Candy Sandwich

Tear ducts

2012-02-17T12:25:00.002-05:00

Apparently, I had surgery when I was a baby. I don't really remember it because, well, I was a baby, but someone needed to unblock my tear ducts. Sometimes, I think that maybe the surgeon went a little too far.

I cry in the morning for no reason at all but the fact that tears need to fall. I'm perfectly happy, but the water just flows. I cry when I'm tired, when I'm angry or happy or inspired. I cry when I'm cold. The water streaming from my eyes seems to flow all on its own, but every once in a while, there's a reason.

"Are you reading?" one uncle asked of his mother's funeral.

"I don't think so," I replied. "I said I didn't want to."

"I heard that you're reading a poem," another uncle said.

"I don't know… I will if you want me to. I'm just a big cry baby."

I sobbed a little in front of hundreds of friends and strangers at my grandfather's funeral, an experience I didn't really want to relive at my grandmother's. Fortunately (for me) nobody could find the poem, though, the one I'd written in college that my grandmother saved and framed and had sitting around the house for years.

Instead, I sat in a pew as my aunt read a poem she'd written on lined paper as we watched her mother die and my uncle told a story of his mother's compassion and I cried from there.

Tag: Tears

Best medicine

2012-02-16T09:15:00.000-05:00

"Let's play cards. Let's play spades! Let's play Texas Hold 'Em! Black Jack! Do you guys have catchphrase?"

Suggestions fly as we geek out with laptops and tablets, TV and music. I'm still wearing a black dress from the viewing, that and pajama bottoms as I curl up with my nephew on the couch.

"What is catchphrase?" someone asks.

"You have a little thing and you say go and everyone else in the circle is on your team."

An 11-year-old comes out to ask about a dress/jacket combination while the dog tears at a teddy bear and my sister complains that she has old lady skin.

"Ha!" her 13-year-old son laughs.

"That's not funny!"

"I don't want old lady skin…" a 21-year-old cousin moans.

"I don't see how you avoid it."

"Don't get old," my nephew suggests.

The conversation of cousins and siblings, mother and children overlap as we sit in the room that use to be the den in my grandparents' house, the room where my cousin Heather and I had to pick up every piece of confetti that we cut three decades ago.

It was about the time that we picked all of the marshmallows out of a box of Lucky Charms; Grandpa made us eat the cereal sans sweet. It was disgusting.

In those days, a giant marlin hung on the wall. A swordfish. Something huge and sharp and blue that never got smaller no matter how big I got.

"Mason! Those are my socks!" the 10-year-old shouts at her brother who grunts in reply.

"Oh, my mom was married in this room!" my cousin says.

"Was it this room or that one?" I ask.

"That one," my brother says. "It was the fireplace room."

The 11-year-olds, the 21-year-old and I practiced the Thriller dance in the room that used to have twin beds and Nancy Drew books a lifetime ago. The 11-year-olds need to know it for a play at school. The 21-year-old loved to dance and I just wanted to remember how to do it to make one of my aunts laugh. I would do anything for a laugh.

Hours earlier, I talked about shoving a bag of jelly beans down my jacket because they wouldn't fit down my dress and the chocolate would melt. People laughed so hard they cried. They would have cried, anyway, but it seemed so much better with laughter.

Tomorrow will be hard. Today. For now, we just have each other and lots of laughs.

Tag: family

Armrest

2012-02-15T08:00:00.001-05:00

With a double ding of the bell overhead, the captain lets us know that we can use approved electronic devices as we fly through the dark toward the setting sun. Fast but not fast enough to catch the fleeting light as it makes a rainbow of the horizon.

The man next to me orders water for the rose he has carried from New York.

"Do you think it will work?" he asks. "They say it is the thought that counts."

He wraps his arms across his buttoned down chest, trying to keep to the space bordered by armrests as I cleave to the wall. I have somewhat needed to pee since Philadelphia but hate the thought of disturbing the man, the arms, the rose.

He is wearing pink.

