranged the stuff inside over and over. She was very happy to be back in school, I think! and she loved showing us her new digs.

She wants to join the drama afterschool group, and I think she'd like to work on the school newspaper. She will be taking chorus and flute and theater improv, like last year, so she'll be busy! Wednesdays at least she can walk over to improv with the other middle schoolers, and I won't see her until we get her at five.

Just a slight worry, what with that guy who was just arrested for kidnapping an 11-year-old and keeping her as his sex slave in his backyard for 18 years. I guess she was snatched at the bus as her step-father watched, and I gotta say, I know this stuff doesn't happen often, from what they can tell, something like 100 kids a year. But still, it gives you pause. I'd feel much safer if she were in Brooklyn, with tons of people all around. I guess I'll have to meet her bus every day. It's just going to make me feel safer, at least for awhile. Now that's an illusion, right? Safety. Bah!

Oh, and I am going to be editing the PTO newsletter! Some things never change . . .

Oh one final, final thing: We have gotten a couple of nice notes from some people at Bement, and I really have no hard feelings there. There are some very fine people there, and they are trying hard to be the best school they can. But I do think this fits Lily better. I hope JFK makes her work hard -- I know Bement would be more rigorous, right off the bat. But I think socially we will all be much happier. I felt much more at home last night, looking at all the other families, the kids, the way the administrators interacted, it just seemed so familiar, all the best parts of what we've been missing about PS 261. I guess at heart we are a public school family, and while Bement was the right choice at the time, I think this is the right choice today. Lily just seemed so relaxed and at home. Can't buy that feeling, ya know?

Lily prepares for middle school

2009-09-02T12:47:00.009-04:00

Really, she's been preparing all summer. Life went on, with camp, computer, some TV (mostly netflix), but also math homework pages and practicing flute and piano. But I sense it was always in the back of her mind. Still, she forgot it during family camp last week and I didn't remind her. It wasn't until we were driving home on Saturday afternoon that she suddenly said, "School starts next week!" Wednesday, to be specific.

But this year I decided not to leave this all until the last minute. So when Land's End had a big sale with free shipping in late July, we ordered a bunch of clothes for my now incredibly tall daughter -- she's about five-two, and all legs -- and still growing. We did shirts, leggings, a down vest, a backpack and matching lunch box, and shoes that were too big so we sent them back. Then we went to JC Penney's weekly sale for a few more things -- mostly jeans, now that she can wear them to school, and a special blouse she really liked.

Her new school, JFK Middle School, has a looser dress code than Bement, but as Dave keeps saying, we're going to continue to enforce much of the old code. I am fine with her wearing jeans, as long as they are clean and not torn, and I don't need all her shirts to have collars, although I don't want her t-shirts to have writing on them. Also, the school does say shoulders have to be covered -- no tank or string tops -- and skirts and shorts have to be mid-thigh at least, stuff like that. Also, no hats, to her dismay. Dave says, "we can just say what our guidelines are for her," so we are doing that.

Next she and I went to Staples for school supplies. Her grandmother thoughtfully gave her $20 to accessorize her locker -- lockers are the big deal for middle schoolers, getting one, using one, decorating one, not getting shoved into one, not forgetting the combination, using the combination -- and she bought a shelf, a mirror, a little basket, and some magnets. All her old notebooks and stuff were falling apart so she also got stuff like a binder, pencil case, looseleaf paper, an assignment book. Turns out the school gives you one of those. Oh well.

Finally, we went to the new Goodwill in town for their end-of-summer dollar sale -- everything a dollar. I had been a couple of weeks before, looking for a costume for Lily's performance as the adult Simba in The Lion King at camp, and picked up a couple of very cheap shirts I knew she'd like -- the kids clothes are really cheap and in good condition, and the racks are very well organized. This time we did more of the same, and also got our free monthly book -- everyone can take a book a month, for free.

[A word about Goodwill. It was founded in Boston a century ago and we used to donate to it when I was a kid and it was known as Morgan Memorial, but in the early eighties, when I was working at a homeless shelter for women in Boston, I was told that the owner had a separate antique business and he'd skim off the best donations and sell them for profit. I don't know if this is true but it always left a bad taste in my mouth and I was ambivalent when this one opened up, just a mile from my house.

But we finally got over there, and my concerns were answered very satisfactorily by one of the managers, who gave me lots of reasons not to like Salvation Army and its anti-gay policies. She said each Goodwill is kind of a franchise and distributes its profits to its own beneficiaries, and that this one works directly with those folks. She seemed genuine and truthful and I felt a lot better.]

At any rate, we got a pile of clothes and some books for something like $10, including some stuff for the rest of the summer. And we had fun. A great place to inexpensively scratch that shopping itch.

Back from our week in Vermont, we spent Monday and Tuesday, hanging out, talking about school, and the summer, and just stuff. She decided she wanted a special dinner on Tuesday night, the night before school started, so among our many errands those couple of days -- the transfer station, the Y a couple of times (they had a big fire in the women's locker room and I had to pick up the contents of my locker and see if any of it was salvageable; none of it was), Dave's for catfood and a wicked cool new toy for Chance, etc. -- we went to the Big Y for groceries. She'd decided on baked ziti and garlic bread.

With our help she found a recipe, checked the pantry for what we had, wrote up the ingredients she needed, decided to have cooked carrots as her vegetable, and then found it all at the store. We also got a congratulations balloon and flowers -- lilies, her choice -- in honor of the big day. She tried to get me to get her an iTunes gift card but I said, enough. Now you need to work hard at your school work, and later we can talk about gift cards and other rewards.

[By the way, if anyone reading this is wondering what to get her for her birthday or Christmas, she has been asking for gift cards lately, from iTunes, Barnes and Noble, and similar places. She also really likes our fabulous local science and nature store, A2Z, and they sell gift cards, of course.]

I can't stand store-bought pasta sauce so after we got home I made our own and she put together the rest of the ingredients for her ziti. Dave came home and helped her.

The rest of the day she painted her nails over and over, so they'd match her outfit (!), which she had picked out two days earlier (!!). She showered and washed her hair and continued to practice hair styles. She picked up her room, and her desk downstairs, and put away all her laundry just like I asked. She got to bed pretty early. She slept well. She was ready.

I'd like to be one of Melville's Catskill eagles

2009-08-22T21:21:00.003-04:00

From Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Chapter 96 - The Try-Works

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp- all others but liars!

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;- not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.

But even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (i.e. even while living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

---------
Off to family camp. Will report back in about a week. Be well.

"I'm not comfortable on the grass"

2009-08-17T08:19:00.006-04:00

I'd heard vaguely about this pool and its very long waiting list. When I saw it advertised in the paper this summer I figured the economy meant fewer people were joining and I got the info but declined to sign up.

We finally got some heat last week and when my friend Sarah mentioned how great the Northampton Country Club was, I finally joined. Just the pool, not the golf. It's $450 for June-July-August, and Kim, the director, let us join for the last three weeks for $90. We have already gotten our money's worth! We've been there every day since Friday and it felt wonderful. We took our friend Mike and his kids, visiting from Brooklyn, over there for the last two days.

It's great. It's packed with kids, the lifeguards are really attentive, and the water is clean and not too chlorinated. The locker rooms are rundown but clean. They offer swim lessons. It's contained, and there's also ping pong, swings, and sand. There's lots of lounge chairs and you can always find a patch of shade if it's hot. They have a grill and a microwave and you can get a burger or a hot dog and chips and cans of soda. Or you can bring your own food.

Kim runs a tight ship, with a focus on being kid-friendly. (As Smith's swim coach he also runs Kids Night Out, an on-campus fundraiser for the Smith sports teams, which is basically three hours of Friday night babysitting for parents. It happens several times during the school year and Lily loves it.) No smoking, no drinking, no glass bottles, no eating on deck -- but it's okay on the grass -- the lifeguards have extra goggles and masks and other swim stuff. Swimmies and that sort of thing are okay. There's a lane for laps.

My friend Brad from Wondertime goes to the Holyoke Canoe Club, near his home. It sounds similar. We go local and as we are starting to know some folks, we've seen people we know every time we've gone. Everyone I've seen has introduced me to other people -- it's very friendly. Lily has seen kids she knows every time too and she begs to go now.

Here's a funny Brooklyn story: Mike's son Nicholas wouldn't walk on the grass. On Monday, his first day there, he climbed over the lounge chair to get to his towel. The next day, yesterday, he stood on the pavement near the pool and begged his father to come fix his face mask. He said, "I'm not comfortable on the grass."

Mike refused to go to him until he finally walked over and took Nick by the hand and walked him back to the lounge chair, where he fixed the mask. Nicky ran back to the safety of the pavement. Later when he refused again Mike brought him his sandals. And finally when Nicky was on the chair, he raced across the grass to get his hotdog and raced back, ate it, and raced to the water.

Sabrina, on the other hand, didn't like being on pavement in bare feet. So she walked to the hose to wash off her feet, put her sandals on, and then walked to the grill to order her lunch. You can't make this stuff up.

