tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75383092024-03-07T10:51:15.562-08:00Travels in BoolandHurtling through time and space in a lesbo-nuclear familyelswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.comBlogger574125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-86093690771030664302010-08-27T09:31:00.000-07:002010-08-27T10:34:49.706-07:00Harvest<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLGzkse6qD5VfqEIK6o-3CdbZXeKAJOBOuXuV-_2YanwVXRj64zLWme51DfSNyk9njiuZW8KNGhtgkuiCJ4gU7YEu1d-c6WjPhk141r2X2Ogo4kv6w2Y2Ro-zXHIrQf3xoRR59/s1600/Denmark+%26+Summer+2010+036.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLGzkse6qD5VfqEIK6o-3CdbZXeKAJOBOuXuV-_2YanwVXRj64zLWme51DfSNyk9njiuZW8KNGhtgkuiCJ4gU7YEu1d-c6WjPhk141r2X2Ogo4kv6w2Y2Ro-zXHIrQf3xoRR59/s320/Denmark+%26+Summer+2010+036.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5510128759749924258" border="0" /></a>Here is my garden, as of about a month ago. The snap pea vines, which grew to over 6 feet, were gone by then, and so were the lettuces, but if you can imagine them in the middle there you'll have a pretty good idea of the whole shebang.<br /><br />It's looking a little more ragged and empty these days. The sunflowers are all bloomed little blossoms are blossoming off the side of the stem while the big old droopy first growth sags over at the top. Most of the carrots are picked--turns out the Mermaid Girl loves them beyond all other vegetables, and, flattered, I've been packing them in her camp lunches all week. The zucchini doesn't seem to be amounting to much, despite everyone's dire predictions that I'd have more than I knew what to do with. It appears to have some kind of virus. And there's some corn, but I'm not sure if I planted enough for it to take. But there are still the tomatoes (most of them) to go. It's true, what they say about homegrown tomatoes. They are like a drug. Sometimes I just go out and stick my head in the plants and breathe in.<br /><br />Then there were the potatoes. I hadn't even planned on planting potatoes; it seemed too mysterious and dirty. Not sexy dirty, but literally dirty. I mean, even when you buy potatoes in the store, they're often covered in dirt; how much yuckier would it be to actually grow them yourself? I think I've mentioned I don't even really like dirt that much. Plus there were all these warnings about where to plant them, and how to plant them, and weird diseases and such, and it all seemed like too much trouble.<br /><br />But back in the spring, when I went to pick up the dirt from that woman at my synagogue, just as I was leaving she literally tossed a couple of little plants at me, saying, "Here, want to try a couple of potatoes?" So I shrugged and thanked her and took them, and when I shoveled all the dirt into my garden I stuck them in; why not? Then a few days later, I saw a potato I'd bought-- a supermarket one, not even organic--was too shriveled to eat and was sprouting like crazy, so I stuck it in the ground next to the other potato plants. Again: what the heck?<br /><br />The plants grew and grew-- you can see them in the photo up there, up front, second from the right, just left of the zucchinis--but the thing about potatoes is that you never can tell what's happening underground, and if you dig around to try to find out, you could mess up the whole root structure. I had one false start when I dug a little and found what I at first thought was a real grown potato and then thought was maybe the seed potato, so after that I just left it alone.<br /><br />Until one hot day late last month, when I was spraying the Mermaid Girl (who hasn't liked that name for years and now says she wishes she'd picked another one) and her friend on the trampoline, and I stepped backward onto a rock. Only it wasn't a rock; it was a HUGE purple potato. So once more I dug, filled with hope despite myself, and this is what I found:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtRhXoh4VK7PVXw04VOB_qTIbZEbWbilsGeQcMwuIP_ZR7-sFx0vb9OJgXlZcrDxhu2UtEoEf5JuXYod78TQ_H1ahjFpFm3jf8NXPTL6SogxHEZSLpXgVjaU-ep_x-5VhjmVtk/s1600/Denmark+%26+Summer+2010+035.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtRhXoh4VK7PVXw04VOB_qTIbZEbWbilsGeQcMwuIP_ZR7-sFx0vb9OJgXlZcrDxhu2UtEoEf5JuXYod78TQ_H1ahjFpFm3jf8NXPTL6SogxHEZSLpXgVjaU-ep_x-5VhjmVtk/s320/Denmark+%26+Summer+2010+035.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5510129172628135474" border="0" /></a><br />That's my hand, over on the right: a grownup-size hand, about six or seven inches from fingertip to wrist. So: some substantial potatoes, there.<br /><br />Gardening metaphors are so easy that they feel cheap, but it's true: you can never tell what's growing underground, out of sight. I've been out of sight of this blog all summer, and I wish I had something as substantial as these potatoes to show for it, but mostly I just have a summer. And a garden.<br /><br />And a kid who turns ten years old tomorrow. Tomorrow!<br /><br />A really statistically abnormal bunch of my friends have become dog-owners this year, and it's no coincidence that they all have kids my kid's age (or sometimes older). When I asked, rather plaintively, WHY, I got variations on the same answer: "So there will be SOMEONE who's happy to see me when I come home."<br /><br />I'm a hard-core non-dog person, so maybe that's why I planted a garden this summer: somewhere on the grounds of this house, there is some living being that responds at least kind of predictably to the nurturing I put into it.<br /><br />There's a song I've been singing to myself all summer, from a musical I love, "The Fantasticks". It starts out "Plant a radish, get a radish, never any doubt/ that's why I love vegetables, you know what you're about!" and goes on to complain that while vegetables are dependable, "With children/ It's bewilderin'/You don't know until the seed is nearly grown/Just what you've sown."<br /><br />I love my kid to pieces, RW and I both do, and there are several signs that what we've sown is growing up into an excellent person. But at almost-ten, she's already moving into her own world. Less and less of who she is, who she will become, has to do with us, and what we do or don't do.<br /><br />One thing is for sure, though: the person she is growing into, that person is an intensely private person. Not someone who would be happy to think of her life and times being splashed all over the Interwebs, even pseudonymously. That's the kind of characteristic that you can cutesify and more or less ignore in a four-year-old. In a ten-year-old? Not so much. I've seldom asked her permission to write about her in this space, partly, I'm ashamed to say, because especially as she got older I was generally sure the answer would be a resounding negative. So I'm thinking this is a pretty good time to close up shop, at least for now, on Booland, which hasn't really been Booland (as she hasn't been called Boo) for some years now. It's not the only reason, but it's a big one.<br /><br />Like I said, gardening metaphors are easy; really, you can compare *anything* to planting a seed. When I started this blog, over six years ago, I didn't know what I was planting: just that I needed to write, and I needed community. And blogging has given me what I hoped for, and more. I've been writing for six years, more-or-less (less, these days...) regularly. And I have more friends in the computer than I can count. If you're reading this, you're probably one of them, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say.<br /><br />That's really the end of this post. The rest of this is totally naval-gazey and skippable, unless you are deeply interested in other people's internal worriting:<br /><br />As I write this post, I'm imagining the "oh-no-not-another-one" dread it's inspiring among the few readers still following. I've felt that same sinking feeling, reading the final posts of one favorite blogger after another, these past few years. So I have this urge to apologize: I'm sorry! I could well start blogging again, sometime! Maybe even soon! A relative recently observed that I'm other-directed: I need feedback, I need to share, I don't write (or live) well in isolation. And I think that's true. But I also think that the feedback, the praise, the comment-mongering, can be a drug, more addictive and yet less satisfying than the smell of tomato plants.<br /><br />Here's what I mean: a week or two ago, I wrote a post, or I mean a "note," on Facebook. It was just something I wrote, and then I posted it. And some people commented to say they liked it. And the next day, when I sat down to write something else, there was a little imp, a very familiar little imp, in the back of my brain, chattering under the words I was trying to write: "Will they like this? Will they? Will they like it more than yesterday's? Maybe they won't like it as much. Maybe they'll like it more! Maybe they'll LOVE it! I wonder if they will. Maybe they'll hate it. Maybe no one will comment at all. I wonder if they'll like it?"<br /><br />I know that little imp, way too well. I've fed her copiously for the past six years. And I think I need to give her a rest for a while. I need to figure out a way to balance the other-directedness, which is as much a part of me as my hair and eyes, with the praise-junkie-ness, which is a Problem. So it's really not just respecting my kid's privacy, and not just concerns about my own anonymity and privacy (which has also been compromised, probably inevitably after six years but still a cause for some alarm), and not just that the blog world has changed: it's not her, or them. It's me.<br /><br />So, Booland is done, at least for now. But I'll be around: on Facebook, and following other blogs (because that's one addiction I just can't quit), and, you know, in the Real World too. So if you're a lurker, and you want to stay in touch, comment or email me: elswhere@gmail.com [careful of the spelling; there's no "e" in the middle.]<br /><br />And I'll see you in the ether. Or, well, elsewhere.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-13581853875948782152010-05-16T11:13:00.000-07:002010-05-16T11:32:27.982-07:00Inch By Inch, Row By Row, Part II: In Which I Acquire DirtOh, hi! Was I neglcting my blog? sorry, I didn't mean to. I've just been so busy. In my <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2010/04/inch-by-inch-row-by-row-part-i.html">garden</a>. Planting, and weeding, and watering, and generally being all farmer-y and whatnot.<br /><br />How did it come to this pass, you might ask? How did a die-hard urbanite like me become a...gardener?<br /><br />Well. When last we spoke, I was <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2010/04/inch-by-inch-row-by-row-part-i.html">whining about dirt</a>, and about the impasse that emerged when it became clear that I might need to suck it up and buy some. And that might have continued right up through planting season, had not a timely message come through on my synagogue listserv.<br /><br />I get a lot of messages on my synagogue listserv. Mostly they're about rallies I can't go to, or political/spiritual debates I don't feel like joining. But this one jumped out at me, because the post-er was offering dirt! Free dirt! And she promised it was all organic and compost-rich and worm-casey and good! Someone had bought the land where her garden plot was, and was going to put a garage on it, and she didn't want all her soil to go to waste. All I had to do was reply, and come get it at the appointed time, and I could have all I wanted!<br /><br />When I got to the garden the next Wednesday, it was so crowded I couldn't even find a parking spot. Gosh. I had no idea that dirt was so popular, though really I should've known if I'd thought about it. Not being entirely sure how I was going to contain or transport it, I'd brought a wheelbarrow, a shovel, a big tarp, our yard waste bin, and about 40 little plastic grocery bags. I shoveled a few shovelfuls of dirt into each bag, tied them closed, and put them on top of the tarp in the back of our van. As it turned out, I didn't need the yard waste bin at all. The bags were all snug and tidy piled up on each other in the van, sort of like the pellets of heroin that the heroine swallows in Maria Full of Grace. But much bigger. Like pellets that a huge heroin-smuggling giant would swallow. If dirt were heroin.