"In honor of the day," I think even as I consider that maybe it is my least favorite Valentine's to date.

With a pair of flights, a funeral and conference calls to take around each, I probably would not mark the date but for the men with roses and the girl in pink feeding a man chocolate at the gate.

"Carry my pink bag," she implores the boy at her side, tucking her pink computer and the chocolates inside and he complies.

"That is love," I think, grateful that I don't feel compelled to stab a man with my fork over an awkward dinner conversation or hogging the armrest.

It is the small things, I guess.

Tag: Flying Travel

How

2012-02-14T08:45:00.004-05:00

Sonnet XLIII
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Off to Minnesota to bid farewell to the lovely lady in white. She's gone to greet her groom, to lie beside him throughout eternity.

Marlo Brandon

2012-02-13T08:33:00.002-05:00

A lifetime seems to have passed since Wednesday night and maybe one has. I spent most of the week sitting shiva for a woman who was neither Jewish nor dead, but she is getting there, the latter, at least. She no longer responds, blinks or breathes more than a couple of times in a minute; I have no idea where she's at with her god.

I felt like an idiot returning home. An imposter. A voyeur. I didn't know if I knew why I came but this wasn't it, eating tacos at an airport gate while waiting for my flight to board as my grandmother gasped for breath in a room 48 miles south of me.

She hadn't had food or water in a week. No medicine but morphine and Tylenol. Supposedly, her body was shutting down but after a few days, it seemed like, maybe, she was going to live forever. Gasping. Staring at the ceiling with unblinking, unfocused eyes. We've been to the edge of mourning and back again, exhausted and embarrassed by the depth of our emotion at something that had not come to pass.

It was hard on everyone, watching and waiting. Wishing her peace and the same for themselves as they listened to each slow, labored breath, knowing one would be the last and thinking of things like return flights and work.

A family friend took the boys – my uncles, brother and nephew – and me for a tour Sunday morning. We drove past the house where my mom and her siblings grew up and so many houses on my uncles' newspaper routes. I heard of bulldogs, an armless boy and a deaf woman. We visited the school for the blind, the one for the deaf and the penitentiary where Buck's wife once taught.

"She hit that waxed spot, slipped and fell, knocking her head on the doorframe," he said, knocking on the window as he slowly drove away from the razor wire. "She awoke, surrounded by five or six inmates, and do you know what they said?"

We couldn't imagine.

"You should sue the state!"

We laughed long and hard. I'm not even sure it was all that funny, but we kept laughing.

At the chapel, we went inside and heard a story of a young troublemaker.

"Do you know Marlo Brandon? The actor?"

"Marlon Brando?"

"Yes… He came to school here but got kicked out for demerits."

And Buck told us a story that involved a kneeling priest and a set of alarm clocks ringing five minutes apart. Brando (or Brandon) offset the story of my grandparents traveling with Buck and his wife in the Bahamas, a golden invitation from the governor and breakfast at a table next to Lauren Bacall and Burl Ives.

I heard so very many stories over the week, of my uncles painting their father's new car, my cousin's hockey wins, travels 30 years ago and last month and a million of others that fell somewhere in between. I half wondered if my grandmother just didn't want to miss her own funeral, if she wanted to hear the stories, too.

The week was wonderful and horrible and it's not over. Not really. Not at all. Because she hasn't had food or drink in a week and she is dying. She will die soon. As easy as it was to forget over the past several days with stories and laughter and her easing, if labored breath, it cannot and will not go on forever.

I cried as I took my leave. I knew that it really was the last time I would see her alive, and I bid my sister and mom a dry-eyed farewell, half expecting them to come back to the airport for me in a few hours or after I had made it to Chicago and figured out a way to come back again.

***

I missed the call that came in the middle of the night. The one less than an hour after I went to bed... My grandmother died last night. Maybe my guess was right: She didn't want to miss the party.

I was the first to go, but others were leaving soon and had said their final goodbyes. She knew that things were breaking up and it was finally time to let go.