Pictures of David

2009-08-11T20:09:00.004-04:00

One silly, at a Cyclones game, one serious, for a dating service, I'm told.

David Fischer walking the long road

2009-08-11T14:58:00.017-04:00

I can't believe I'm writing these words but my good friend, David Fischer, and Dave's best friend since eighth grade earth science, died last early Thursday morning.

David wasn't feeling well and went into the hospital on, I believe, July 23. He went on dialysis, and was diagnosed initially with Epstein Barr. About 10 days later he was diagnosed with a rare and virulent form of cancer associated with Epstein Barr, called NK leukemia -- the "NK" stands for "natural killer." Charming, huh? They gave him chemo but it was already too late. I may have some of those details wrong but you get the general idea. Dave spoke to him several times on the phone and then saw him the weekend before he died, two weekends ago. We sensed this was coming, especially once they identified the leukemia.

It's funny, I keep thinking of his laugh -- he loved to laugh, and he was really sharp, and witty, so he saw a lot of humor in things, but he didn't have a mean bone in his body so his jokes were never nasty. I know all things must pass away. I know this life is short, ephemeral, tenuous. (Now I really know it, like I really wanted a reminder, thank you very much.) I know David wasn't entirely healthy, physically, and while he was solidly built, he'd always seemed a little frail to me. But I never expected him to die, never ever, and not in a million years to die this way.

I met David when we both worked at LIFE magazine, and he will always hold an indescribably important place in my heart, because he introduced me to Dave, my dear husband. He fixed us up, just had an instinct we'd like each other. How did he know that? I'll never know.

David and I worked in different departments at LIFE but we'd talked on and off for a year or two, and he kept mentioning this friend, Dave. He showed me this magazine that his friend Dave had co-founded, 2600, the internationally famous hacker quarterly, with his friend Eric. I think Dave was gone by then but his name is still on the masthead some place and I remember being in David's office and him showing it to me. This magazine is pretty technical, and I didn't get the it at all, at first, so I kind of said, okay, cool, and moved on. I was also seeing someone else at the time, but as it was a woman and long-distance, I didn't talk about it at work.

Then I was single again, and again I found myself talking to David, and mentioning that I was doing a lot of canoeing that particular summer. He was delighted, saying, my friend Dave canoes, and he even owns a canoe! Excited, like a little kid. Er, that's nice, David. Good for him.

Then, after what I call my year of sleazy men (but that's another post), I finally decided that I wasn't interested in just any man, I wanted one who was kind, and funny, and smart -- and I wanted to like his mother. I didn't want him to have kids, and I kind of figured he'd be in the math or science field, since I had had luck in that area before. And if my man wasn't forthcoming, I was going to be just fine by myself.

So I got myself subscriptions to concerts and plays, and it must have been around Christmas that I asked David Fischer if he wanted to see Guys and Dolls, the wildly successful Nathan Lane-Faith Prince version that was playing that winter, 1993. Sure, he said, and he went back to his office and called me up. Okay, he said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to get us all together. Uh, okay David, not quite sure what he was talking about.

A few days later he called me back to say, the first Friday in February, let's you and me and my friend David go to a poetry slam at the Nuyorican Cafe. That's Friday, February 5th. It was ages and ages away.
Uh, okay, but what's a poetry slam?
It's a poetry competition. We'll go to Avenue A Sushi beforehand.
Uh, okay.

I still had no idea I was being set up. But there was enough time and eventually I clued in, and started getting nervous. That night leaving work, I met David and our friend and colleague Sandy at the elevator, and she looked at the two of us going out together and said, in her wonderful, enthusiastic way, oh, tonight is your date!
No, no, no, it's not a date! David cried, not wanting the situation to be too loaded.
I don't want to go, I said, suddenly scared. I'm tired, it's Friday night, I'm not wearing the right clothes, and all I want to do is go home and watch TV.
I think you're going to have a great time! Sandy said, in her inimitable way. I love your new haircut, you look East Village funky, and you're going to have a great time! Lucky me, she was the best possible person for me to see at that moment.
Okay, I said under my breath, as I walked through the doors, I'll go. But I'm just going to be myself. And if he doesn't like me, fuck him!

Needless to say . . . we had a great time, a great, great time. How could I not have a great time at a poetry slam with Dave and David Fischer? I could be myself with the two of them, and we laughed all night. Dave and I were on the same vibe right from the beginning: David and I were late, and Dave wasn't right outside. And instead of going into the restaurant to see if Dave was there already, as I suggested, we walked up a couple of blocks to see if he'd gone to a different restaurant. I guess David was nervous too.

We came back to the restaurant, stood around for awhile, and finally David said, okay, let's go in and see if he's there. Sure enough, there he was, waiting for us at a table, polishing off some sake. The first thing I noticed was that he had long, graceful fingers -- I don't think I even realized he had blue eyes until we'd been dating a few weeks and he mentioned them. This weekend he told me that he never usually went inside like that, without his dinner companion, but he was early and decided to do things differently that night.

We walked over to the slam, which was jammed, and raucous and fantastic, and as I say, we laughed all night. These things stand out:

-- the second-round poem by the guy who looked like a junkie wannabe that started out, "I opened the dog's jaws and pulled out my penis" (we all collapsed, of course);

-- the MC, who was the famous Bob Holman, a founder of the Nuyorican, whose running patter was hilarious and smart and perfect;

-- Dave mentioning he lived in his parents' home, and me being instantly and obviously turned off, and him quickly following with the information that he had his own apartment and his own door and didn't see them much, and me deciding, still a little ambivalent, okay (and I think David quickly changed the subject);

-- "Long Island is shaped like a fish." When I said I had never been to Long Island, these two Island boys said, of course you've been to Long Island, you live in Brooklyn, and proceeded to draw me a map of the island, featuring the North and South forks as the tail, and dotted with landmarks such as Billy Joel's childhood home, and Paul Simon's Montauk home, and the Amityville Horror location, and the town of "Matzo-Pizza," where Joey Buttafuoco met Amy Fisher for their afternoon trysts.

Needless to say, I still have this map, and needless to say, David was our guest of honor when Dave and I were married three years later. He was the first to speak at our Quaker-style wedding, and when he was preparing his speech I was able to pull out the map, at his request, to use as inspiration. I just kept marveling, how did he know? How did he know?

We saw David a lot over the next few years, especially before Lily was born, when we'd all go out to a show or a movie or to hear some music. Dave spoke to him weekly or more, and emailed, and they got together frequently, always for a show, with a meal together before or after. I was bummed when he was diagnosed as a celiac, because as much as he knew about culture he knew about food, and it had been really fun to explore restaurants with him.

When we moved to Massachusetts Dave saw him every time we went to Brooklyn or Long Island. I heard all about the shows he saw that I could never fit in, and I was subjected to many possible cartoon captions. He came to visit us last fall, I think it was, or maybe it was the fall before, and they went for a hike while Lily and I were at work and school; later we all went out to eat (he'd previously checked out all the local celiac-friendly restaurants).

I think David knew Dave and I were a good match because he was incredibly thoughtful and conscientious, to a fault, perhaps. He didn't know me that well, but he and Dave had known each other for most of their lives, and I think he just thought about us both, and somehow just knew. I want that kind of thoughtfullness. He could also be annoyingly neurotic, and at one point in my life I had little patience for him. But I made my amends, and lately I was enjoying him so much, and when we went to West Side Story in May I just wanted to spend all my time chatting with him. He didn't join us for lunch and I was disappointed, but we compared notes at intermission and talked and talked at the parking garage until Dave dragged me away and said we had to leave.

He never married or had children, but he had literally hundreds of friends, many of them ex-girl friends, from as far back as elementary school, high school, and college, and then New York City, and still more from all his many cyber communities. He was part of many; I think the internet was the perfect place for his many talents and erudition. The David Fischer Salon, as someone called it, was based on his blog about town blog. He was a part of the celiac community, kindertransport, the New Yorker anti-cartoon contest community, and many others. You can find those links on his blog site.

Listening to his friends about him, and reading their wonderful stories, what makes me sorriest now -- aside from the fact that my husband has lost his his right arm -- is that he was such a joy and a resource that in some ways I had not begun to tap. I would give anything right now to sit and talk about his funeral with him, for instance. Didn't you love Matt's speech, I'd say? Isn't it wonderful how kind he was to your mother, before even talking about you? Didn't you love his line about, who is this 60-year-old man sitting across from me? And Anne, also a wonderful eulogy. I loved hearing about you mooning the train, and how a group of you, single and culturally devoted, formed a kind of family, over the years, and when she quoted from her friend about your salon, that was a great line, huh? And wasn't the music lovely!

I really liked meeting all your friends! What wonderful people! I loved how they all knew that you could be, er, very particular about some things, and they loved you in spite and because of that. They showed me how to love you, David, and how to love more, in the future. I find myself wondering, what other hidden gems of friends have I not fully appreciated, and who haven't I recently said I love you to. I am so happy I got to give Stephen Mernoff's mom a ride home; aside from the company, she really illuminated some important things, things I've been struggling with for years, and gee, David, I sure would love to share them with you. I too love La Mer, David, thanks so much for the Charles Trenet CD you gave us many years ago. Was it Matt who said, there's so much more to speak about? David, it's too soon! There's so much more to say.