<br /><br />So. Then I had dirt!<br /><br />By this point, I had weeded one section of my incipient garden patch--the section where RW had planced flowers the year before. The rest of it was so very, very weedy that I despaired. So I only had that one small patch of dirt on which to dump the new organic dirt.<br /><br />But dirt does, in fact, take up space. So I had to shovel out some old dirt to make room for the new dirt. This I accomplished by putting the old, bad dirt into the wheelbarrow, and also dumping some on top of the weeds, and then emptying all the plastic bags into the cleared space in a big hill.<br /><br />Already, gardening was turning out to be much more about logistics than I had bargained for. Also, my back was starting to hurt.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-5047049958132293152010-04-30T10:18:00.000-07:002010-04-30T10:37:13.075-07:00Inch By Inch, Row By Row. Part I<div> I have never been much of a gardener. I don't love getting my hands into the dirt; actually, it feels all gritty and kind of squicks me out. I'm not big on nature; I've always been a city person, and my idea of getting outside is to walk several blocks while people-watching on a street like, say, Broadway in New York or Seattle, or Commercial Drive in Vancouver. I am just fine with buying my produce and flowers. I feel no need to be self-sufficient.</div> <div><br /></div><div>But. Two things happened. No, three. Well, maybe four.</div><div><br /></div><div>First, we bought a house. Almost two years ago. I'd lived in a house with my spouse (and a mouse! and maybe a louse! and a blouse!) before that, but it was *her* house, and I didn't have the same feeling about the yard that I did when we moved and it was *our* house. Plus, the former owner was a devoted gardener and made a beautiful garden here, and I felt bad just letting it go to rack and ruin. </div> <div><br /></div><div>The second thing that happened was global warming. Well, sort of. The second thing that happened, really, was that, wanting to contribute less to global warming and landfills and the overall trashing of the planet, we got a compost bin from the city, and started putting our non-protein-based kitchen waste in it. And eventually it filled up, and I thought, gee, I should take some of that compost out of the bottom of the bin and put it in... the garden. Right. Garden. What garden?</div> <div><br /></div><div>The third thing that happened--okay, not the third thing, this is actually chronologically the FIRST thing, but I'm just going to leave it third in this list, okay? Anyway, what happened was, I moved to the Northwest. In the East, where I'm from, it's perfectly okay to spend a sunny afternoon curled up on the couch reading the New Yorker, if you are lucky enough to have the leisure, the couch, and the New Yorker enabling you to do so. If you feel like appreciating the weather, you can look out the window and maybe remark to the cat that it certainly is lovely out. But in Seattle, or Vancouver, or anyplace Seattle-or-Vancouver-like, there's this crazy moral imperative where in the unlikely event that the sun is shining and it's not pouring down miserable rain, really you need to be OUTSIDE! Enjoying It! As I mentioned earlier, my favored Outside activity is walking through a bustling cityscape. But I don't actually live right next to a bustling cityscape (I used to! long, long ago, in Seattle, in a lovely little studio apartment that was recently torn down to make a subway station. But that's another story.), there's no convenient way for me to Enjoy being outside when I have no bus to catch and it's not quite warm enough to sit on the porch reading the New Yorker. So what I mostly do, when it's nice out, is sit inside, not enjoying my New Yorker or whatever, but feeling guilty that I'm not outside and resentful that I feel guilty. </div> <div><br /></div><div>After twenty years of this, I got a little tired of it, and thought maybe I should try Enjoying the Outdoors like other people around here do. And I know from several years of Monday-morning staff-room conversations that the main way that people Enjoy the Outdoors, when such is possible, is to work in their gardens.</div> <div><br /></div><div>Okay! Compost moldering in the bin; cultural imperative to Enjoy the Outdoors, backyard all ready to garden in. This is what we call, in the literary analysis biz, overdetermined.<br /><br />So. A garden, then.<br /><br />A lot of our garden is already sort of...gardened. I mean, there are perennial plants planted, and they grow, and the weeds haven't gotten them yet. But there's this long, sunny patch of ground over by the garage, that was basically weeds. The former owner told us that the soil over there wasn't very good and if we wanted to do anything with it we should get new soil in. Last year RW bought some flowering plants at the school plant sale and put them in a patch of it, and they looked pretty, but I thought this year I would grow FOOD. Just like Alice Waters in the California elementary schools, and Michelle Obama at the White House, and all. Because I am the Zeitgeist Girl. With my ukulele and my brown hoodie and my little tiny iPod shuffle. Okay, I am the Zeitgeist-of-2-or-3-years-ago Girl. That works for this. Isn't reducing food-miles so 2008?<br /><br />But first I needed good soil, and that was where I balked. It just didn't seem right to go to the store and BUY DIRT. Isn't the point--one of the points-- of gardening that it is frugal? That you plant seeds and grow your own food and keep at least some of your nutritional needs out of the capitalist stream? Isn't it defeating a purpose to haul a bunch of plastic bags filled with dirt--oh, sorry, soil--up to a cash register? A friend told me that you could mix compost (compost! I have compost! Okay, the grapefruit peels and eggshells are still pretty intact, but I'm sure there's some compost in there somewhere)--right, mix compost with sand from the beach and get usable dirt, but then she said you have to WASH the sand and I threw up my hands in despair.<br /><br />[More coming. Because I can milk a saga out of ANYTHING. Stay tuned later on for my riveting series on vacuuming the couch.]<br /></div><div><br /></div>elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-55410983632764104462010-04-07T10:25:00.000-07:002010-04-07T11:00:51.304-07:00Things PastI actually remember the very last day that I bumped around the city aimlessly. It was in 1995, a few days before I started library school, and I was looking for some books downtown. "I wonder when I'll get to do this again?" I thought, idly. Then there was school, and then looking for a job and planning the commitment ceremony, then working, then we had the baby, then there was more work, then we moved, and now it's 15 years later and I think I might finally get to do it again sometime soon. Of course, it is a different city and a different world. But still.<br /><br />I remember the tile patterns in various bathrooms I have frequented. At my dad's apartment, I think it was, and also my cousin's nearby, and maybe my grandparents', there were these little white hexagons that made pleasing arrangements when you looked at them for long enough. And it might have been my elementary school that had tiles in a repeating combination of squares and rectangles that fit together in an interesting way, that you could re-arrange into many different interlocking shapes. Bathrooms on the West Coast mostly don't have that kind of tile. I miss it. I'm sure all that time looking at those tiles contributed to my understanding of geometry, too.<br /><br />I remember the first time I wrote a paper on the computer, which was also the first time I accidentally deleted a paper, which was also, fortunately, the first time I made use of the "Undo" command. I was up late, late at night, in my mother's home office, typing away in a happy daze, and when I was done I highlighted the whole thing and accidentally hit they backspace key instead of whatever other key I had meant to hit. I was a senior in high school and the paper was about Theodore Roethke's poetry. I might still have it in my boxes somewhere, safe and sound on paper still. But there was that terrible moment, the moment when everything disappeared: all my insightful conclusions, my illustrative quotes, those graceful paragraphs. All gone--poof! Like that! And me staring at the traitor screen in mute horror.<br /><br />I remember being three or four years old, sitting on the bus, looking at the funny pointy knobby things you could use to open or shut the windows. I called them kitty-cat ears because that was how they looked to me.<br /><br />The other day a college friend posted a photo of herself on Facebook. We weren't such good friends that we'd made an effort to keep in touch before Facebook put me in potential touch with almost everyone I ever knew. So in my mind she is still 20 years old, doing pasteup on the college newspaper, funny and witty and flirting, maybe without knowing it, with the editor. When I saw the photo of her last week I thought with great sadness: oh! That girl is gone!<br /><br />I know that girl (we called ourselves women, but now I think of us back then, fondly, as girls) is still there, inside my friend, like 4-year-old me is still inside 43-year-old me, still marveling at the kitty-cat ears. And if you believe in certain theories of time, she is still there in the common room also, still 20, still cutting and pasting and laughing and flirting. But in the regular, everyday world that I live in, that girl is as gone as the Theodore Roethke paper on my screen, and instead there is a (perfectly happy, by all appearances, I should note) middle-aged woman out there on the other side of that photo, and there is no Undo key.<br /><br />Why this should make me more melancholy than my own middle age, I do not know.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-61721359487609306722010-03-07T13:09:00.000-08:002010-03-07T13:30:28.239-08:00Random bullets of various ambivalences*Well, here we all are in the post-Olympic hangover, everyone wandering around saying to each other, "Well that was some party, huh. So, how d'you think it's gonna get paid for? Hmm. Huh. Well, some party, eh?"<br /><br />*It was kind of wild to see how the local mood swung from wary cynicism to totally over-the-top "Go Canada!" madness. I was at our earthy-crunchy-lefty synagogue's rabbi's house for a hamentaschen-making party last Sunday when the Big Hockey Game was on. We all ended up in front of the TV--Vancouver natives, US expatriates, diehard Olympic protesters and the ambivalent middle (me) alike, cheering like crazy and jumping up and down at that last-minute overtime victory.<br /><br />*It made me think-- this is how communities are formed, what makes community: shared experiences like this. These people will always be the people I witnessed this moment with, and that counts for something.<br /><br />*Funny, too, how the hunger for Olympic swag came over me suddenly just in the last days of the games. I resisted for a while and then bought a few kids' things from the picked-over racks at the department store near work. I am kind of embarrassed about it<br /><br />*A few nights ago there was a young teen in the library at closing time, who asked to use the phone. From the conversation he was having, it appeared that his parents had kicked him out and he was looking for a place to stay the night. I passed him the name & number of the local youth shelter, thought about encouraging him to stay and call him right then, but by the time I'd thought it through he was gone.<br /><br />*I was kind of shaken and posted about it elsewhere, saying I was trying to wrap my head around what would lead parents to do that. Someone wrote me privately about a similar situation they knew of in their family, and told me not to judge too quickly. The thing is, I *had* been trying not to judge-- I'd just written what I was thinking, and had also written that I knew there was no way I could know the full story or even whether the kid had been totally telling the truth on the phone.<br /><br />*But I figure there's no point in being defensive to my friend. Even though I feel defensive.