Tag: Family

Puzzling

2012-02-12T08:48:00.002-05:00

Every time I pour a puzzle out of a box, flip over the pieces and start working on the edge, the same words escape.

"We must be missing a piece!"

As we work on the puzzle, fitting pieces together and forming pictures from colors – balloons, a flower field, the Brooklyn Bridge – the thought bubbles to mind again.

"They cannot all be here!"

Every. Single. Time.

One of my nieces accuses her father of holding the last one, hiding it so he can fit the final piece. He's never actually done it. He has suggested it but not nearly as often as the girl accuses him; it just seems impossible that we have all the pieces.

As we work, though, as the pictures start to form from the uneven and jagged bits, the number and size of the holes wane. The whole exceeds the sum of the parts and we start to realize that we have exactly the right number of pieces. No more. No less.

Deepak Chopra once said, "There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle."

Over the years, I've seen a number of other quotes about puzzles and pieces and fitting together, the idea being that everyone has a place. We just don't know where it is until we meet the ones on the sides. Working on puzzles, fresh from the box, it all makes sense. The pieces just fit together. Unless, of course, you're working on one (already opened) in the memory care unit of a nursing home.

Sometimes, in life, you find yourself working two puzzles and once. Sometimes, you find yourself with an extra corner piece and holes that won't be filled. Sometimes, when you think that maybe you must be crazy for overlooking the piece that you need because you just cannot find it, you realize you're not. The piece really is missing. It's not on the floor. It's not in the box. It's just gone.

And you put together the rest of the puzzle with holes in the middle, admire it for a while and take it all apart to put back in the box and leave for somebody else to try.

Tag:

Vigilant

2012-02-11T21:00:00.001-05:00

"Oh, my God," moans the woman across the hall. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

Apparently, Olga is awake and less than happy with something.

"Take me to heaven!"

We are in the memory care unit standing vigil. Sitting vigil. In chairs and beds. On the floor. With laptops and notebooks, devotional materials, cell phones and thoughts.

"Who are you?" Olga rasps through open doors.

Nobody answers.

A few hours earlier, we heard a man at the end of the hall, a man in his 80s calling for his mommy and shouting that he didn't know where to find her. I wished that I could, if only for a little while, be the woman he missed. Another man on the ward winks at me and reaches out to touch my arm or my leg whenever I pass and I do the same, smiling at him.

We laugh in the hall, in the family room over lunch and in the sunroom. We laugh in Grandma's room even as we cry and our noses run. I burst into tears for no reason at all talking to my uncle and great aunt about the threads in our lives.

I blame the exhaustion – I'd sat vigil the night before, at the foot of my grandmother's bed until they turned her and in a chair at her side when they did, holding her hand as night became day and still she held on. I wanted her to know, even in the darkest, smallest hours of night, that she wasn't alone.

My breath caught with each of her own as I counted the beats between inhale and exhale thinking of summer storms and the distance between thunder and lightning. I was scared that each breath might be her last, knowing one could, would and should be soon. When my sister woke and we switched places, I passed out in the bed for an hour or so, thinking of my grandpa's words about sleeping the sleep of the just with nary a thought of the unjust.

"Help me!" rings through the halls, Olga's cry unanswered as so many are. The nurses and aides just cannot give as much time as the residents want or need as their minds and bodies wander, locked into the ward.

One of the women wanders the hall endlessly. Night. Day. Sitting in a chair and sleeping soundly for minutes before getting up and walking again. I manage to get her a cookie – a win for the walking Eleanor – and to find out that she likes ice cream and popcorn, chocolate chip cookies and peanuts but not peanut butter.

The other Eleanor snaps at me, telling she "can't get nothing in this place."

"What do you want?" I ask.

"Nothing," she replies.

"Then you should be set," I answer. She is not amused, mumbling something about having enough of getting older and calling me a dumbass as she walks away. The day before, she tried to steal my sister's purse from the sunroom. We discover that things wander as much as the residents but nothing goes far. Not as far as the minds.