The Long Road

And I wished for so long, cannot stay...
All the precious moments, cannot stay...
It's not like wings have fallen, cannot stay...
But I feel something's missing, cannot say...

Holding hands are daughters and sons
And their faiths just falling down, down, down, down...
I have wished for so long
How I wish for you today

We all walk the long road. Cannot stay...
There's no need to say goodbye...
All the friends and family
All the memories going round, round, round, round
I have wished for so long
How I wish for you today

And the wind keeps roaring
And the sky keeps turning gray
And the sun is set
The sun will rise another day...

We all walk the long road. Cannot stay...
There's no need to say goodbye...
All the friends and family
All the memories going round, round, round, round
I have wished for so long
How I wish for you today
How I've wished for so long
How I wish for you today

We all walk the long road
We all walk the long road
We all walk the long road

-- Eddie Vedder with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

RIP, dear David. I'll miss you. And by the way, thanks again for my life.

Summer reading

2009-07-23T14:57:00.003-04:00

My latest readings, by request:

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout -- loved this book. A collection of short stories that add up to a portrait of a crusty, older, many-generation Maine woman. The writing is sparse and evocative and the character is strong, imperfect, and very lovable on some level. Many of the stories are about the marriages and relationships of older people, people in their 60s, say, and it's wonderful to hear that perspective for once.

Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon -- this is an intense, powerful, painful book. A thoroughly researched history of what post-Civil War slavery in the South. Ninety percent of blacks lived in the South after the war and for 80 years whites systematically arrested, convicted, and enslaved thousands of them, mostly men, but also women and children. The call would go out from a large plantation or coal mine or steel mill for 20 more men, and sheriffs and justices of the peace would routinely round up black people doing nothing more than walking down the street. The fines and court fees would be inflated and the man would be sent into servitude for a year or more to work off his debt. Once there they would find some reason to fine him again and he would get another year or two. Needless to say the conditions were appalling, with sickness, famine, and torture rampant.

This practice began in earnest after Reconstruction failed, and didn't end until a few days after Pearl Harbor, when the Federal government decided it wouldn't look good to claim to be fighting for freedom and have hundreds of thousands of blacks enslaved. Plus they needed black men to fight. Blackmon says the Jim Crow era should be renamed the Age of Neoslavery. There's a long history to the black distrust of police and authorities, with very good reason.

Persepolis I & II by Marjane Satrapi -- Lovely autobiographical graphic novels about the coming of age of a young Iranian woman. Gives a very sympathetic picture of the strong intellectual community in Iran, the pre-revolution and post-revolution world, and I started to get a sense of what it must be like to live under such a strict regime. I don't know how I would act, under such conditions. The art work is simple and extraordinary.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- Have you reread this lately? It's still a classic.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway -- I had read this since the 12th grade and I wanted to see if I still loved it. I still love it. My bookgroup did not, however, and we had a great discussion. The writing is extraordinary, and the portrait of a time and place and some miserable post-War ex-pats hanging around Paris and Spain.

Tips for New Yorkers moving to the Valley

2009-07-15T12:06:00.017-04:00

A few observations, now that we've been here almost three years (!) (at Thanksgiving), in no particular order:

Don't come in thinking you know everything and you'll show everyone else how it's done, because a) you're wrong, you don't know everything, and b) you have no idea how things are done yet. Just be friendly and go about your business. The pace is different here; the environment is different; people move in different ways and communicate differently. Not better, not worse, just different.

Don't expect an immediate warm fuzzy welcome. Most people living here are New Englanders, after all. Like New Yorkers, they respect your privacy, and they are also used to frequent newcomers. But don't ever doubt that they have your back. Once they are your friend they are extremely loyal. We are extremely fortunate to have moved into a wonderful block. Everyone is very busy -- yes, NYC doesn't have a monopoly on being busy -- so we don't see each other much. But we all take care of each other. It's lovely.

Ignore the Hamp-NoHo debate. I think that's about class more than anything else, and there's no winning in an argument about class. Just don't be a jerk and most people will like you no matter how recently you moved here.

It's not necessarily a lot cheaper to live here than in the city. If you own property you'll have to pay these odd things called property taxes, which add a big chunk to your cost of living. Not to mention you'll have to have a car, and probably two, and beyond buying the things, those cost a lot to run and insure. And, if you're used to the Park Slope Food Coop, you'll be astonished at home much more you pay for groceries.

Don't complain about those property taxes. It's the price you pay for good roads, schools, public health, and safety. Your money is really not being wasted; the fact is the Federal government has stiffed the state for years, especially since the war in Iraq, and the state has to pass that loss onto the towns. It's just the way it is. Vote for tax overrides; it's the community-minded thing to do.

Don't assume the public schools are better than New York City. New York is on the cutting edge of education, in many ways, and few public schools anywhere are better than the best in New York, especially in their ability to handle very diverse communities, abilities, and large classes. If you intend to put your child in public school -- and there aren't a lot of alternatives -- be thoughtful about what town you live in.

If you buy a house, check out the neighborhood. Don't assume that empty space behind your backyard is zoned conservation land. It could actually be a landfill.

Don't make assumptions about the people who've lived here for generations and have never been further than Springfield. Some of the kindest, smartest people I've met here have never lived anywhere else. You are not a better person because you lived in New York City.

Things smell differently here. Understand that landfills smell, and so does agriculture, and there's not much you can do about it. Massive livestock farms, like pig farms in North Carolina, aren't common here. But there are lots of animals and cow and horse manure have distinct odors, that's just the truth. Appreciate the incredible lush loamy smell too, and the aroma of a fresh snow, and the flowers in the spring. Lovely.

Not every farm is organic. The Pioneer Valley is full of nutty crunchy people but people have been happily farming here for generations and they do it in all kinds of ways.

That tractor going 15 mph on the road in front of you, like the smell of manure, is one of the prices you pay for having incredible fresh produce from May into November.

Farmers work incredibly hard. Be sympathetic to their concerns. Unless you've farmed you have no idea what their lives are like, and you could not live without them.

New England is the whitest region in the country. But there is much more diversity of all kinds here than might be obvious at first.

Straight people go to Gay Pride. The one in Northampton is a big city street festival and well worth attending. Support your LGBT friends and have a great time eating and hanging and buying stuff. It's really fun.

Go outside. That's why people live here, to hike, swim, boat, bike, and ski, skate, and snowshoe. Many people do other things, like hunt, fish, bird, rock climb, and row on the river. Invest in the basics right away -- snowshoes, skis, bikes, hiking boots, and good winter wear. Essential.

There's lots of culture here so check out everything you can. The Mullins Center at UMass brings in superb international acts. They and all the colleges have their own arts programs, museums, botanic gardens, libraries, and speakers. And that's just the colleges. There are many other hidden treasures, including in the Hilltowns, and west toward the Berkshires. Boston is just two hours to the east, New York is three hours south, and we're very close to the Berkshires, with its wealth of culture, especially in the summer.

Get a farm share, the term they use here instead of "joining a CSA" (community-supported agriculture). A farm share helps you support your local farm, meet your neighbors, eat organic veggies, and improve your diet.

Look at the sky. It's incredible. It's vast, ever-changing, and you can see a whole lot more of it than in New York City.

Likewise, keep an eye on the Connecticut River. Like the sky, it's organic; it changes constantly; it rises and falls and keeps on flowing. There's lots of smaller rivers too.

Walk or drive to the top of Mt. Sugarloaf regularly, climb the tower and look around. Remind yourself why you moved here. It's a wonderful life. Oh, and be sure to make at least one visit to the Quabbin Reservoir, and hear the story of how it came to be.

Be prepared for your cell phone not work, especially once you go into the hills and otherwise get out of the town centers. Along those lines, many towns don't have cable or high-speed internet access, either. I think you can get a satellite, but those have problems too, especially when it snows. And lately it's snowed a lot.

Our best recent purchase was a GPS. It got me home on Monday night over twisty, deserted back roads in the dark. It will save you time and get you onto the more interesting back roads.

Be prepared to drive a lot more than you may have ever expected. Especially if you have kids. The corollary of that is, be prepared not to walk nearly as much. Every New Yorker here misses the walking. You have to plan your walks, if you want to take them, and take them you must.

Global warming has hit the Valley, like every place else. This means it doesn't get that cold in the winter -- it barely went to single digits last winter -- but we get a lot of moisture, and that's meant lots and lots of snow. This summer has given us so much rain it's really hurt the hay crop, and also the strawberries. Be prepared for all kinds of weather, all the time. It changes quickly.

If you can afford it, buy a house with a garage. It makes a big difference on those cold mornings when you have to go to work, especially if it's snowed.

You will probably have to drive into town to get the NY Times, if it's still publishing when you move here. Get it early, it sells out.