<br /><br />*I ended up just writing back a brief note saying I was sorry that had happened. I know that wasn't adequate, but am not sure what would be.<br /><br />*A Facebook friend posted that Mary Oliver quote about What Will You Do With Your One Wild and Precious Life, and I just thought...crap, I don't know. What *will* I do with my one wild and precious life? Pull holds on beautiful Saturday afternoons at work? Fold laundry? Check Facebook? Remind the Mermaid Girl to brush her teeth? I love that quote, theoretically, but in real life every time I read it it makes me feel itchy all over and a little bit like screaming.<br /><br />*The Mermaid Girl and I are going away this week, to see my baby nephew and his parents in the wilds of New England.<br /><br />*It will be Mud Season, but also Sugaring Season. I guess they go together.<br /><br />*I think that's where I am right now internally, too: Mud Season. Maybe it will be sugaring season, too.<br /><br />*I wonder what I'm tapping, and what it will turn into.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-3454225396032334372010-02-16T22:37:00.001-08:002010-02-16T23:17:35.181-08:00Random Bullets of Men's Figure Skating Short Program<ul><li>Our seats were indeed way up high, but the stadium is so steeply raked that we still had a really good view. And we had a side view of the Kiss & Cry, the bench where the skaters and coaches wait to hear their scores. We could see them hanging out there putting on their jackets while the monitors replayed their best and worst moments. And we could see that there were boxes of tissues (green and blue Olympic logoed boxes) down on the floor. In case of crying, I guess.</li><li><br /></li><li>There were a lot of empty seats, too--including some really choice ones lower down and across the stadium from us, and practically a whole section behind the press seats. The ones across from us were eventually filled by skaters and their families as they finished their routines, but the big blue section never did fill. At first I thought the seats belonged to bigwigs who were going to show up late and just catch the highest-ranked skaters, but then as the evening continued and the seats stayed empty, I started to get mad. Why not give those tickets to volunteers, at least? I couldn't believe there weren't a few hundred people around here who wouldn't be happy to see an Olympic event.</li><li><br /></li><li>In spite of the threats from the official Olympics ticket people, there's obviously a huge scalped-ticket market. On our walk from the bus stop to the front gate we saw at least ten or twelve guys selling tickets, I met a woman sitting near us who had gotten her tickets free from her friend, a scalper who buys huge quantities of Olympics tickets every two years, flies to the host city, and scalps them. </li><li><br /></li><li>Our favorite skater was the Swiss guy who danced to the William Tell Overture. And I also liked the guy from Japan who skated early on and was in 2nd place for a long time. They both had chops *and* musicality</li><li><br /></li><li>I don't actually know that much about skating. I always thought that the audience at a big event like this would be made up of really dedicated fans, and there were a lot of those, but as we found out, mainly what you need is proximity and/or money and/or luck. So I felt like kind of a fraud and like I should have done more research beforehand to have really appreciated it.</li><li><br /></li><li>Fortunately, Uncle Skaterboy was with us, and he's a real expert. He was so knowledgeable and opinionated that the people in front of us were turning around between skaters to ask him how he thought the next one would do. He took to calling each skater's rank after their program was done and before the judges announced the score. He was right more often than not, too. </li><li><br /></li><li>And his commentary was a lot more colorful than you get on TV, too. When a skater who had been a major contender would blow a jump or fall down, Uncle Skaterboy would murmur "buh-bye," and I was know that was that.</li><li><br /></li><li>Figure skaters simply should not wear white costumes: they become basically invisible against the ice. We noticed this in the couples skate on TV yesterday, and it was equally true tonight, though there was a lot less white.</li><li><br /></li><li>No shortage of black and sequins, though.</li><li><br /></li><li>We got to see a lot of the little girls who skate out to pick up the flowers and stuffed animals that fans throw onto the ice. Actually, they're not so little-- these girls were about 11 or 12. We could see them in their spot on the sidelines and they looked absolutely thrilled to be there. </li><li><br /></li><li>It was interesting what happened to all those tributes, too, after the flower-sweepers picked them up from the ice: they'd bring them back to their home base and hand them to an adult volunteer, who'd drop them in a bin lined with layers of plastic bags pick up the innermost plastic bag, twist it closed, and remove the bag from the bin and spirit it further backstage to somewhere we couldn't see. Maybe they were donated to hospitals?</li><li><br /></li><li>I seem to be a more patriotic Canadian than I was/am an American. It really was a thrill to see the sea of Canadian flags and the huge roar of cheers when both Patrick Chan and the other Canadian skater came on. I'm watching the broadcast on NBC right now as I type-- it's delayed by a few hours--and the cameras really don't capture either what it looked like or how it felt. </li><li><br /></li><li>Wasn't that skeleton costume weird? Also, the farmer-boy one. </li><li><br /></li><li>We had a great time. The Mermaid Girl especially. I can't think of a more interesting or eloquent way to say that, so I'll just leave it as it is. </li></ul>elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-63123319804799786942010-02-12T21:39:00.000-08:002010-02-12T21:50:06.045-08:00Where My Job Went: Part IISo, almost immediately after I'd remedied the hot dog situation and gotten back to my seat, the rehearsal began. First, a woman in a red toque came out and talked to us. We don't really know what she said because the acoustics in BC Place are terrible (RW: "The acoustics in here are awful!" MG: "What??") but she was projected on two big screens and between that and the few words we could catch here and there we figured out the gist of it:<br /><br />Bienvenue, mesdames et messieurs, to the Opening Ceremonies of the 21st Winter Olympic Games! The 230 volunteer cheerleaders scattered around the stadium will now direct you in the use of your Audience Packets. (massive rustling as everyone looks for packets.) Okay, you don't actually have Audience Packets. The real audience will have them on Friday. For now, I'm going to pretend you do so that the cheerleaders and I can practice instructing. Everyone take out your (nonexistent) white ponchos and put them on. Watch the cheerleaders for cues on when to wave your (nonexistent) flashlights to create special effects. And also [Charlie-Brown-Grownup-like mwa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa.]<br /><br />Then Fireworks! Ohboy!<br /><br />Then, some singing performed by stand-ins. Note on screen says "Talent ID." RW: Do you think that's really their name? Or just a note for later?<br /><br />Artistic Director comes out and begs us not to tell anything to anyone ahead of time. Oh, okay. If it's so important to you.<br /><br />And now! The Opening Ceremonies!<br /><br />The room darkens. The two screens show a montage of scenic Vancouver, ending with a guy standing on top of a snowy mountaintop. Way up high. Then he starts snowboarding down...down...down...all the way down the mountain!<br /><br />Partway through, one of the screens goes dark. Oh well, minor glitch, I'll just watch the other one.<br /><br />Down...down...down...<br /><br />Then--<br /><br />Real-life, non-film nowboarding guy bursting through paper wall below the screen and swoops down ski run and onto the floor! So cool! My favorite part!<br /><br />[note from Friday-- did they cut this part after the Luge athlete died? Don't know, I didn't get to see the actual opening ceremonies except for little bits on break, since I was at work tonight]<br /><br /><br />First Nations! First the 4 local Nations welcome everyone in their languages, then four big totem poles rise up from the floor in provocative fashion & provoke me to low-minded choking hysterics, especially because there's this big concentric-ovals centerpiece thing hanging from the ceiling which suddenly looks very vulvic. But once they're standing upright they do look more like big white totem poles than like, um, anything else, and I'm able to pull myself together and stop snorking and gather the shreds of my dignity around me.<br /><br />Then all the First Nations of Canada (well, representatives) come out and start dancing. My second-favorite part. My reaction: This is so cool. The US would never do this. RW's reaction: This is Canada showing off that they're cooler and more PC than the US. So irritating.<br /><br />Flag of Canada raised, national anthem, sort of moving. Flag flapping in the breeze. How are they doing that? Is it coming from the big vulvic thing? No, maybe not.<br /><br />Then representatives of the BC and Canadian government and IOC bigwigs are announced, but turn out to be actually Olympic volunteers standing in for the actual bigwigs.<br /><br />Then! The parade of athletes (or, well, flag-bearing volunteers holding long ropes representing athletes) from all participating countries! This is pretty much endless, at least an hour. RW comments that the breakup of the USSR must have added several minutes to this segment all by itself. You can tell where the big waves of immigration to Vancouver have been from the volume of cheering for various contries: Italy, Iran, India, China. Great Britain. Australia. Jamaica, too, for some reason-- there isn't a big Jamaican-Canadian population in Vancouver that I know of, so it must have been on the strength of the famed Jamaican Bobsled Team from that "Cool Runnings" movie I've never seen. We cheered for Israel and Denmark and the U.S. I cheered for Ukraine and Russia and Poland, too, as I think that's where Vilna is these days. It's one of those cities that's hard to keep track of.<br /><br />Then Canada came out last, and everyone stood up and cheered like crazy, and I got all choked up in spite of myself.<br /><br />And the First Nations reps had to keep dancing through the whole damn thing. Though I noticed they spelled each other so that not everyone was dancing at once. And a lot of the dancing was just sort of place-holding jogging from one foot to the other. But still!<br /><br />Then all the First Nations people dance off the stage, including one guy who seemed to really, really not want to leave.<br /><br />Then the performances!<br /><br />The room got dark and there was all this lighting effect and tissue-paper snow that everyone started grabbing for. And then some strange dancing in white costumes and a huge weird lit-up ice bear that rose up and then sank down below the floor. and then! Sarah Mclachlan singing "Ordinary Miracles!" and I think it was really her, not a stand-in. Excitement all around, and I forgave them for the ice bear.<br /><br />Then all the white dancers finished and were replaced by a bunch of Riverdance dancers and a fiddler on a big platform in the middle, while tissue-paper maple leaves rain from the sky everywhere except our section. Is that Ashley MacIsaac? Maybe. Could it be? What do you think? I think so! Cool! Last time I saw him he was skulking around at the edge of a stage at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, performing semi-incognito with his cousin. He'd been wearing a big coat and looked sort of worn out. He seems to have pulled himself together since then.<br /><br />OK, Riverdance off, next performance on. Now the big vulvic thing kind of droops and drops down four big fabric drapes and light projects onto them so they look like Emily Carr tree paintings. Cool. Actually that was my third-favorite part. More dancing in front of the trees, and people spinning around in the air on wires.