Back down the hall, Olga lies in her bed with drool soaking the comforter nearing her mouth. I crouch inside the door to meet her eyes, to tell her who we were and to talk for a minute or two.

"I don't know where they are," she says.

"Who?" I ask.

"I don't know," she replies and her shouts stop for a little while.

Tag: Family

One night

2012-02-10T08:00:00.005-05:00

"How can I be so tired?" I moan as we climb from the car. "I've done nothing today but eat, cry, and sit on my ass."

I've done more, including work, lots of work, but that was it in a nutshell: sit, eat and cry. Laugh a little. Talk a lot. And as tired I am, I sit in a darkened room, listening to classical music and the soft snores that help us feel as if she might just live forever or if not forever than through the night. Just one more night.

"Give us tonight," I beg a god in whom I'm not sure I believe, knowing it's not the right thing, not the right thing at all. She needs peace. I just don't want to imagine a world without her. Not yet. Not tonight.

We eat candy and drink soda. My sister clips coupons as I type on my laptop, catching up on work, keeping busy. The work could wait. The coupons. But we need to keep busy. My breath catches when the snoring stops. I strain to see the blankets move at the foot of her bed, rising and falling with each labored breath and then, my breath starts again.

"We won't be here through the weekend," the nurses say after taking her temperature, changing her position and trying to deaden her pain. "So, we'll see you [whispering] at the funeral."

The funeral.

She's not gone yet. My grandmother isn't gone. She's there. Here. Somewhere. Breathing loudly. Snoring through a morphine-tinged haze.

My sister balances her checkbook, and I balance mine.

"My laptop battery is about to die," I think, and the thought gives me pause because it's not about to die. Not really. It will reboot with a charge and work again. My grandmother, she's about to die. In the bed right next to us with the covers rising and falling. With gentle snoring and crazy hair. In a morphine-tinged haze.

I think we drove her a little crazy earlier, piling into the room like clowns into a VW, adding more chairs and more chairs and stumbling over each other with words and feet. I read aloud for a while from the book I was reading but stopped to cry for a bit. It was a poor choice of reading material but the only thing I had. It seemed to help her sleep; she closed her eyes, at least. For a little while.

My aunts and uncles, my sister and brother, a niece, a great aunt. A pastor comes in to help commend her spirit to God. My grandmother's friends with walkers and weary, lined faces weave through the room to give their love. The man from the shoe store comes in with a smile, a newsletter to share, a banana and some crackers as we piece together a puzzle in the sunroom and listen to a hospice nurse tell us what to expect. He, the man from the store, is so kind we all want to go and have our feet measured and shod. To buy every pair of shoes we will ever need from him.

Before dinner my nieces and great aunt played Boggle, the game that Grandma would assiduously study before I came to visit because she delighted in words, in finding new ones and beating me. She loved beating me. What I would give to be playing her right now in a cloud of Estee Lauder and Gold Bond Powder, seeing her smile with a flash of gold and fuchsia lipstick. My clever, clever grandmother so full of laughter.

It smells like shit in here. Actual human feces. And my sister and I close the door on the smell and the hall and the noise outside. And play music of our own, my own, Magnetic Fields, in Grandma's roommate's bed as the roommate finds rest in another room for a few nights and the classical music plays and Grandma snores and my sister tries to sleep and I read and think of sunset seen over the dash as my brother, aunt and I drive to pick up pizza for dinner, talking and laughing and singing with the sun setting in front of us and it's just so beautiful.

Close your eyes, listen to my voice it's my disguise
I'm by your side
Oh it's what you do to me
It's what you do to me

So beautiful.

Tag: Family

Forever 21

2012-02-09T08:46:00.004-05:00

Shaking my head, I blink back tears and wonder how I got here, to the thump, thump, thumping techno beats of Forever 21 while looking for something for my grandmother to wear to her own funeral.

Forever 21.

My head pounds even more than the music and I feel slightly queasy. The new vendors in the cafeteria at work don't seem to care about vegetarianism; even the tomato soup has fish in it. I make a lunch of lettuce and chickpeas. Very expensive lettuce and chickpeas.