You will not find the deep diversity here, such as food, music, people, languages, country of origin, that you find in New York. But you will find really superb versions of all that; there's a much wider variety than you might think, and you don't have to dig hard to see it.

One thing that surprised me about living here is all the various meditation retreats and sitting opportunities. Within an hour of Northampton are major centers of pretty much every major Buddhist tradition, and even more places to sit and study.

Don't go blindly killing wildlife and plants that are unfamiliar. That snake that suns on the rocks next to our driveway eats all kinds of small vermin and bugs. Ditto the bats that swoop around. We had a bat in our living room recently and it was no big deal at all. Check things out first and see what's dangerous and what's not.

I advocate keeping your cats in doors. They kill all kinds of birds and small animals and don't eat them, and they themselves often fall prey to bigger predators, coyotes and fishers, in particular. They can also get diseases out there. Pretty much everyone here does, except the folks who adopted a stray.

Check out the community events -- town fairs, book sales, ski and skate sales, pancake breakfasts, church suppers, high school plays and musicals. Don't be a snob. They're fun and you increasingly see people you know. Many of these are regularly scheduled so just watch the paper.

It bears repeating: Don't be a snob. The community is very small and very tight. Everyone knows everyone else, and most of the people I've met are really interesting, doing all kinds of cool things. Talk down to your plumber, ignore the cashier at the food coop, and pretty soon you will find yourself with no one to talk to.

Subscribe to the Hampshire Gazette. If you live in the Valley, it's your hometown paper. It's where you get all the news, its website is excellent, and like any paper, it's fun to rag on it when it screws up. Essential.

Feel free to add your own.

Missing New York City

2009-07-15T11:50:00.003-04:00

This is what I miss about New York City:

I miss stuff like this, everyone of every race and gender sharing a moment, a common experience, working through a commonly shared emotion. When I described this video to someone recently she said sure but this kind of thing rarely happens. But you know, I saw it everywhere, all the time. Maybe not in big ways, but certainly in little ones. Interactions with the bus driver. Smiling at people in the park. Chatting with people at the next table in the restaurant. The drycleaner who smiled and chatted with me whenever I went in. The extraordinary Community Bookstore on 7th Avenue. Lots and lots of warm fuzzy feelings at PS 261, Lily's old school. Even when I first moved there and the subway took tokens and they still cost a dollar, I could use a token as money. I didn't do it often but if I didn't have change I'd offer that and I was never turned down. That was way cool.

It's the little things, the things that make you feel like you are in this enormous organic thing called New York City, and you are all in it together, trying to get along. Forget the guys in their limos and penthouses, they're not really New York. Or they are, I suppose, but not the New York I miss. I miss those of us little people just trying to share very limited space and air and sun, and doing it the best we knew how. The best of my Brooklyn life embodied the word "community."

Not being clear here. A friend who has lived here for generations was complaining recently about New Yorkers who come in and throw their money around, and how much the locals don't like them. I realized later that in New York, we didn't like those people either. We didn't like people who routinely talked loudly on their decks at 11 at night. We didn't like people who came in with expectations and assumptions. People who got priced out of Manhattan so they settled for Brooklyn. Go to Westchester!

Someone told me that after Michael Jackson died someone in downtown Northampton blared their car radio and a crowd gathered and danced and sang. She wasn't sure that story was true, but I like to think it was; it's important to keep singing and dancing together. We're a community, here and there. Times like these can bring out the best in us.

Turtle on the road

2009-07-12T10:48:00.008-04:00

On the way to Dover yesterday I took some friends of Lily's home to Amherst and just as we drove past Flayvors of Cook Farm (fantastic ice cream) I saw some people on the left on the side of the road, and garbage bag floating on the right. So I slowed down a little and was glad I did, because the garbage bag turned to be what I think was a huge snapping turtle crawling into the field next to the road. Yikes! They get up to 15 inches, I gather. This guy was really big, like the size of a bike helmet.

Reunion #3

2009-07-12T10:06:00.002-04:00

Last night I went to my third reunion this spring, the 40th anniversary of the Charles River Creative Arts Program in Dover, and now I am trying to figure out how to get Lily there as a camper.

First, some background: The camp is basically classes of all kinds of arts -- music, drama, textiles and costume design, art of all kind, writing, photography, media, etc. Also swimming and Ultimate and stuff like that. The day is broken into about six periods and a kid makes her schedule out of 130+ classes. It's all by choice and availability. So you could have Show Tunes first period and costume design second and cartooning third and ceramics fourth, stuff like that. There's a constant buzz of energy and creativity. I think 500+ kids, and outstanding teachers, experts in every area.

This is from the camp's website: "On the last day of each four-week session, the performing and visual arts created by campers are displayed and performed in an Arts Festival. Families and friends are welcome and encouraged to participate. The festival will conclude with an evening performance of the program's original musical with all elements produced and performed by students under professional direction."

It's gotten lots of grants and support over the years and has turned into a model for arts camps all over the country. Really wonderful program. I went to the camp in the seventies as a camper when I was 11 and 12, and then as a CIT when I was 15 and 16, I think. For almost the entire time it's been run by two members of the Dewey family, Nissy Dewey, now in her late 80s, who I gather took the camp from what was basically a crazy, disorganized -- but fun -- idea to the shape of it now, and Toby Dewey, her son, who has headed it for many years and has continued to hire extraordinary professionals.

I've been debating going. Reunions are so emotionally draining and I hadn't been back to camp since I left 30 years ago. Dave and Lily didn't want to go, certainly. It's almost two hours away and it was evening event. Yesterday, as I drove to the reunion, I asked myself why was I doing this? I'd been up since five am and at four pm, when I had to leave, had already picked something like 30 pounds of strawberries, cleaned about 20 pounds, had entertained our picking partners and their families for lunch-plus, and was on my way taking two of the kids home.

As I ran down the list, I rejected going to feed my ego, say, look at me and see how I turned out. I didn't go to see anyone I knew, because I didn't think I'd know a soul. It was partly sentimental, to see what the place looked and felt like. But mostly, I went because Toby Dewey asked me to. He was organizing this, it was important to him, he wanted us to go, and I wanted to show up for him. For him, and for the whole Dewey family, who have really made that camp what it is today, an extraordinary, happy, creative, buzzing wild place.

It was so worth it. The first person I saw remembered me, although I didn't remember her until I quite a bit later, and I couldn't fake it. I saw the Deweys (there's also Kippy and Peter, Toby's siblings) especially dear Nissy, who kept encouraging me to write, write, write! I was so talented! She taught a playwriting class I was in, me and Dana and Jenny, I think, and we wrote the August show, Rip's New Wrinkle, about the sleeping guy being out for 200 years, not 20, and waking up in 1972.

And I saw dear Louis Hutchins, probably one of the nicest people from one of the nicest families ever to live, also with his really nice wife. We talked a long time, reminiscing and sharing notes about the crazy, wild seventies, how off the wall they were in some ways. We caught up on families and mutual friends and former camp mates. It was such a gift, to meet him again, and be greeted so warmly, and feel like I had remade a new friend.

I also saw Harley, and Howard, and had a long talk with Howard's partner, and others, and was just thrilled to have made the trek. Thank you, dear Toby. You are a gift, and you gave me a great one by organizing this event, even though I didn't get home until midnight, most of that in a driving rainstorm, caffeinated wildly -- I even stopped at a 7/11 to get coffee, which I never drink, to stave off any hint of doziness -- my hands gripping the steeling wheel, reminding myself I didn't have to go 75 in that storm, just because many others were, the GPS telling me in her clipped British accent where to turn, the iPod set to my song mix, playing very loudly everything from Michael Jackson (RIP) to ABBA to the Stones to Elton John.

I'm a bit burned out today, laying low, taking it easy on this lovely summer morning. Me and the Times and a cup of green tea. And now two blogs in two days! How about that, Kim?

Blog catch-up

2009-07-10T19:58:00.004-04:00

Yup, haven't blogged in more than a month. Ah, me. Haven't done much of any writing, partly because Lily has been out of school since the first week in June and camp ended early, 2:30, or else she didn't have camp. Here's some notes about June:

Bement graduation. Lily was required to go and wanted me to go too. The kids not graduating wore their uniforms, school blazer, white collared shirt, khaki skirts/pants, and made two rows up the sidewalk. All the graduates walked between them, one by one. The best part of the ceremony was the red-tailed hawks circling above the whole time, watching us. At one point the third grade sang a song (it sounded fabulous, but I was told later that the tape they sang along to included a whole choir of kids; disappointing)and at the end, a couple hawks gave their haunting cry. Go to this link on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and scroll down to listen to their call. Best part of the day for me.

My 30th high school reunion: I graduated from Milton Academy in 1979, and was really happy to be able to go back this June for reunion. I wish more people showed up, although I was happy to see the ones who did. Unfortunately, two women I really wanted to see didn't come until the evening, and we had already left.