<br /><br />Then the trees are gone, and there's a big sun and a projected field, and a lone dancer running in place and the chords of the next song start and--oh wow--can it be? RW and I clasp hands in wonder and gasp--Joni! Singing her all-grown-up, jazz-inflected version of "Clouds!" But no, soon we realize it's just a recording. Though the dancing-- which soon turns to more swinging around in the air on wires--is gorgeous. And maybe it really will be Joni in person on Friday; we'll find out, I guess.<br /><br />Then the centerpiece bulges and droops and transforms again, this time into a snowy mountain, and again we have performers on wires, though this time they're all wearing winter clothes and skis and snowboards and pretending to ski and such on the projected slopes. It's very good, but I can't help remembering this parody that one of MG's circus coaches did in a performance a couple years ago that was just like this, only funny. How did he know??<br /><br />Then, with all the airborne skiiers still doing their thing, a whole fleet of rollerbladers zooms in! One of them is Uncle Skaterboy, but it's impossible to pick him out from the crowd, especially since they're all wearing red, pretending to be speed-skaters on ice. (Oh-- the floor is white, so everything looks kind of icy.) Yay, Uncle Skaterboy! Yay, athletes! Yay, performers! Okay, bye!<br /><br />Then with great fanfare they announce that the Olympic Torch is coming in only 27 minutes (only it isn't really; it's still wending its way around the Lower Mainland this week). Photo montage of all the places it's been. More fanfare! Announcement that a big High Muckety-Muck will now speak!<br /><br />Camera focuses on mild-mannered Olympic Volunteer, who steps up to podium and introduces himself, to huge enthusiastic cheers, as the stand-in for High Muckety-Muck. He explains that Muckety-Muck will be giving a four-and-a-half-minute speech, and proceeds to fill the next four minutes with a boring encyclopedia travelogue about the City of Vancouver, while MG and I dart forward and grab as many tissue-paper maple leaves as we can from the section in front of us.<br /><br />Another speech from another stand-in, and then mounties march smartly out and raise the Olympic Flag beside the Canadian one. RW figures out that the wind machine is INSIDE THE FLAGPOLE, which we agree is very clever.<br /><br />Now all please stand for the Official Olympic Song! (There's an Official Olympic Song?) Camera to young, slightly embarrassed stand-in, who holds a microphone to her face and grins while a recorded voice sings a very operatic anthem. Occasionally the volunteer mouths a particularly aria-like syllable, and sort of waves her arms around, and everyone cheers extra loud.<br /><br />Somewhere in there there was another song, only we don't know what it was because it is A Secret. A stand-in stood on the platform for a few minutes while an instrumental version of "Hallelujah" played. We took bets on who the real performer will be: Shania Twain? Celine Dion? Leonard Cohen? Maybe Leonard Cohen. Wouldn't that be a kick? Or kd lang-- didn't she make a big splash at the last Canadian Olympics? Well, by the time you read this, everyone will know, but I don't yet. [Note from Friday: It was! It was kd! Looking quite stunningly butch and soignee, don't you think?]<br /><br />And another song. Before that one, or after, I forget. But the lights went down and the cheerleaders did a lot of waving their lights around, and finally at the end several audience members got the bright idea to wave their cell-phones in the air. I did, too. It was fun, even though I don't have one of those fancy iPhones with a simulated lighter-waving app.<br /><br />Was there more? I think there was more. Oh, there were all these white-clad Olympic handmaidens (and hand...men, I guess. Anyway, there were men and women) who just walked and stood around the edge of the stage in formation for the whole performance, off and on. They didn't dance, or anything. They were like snow nymphs. Sort of militarized snow nymphs.<br /><br />They lined up to welcome the (imaginary) torch and light the (imaginary) Olympic Cauldron! Yay!<br /><br />And then it was over! Good night, mesdames et messieurs! Twenty thousand people rushed for the exits. More blue-clad volunteers shepherded us out of the stadium and told us to go over the little bridge. And as we all surged for the bridge...fireworks! off the top of the stadium! Ooh! Pretty!<br /><br />"That's where my job went," I said to RW, gesturing to the explosions behind us.<br /><br />"Yep," she said. "Up in smoke. Well, you might as well enjoy it."<br /><br />And I did, pretty much. Then we used our tickets to get a free ride home on the Skytrain, and that was the end of that.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-59328282047411906232010-01-29T10:57:00.000-08:002010-01-29T11:39:28.744-08:00One Day in Spring 1981<span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >I'd spent part of the day dragging out to the swim club with my mom to get my photo taken for a membership card for the upcoming summer. On the way back, I got her to drop me off at the used bookstore where my literary-magazine friend Dina, a few years older than me, worked part-time. I went home and lay around reading one of the books I'd bought there. Then, late in the evening, inspired by the book and procrastinating on the Hebrew-school homework that was due the next day (I was nearly fifteen, finishing 9th grade, almost two years past my bat mitzvah, but was going to Hebrew high school voluntarily because that's the kind of Jewish dork I was), I got out some lined notebook paper and wrote a letter to the author. <o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >As far as I can remember, I wrote about what I'd done that day, with the swim club and the bookstore, and confessed that I should be doing my Hebrew homework, and enthused about how much I loved the book I'd just finished, and just generally yammered in the kind of artfully artless half-imitative way that a sticky-eared kid of literary inclination is wont to do, especially one who has just finished reading something by an author with a strong and distinctive and catchy style. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >I addressed the letter to the publishing company listed on the inside front cover, and more or less forgot about it.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" > <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >It couldn't have been more than a month later when the envelope came. At first glance, I thought it was junk mail, the kind of junk mail that pretends to be a real letter. The return address was a P.O. box, typewritten, as was my address, with my name spelled correctly, for once.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><br />By the time I got to my room and opened it I could see that it wasn't junk mail. There was a 3-cent stamp stuck next to the 15-cent "America's Cup" pre-stamp printed on the small envelope. The typewriting showed unmistakable signs of being genuine: I'd learned to type on a manual typewriter, myself, and recognized the way the periods in the "N.J." of my address punched practically through the paper. And what kind of junk-mailer would be based in Vermont? I didn't even know anyone in Vermont. Who could...</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >The way I remember it, I knew before I drew out the single yellow sheet of folded, typewritten paper, before I read the opening lines diffidently expressing surprise that my letter had even reached him, before I saw that distinctive--and rare, even at 14 I had some idea how rare--signature. I swear it's not just hindsight that the buzz of knowing started in my hands, in my stomach, reached somewhere in the back of my brain, before I'd even finished ripping the envelope open (with my fingers, so that the top parted raggedly. Even then, I remember thinking maybe I should detour to the kitchen and get a knife. But I was too impatient.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >I'd be lying if I said I'd never thought about the money. But if I sold it, what would I have? A few thousand dollars, based on prices I've seen for similar items up at auction (and there are similar items; I was far from the only teenage girl who received such a letter. Joyce Maynard complained that when she lived with him he used to hole up in his cottage for hours, writing to adolescent fans. I was a little retrospectively creeped out, hearing that, years later, but the letter I got wasn't creepy at all in itself, certainly wasn't sexual) . And then I would no longer have a letter from Jerome David Salinger, thanking me for my fannish gushings about his last-published, least popular book, <b>Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction</b>.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >It's not that I'm so pure that I don't have a price: unlike Maynard, I didn’t have a personal relationship with the letter-writer to betray. But my price for not having that letter any more is a lot higher than the market will bear. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><br />A former teacher who knew me then mentioned the letter in her Facebook status report yesterday, and one of her friends brushed it off as "shallow celebrity chasing." It wasn't. Or mostly not. The second letter –that I wrote a few months later, spurred by the P.O. address and the feeling that I might as well, and which, predictably, went unanswered--sort of was, though. I don’t tell people about that part; it’s too embarrassing, and I felt for a long time that my writing again diminished the meaning of the first letter. But it’s part of the story, too. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><br />Which is what all Salinger's writing is about, really. The trying desperately, and mostly futile-ly, to be pure, to be GOOD, in all the meanings of that word. And the tendency, in people the age of his protagonists—and the age I was when I read those books, and the age of person he became famous for connecting with—to scorn all those who have given up the fight, to rail against the bitter compromises most of us make as adults. (Franny and Zooey Glass, and the unnamed narrator of “For Esme, with Love and Squalor” negotiate those compromises more or less successfully. Holden Caulfield and Seymour Glass never really do. )</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >I loved the books when I was fourteen. I still like the books a lot, not Catcher in the Rye so much, but the others. In <b style="">Franny and Zooey</b>, he wrote about things I was grappling with back then, even if I only partly recognized it: the feeling of wanting to be special, and despising oneself for wanting to be special; of grappling with one's own ego and fear of failure; of being a girl and an artist and a sexual being and a grownup and wanting to retreat to the couch in the apartment (I always superimposed the Upper West Side apartment my dad lived in with his girlfriend for a few years onto all those scenes in the Glass family home) even though the painters are coming and your mother keeps bringing soup, of being a smart kid who was going to have to grow out of being a prodigy, and damn soon.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >Getting back to that second letter that I wrote, the letter I tell even fewer people about than the first one: I always, solipsistically, had the feeling that not getting an answer was a fair judgment of me, not of me personally so much, but of my growing up—just like Wendy gets too old to see Peter Pan, I was too old, by the time I wrote the second letter, to have that kind of purity that the characters in Salinger’s stories are always yearning after in themselves. For one thing, I had a boyfriend by then. I went to parties and rock concerts. I was consciously turning myself into as normal a teenager as I could manage. Salinger doesn’t have much use in his writing for grownup, sexualized women (Boo-Boo Glass aside), and I was doing my best to be one of those. His writing wasn’t the touchstone for me that it had been even a few months earlier.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >So, why does that letter matter so much to me, even today? At the time, it felt like a sign: if I could write a letter good enough to coax a response out of that notoriously reclusive author, I must be A Real Writer. I held onto it as a talisman, and have managed not to lose it through all my moves. It still feels like that, with a bit of “if I’ve done nothing else…” tacked on to the front.