Hunger gnaws as I stand at my desk, trying to pull on my coat and scarf while copying over a few more files, setting up meetings, closing out issues before leaving again.

"You're not going to have access..?"

"I left my VPN fob at home," I lament, trying to figure out if I had time to retrieve it before my flight, after shopping. "I will have access to email. My phone. If I don't answer, I might be in a funeral service."

"Can you get this done before the meeting on Monday?"

"No."

"Not even if we don't meet until one?"

"No... Just... No. It takes time. You have to run and filter the reports. Export them to excel. Reformat the files. Re-link them. Reformat them in word. It takes time... We shouldn't be doing it this way."

It was a discussion we'd had before. Why are we building the reports in Business Objects to put them in Word. Doesn't this make it easier? Can't you do it faster?

"We might need to change them anyway. She said we're grouping the employees in the wrong way."

"We can't change that."

"She said...."

"We can't change that. It is based on funding organization."

The data just wasn't there. We had had that conversation, too.

And it doesn't matter. None of it matters. I have to leave. I need to find a jacket for my grandmother to wear to her own funeral. A jacket in which she'll be buried because nothing fits.

She weighs less than my 10-year-old niece whose name she cannot remember, even in lucidity, and she's dying. Hospice says she's dying right now. Today. Tomorrow. Yesterday. Her time is up.

Ann Taylor. The Loft. Macy's. I call my mom who hands the phone to an aunt who knows just what she wants. I know, too. I can see it in my head. It is just not on the racks in the stores I race between in a cold, February rain, racing against time my flight leaves in two and a half hours.

I consider a $300 suit for the sake of the jacket. It looks almost right. Maybe I could keep the skirt? My bottom matches the size of her top. Would that be too macabre? More than jokes about black armbands on my sister's 40th birthday, which is today.

"Your family always has something going on," my boss says when I tell her.

"We don't do anything halfway."

Forever 21 is my last stop. Second to last. Just one more.

"She wouldn't be caught dead in that," I think perversely as I view the too short, too tight and completely obscene, bordering on hysteria.

I find a blazer not quite but not so completely wrong that I leave it behind. There just aren't that many options in Grandma's small town. Walmart. What about that gorgeous shawl Uncle Dale gave her, the one she always felt was too dear to wear? Nobody should be shopping for funeral clothes. Not now. Not ever.

I step up to the cash register, hand over my credit card and wonder, "What the hell am I doing here?"

Tag: Family

Full Snow Moon

2012-02-08T08:25:00.001-05:00

Generally, the heaviest snows fall in February. Two years ago, most of the city and the federal government shut down for most of a week in February and I missed a flight to New Orleans for my first Mardi Gras. I still haven't been, but this might have been the year to go with February snow nowhere in sight.

The moon, though, the full moon of yesterday, the Full Snow Moon, might be better known this time around as the Full Hunger Moon. Though, that might not fit either. The name originated with harsh weather conditions at this time of year that generally made hunting very difficult.

This year, it doesn't even feel as if winter has hit. Not yet. Not at all. It feels as if summer lasted forever and that fall melded into spring with hints of summer. According to the groundhog, though, we have six more weeks of winter. Maybe a little hunger under a beautiful full snow moon.

Unexpectedly, I'll be heading to Minnesota tonight as that moon starts to wane. I might just have a little snow yet.

Tag: moon

Tasty Salted Pig Parts

2012-02-07T08:59:00.001-05:00

After a few days in San Francisco, after farming my blog out to my niece, I tried convincing my sister to let the girl post regularly, maybe once a week or so to help her hone her skills as a would-be journalist. My sister, however, was not having any of it.

"I don't think so," she said.

"It would be a great opportunity for her to work on her writing."

"I'm thinking something along the lines of 'child labor laws'," she replied.

"But those nimble little fingers can type so fast!"

She wouldn't be budged.

At the time, I thought of how wonderful it would be for my 10-year-old niece to explore the world of writing through a blog, as well as the fact that weekly post would give me 52 free days in a year. 52 days. A year!