Dave and Lily were highly bored and won't come back again, although I was very happy to show the place to Lily. It was an essential part of who I am; it was solace and comfort at a time when I was troubled, not to mention an extraordinary education, and my teachers and the other adults there were devoted and fabulous. I didn't love every single one, but I adored many. Three of my very favorite teachers were there this day, the three who always go to reunion, Sarah Wehle, my Latin teacher, John Banderob, my algebra teacher, and my counselor Ellie Griffin. I am so grateful to these people, and to Milton in general.

Lily's June consisted of art camp for two weeks, which she always enjoyed. One of the few (only?) camps that opens the second week in June, for the private school kids. Thank god! Then she was off for two weeks and we drove to Washington DC and back over four days. We stayed with our friends Anne and Jamie, whose daughter Grace was one of Lily's first friends. They met when they were a year old, at preschool. They hadn't seen each other in a couple of years but they picked right back up and had a great time visiting.

I saw not a thing in DC; I was there to see my friends, and decided to skip the sights, most of which I've seen several times. So my friend Betsy came over for breakfast with our hosts, and then, while our friends took Lily to the Air and Space Museum, Dave and Betsy and I went to Politics and Prose, the best bookstore I've ever been in. We met our friends Nancy and Eric -- I met Betsy the first day of school when I was a freshman at Johns Hopkins, and Nancy was her roommate. They stayed roommates while I dropped out but we've all stayed close ever since. It was wonderful just to chat and visit for a couple of hours.

DC-Baltimore-New Jersey. On the way back home we stopped in Baltimore to spend a night with Dave's cousin and family. Lovely! Then another night, this time in New Jersey, with my cousin and family, and then breakfast with my father and stepmother. All this driving was helped considerably by our brand-new GPS, which we have been saving for for some time. Maps make you far more aware of your surroundings, and more independent. But there's something to be said for a GPS, especially when you are driving city streets. We had a couple of hours to kill so we stopped at the Baltimore Art Museum just before closing and caught the phenomenal Cone sisters' collection of Matisse and other works. Lovely! And lovely to show Lily and Dave yet another school I'd gone to, albeit briefly. But the people I met there have stayed my friends ever since.

Two weeks off. I was a little anxious about having two weeks off with Lily and nothing scheduled besides this trip. But we had this trip, and I got a sitter a couple of days so I could go to yoga. We went to visit my mother and Don for a night just before the 4th, lovely to see them as always. Lily and her cousin Jonah went to dinner at Friendly's with Don, and I made the mistake of saying she could get anything she liked. So two orange sodas, chicken fingers, fries, and an ice cream sundae later, she was very sick to her stomach. She didn't lose it all but I gather it was close.

More reunions were up next up for me. My friend Susan from high school, one of the women I'd wanted to see but hadn't, made the drive from Gloucester, on the north shore of Massachusetts, for the afternoon and dinner. I cannot say how enormously flattered I was and am. I was so touched and pleased. The weather was crappy so we sat on the sofa while Lily was distracted by TV, and talked and talked and talked. Susan has been in construction management but is making the transition to counseling. She stayed for dinner and then drove home. What a wonderful gift!

And I was only to be given yet another, similar gift. Another friend from my class at high school who lives in Idaho couldn't come to reunion but was visiting her family in Brookline on her way to New Hampshire. So she and her kids drove a couple of hours out of their way to have lunch with me and Lily. Again, what a gift! Molly is a French teacher at her local Waldorf school and raises sheep and knits incredible things. Her girls were wonderful.

Thank you, friends. I am honored to have you in my life.

Camping was next up. This was last week, the week of the 4th, and you may remember it poured all the time. We were to go camping with friends at Myles Standish State Park in S. Carver, southeastern Massachusetts. But our friends had a medical emergency and had to cancel and we were anxious about all the rain. Dave had given me a new, very sturdy tent for my birthday, so we decided to take a chance and give it a test drive. As it turned out we were on a bluff just above Barrett's Pond, if you know the park, and while it was incredibly windy it never rained.

Dave had also gotten a hammock, and although I was worried about Lily being bored without kids for three days, she read in the hammock almost the entire time. We hiked a little and got lost. We swam in the pond. We sat in the sun and tried to dry out from being soggy and moldy for all of June. We drove into Plymouth twice, once on the night of the Fourth to see fireworks, and once on our way home on Sunday to go Plimoth Plantation and Mayflower II. Oh, and Plymouth Rock. (That was amusing; a smallish boulder surrounded by a colonade, designed by McKim, Mead, and White, with a grate on the ocean side to let the tide in. Dave noticed it had split so someone had patched it with cement. Silly!)

The ship and the rock were pretty lame, but the plantation was pretty cool, for two reasons. One, they've tried to modernize the truth about how the Pilgrims actually were an early wave of the genocide of the Native People living here already. They have a Wampanoag village with Native people wearing authentic clothes and doing authentic chores and crafts, such as cooking, beading, and making a dugout canoe (with fire). Those people are not role-playing.

But then you go down the path and meet people dressed in 17th century clothes role-playing the Pilgrims. They are specific people and they have the accent and the entire backstory down cold. I was given parenting advice by two women (one was a very pregnant Pricilla Alden) daubing clay on the walls of a new chicken coop (the less labor a child does, the more the mother does) and got into several conversations with Feare Allerton, I think her name was. Her father was Brewster, and my friend Sylvia is a descendent. Dave took our photo so I could send it to Feare's "cousin" in New Amsterdam.

Years ago I met Emily Dickinson in the Concord Inn, in Concord, Massachusetts, and when without thinking I told her I'd flown there she laughed and said, In what, a hot air balloon? So this time I tried to have a conversation with Feare on her terms. We discussed midwifery, and where I had come from (100 miles west by carriage "but there are no roads!" I said we made do, but I kicked myself later for not saying, "you'd be surprised") and her a-forementioned cousin in New Amsterdam.

I kept going away and then coming back, and at the end after we'd said goodbye, I turned back quickly and said, "You're very good!" She gave me a big grin and said, "And you are a wonderful guest!" That made my day. I told the woman at the gift shop about her and asked her to convey my compliments. These people aren't actors, apparently, they are just local people who are very big history buffs. They read histories about the time, and primary sources from the time, and an newbie works with an experienced person, and sometimes they switch and have to learn an entire new accent. I was so impressed. She was fun.

Camp today. Finally, June has ended, and so has most of the rain, and Lily started at Camp Norwich, the Y camp she went to last summer. She loves it, and I gotta say, she has really matured this year. She sounded accepting and willing about everything. She says some kids are kind of icky, but she can handle them -- and tonight she noted that kids that can be icky at school can be really nice at summer camp. She got a part in the play, Really Rosie, and she's playing Bonnie, as in One Was Johnny (but the cast is mostly girls so they changed it).

Lily is truly growing up. She is playing two instruments this summer, continuing with flute and starting piano. She is also doing a couple of pages of math four or five times a week without complaining. She is helpful. She is very, very tall, almost as tall as I am (probably 5-2 now), and she can sit in the front seat, per doctor's orders (at least five feet tall).

And, she has pierced ears. That's a story I should blog, it was pretty cool. I promise to try to put more photos up here, like of Lily. And I want to do a little photo essay of Chance, our cat. Stay tuned. Oh, and I should talk about the New Century Theatre, our local summer stock subscription.

One final point: Harry Potter 5 opens on Wednesday and I am very sorry I won't be in Brooklyn to watch the first showing with my friends Charlene and Alyssa. I saw 3 with them, and 4 with Char, and it was a wonderful tradition, much like volunteering at the Community Bookstore the night the 5th book was released. But, as Tom Lehrer says, I digress.

Yoga update

2009-06-03T20:25:00.002-04:00

So after a couple of months of doing this lukewarm yoga thang three or four times a week, I definitely notice a difference. I have hit that wonderful, glorious point where it hurts not to exercise. If I don't go to yoga, I feel it in my back and legs, and my sore left shoulder is much stiffer. But if I go to yoga, no matter how stiff I am going in, I feel better looser and stronger and lighter. That's progress. As an old lady of 48 I am still stiff at night, but I know better how to fix that now.

I don't want to go. But at night I lay out my yoga clothes (they get soaking wet each class so I have to wash them every day) and in the morning, I wake up, put on my yoga clothes, get Lily to the bus, and just go to yoga. I often find myself on the mat doing a ragdoll or a downdog wondering, how did I get here? When did I get here?

The first 15 minutes are awful, usually; I'm stiff, weak, tired, I can't stay in the poses, my brain is really crazy, my hamstrings ache, and I want it to be over. We do about 45 minutes standing and 45 minutes lying down. That also includes some inversion time. It's a pretty typical routine; rarely are there surprises in the order of poses, and it's easier for my mind to wander now because I don't have to pay as strict attention. But it still surprises me when we come to back bends and start the prone/supine positions. I think, wait, we're halfway through? And often, like today, all of a sudden it's 90 minutes later and I am finishing up shivasana, corpse pose, and I'm thinking, how did I get here?