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >The funny thing is how receiving a gift like that—and it was a gift, sent, I’m sure, out of as muddled a cocktail of motives (kindness; genuine appreciation; desire for whatever reason to connect with youth; maybe some egoistic thrill at the thrill I’d get) as was the letter I sent him—threw me into a lifelong Salinger-worthy dilemma that started as soon as I opened it, and continues right up to the present. Every time I tell someone, it feels like a little bit of a betrayal of that desperately publicity-wary person, a little cashing in on a celebrity I have no real connection to at all. So I don’t tell people, much. (Of course, I’m writing this post for the whole Interweb to see. Pseudonymously, but still. So you can see how impure and compromised I am about that.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >Yesterday, when friends’ Facebook status updates were full of links to obituaries (<a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d">this one</a> is my favorite), people who knew about it remembered me and that letter. And I did, too. But mainly I thought about the writing. My favorite parts are the redemptive ones, like the end of “Zooey:” Zooey’s long lecture to his younger sister about the Fat Lady: about going forward into the crassness and imperfection of the world, and doing what you need to do—what you’re called to do, what you’re good at. At the end of “Seymour, an Introduction,” the last story in his last published book, Buddy Glass—that cynical struggler, that Zen-wrangling stand-in for the author—prepares to go teach an English class, reminding himself that “There isn’t one girl in there, including the Terrible Miss Zabel, who is not as much my sister as Boo Boo or Franny. They may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine.”<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >That’s the double thread running through those books: not just that we’re all phonies, but that we shine anyway. You could say it’s a Christian message, or a Buddhist one, or just Salinger rowing hard at compassion against a constant inner storm of cynicism and curmudgeonliness. But it’s the one that’s stuck with me at forty-three, and the one I was so happy and grateful to read, at fourteen, that I wrote to thank the author. </span></p>elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-72467635567900643092009-12-26T07:54:00.000-08:002009-12-26T08:25:07.495-08:00Holiday Post-Mortem, Non-Gingerbread EditionSo here's the Mermaid Girl, at our post-Jul lunch of leftover turkey and rice pudding yesterday:<div><br /></div><div><b>MG:</b> <i>*surveying our present-strewn, candy-heavy, tree-and-light-ridden surroundings and lighting on the one missing element*</i> We need a gingerbread house.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>RW and me:</b> We...<i>need</i> a gingerbread house?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>MG</b>: We NEED a gingerbread house!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Me:</b> <i>*Contemplating the much-discussed difference between "need" and "want"</i>* What will happen if we don't get one? </div><div><br /></div><div><b>MG: </b>I'll cry! <i>[NB: She is nine. NINE.]</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Me:</b> What will it look like when you cry?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>MG</b>: *<i>with suspicious glare*</i>: Why do you want to know?</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Me:</b> So I can prepare myself for the trauma.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>MG:</b> <i>*extravagant eyeroll*</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Our Lovely Houseguest:</b> It is difficult to have a snarky parent, isn't it?</div><div><br /></div><div>This was one of those exchanges that could have tipped in either direction, with MG either storming off in a huff or producing a magnificent pretend-crying session and laughing it up. She has a great sense of humor and is actually pretty good at laughing at herself, when the stars are aligned correctly. I could see from her face that she couldn't decide which way to go with it. </div><div><br /></div><div>The thing is, my question, and my response, were mostly serious. I totally hate when she cries, and she recently confided to me, in an exceptionally cheerful moment, that she's been fake-crying on occasion for "the last few years;" it really seemed possible that she might come up with a pretend cry right then and there. Is it twisted to ask your kid to fake-cry on demand? Could be. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the bright side: For the first time in years, she didn't whine and beg not to be Jewish this holiday season. Maybe it's the rousing Hanukkah song her choir sang in their performance. Maybe it's that RW finally let her hang up a stocking (stockings and Santa are not part of Danish Jul, but somehow she connected the lack of them with Jewishness rather than Danishness). Maybe it's the magnificent (if I do say so myself) haul of <a href="http://savtadotty.blogspot.com/2009/12/savlanut.html">my old dollhouse furniture</a> that she got for Hanukkah, which gift she pronounced "better than a hundred million Webkinz!" </div><div><br /></div><div>Aw, heck. Maybe I'll buy the kid a gingerbread house. </div>elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-16562879495841427122009-11-26T12:02:00.000-08:002009-11-26T12:23:10.146-08:00Panto![OK, it is obvious that I have completely blown NaBloPoMo, so I will now commence posting on my usual irregular schedule without further apologies. Onward!]<br /><br />I was a big fan of E. Nesbit as a kid, but there were aspects of her turn-of-the-last-century British kids' lives that utterly mystified me. One of them was pantomime. At one point in <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Treasure Seekers</span>, the kids all get an offer from Albert-Next-Door's-Uncle to go to the pantomime. It seemed to have something to do with Christmas, and I knew what a mime was--those weird, black-clad clowns who could be seen blowing up invisible balloons outside the Metropolitan Museum--so I always envisioned this pantomime as some bizarre no-words performance of the Nativity story. I also thought of it as something that happened, a) only a long time ago, and b) only in England.<br /><br />Well. Apparently, I was quite wrong on all these counts. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime">Here's what Wikipedia has to say about pantomime</a>. Basically, aside from being performed around Christmas, it has nothing to do with the holiday; it's a sort of broad farcical version of any one of a number of stock fairy-tale-based stories (Peter Pan started as British pantomime), though there are also original modern pantos--last year, I saw ads for "Panto of the Rings" on the community bulletin board at one library where I work. Which brings me to the other thing I was wrong about: Canada is one of several non-England-based panto strongholds. You hardly ever see it in the U.S., but apparently the area work, being a traditional dwelling for immigrants from the British Isles, is one of the best places in North America to see pantomime-- or, as it is charmingly nicknamed, panto. Just one of those things, like different-colored money and square-cut screwdrivers, that lets you know Canada actually is a different country from the U.S.<br /><br />So last night, the Renaissance Woman and I pulled our our google-fu to find out how many pantos there are around here, and where they're playing. Turns out we have many choices: aside from old-school panto offerings like Snow White and Aladdin, there are newer adaptations, including The Wizard of Oz and (yes) Panto Wars. We opted for a traditional panto, Babes in the Wood, which promises drama, audience participation, drag (an essential panto element), plus Robin Hood and Maid Marian. As my non-panto-going grandparents might say, what's not to like?<br /><br />I can't wait.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-20675920018381798412009-11-18T23:33:00.000-08:002009-11-18T23:49:27.259-08:00Where are the talking blankets of yesteryear?Here's another story from the vault of memory. I actually meant to blog this at the time, but never got around to it, and now, what do you know, it's two or three years later. (Actually, it must be more than two years, because this was in our old house in Seattle. How can that be? Three years? But I guess it must be so)<br /><br />So, about three years ago, so that would've been when the Mermaid Girl was about six, we had this game we used to play. She'd lie on the couch, completely covered in a blanket, and talk. If I'd blogged this back then like I meant to, I'd remember what she used to say. But I think it was something like, "Hi, I'm a talking blanket. See? I'm talking! And I'm a blanket!"<br /><br />Then I'd get all excited and go, "Wow, a talking blanket! Oh my gosh!"<br /><br />And she'd say, "Yes! I'm the only one in the world!"<br /><br />I'd say, "I can't believe it! I've never seen a talking blanket before. It's too bad my daughter isn't here-- she'd love this!"<br /><br />And she'd go, "Yes, go get your daughter! I think she's in her room!"<br /><br />So off I'd rush to MG's room, calling "MG! MG, come quick! You've gotta see this!" And then, since of course she wasn't there, I'd return to the living room, still calling, "MG! MG! MG, where are you?"<br /><br />And then there she'd be in the living room, prim as you please, and she'd say, "Mommy? Mommy, I'm right here. What is it?"<br /><br />"Oh!" I'd say. "Oh, you have to see this! MG, there's a talking blanket, right on our couch! See? See? There it is! Talk, blanket, talk!"<br /><br />And she'd pick up the blanket and say kindly, "Mommy, there's no such thing as a talking blanket. See? It's just a blanket. It doesn't talk at all."<br /><br />Then I'd get all red-faced and insistent and she'd shake her head pityingly at the depths of my delusion. Sometimes she'd say, "Mommy, I think you've been reading too many children's books."<br /><br />We'd continue like this until I walked away, scratching my head and muttering, ""I'm SURE it talked! Maybe I was imagining things? ["You were imagining things, Mommy."] But it seemed so real!" etc. etc.<br /><br />There is no real point to this story. Except that it was a really excellent game, and we haven't played it for a while. We still play the <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2005/11/taking-bait-and-guarding-peas.html">peas game</a> sometime--and, astonishingly, she still delights in cheating me out of the peas--but we haven't played the Talking Blanket game for, oh, years and years. I wonder if she'd still want to play it, at the advanced age of nine?elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-69452730013156555472009-11-17T23:33:00.000-08:002009-11-18T00:30:33.991-08:00My Ukulele: A Love StoryI've mentioned the ukulele here and there in posts over the past year, but I don't think I've ever actually devoted a post to the topic. So here it is:<br /><br />My family is full of musicians: both my parents play the piano, my dad professionally since his retirement, and my mom has sung in high-level choirs; my brother plays a bunch of instruments and sang professionally as a kid; my spouse was a music major in college and has a closet full of various instruments from recorder to viola da gamba. I'm the non-musician in both my adult family and my family of origin: I love to sing, and sing a lot, but I don't read music and I've never really mastered an instrument.<br /><br />That's not to say that I've never tried, albeit halfheartedly. As a kid I played piano for a few years, but dropped it when the theory got too hard (which was very early). I played viola for a year or two in elementary school (we got to pick our instruments, and I picked viola because the name of the instrument sounded pretty and romantic) but never practiced. As a teenager, I tried to learn guitar, briefly, but the metal strings hurt my fingers and my hands were too small. When I first got together with the Renaissance Woman, back in the mid 1990's, I was inspired to teach myself recorder with her help and encouragement; I learned some notes and some tunes and then plateaued because there wasn't much I could do with it, and stopped playing. What I really wanted to do, after all, was sing and play, and you can't sing and play the recorder at the same time.