"Do we have to write another one?" she asked.

"It's tiring being me," I replied.

It was hard: The daily writing, thinking, getting out an living so we'd have things to write. She barely touched the surface of our trip in the course of our posts (which my sister and I minimally helped her write). She barely managed to cover the things that we did - the planes and cars, cable cars and boats. The miles of walking and aching limbs. Flight upon flight of stairs, as many as 30 at once down to the Point Reyes light house and back up again as well as regularly in the hotel once she realized the elevator certificate had expired.

She talked a little about the Winchester Mystery House and less about sunset on the Golden Gate Bridge. Walking among giants at Muir Woods. Walking in the surf the very first time. A gray whale feeding. Elephant seals breeding. Sea lions barking in the sun.

My sister and niece rode on the inside of the cable car while I clung to a bar on the side and tried to keep my skirt down. In Chinatown, we climbed three stories up to the oldest Chinese temple in the country and tried to avoid getting burnt by a girl carrying a dozen sticks of lit incense.

I tried to teach my niece how to use chopstics over dim sum and we watched women folding cookies around words of wisdom and bits of fortune inside. We sampled flat, unfortuned treats, hot off the belt, and shared a bag of the fortuneless kind at the hotel while watching football. No party. No beer. Just the girls and the pigskin, and my niece barely remembering which teams were playing.

"The Packers?" she asked. "How are they again?"

"The Giants and the Patriots."

"I thought they wore green."

"The Packers wear green."

"Maybe that's it."

At Alcatraz, we were fortunate enough (despite the empty cookies) to find ourselves on a walking garden tour and the favorites of one of the volunteers. We got even more information than the rest of the group as we lagged behind, taking pictures of flowers and learning more about the history of the fort cum prison as well as the vegetation itself. After that, mid-audio tour, we managed to see and hear a former inmate. My niece couldn't hear much , though. It was crowded and she was tired. It's a shame as her chances will wane as the number of former inmates dwindles. (The institution closed almost 50 years ago.)

We talked about waning and waxing and the moon that would soon be full. The moon that was up in the sky at the same time as the sun. About the sun and sunscreen and how very lucky we were with the days warm and clear.

She didn't quite write about her lucky pennies, the ones she cranked out with images of the Golden Gate Bridge or an owl from the woods, or the walking tour and the others who made it even more interesting. The family from Melbourne. The woman from Arizona. She didn't write about me swearing on the treacherous curves of Highway 1 or the way I always wonder aloud if I might be lost about 30 seconds before getting wherever I need to be. The things we didn't do, like a shanty sing along.

Anyone would have struggled to capture the days of sunshine and laughter. The somewhat hard bits. The little things like hotel neighbors talking too loud. The stars inside eucalyptus pods. A man on the street drawing a caricature outside the farmers market and the things we saw in, like a place that sold "salty pig parts." It was hard for any of us to wrap our minds around our days together, muchless to write them up, but the girl did a very good job.

If only I could convince her mom to let her keep writing... 52 free days. Can you imagine?

Tag:

Super Bowl Sunday from Mini Me

2012-02-06T08:26:00.003-05:00

The morning started when we saw a baby in a bar window covered in blankets. It was an organic bar that might make it OK, but I don't think so.

Then, we caught a cab to fishermans wharf where I shared an awesome bagel with my awesome aunt while waiting for a cruise boat. It said cruise but it wasn't a cruise. We were taking it to go to Alcatraz. It was cold on the way there. Smooth waters. Not rough and choppy. We went on a garden tour and saw some pretty flowers. We got to go into some restricted areas. The sea gulls were really bugging me. They were all over, like, all over.

Then, we took an audio tour of the cellhouse, and my mom's tour was a totally different tour and she was taking us into different places. Maybe she had the French tape or something. Halfway through, we took a break and we listened to an ex-convict person. I couldn't hear. When we started back up, I learned about some people who got out of prison using some fake heads and a spoon. Then, we went to the gift shop and looked at some magnets that had rules on them.