The other day I was late and missed class, so I went for a bike ride instead. I couldn't believe how much easier it was! I am stronger and more flexible and I have more lung capacity. Last Friday I knew I couldn't go but I couldn't imagine not doing yoga that day so I took out my mat and did a half hour on my own. It felt nice. But then we were away for the weekend and I didn't get any exercise, and then on Monday Lily was sick for the day. And oh, did I pay on Tuesday morning!

Adventures in gardening

2009-06-03T19:28:00.006-04:00

Dave was a bit annoyed recently because our local freecycle.com said subscribers could no longer ask about plants. But not much later he reported that a new freecycle list had started, called ChlorophyllPV, but it only had three subscribers. A day later there were more than 70. And he's been happily responding to all the offers of shade plants for our poor, devastated front yard.

Devastated because when our power went out last fall we had to have a trench dug from one end to the other in order to get at the cable coming in from the street. But it was a great way to get rid of some of the hated pachysandra, and it sparked our brain cells. After our electric was fixed our electrician came back for several diseased hemlocks, which we allowd him to chop down to use as firewood. He left the branches for us to chip. Next we got a visit from an organic, naturalistic landscaper, who is working on a plan for us as we speak. And he mentioned grinding the dozen stumps on our yard, which turned out to be pretty pricy but totally worth it, except that now we have great deep holes all over our yard instead of stumps. Then a guy came in and chipped up the branches.

And now, our shade plants. This weekend Dave raided his mom's garden and the back of our car was filled with hostas, and a hydrangea. Then he arranged for me to go to a couple of ChlorophyllPV folks and pick up their shade offerings, including lilies of the valley, sweet woodruff, aretemia (?), myrtle, and I don't know what else. Yesterday the lily-of-the-valley lady showed me where to from, and I kinda hacked at it until she stopped me and showed me what to do. I'm an amateur, I said apologetically, and she hung around and encouraged me as I dug up her plants, four or five shopping bags worth.

I told the second plant-giver right at the top that I was an amateur and that I was here for my husband, and she happily gave me a tour of her lovely yard, apologizing all the while for the messiness. I guess it was a bit messy, because she'd been away for several months, but I really like that kind of messy. She kept saying, do you want myrtle? How about some lily-of-the-valley? Would you like loosestrife? I knew Dave hadn't wanted the loosestrife and I had just gotten the lily OTV the day before. But I took the myrtle, only to realize we have quite a lot of it. Oh well. She gave me more stuff, including forget-me-nots, and showed me how to dry the little seed pods and plant those. I got four or five shopping bags from her too.

So after Dave came home tonight, around his usual five, we donned insect repellent--why do I always get inspired to do this gardening thing in the early evening?--and braved the elements to dig up about three or four feet around half of one of our enormous oaks out by our mailbox. Any gardening I do right now is as close to the street as I can get it, because it's the part that everyone sees--we're on a cul-de-sac and we have a trailhead at the end of our road, so there's a lot of walkers--and I want to discourage people from allowing their dogs to poop on our yard. I have found quite a lot of that stuff out front, and I think the better the yard looks the less likely someone will be to allow their dog to wreck it.

At any rate, tonight I pitched up around about a third of the oak and we got a couple of wheelbarrows of mulch from a pile our neighbors dumped last year. Yes, I asked, and we'll probably pay half of the next load, something like that. And then Dave planted some hostas, interspersed with some of the lilies-of-the-valley. I think it'll look nice when it's all filled in and blooming, and for now, at least it looks a little cared for.

In case it wasn't obvious, I am not a gardener. I am an amateur. But we got this place and more than not wanting it to look like a construction site, I want to enjoy my yard. I like being outside, I like being around plants and soil and yes, even the bugs--in small doses. And if I can learn something about gardening and plants in the meantime, so much the better. I have no idea what I'm doing, but what's emerging is, I'm doing the next right thing. I'm taking this one step at a time, and that seems to be working pretty well.

Still to come: a truckload of top soil or loam to fill in the holes, and shape the hill by the front door. And maybe some more mountain laurel to go on that hill, and who knows what else. And weeding in the front along the street, and maybe eventually putting down more mulch and planting other interesting shade-loving things. And of course, mulching around the other four or five oaks.

West Side Story was disappointing

2009-05-31T17:54:00.006-04:00

I hate to say that. We spent a lot of money on the tickets, $121 each for seven seats, and that was before the fees. And I think the show stands up all these years later. The music is outstanding and the orchestra was great. The dancing was very good. I liked the cast in this production, all except for Tony--one of our party said perhaps my objection was that he seemed very "American Idol," if you know what I mean, and I think that was accurate. American Idol in that he was too self-conscious, too commercial, he sang to the audience, you could watch him wanting to connect with the audience, and his singing was just plain, oh, icky. That's a technical term. Oh, and Lt. Shrank sounded like he was reading his lines. Bad actor, or miscast.

Still, our crowd liked it, and Lily really liked it, and I cried in the end. It's a nice piece of work, even though I do agree with Stephen Sondheim that the lyrics are pretty much awful. Krupke is okay. Not much else. And I kind of didn't get what they were doing with There's A Place for Us, which was sung by a boy standing with Tony and Maria, looking like he was supposed to be their son, while Sharks and Jets danced together, smiling, bathed in a warm light. Also the ending was odd: Only a couple of gang members showed up for Maria's big speech about the gun and how many bullets does it have. I wanted to see all the surviving members of both gangs, and their girls. It felt lonely.

Dave and Lily and I had seen Guys and Dolls on Broadway recently, and that got bad reviews. It was badly cast, the orchestration was bad, the set was appalling, the attempts at updating and adding were silly (Nathan Detroit runs a hotdog stand at the end, called Nathan's. Get it? Ugh), and it was just bad. We knew that, and wanted to see it anyway, wanted to show it to Lily, in my on-going effort to educate her about musicals and theater, and this is one of the great musicals in the world. Probably my most favorite ever.

But West Side Story! I thought it got good reviews, but maybe I'm wrong. What astonished me were the glaring technical mistakes, mostly the lights. Even Lily noticed. The lights were just wrong, and I don’t understand how, because all those cues are computerized. The person calling the show, usually the assistant stage manager, says things like, "electrics 47, warning," about 20 seconds before cue 47. About five seconds before she says, "electrics 47, stand by." Brief pause. "Go!" And the person on the light board hits a switch and the hundreds of appropriate lighting instruments do their thing, go stronger or fade or turn off or whatever, all at the appropriate time, a time that has been programmed in to the computers weeks ago.

But in this case, lights would randomly turn on and off and get brighter and dimmer, for no apparent reason except to distract the audience. The lights in the tenements, seen all through the balcony scene, for instance, flicked on and off. All of a sudden in the middle of a Tony and Maria scene, I forget which one, a big blast of blue hit them square on. During their wedding scene an ellipsoidal lighting instrument starts rotating right above us, really loudly. Additionally, the spotlight operator never seemed able to find his mark and would wander all over the stage. There were musicians in each of the boxes, and the one near us had a glaring music light that wasn’t gelled and it shone right into our eyes.

Other problems included several times singers who weren't keeping up with the orchestra. An understudy noticeably screwed up the lyrics to Officer Krupke. We had the matinee understudy syndrome, five or six were out, which I kind of get when the show's been around a while. But in this case it had just opened!

One of my great joys about going to live theater, especially something a splashy Broadway musical, is watching the best of the best do their job. The best lights, set, costumes, stage management, as well as actors, singers, and dancers. And that certainly disappointed this time. I am one of those out-of-towners now, the people who save their money for the big show, buy the tickets weeks in advance, drive into the city for the weekend, go out to eat, all that, and then really don't want to be disappointed. For the $75 TKTS Guys and Dolls, I wasn't so crushed. I knew what I was getting. But this! Very disappointing.

Amazing Lily

2009-05-21T08:18:00.005-04:00

I have to say I am so enjoying Lily right now. I understand that kids--and people general, perhaps--go through phases and growth spurts, and of course, this too shall pass. But right now, school is winding up--the last day of class is June 3--the weather is at last warm, our thoughts are turning to summer, and camps, and camping, the asparagus is fresh and wonderful, and Lily is a delight to be around.

She's fun, she's funny, she's listening to me and taking my suggestions, like reading new books--I talked to Jess, a children's librarian at the Jones Library in Amherst who gave me five or six books, all of which I borrowed, and am making Lily read. The first one was a chore and then she realized how great they are and she's zooming through the rest. We like to play flute duets together. We have fun shopping together, and yesterday I even left her home alone for 45 minutes while I went to the food coop to get dinner. She's got a new bike that fits much better and wants to bike to school and to her flute lesson (!). She's going to hike Monadnock next week with school! This is a big-deal mountain, her biggest, and she's going to be way pooped afterward. I climbed it as a new 7th grader at the Charles River School and remember it as a wonderful time.

She's relaxed, and just a lot of fun to be around. Not every single time, but then, who is, every single time? I like that she's developing a sense of who she is and what she needs to take care of herself, and then she's doing those things. She gets to bed on time (mostly), for example, because she knows how cranky she gets trying to get up the next day.