<br /><br />So, for a long time, that was that. I sang songs at library story times, and I sang to the Mermaid Girl at bedtime, and I sang for fun by myself and with friends, and I just figured I was the sort of person who was not going to play an instrument, either because I was too lazy to learn or because there was no instrument that was quite right for me.<br /><br />Then, a little over a year ago, I went to a library storytime workshop. The format was very simple: each of us was to bring two songs or rhymes. We sat in a circle, and went around the room, each in turn teaching our songs and rhymes to all the other participants. About halfway through the workshop, a librarian stood up with a tiny little guitar-like instrument which was, she explained briefly, her ukulele. She taught us her two songs, accompanying herself on the ukulele, and sat down, and we moved on to the next presenter.<br /><br />So, that was it. But it was...I don't know how to put this without being cliched and corny. It was like a lightning bolt had hit right in front of me! It was like a spiritual experience! It was like the proverbial light bulb went off! I stared and stared at that little ukulele and knew I had finally, after 42 years, found my instrument.<br /><br />Well, not that particular one; that one was the other librarian's, and I resisted the urge to run across the room and wrest it out of her hands. But, you know.<br /><br />So I went home and told RW that I had found my instrument and that it was the ukulele and that if, you know, anyone was trying to figure out what to give me for Chanukah, a ukulele would not go amiss. And, lo and behold, a ukulele was what I got. (Oh-- <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2009/01/equation-for-new-day.html">I did write about this part</a>, I guess.)<br /><br />So off I set to learn how to play it. I found a ukulele book in the library, and renewed it several times and then just let it go overdue because I needed the chord chart so that I could play songs I liked in Rise Up Singing with ukulele chords. I learned three chords, then four and five and six. I learned how to play "Clementine" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" which are very easy and have very few chords, and then "Angel from Montgomery" and "Desperado," which are more fun and sound more impressive and have more than three chords but are miraculously not actually that hard.<br /><br />Then I really needed to return the ukulele book, so I turned to the Internet to print out a chord chart. And that was when I discovered that, once again, I had been an unwitting pawn of the zeitgeist. Because! Ukuleles are everywhere! Especially on the Internets! While I'd been blissfully bonding at home with my new little orange ukulele, believing that it was pure providential luck that I'd finally found my instrument, thousands and thousands of other people were simultaneously-- or actually a little ahead of me-- discovering that the ukulele was also THEIR instrument, and were busily posting Youtube videos of themselves in their room playing ukulele. There are online ukulele stores, and online video ukulele reviews (so you can see and hear what various models are like before ordering them online), and online video ukulele tutorials, and magazine articles heralding all the above and talking like the ukulele was the biggest thing to hit since grunge.<br /><br />Just like when I'd suddenly inexplicably gotten the urge to buy a brown zip-up hoodie, I had once again stumbled blindly into trendiness. Dammit.<br /><br />But by then, it was too late. I was bonded to my ukulele, and I was practicing, and I was getting better. I was even learning a little music theory-- first, I just played the chords the way the chord chart said. Then, RW taught me about the 1-4-5 chord progression and how you could apply it all up and down the scale. Then, this summer, I wanted to learn "Uncle John's Band" but the version I found was full of hard B chords (I hate B chords; they are devilish hard) and also the wrong key for me to sing, and I realized that I could transpose it-- if I changed the B's to G's, I could change the A's to F's, and etc. etc. And it worked!<br /><br />I spent a lot of the summer playing, on our porch when we were home and at various campgrounds and in the passenger seat of the van when we were not. I learned more chords, and chord changes that seemed way too hard at the beginning of the summer were somehow not so hard by the end. When we met up with our friends on the Washington coast I got to play with other people, and that was fun and I didn't totally suck and drag them down.<br /><br />By the time summer ended, I figured I was finally good enough to go out and play among strangers. So I started going to the monthly ukulele circle in the city. At first it was overwhelming: there were 40 or 50 people there, most of them better than me and with better, more expensive, better tuned ukuleles. For the first half of the meeting everyone played together out of a songbook, and even though I knew way more than three chords, I didn't know nearly enough to play along with most of the songs.<br /><br />But everyone there was friendly and warm and encouraging, and told me to just play and not worry about getting it right, so I've kept going. Playing with the group has gotten me to finally tackle the B chord family, plus it is good for my soul. One thing about not reading music and not playing an instrument is that music for me has been mostly a solitary, or at most fleetingly social, experience. This is about the least original observation in the universe (aside from the one about time flying and babies getting older) but there really is something powerful about singing and playing music together with a group of people. The group meets on a weekday evening and every time I have to drag myself out the door rather than staying home and hanging out with MG and RW. And every time I am glad I went and feel lifted up and happy.<br /><br />So, that is the story of a girl and her uke. I'm still not very good. But I can accompany myself on a bunch of my favorite songs, and I keep learning more. Even though I love my little orange ukulele, I can hear now that it's sort of a beginner one and I'm thinking about buying myself another one that has a richer tone and stays in tune better. When I start my new schedule in January, I might take some group lessons that someone from the ukulele circle runs. And these days, when I am feeling sad or low or frustrated or like the rain it raineth every day and it is dark all the time, I try to remember that the ukulele works better than Tetris or even the Internet for reminding me that there are good things and maybe even joy in the universe.<br /><br />And if it's all trendy and whatnot, too-- oh, well; nothing's perfect.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-82987780670299704952009-11-16T22:29:00.000-08:002009-11-16T22:41:53.929-08:00Hear Me Complaining, Fates!Hello hello hello! It is the next day and I am blogging again!<br /><br />Well. I will not make the mistake again of blogging about how non-depressed I am. Right after I wrote <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2009/11/nothing-to-see-here-universe-just-move.html">this fate-tempting post</a>, things went all what the Brits call pear-shaped, and there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I will draw a veil over it.<br /><br />Instead I will say: Today I got home from work at 2:30 (I work 9-2 on Mondays) and I was telling myself how I should be feeling lucky and grateful because back in my old life in Seattle I used to work 8-5 on Mondays, and then drive through horrendous traffic for another hour or two (Monday was our staff meeting day). But instead of feeling lucky I was feeling exhausted, due to a combination of hormonal cycle and the Beastly Rainy Weather and RW and me staying up too late talking the night before. So I went home and said hi to everyone--RW didn't have work today, and seems to be having a semi-relapse of exhaustion, and MG had concocted just enough sneeziness and stomachache-complaints that she got to stay home. Probably if we'd both been working we would've just made her go to school. But, you know.<br /><br />So there they were, all cuddled up on the couch in their pajamas, and I went and collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. And next thing I knew, it was 5:00, it was dark, it was still raining, and MG and RW had made strawberry muffins while I'd been asleep and were about to start making pizza for dinner. So, that was really nice.<br /><br />Of course, now it is past 10:30, they are both sound asleep, and I am bright-eyed and wakey with no one to talk to or watch DVDs with. And I know there is a big meteor shower tonight, but trust me, it is way too rainy to see anything in the sky.<br /><br />So here I am! Complaining! About the rain! And the wakeful aloneness!<br /><br />Not because I am ungrateful for loving family or strawberry muffins or pizza or 5-hour workdays. No. But because it will KEEP AWAY THE EVIL EYE.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-51441856057037327482009-11-15T10:23:00.000-08:002009-11-15T11:04:43.104-08:00Canada: A Few Tipsoh, man, I can't even keep track on how behind I am on NaBlowhatever. But! Onward!<br /><br />Someone emailed me a little bit ago to say they might be moving to Canada and did I have any advice? I started to compile a list and made myself stop after just a few items because I was having too much fun. So here is the rest of it:<br /><br />1. Don't lose the piece of paper that comes with your stamped visa. <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2007/09/now-it-can-be-told.html">They don't like that</a>.<br />2. Spell everything with a "u".<br />3. Canadian drivers are not as polite as you might think.<br />4. Don't bother looking for a post office as such. Just go to the Shoppers Drug Mart. You will be amazed to find a complete post office in there.<br />4a. But don't buy anything else at Shoppers. They suck.<br />4b. Oh, and there is no Saturday postal delivery. The mail carrier didn't just skip you last weekend; s/he didn't come at all.<br />5. If you are a U.S. Citizen, and you have a child, don't open an RESP for them no matter how much your regular bank tells you it's a great deal. There are terrible tax implications that will hit either you or your child later. Plus you could be arrested or something for having a foreign trust. <a href="http://webamused.com/milkbreath/">Rachel</a> said something about this and I didn't quite believe it, but then the guy who did our taxes last year confirmed it.<br />5a. However, someone else who is not a U.S. citizen <span style="font-style: italic;">can </span>open an RESP for your child, even if they're not related. Just saying. And if you were to quietly funnel them the money to do so, I wouldn't tell anyone.<br />6. And speaking of taxes: even if you have always prided yourself on doing them yourself, the first year you live in Canada might be a good time to pack it in and go to an accountant. After that, you can consider returning to your old self-sufficient ways.<br />7. Cream cheese costs $4.00 a package. You aren't reading the label wrong; it really does.<br />8. Be prepared for lots of Christmas. There is separation of Church and State in Canada, but it doesn't mean exactly the same thing that it does in the U.S.<br />9. Bring your own screws, or else just buy a new screwdriver. Seriously. The screw-heads are all different here and you won't be able to buy any new screws to fit your Phillips or flathead screwdriver.<br />10. If you are planning to apply for citizenship later, keep a record of all the time you spend outside Canada, including weekend trips down to the States; you'll need it for calculating your total residency. If you are like me, you will not think to do this for the first couple of years, and then you will wish that you had.