"You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege."

Then, we took the boat back.

We were walking around for a bit and then we saw people staring at something and then we walked over to them and saw that it was the sea lions' 22nd anniversary. The sea lions were noisy and they were fighting over a girl, we think. Yeah. Those two. They were like king of the hill and then one of the fighting sea lions got his own hill instead of the other guy's.

Then, we ate at In-N-Out Burger. Their fries weren't salty. The burgers were really good, and there were people feeding the pigeons even though it was illegal.

Then, we went to a store and I got a really cute fleece jacket. After that, we were walking around the city again. We walked a really steep hill that my mom thought was really hard to walk up because her back hurt. It was at a fort named after my brother. Then, I had to go to the bathroom so we went to Safeway and walked around the store for a while because somebody thought the bathroom was in the back, but it wasn't and there was a really long line and my aunt looked at sock monkeys while we waited. There was an argyle one.

After we were done peeing and looking at sock monkeys, then we walked out of the store and we walked through some neighborhoods and we walked home. To the hotel. And that leads up to right now and we're watching some Super Bowl thing. The whatevers versus the whatevers. The Packers. No, the Giants.

Tag: Travel Family San Francisco

More wisdom from Mini Me

2012-02-05T08:49:00.003-05:00

Apparently, I've adapted to the times and have started outsourcing my blog. Not only that, I've employed child labor in the process. My 10-year-old niece, my mini me, has thoughts to share and it's fun - for me, at least - to experience the journey through the eyes of someone younger, less traveled and slightly shorter than me.

Words of Wisdom (Take II)
by Mini Me

Yesterday was awesome.

Yesterday I got to ride a cable car for the first time, I got to see the crookedest road in the world, Ghirardelli Square, China Town, and Fishermans Wharf. In China Town I tried a suggested pastry and I found out I am not a fan of the Lotus Golden Yolk Mooncake! I have to say it was not my idea to get this yolk mooncake thing.

I went to this awesome restaurant for lunch and got a whole bunch of dishes including a spring roll, greenbeans, and pumpkin fries. I'm glad I didn't have anymore mooncake!

Also in China Town I went to a fortune cookie factory and got some chocolate fortune cookies. I saw the old ladys making the cookies by hand and folding all the cookies.

Back at the area of Russian Hill I saw the crookedest road in the world (Lombard Street) and walked down it at a 31 1/2 degree angle. I got a couple pictures. In Ghirardelli Square I went into a chocolate and ice cream store and got Cookies and cream ice cream in a cone. I also got a little free sample of Ghirardelli chocolate at the register. It was good.

In Fishermans Wharf I went on a tour with a park ranger and learned about the industrial side of fishermans wharf and saw a couple of crazy swimmers in the bay, that doesn't seem like a good idea!

Yesterday morning I went on a donut and creamer run for my mom with my Aunt, I got really a good donut with sprinkles and my Aunt got what she and my mom call the best apple fritter in the world.

On my first cable car ride I was squished in between my mom and this kid who kept stepping on my foot. I found out that cable cars move really slow!

Well... So...Overall yesterday was a really good day, I don't want to leave San Francisco on Monday Night. But I guess I have to go back to school sometime! Bye!

Tag: Travel San Francisco Family

Words of wisdom from Mini Me

2012-02-04T08:54:00.001-05:00

"OK. So what am I going to say?"

"Tell me about your trip."

"But I don't know what to say."

"Tell me about your day."

With that, I'm turning today's post over to my 10-year-old niece and her impressions of her first trip to the Left Coast, days that have included the Winchester House and sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, Highway 1 and the Pacific Coast Highway, her first views of the ocean and dipping her feet into the chilly water on a warm February day, 308 steps to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, elephant seals, cows and the best sandwiches in the world, and, without further ado, my niece....

Hi, I'm Remy and I just saw the ocean for the first time. When I was at the sea shore my mom helped me find some really cool shells including an oyster shell and a crab one.