We did get her the iPod. We gave it to her Monday maybe Tuesday night, and she was utterly surprised. We got a bright purple Nano, very modern, and she is having great time syncing it to her iTunes, which is mostly Broadway musicals. She's been going through my song list to see what she wants -- definitely the Dixie Chicks, she says, she likes the Dixie Chicks -- and playing the games and generally learning the care and feeding of an expensive electronic devise. One of her first reactions was about how now she'd be able to relate to the kids at school, who all have iPods and Nintendos. Not that they'd be friends with her, necessarily, but she wouldn't feel so left out.

To that end, we let her stay up and watch the finale of American Idol last night, which stretched into two hours, mostly horrible commercials. What a crappy show! I don't think Dave or I had ever seen it before, but it was mostly what we expected. We don't really watch much commercial TV and things like a giant Ford ad, with the two finalists receiving Ford cars, was treated as a new music video and not the ad that it was. In the end, of course, the two guys get the cars as gifts. And then there were more commercials. Dave and I also hated the way they made fun of the earlier, terrible singers. Yuck.

But it was fun explaining to Lily who all the ancient performers were, Queen (and of course Adam Lamont or whatever his name could have the perfect gig there, right? as lead singer?) and KISS, and a geriatric Rod Stewart. I did like hearing Carlos Santana play guitar. That was way cool. Lily liked all the music, more than we did. And now she has something to talk about at recess. Quite a balance, that: the social thing of knowing about TV shows and music and movies, and not having enough time just to read and watch good movies and go to museums and shows. I don't think I'm a snob about all this other stuff, it's just that I don't have time to watch it and to get the downtime I need.

Lily has also just come through three days of ERBs, standardized tests that Bement uses to gage how the school and the kids are doing, and to introduce the kids to these kinds of tests. She actually said they were fun, and easy. She liked filling in the bubbles.

She’s really gotten into music this year, between two choruses and flute lessons. She’s also starting piano in June. She had a solo in one chorus and played the flute in another. All her music teachers comment on how musical she is, Sarah, her flute teacher, particularly, who's really excited about how good Lily’s gotten just since she started lessons in January. Her tone is lovely, and Sarah says she’s making really good instinctual choices when she plays.

The iPod was also a reward for working so hard both academically and socially this year. She's much more easy going, much less moody. She's got more of a sense of humor and she doesn't fly off the handle shrieking and slamming doors nearly as much. She almost never whines these days, unless she's tired or stressed. She doesn't complain about kids at school any more, really, and she had a fantastic time at Nature's Classroom, the three days, two nights camp she went to with school in April. Because of that, she now does sleepovers, and had a great one this past weekend with her friends Lily and Adeline, who live around the corner. What a find that friendship has been! How wonderful they are here!

Lily has found her way at Bement. She's improved so much in math that she’s being moved into the advanced group. This spring she routinely aced the tests. She has a great number sense, her math tutor says (yes, even though we pay tution, for some reason she had to have a tutor, but that's been a find, a great gift). She likes math, she enjoys it, and that’s the best thing I could hope for.

Socially Bement is hard because it's small, and everyone comes from some place else, and her friends live at least 20-30 minutes away. (Gosh, I drive a lot! I hate it. I won't miss that next fall.) I've told her I suspect that JFK, her new middle school, would probably be like Camp Norwich socially, and she loves that camp. A guidance counselor at JFK agreed; a lot of kids from JFK go there.

Middle school will be a mix of kids she’ll like and kids she won’t, and thankfully, the friend pool will be much bigger, 200 kids verus 27, and mostly local, mostly Northampton. I told her that she'll find the artsy kids, the kids in band, the kids who are political and interesting. In the fall we expect she'll keep up with the chorus and the flute and I hope the piano, and also her theater improv class, and who knows what else. And she's psyched to get a locker. Of course.

To the Editor: Barak Obama's graduation address vs. Barbara Bush's

2009-05-18T15:47:00.007-04:00

To the Editor:

I am heartened to see in 2009 the occasion of Obama's invitation to address the Notre Dame graduation is being used as a way to discuss the many different opinions on abortion in this country. No one seems to be spending much time talking about how disrespectful the objectors are being to the president of the United States.

Too bad the 150 seniors at Wellesley College who asked for a second graduation speaker in addition to Barbara Bush, were not afforded the same courtesy in 1990. Think of the wonderful exploration of the meaning of feminism we could have had, the dialogue about the value of staying home with children or going into the workforce, the importance of choice, the affect economics has on such decisions. Too bad much of the country felt it necessary to focus on the manners of those questioning, sincere college seniors. Maybe we have made some progress in the last two decades.

sincerely & etc.

chicks, rain, Star Trek, sexism

2009-05-18T15:21:00.006-04:00

-- Yes to the Nano. She gets it tonight, we think.

-- Last Friday I called Amherst Farm Supply about getting a wood stove for the living room. The recorded message I heard had this peculiar noise in the background, very loud, and as I listened, I quickly realized what it was. The message said, "The chicks have come in and you must pick them up today." The sound I was hearing was the peeping of what must have been thousands of baby chickens, just a day or two old. I never heard that when I called Home Depot in Brooklyn.

-- The weather is a drag. I mean, it's very cool and that's lovely. I can even deal with the gray, and the rain. But we aren't getting that wonderful warm, sunny, seventies weather I'd looked forward to in February and March. My fear is we will wake up very soon and it'll be in the nineties. From the fifties to the nineties overnight just isn't fair. On the other hand, the trees have all leafed out, and that's just thrilling. How do they know to do that, every year, right on schedule! Incredible.

-- Last week we saw the new Star Trek movie, the four of us: Lily, Dave, me, and Dave's mom. It was the first kind of adult movie we've taken Lily to in the movie theater. She's seen stuff on Netflix at home, movies like the remake of The Ladykillers, which Dave ordered by mistake, thank goodness. I loved the original with Alec Guiness and wanted to share it with my family. This remake was by the Coen brothers, so you can't go too wrong there, made in 2004, and set in southern Mississippi. It was really great, not too violent. But every other word out of one character's word was the f word or the mother-f word, or other street angry lingo. Lily and Dave were a bit uneasy with all the language, but I figured I'd seen Cabaret when I was 11 and Lily would be okay with a more sophisticated movie every now and then. I intend to take her to Harry Potter 6 when it comes out this summer.

At any rate, the Star Trek movie was a lot of fun, especially for someone like me, who gets the Scotty and McCoy jokes, but doesn't know enough to care that Kirk's brother saw him off when he went to the academy - there's been a time warp yet again -- gosh those black holes come in handy! -- and now the Trek movies can go off onto an alternate reality. I suppose that means that Kirk could be a very different person from the one we saw in the sixties; it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the sequels.

The cast was great and the special effects really awesome. This is the kind of movie you need to see on the big screen, although Lily wanted them to turn it down, said it was too loud. With any luck she'll keep her Nano turned down enough so she doesn't burn out her eardrums by the time she's 20, like everyone else.

And now Lily wants nothing more than to watch reruns of the original Trek. I've been watching a few with them, and they are great, campy and fun. But you know, I can see why I never gravitated to them. They are so unbelievably sexist, it's painful to watch. Every girl and woman wants Kirk, and he accomodates them as much as he can. Every woman is an idiot in short skirts, at least the shows we've seen so far. I love how Gene Roddenberry gets so much credit for having black and Russian and Chinese crewmen in the sixties--but the women are in their same old boring role. What a bore. It's hard to stomach.

Should Lily get a Nano for graduation from elementary school?

2009-05-14T14:20:00.002-04:00

Dave wonders if we should just give her the iPod that he doesn’t use (my old one, four+ years old and now discontinued), or show her how to use the MP3 player she already has (I’m not sure what that is but it was free from work).

Here are my arguments in favor:

--She gets a lot of hand-me-down stuff already.

--This would be a reward for a job well done. This has been a tough year for Lily socially, and she also really struggled with math this year. Two weeks into school we were seriously considering yanking her right then and putting her in a different school. We had parent/teacher conferences this week and her homeroom teacher said it's like she's a different kid than this fall. Both teachers said she has grown up a lot this year, and things don't seem to bother her nearly like they used to. And after six months of math tutoring her teacher is putting her into the advanced group because she's so good at math; after a lot of hard work, she's really turned the math around too.

--It’s her last year at Bement, which has been a mixed experience, but mostly positive.

--At last, after two and a half years, she seems to be on the other side of the move; she’s much more settled socially and doesn’t talk about how much she misses Brooklyn any more. Last night we were talking about lunch and she said, "I wish we hadn't moved!" My heart sank. "I really miss talking to Kes," she continued. Oh! Her school switches lunch tables every couple of weeks, and that's the move she was referring to. She hasn't talked about missing Brooklyn for six months, at least.

--She’s really excited about middle school. Gosh, she's grown up a lot this year! Her new haircut makes her look so much older, not to mention the fact that she's now five feet and growing, and is maturing physically as well. She's going into sixth grade in the fall and she's almost 11 years old. This feels like a really big transition year.

--I told her she could pierce her ears this summer and she wants to but is still too scared of the pain.