<br />11. There are no public holidays (in BC, anyway) between New Year's and Easter. This makes for a long, dark, work-filled first few months of the year. It's a good time to plan for a short vacation. Or perhaps a short drunken spree.<br />12. When people ask you why you moved to Canada, don't say "For the health care" (even if it's true, or partly true).<br />12a. However, "It's just better here" is a perfectly acceptable response.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-60767946794081310412009-11-13T13:28:00.000-08:002009-11-13T13:33:18.108-08:00Murray, Who Invented Thumb-TwiddlingYeah, hmm, I really shouldn't have written that post yesterday. It was just tempting fate.<br /><br />But this afternoon I was pulled out of my doldrums by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/arts/television/15karp.html?hp">this interview</a>. I grew up listening to the 2,000 Year Old Man, so reading this was like old home week for me. Plus, I just get a kick out of how much Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner obviously enjoy each other's company after 60 years of friendship. I hope I have such good friends when I'm in my 80's.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-27491760125434859122009-11-12T19:05:00.000-08:002009-11-12T19:10:41.106-08:00Nothing to see here, Universe; just move along.You know, I don't want to jinx it....so I won't say it. I'll just say that we had an incredible summer, hot and sunny and full of leisure and song and water. And then we had a gorgeous, gorgeous October, without too much rain and with really truly glorious leaves all over the place.<br /><br />And now it is true, the leaves are all falling, and the sun sets nearly at 4:00 exactly what I'm dreading, etc.<br /><br />And RW was sick for a week, and that did kind of suck. (Though more for her than for me.)<br /><br />But, well, if I said I was less knocked over than usual this year by Teh November Gloom, that would be just a great big engraved invitation to the universe to send me something truly rotten, wouldn't it? So I won't say that.<br /><br />Instead, I will note that last week had several extremely crummy days in it. Remember that, Universe? Remember when I burned the corn muffins and messed something up at work? Huh?<br /><br />Yep. Just keep that in mind, and we'll say no more.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-78996186861428016662009-11-11T08:19:00.001-08:002009-11-11T08:19:48.977-08:00An Amazing DrawingRight! So, then I folded some laundry, and then I went to work, and then I came back, and RW took MG to her piano lesson instead of me doing it so I could get something done from my list, and then I made dinner (roast vegetables, mmmm), and then things were better although really should I be this sleepy when I just slept 10 hours last night?<br /><br />Well, tomorrow is a Day Off so we can Remember, and maybe in addition to remembering I will take a nap.<br /><br />In the meantime, here is an amazing drawing from K. Beaton, who is the author/cartoonist behind <a href="http://www.harkavagrant.com/">Hark! A Vagrant</a>. She was commissioned to create this <a href="http://beatonna.livejournal.com/123001.html">huge picture of famous people in Canadian history</a>. And I even know who a bunch--maybe a quarterof them--are! (There's a list underneath the picture if you want to match likenesses to names.) I am becoming more Canadian by the minute.<br /><br />Okay, I only know about Louis Riel because kids keep coming to the library to ask for information on him for reports. Apparently he is a popular report topic. I'm not sure if he would've approved.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-88700478528543438842009-11-10T08:40:00.001-08:002009-11-10T08:42:59.684-08:00Towing, Bailing.I blew it! I blew NaBloPoMo! Rats. I fell into (well, onto) bed right after MG's bedtime last night and that was that. I was exhausted from picking the car up at the towing place and from bailing the water out of the trampoline, which we had covered with a tarp against winter and which then proceeded to fill up with water until there was a big heavy pool in the middle and we were worried it would stretch the trampoline out of shape.<br /><br />So. Tired. Blew it. Will try to post twice today.<br /><br />P.S. it rained last night and there is again water in the trampoline.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-41840092689969711362009-11-08T22:04:00.000-08:002009-11-08T22:35:33.840-08:00Love and Work. And food.Today someone called in sick at at Big City Library, Big Downtown Branch, so I went in and worked.<br /><br />I helped kids find adventure books, mystery books, and books about Zimbabwe. I helped parents find counting books and books they could read aloud to their 5-year-olds that would not make them want to gouge their eyes out like the Rainbow Fairies (Here are a couple: Catwings; Pippi Longstocking). I more or less taught one mom all about early literacy and how to help her kindergartener get ready to read in a way that would be fun for both of them (Yes: reading together, rhyming, singing, finding books they both like, looking at signs and labels. No: memorizing vocabulary lists, formalized teaching of phonics) and she seemed to really get it and to be happy for the information. I showed a kid how to find information about prehistoric people on an online database, and how to e-mail the articles to himself to print out later, and his whole family gathered around the computer terminal to watch and encourage him.<br /><br />I helped an older woman wearing a poppy find "The Story of Ferdinand" for her grandchildren. I tracked down a book about Remembrance Day at another branch for someone who wanted to read it in her class. I helped a parent find a DVD about how to talk to your kids about sex. I found a CD-ROM about dinosaurs that a kid remembered playing two or three years ago. I did not find the French Christmas books because they'd been moved, and the other librarian on duty didn't know where they were either, but the patron who was asking me eventually found them herself, and she showed me where they were. I retrieved many video game disks for kids who wanted to borrow video games. I told many, many people that the bathroom keys were right on the desk and they were welcome to use them. And right before we closed, as everyone was hurrying for the exits, I helped a woman find some books about origami and haiku.<br /><br />I logged 86 questions in five hours. By the end of the afternoon I was a little twitchy. If someone-- like, say, one of my fellow librarians-- came into the corner of my field of vision, I would jump a little bit and reflexively say, "How can I help--" then laugh a little and say, "oh, hi." But it was fun. Well, mostly fun. I was doing the kind of reference I like most. It was fun to feel needed and knowledgeable and helpful.<br /><br />Then I went out for an excellent dinner with friends and laughed and laughed. I'd started the day with good food and laughter too-- the Mermaid Girl woke up in fine form, wanting to cook popovers and fruit soup out of the book Pretend Soup, by Mollie Katzen, and it turned out to be a really scrumptious breakfast. The Renaissance Woman is still sick, but was well enough to sit up and eat and chat with us before I had to go to work.<br /><br />I've had some tough days this week, but today was a really good day.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-91243998811262771992009-11-07T08:21:00.000-08:002009-11-07T08:37:42.281-08:00Surreality, 6 AM EditionHellooo! I am awake, o yes I am! I would be awake by now, anyway, but I was first wakened in darkness by the Mermaid Girl who came in and lay down and said, "I think my head hurts, and my stomach hurts."<br /><br />"Um," I said. "Maybe that's because it's, uh, 3:30 in the morning, bunny."<br /><br />"Oh!" she said. "Never mind! Okay! Go back to sleep!" And she went away and I did.<br /><br />I next awoke in darkness to the sound of someone talking in the other room, and a strange vibrant clinking ringing sound, like a glass harmonica. Or maybe two glass harmonicas bumping into each other.<br /><br />MG was sitting bolt upright in the middle of her room with the light blazing bright, listening to Shannon Hale's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Academy">Princess Academy</a> on CD. The weird glass harmonica sound was coming from her ceramic tea set, which she had laid out on the floor. It was 6:00 in the morning.<br /><br />"Look!" she said, climbing into the laundry hamper. "Turn off the light!" I obeyed. Blurry stars shone down on me from the ceiling. (I wasn't wearing my glasses.)<br /><br />"Oh, honey, that's gorgeous," I said.<br /><br />"Mama gave them to me," she said. "It was from a really old sheet. She said they probably wouldn't even work any more, but they DO. And some silly putty."<br /><br />"Uh...sweetie? Do you think maybe you should lie down and try to rest for a while?"<br /><br />"I can't, I have to CLEAN MY ROOM," she said. "I TRIED to sleep. But I can't. So now I'm cleaning my room."<br /><br />"Oh." I said. Who am I to tell a kid to stop cleaning her room? Though frankly, it looked if anything more cluttered than last time I'd been in there. "Um. Okay." Still kind of dazed, I slumped down to the floor and picked up one of the many Dear America books that her grandmother gave her a couple of years ago. "Um, maybe you could read for a little? Here, you could read this book about a factory worker."<br /><br />"No, Mommy," she said kindly. "Um, Mommy? You don't have to stay." Which is what she says when she is feeling diplomatic and wants us to GET OUT.<br /><br />"Oh. Uh, okay."<br /><br />"Mommy?"<br /><br />"Uh huh?"<br /><br />"Could you turn the light out on your way out? I'll turn it back on when I need it."<br /><br />"Um, okay." And I turned out the light and stumbled back to bed, leaving her in the laundry hamper looking up at the stars on her ceiling.<br /><br />So I listened to a podcast and tried to tune out the Princess Academy filtering through the heating vent, but no go. And now it is light and time for us to get up for real and go to synagogue, where we will, respectively, attend and teach religious school. Then she will go straight from there to a gymnastics birthday party all the way across town.<br /><br />Anyone want to take bets on the likelihood of:<br /><br />a) us making it to shul on time,<br />b) MG's room being cleaned for real by her deadline tonight, and/or<br />c) One or both of us having a total and utter meltdown by sunset ?elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-82210038316740772372009-11-06T22:10:00.001-08:002009-11-06T22:15:12.474-08:00Let's just pretend I wrote a real post today.Well. I must admit to feeling completely uninspired today. It is the third of three pretty crappy days, and also the day on which we ascertained that the Renaissance Woman has H1N1, which is completely upending our plans for the next week. My cold appears to be better but now I have a cough. I wish I could think of something clever or funny to write--I had lots of ideas yesterday, but they seem to have fled right out of my head, which is why one should always keep a list of blog post ideas handy.<br /><br />Anyway, maybe I can interest you in <a href="http://www.joshilynjackson.com/mt/archives/001099.html">this post</a> instead? It is pretty dang funny. And also its companion following post, <a href="http://www.joshilynjackson.com/mt/archives/001100.html">this one</a>.<br /><br />Okay! Enjoy! See you tomorrow!elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-26210442983409516832009-11-05T19:10:00.000-08:002009-11-05T20:38:45.246-08:00Bah Humbug, Yet Again: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love "The Holly and the Ivy"The annual "Bah, Humbug" post has become a holiday tradition here at the Booland, and far be it from me to mess with tradition. Tevye and I, we are ALL ABOUT teh tradition. (<a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2005/12/bah-humbug.html">Here </a><a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2006/11/bah-humbug-redux-first-draft.html">are </a><a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2006/11/bah-humbug-sugar-plum-edition.html">all </a><a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2007/11/bah-hum-no-wait-no-well-maybe-bah.html">the</a> <a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2008/01/eleven-ways-of-looking-at-entitlement.html">old </a><a href="http://elswhere.blogspot.com/2008/11/return-of-spawn-of-revenge-of-bah.html">ones</a>, if you'd like to bask in the past.)