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

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.

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

"I'm not comfortable on the grass"

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

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

David Fischer walking the long road

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- 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?

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

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

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

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.