--She's really into music. She is playing a mean flute these days, her teacher is really impressed, and she has only had lessons since January. She's also going to take piano these summer and see how she likes that. She's learned to sing this year, in two different choruses. She had a voice solo in one and has a flute solo in the other. She's in band. All her music teachers say she's really musical.

--I feel somewhat guilty for being a Luddite. We have computers and WiFi and all, but we don't have cable and we never get around much to taking her to movies or other hip stuff like that. So she doesn't always get her friends' conversation, like when it's about American Idol, say, or that dancing one. I don't care if she doesn't watch the Red Sox or can't remember if the Celtics are hockey or basketball. And she really wants to use her money and buy a Nintendo DS, and I think we're going to let her.

--She can really show it off. She'll get a lot of brief attention if she brings it in on one of the last days of school.

--The Nanos are wicked cool! These new ones are fun and they come in fabulous colors! She'll love it. She'll have a great time loading songs and playing it and showing it off. And we can now give her iTunes gift certificates as a present.

So I want to honor all that with a new, fancy iPod. Too much? Do it anyway?

one response to my letter

2009-05-08T20:17:00.003-04:00

Lots of interesting discussion about torture on my FB page. Here's a message I got on FB from someone I don't know. He lives in Pittsburgh, though, and he's in his early 60s.

A partial answer to your question "what kind of person does this to another person." People from North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, China, the USSR, WWII people in Germany and Japan, and many leftist regimes in Central & South America today, plus I'm sure many more. And of course any Doctor or nurse who has sucked the brains out of or dismembered an unborn baby.

My letter is in today's New York Times

2009-05-08T08:35:00.001-04:00

Here's the link to my letter. Scroll to the bottom.

And here's what I said:

To the Editor:

With all this talk about what defines torture, I’d like to know what kind of person does this to another person. That is, what kind of person strips someone, hoods him, slaps him, slams him against a wall, places him in “stress positions” or isolation for prolonged periods of time, intimidates him with a dog, and yes, straps him onto a board and pours water down his throat in order to make him think he is about to die. And does this repeatedly, for weeks and months at a time.

I would be mortified if my child grew up to think these actions aren’t torture. But I would find it unspeakable to know that I had raised a child capable of inflicting this behavior on another human being, no matter how despicable that person’s presumed crime.

Sasha Nyary
Northampton, Mass., May 6, 2009

We watched two great NYC movies last week

2009-05-05T20:31:00.001-04:00

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Released in 1974 about the hijacking of a subway train. I didn't formally live in the city until 1988, but I visited it enough once my father moved there to know the city portrayed here. What a hilarious, great, quirky, wonderful, wonderful movie.

Man On Wire. Phillippe Petit's high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, also in 1974. The photos of him on the wire made my stomach lurch and it was hard to watch. But I'm so glad he did it, and so glad they made this movie.

They made me proud to be a New Yorker. God, I love New York. That New York, especially. Don't listen to what anyone tells you, that was a great time. I highly recommend both of these movies.

I am one degree from Stephen Colbert

2009-05-05T19:44:00.007-04:00

This is my friend Laurie on the Colbert Report, talking about the Anglican Church:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Laurie Goodstein

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Gay Marriage

And while I'm at it, here's the Colbert Report's gay storm ad:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Gay Marriage

And for old time's sake, Colbert's roast of Dubya at the 2006 White House Correspondence dinner:

Hit the road, Bat!

2009-05-04T15:49:00.004-04:00

I was doing something upstairs on Saturday night and suddenly Dave cried out, "Bat! Bat in the house! Bat!" He said later that he had heard a commotion from the family room and then this flying thing came tearing into the living room, clicking its sonar wildly, followed by Chance. He and the cat converged on the corner by the sofa, looking on the floor at the small creature huddled there.

When I was in my early 20s I listened to a group of women telling terrible stories about how they had killed bats who had somehow gotten into their homes. Tennis racquet, baseball bat, whatever. I felt like Hillel, first they came for the bats, and I kept trying to interject how great bats were and how simple it was to get rid of them: When I was about 10 a bat flew into my sister Bondi's room. Instead of panicking my mother called Angel Memorial, the animal hospital in Jamaica Plain, Boston, and they told her to cover it with a towel, scoop the thing up, and throw it out the window. Simple.

(I feel the same way about snakes. Fortunately, Doug Morrison in elementary school would bring in snakes for show and tell, and talk about how snakes are great, they aren't slimy or scary, and there's no reason to be afraid of them. So before I had a chance to learn to be afraid of them, I knew not to be. Today I love snakes; a friend's son had a corn snake that liked to climb around my waist inside my shirt because it was warm. Although it was intense recently to watch the snake feeding where my sister Cate volunteers; especially when the copperhead bit a live mouse and it writhed a while until it was paralyzed and could be swallowed. It's a snake-eat-mouse world, I guess.)

So I grabbed a beach towel and threw it to Dave. And yes, he scooped the critter up, much to the cat's disappointment, and dashed to the front door, the bat clicking like crazy all the while, trying to figure out what was going on. I grabbed Chance so she wouldn't escape and opened the door for Dave and his, er, companion. "You want a look?" he asked me, and I said no, just let it go, poor thing! So he opened the towel, but instead of flying off immediately, it just lay there. Maybe it was frozen by the light of the house coming through the front door window. We gazed at it in all its creepy glory for several seconds. It really did look like a little vampire. We all got a good look, even Chance, and then it took off into the night.

Chance was pretty excited with another mammal in the house for even a moment, and unfortunately Lily was in the soaking tub and missed it entirely. Dave went around all night singing, "And the bat came back, the very next day . . ." and, "Hit the road, bat, and doncha come back no more no more no more no more . . ." No bats ever got into our apartment in Brooklyn.

And speaking of the local mammals, we haven't seen bears yet, but our neighbors have so we know they are back. This should be cub season; they deliver every other year, I gather, and as cubs were cavorting on our driveway just before we bought the place, we should be seeing the next generation soon. Yes, it's been two years since we moved to Marian Street. Time is a-passing.

J School Reunion

2009-05-01T12:14:00.002-04:00

Being back in New York City last weekend was odd, oddly familiar. I almost didn't go, first because reunions are so weird and I didn't want to pay the money ($125 for two days of talks and lunches and such). Being unemployed is a depressing place to be at a social gathering, especially a graduate school reunion. But I allowed my friends to talk me into it and signed up. Then the day before I hurt my back in yoga and really almost couldn't go. I couldn't get off the sofa, where I was lying on ice packs. But with the help of my amazing chiropractor, Megan Hudson, that pain mostly went away the next day.

So there I was, on Metro North, headed into the city, at 8am. It's handy having my mom live 20 minutes away from New Haven. I got to combine a short visit with her and an overnight, and a cheaper ride into the city. And easier, more productive, because I got to read. Ah, how I miss those subway rides! I realized I could get off in Harlem at 125th street, and to stretch my back I walked over to Columbia. Lovely, although I probably trashed Lily's wheelie suitcase. New York City in the spring really can't be beat. Every side street is a joy, all the pear blossoms and magnolias and forsythia and daffodils. Heaven!

Just before I got to Morningside Park I caught a whiff of Dominican food, that wonderful, familiar aroma, and at once Lily was a toddler and Dave and I were eating breafast with Jenna and Curtis and Joan and Tony at Castillos on 7th and Flatbush at the edge of the Slope. Harry and Ben and Lily were racing around after eating some bites of rice and beans, and we were all relaxing over the last of the coffee, maybe glancing at the Sunday Times. Castillos is now a CVS and Joan and Tony live in Montclair. But our family still loves rice and beans, and nobody makes it like Castillos used to.

Morningside Park sure is steep! and I climbed up and through, and got to the J School just in time for the famous Sam Freedman's famous lecture on writing a book proposal. If I turned around and went home after that, it would all have been worth it. Feel free to email me and I'll send you my notes. He's writing his seventh book, many award-winning, and his former book seminar students have published more than 50 books, also acclaimed, in 15 years. It's the reason many people go to reunion. The rest is gravy.

Good gravy, though. I loved seeing my friends, but just as important, I loved remeeting people I hadn't known, some I might have, in my callow youth (is that redundant?) once dismissed for some stupid, petty reason. At every event, the lectures, the lunches, the Saturday night party at a classmate's apartment, the door would open and I would see someone else to embrace and chat up. These guys are all really nice folks doing really interesting things. For myself, I was also able to help out a bit, to get down time, to walk around and sit on a bench in Central Park, to set my own limits, not to get overwhelmed. Makes a difference.

In addition, I got to see my oldest friend, Blair, from high school, and we spent hours and hours catching up. I realized with a doh! and a forehead slap that it's ridiculously easy to get to New York City, I can easily go down for a night, see Blair, crash on her guest mattress, go for a long walk in Central Park (wonderful! wonderful! the flowers! the warmth! the resevoir, the masses of people! Oh, New York City! Joy!) and make it home in time for dinner with Dave and Lily. What's not to like?

Can't wait for the 25th. And my 30th high school reunion is in June. You bet I'm going.