<br /><br />What-- you say it's not even December yet? Tell that to all the local merchants. Because things are gearing up already.<br /><br />Hence, forthwith, the FIFTH installment of our esteemed annual "Bah, Humbug" series. Said series aligning more or less-- no, wait, exactly!--with the number of years that the Mermaid Girl has been in public school in the Pacific Northwest/Western Canada/A Place Far From the Greater New York Metropolitan Area Where I Grew Up and Where School Staff Would Be Less Shocked At A Suggestion That They Teach The Flat-Earth Doctrine Than One That They Drag a Tree and Wreaths and Santa and Reindeer, Never Mind The Little Baby Jesus, Into the Public Schools In December. (At Least That's How I Remember It.)<br /><br />Our story (this year) begins back in early October, when the Mermaid Girl's Special School Choir started its rehearsals. The official name of the Special School Choir is actually-- I finally learned last week when I saw the permission slip, which never made it home last year due to the mysterious paper-eating qualities of MG's backpack--"The Christmas Concert Choir."<br /><br />I mean, I knew from MG's experience last year that that's what it actually <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span>, but in my home country we don't <span style="font-style: italic;">say</span> that. Even in Seattle they'd call it the "holiday choir" or some such.<br /><br />MG was hot to be in the choir, and no way was I going to be the bad guy here. I asked her if she minded singing songs about baby Jesus, like she did last year. "No," she said, "As long as there aren't too many. And as long as I don't have to <span style="font-style: italic;">believe </span>in him."<br /><br />I asked her if she wanted me to talk to the choir teacher, as we'd talked about a little last year after the concert, and she did. What did she want me to say? She wasn't sure. Did she want me to ask if the choir could sing a couple of songs about Chanukah, or at least not about Jesus or Santa? Yes, that was what she wanted. And should I say that if they do a Chanukah song, she would rather it not be the Dreidel song? YES YES I HATE THE DREIDEL SONG MOM.<br /><br />Okay! So, I went in to talk with the choir teacher. I'm always anxious about being an obnoxious demanding parent (having dealt with a few from the other side of the desk) so I practiced in the shower before I went, and even typed up talking points so that I could keep them in my pocket and refer to them if need be.<br /><br />And it went...okay. I've learned from some of my previous experiences and finally understand that much as I am stunned at the Christmasmania in the public schools out here, the people running said public schools honestly don't see anything wrong with what they're doing and really aren't going to transform their December celebrations into a replica of those in public schools on the Upper West Side or Northern New Jersey just because I told them they should. "Park Slope wasn't built in a day" is my new mantra.<br /><br />So I started by telling the choir teacher how much MG loves choir, which is true, and how excited she is to get to be in Special Choir, which is also true. Then I said, "Um...did you know that MG is Jewish?"<br /><br />And, no, actually, the choir teacher hadn't known that!<br /><br />So I talked a little about my surprise about the repertoire last year, and recounted much of my conversation with MG about it, and added my own observation that she actually seemed to be more affected by the Santa stuff than by little baby Jesus references, and the poignant (and true) detail that every year around Christmas she gets very upset and goes on and on to me about how she wishes she wasn't Jewish. And I do understand that Christmas is important to a lot of people at the school, but we are also a school and a community with a fair bit of cultural and religious diversity, did the choir teacher think she could maybe tone down the Santa and Jesus a bit? And maybe include a Chanukah song, or at least one that's not specifically about Christmas per se?<br /><br />And the choir teacher was very nice and listened very well and wasn't defensive and then said, well, of course we have to do Christmas (which, why??? Everyone seems to think so, and I've finally learned not to argue, but I still don't truly understand why), and the choir does sing "Silent Night" and "Away in a Manger" every year because they perform at Downtown Hotel and the old people there really like to hear it, and the choir is optional and is called the Christmas Concert Choir just so there won't be any confusion, and she's had concerns before from Jehovah's Witness families.<br /><br />BUT she could certainly look into including a Chanukah song, especially as she'd also had a question from another parent (the other Jewish family!) about the repertoire.<br /><br />And lo and behold, afer several weeks of rehearsal MG is going around warbling about "LIGHT the candles, SPIN the dreidel," and complaining genially that most of the kids don't know how to pronounce "Nes Gadol Haya Sham." Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.<br /><br />And even the Christmassy songs seem less... Christmassy this year. She's been singing Jingle Bell Rock, which isn't actually about Christmas at all if you think about it, and The Holly and the Ivy, which is so old that it's practically pagan and which actually, according to RW, references paganism.<br /><br />AND the for the Big Annual Christmas Show this year, they are doing NOT some made-up Santa-extravaganza, but an adaptation of "A Christmas Carol," which at least is, hey, Dickens! And as far as I can remember has no Santa in it! (Though Scrooge does I think dress up as Father Christmas at the end.)<br /><br />So: I am happy.<br /><br />On the one hand: It seems like such a pathetic incremental amount of change to be happy about.<br /><br />On the other: I <span style="font-style: italic;">am </span>happy. Pretty much. And Park Slope was not, after all, built in a day.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-19048808395363535692009-11-04T07:47:00.000-08:002009-11-04T08:04:25.997-08:00Grumpy little postOkay, first the bad news:<br /><ul><li>The slight sniffle and cough I had has metamporphosed overnight into a full-fledged and nasty cold.</li><li>Likewise, the slight lead for Yes on 1 in Maine last night has solidified into a loss for our side.</li><li>As one Facebook friend said this morning: "[My] humanity is not up for a vote, but thanks for your opinion, Maine."</li><li>I am running Book Club at work tonight, and so cannot call in sick. </li><li>The book we're discussing has lots of food in it, most of it totally impractical to serve at a book club meeting, so I will be making corn muffins this morning. Between coughing bouts. And trying not to infect the sweet old ladies who will be eating them.</li><li>There are Renovations happening at work, so the Book Club will be meeting not in our very own program room, but at the Community Centre across the way. On the second floor. Which means getting Circ to let me have a book cart (mostly requisitioned as part of the renovations) so I can cart all the Book Club stuff over. </li><li>RW and MG also have nasty coughs. We're just generally wrecks over here.</li></ul>Now the good news:<br /><ul><li>Um...well, there's Washington State. I guess I should be happier about I-71 passing. Baby steps, right?</li><li>I guess I could skip making corn muffins and just buy them. </li><li>RW ordered me a new iPod last night.</li></ul><br />Right! And you?elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-76731042591678545522009-11-03T17:47:00.001-08:002009-11-03T18:04:15.259-08:00Requiem for Something the Size of a QuarterI regret to announce that after first going through the washer and dryer, and then cruelly raising my hopes two or three times in the past week by acting like it was working, my iPod Shuffle is now definitively dead.<br /><br />I would just order another one exactly like it, except that I can't: it's a 2nd Generation one and they don't make them any more. I don't want a Nano because it's too big and doesn't have a clip, and I don't want a new Shuffle because all the controls are on the headphones, to which I object both philosophically and logistically. I can buy a refurbished one (for almost as much as the new one cost me a year and a half ago) but not in purple.<br /><br />So farewell, little purple Shuffle: You held all my podcasts, and you never complained about being hooked up to a sub-standard 1.0 USB post to be recharged and reloaded. You fit snugly in my pocket (which turned out to be a liability, come to think of it). Thanks to you, I was able to stay connected with my old radio friends <a href="http://thislife.org/">Ira Glass </a>and <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=35">Peter Sagal</a>, and to make new ones, like <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/">Eleanor Wachtel</a> and <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/">Terry O'Reilly</a>. You helped me get to sleep on many a night, and you kept me company while doing household chores and on otherwise-boring bus trips. There may be other iPods in my life, but you were my first, and I will always remember you fondly.<br /><br />(And not to be disrespectful to the dead or anything, but the big question now is: Pink or green? (Green, I think; less chance of the Mermaid Girl coveting it.)elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7538309.post-42638144778852681672009-11-02T15:10:00.000-08:002009-11-02T15:50:11.371-08:00Like rain on your wedding day. Halloween edition.Guess what came in the mail today?<br /><br />The Mermaid Girl's Halloween costume!<br /><br />The one I ordered from eBay because unlike our local stores , but they had a flapper dress in the right size *and* the right color (<a href="http://www.buycostumes.com/Sassy-Flapper-Child-Costume/21692/ProductDetail.aspx">this one</a>, but not at the site I just linked to, which why didn't I buy it from them? Because I am apparently dreanged, that's why) but then couldn't pay for because my old PayPal account wouldn't work because now I have a Canadian mailing address, and the eBay vendor kept not answering my frantic e-mails in which I tried to pay with a credit card, and the eBay help chat people were incredibly unhelpful (they were nice! but not helpful), so after a week of this I created an entirely new PayPal account, which somehow required me to create an entirely new e-mail address, and then I ordered the exact same costume again from a different vendor supposedly in plenty of time for MG's Costume Day at school last Friday,<br /><br />[pause for breath]<br /><br />and it didn't come and it didn't come and finally on Thursday night the Renaissance Woman took her to the Halloween store in Metrotown which by then was, as you can imagine, a complete zoo and also didn't have any flapper dresses except slutty ones for grownups so they picked out an awesome (and expensive) pirate costume and RW loaned MG her pirate hat and also the plastic sword (which she didn't take to school) and MG declared that pirates must wear black lipstick and black eyeliner and was perfectly happy and actually very sweet about it. ("Don't worry, Mommy. You tried," she said.)<br /><br />So when I told her what the package was today after school, she opened it up and put it right on and it fits perfectly and just looks overall fabulous. She did a few Charleston moves in it and all the fringes flew around just like they should.<br /><br />"Maybe I should go around trick-or-treating again today and tell everyone my costume didn't come in time," she said. (She was kidding. Fortunately.)<br /><br />We agreed that we'll feel much better about it if we think of it as a Purim costume that we ordered EXTRA EARLY. Because we are meticulously organized like that.elswherehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09682431666658202440noreply@blogger.com5