Before I went to the beach I got to see these amazingly huge trees, the giant redwoods at Muir Woods. We walked about 2 miles on the paths. The trees made me feel so tiny!

Ok, I have to stop going back in time so maybe I'll just start at the first thing I saw a day before, the Winchester Mystery House. I've always wanted to see the Winchester House since I saw it on my favorite show, "Ghost Adventures." That was the main reason I came on this trip, just to see it. I got to go on two tours at the House. The first was just a tour around the actual house, like to see all the rooms and stuff like that. The second was called the "Behind The Scenes" tour. I got to go to the basement of the house and a couple other outbuildings. I found out Mrs. Sarah Winchester had her own seance room and apparently she really liked (not liked, Loved) the number thirteen, she had thirteen bathrooms, thirteen drains in one sink, and in one of the bathrooms there were thirteen windows!

So now in my story we would be at the Muir Woods, but I already told you about that and the beach. After the beach I went to see a cool lighthouse. I had to go down three hundred eight steps, that's thirty stories tall! After that I saw some elephant seals but right after I took one picture my camera died! The seals smelled alot and it sounded like a zoo or something. They were so noisy! When we were coming home we had to wait for these cows to cross the road. One cow came onto the road off its path, this guy (probably the farmer) came up on a four-wheeler and rounded the strayed cows back into the group of them. It was really weird!

Me or my mom or my aunt hadn't had lunch so we stopped at this little store and got the best sandwiches ever!! They were so good; I got a turkey and bacon one. I ate my sandwich on the way back to San Fran. I don't really have anything else to say... We are kinda caught up now, so I guess... Bye!

Tag: Travel California Family

Sleeves

2012-02-03T08:30:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, we wear our hearts on our sleeves. On our chests. The man across from me on the shuttle wore an American flag polo emblazoned with a bald eagle on the right shoulder.

I tried to imagine the store where one might buy that, picking it out from the rack or maybe seeing it on a mannequin first and asking where to find it. Holding it up. Gauging its width. The length.

"Perfect!"

Someone carried this shirt to the counter and paid for it. Cash? Credit card?

Whether it was a gift neatly wrapped and tucked under a tree, somehow this shirt made its way into a man's closet and this morning, when he opened the door and tried to figure out the best outfit for travel, seeking the right blend of comfort and style, knowing he'd see hundreds of strangers over the course of the day and this - this American flag with an eagle - is how he chose to represent himself.

He looked very nice.

I, too, stared at my closet this morning and struggled to piece together an outfit. Comfort. Style. Something that represented me to the world I would see.

"Pink t-shirt. Unflattering cut..."

It was not my cutest print T, not by a long shot, and the color looked absolutely hideous on me but the message won out. I tried a couple of pairs of cords, trying to find something that looked slightly less terrible. Jacket. Fleece. Cardigan. Cardigan! I didn't look half bad. I didn't look half good, either, but I managed to find something that worked.

At airport security, when I peeled off my layers, a TSA agent told me she liked my shirt. At the gate, four men started talking to me about it.

By 5:43 in the a.m., the groundhog still hadn't figured out if we would have an early spring, and I had had several discussions with strangers on a fairly controversial topic because of the heart (and the words) I wore on my sleeve: I stand with Planned Parenthood.

Tag: Clothes

Stand or walk

2012-02-02T08:00:00.004-05:00

I don't know what to do.

In the past three years, I've walked in four 3-Day for the Cure events, raising about $10,000 for Susan G. Komen and officially covering about 240 miles for breast cancer awareness and education, research and treatment. I've covered thousands more in perpetual training since February 2009.

I wear my pink with pride because the world needs an end to breast cancer. Because my grandmothers had it. And my aunts. And my friends. And I want my nieces to grow up without fear that their breasts will kill them. I want to grow up without fear that my breasts will kill me. I have great breasts. I want to keep them and stay safe, all at the same time. Is that too much to ask?

On Valentine's Day, I'll go in for a semiannual appointment at one of the nation's top breast health centers. I go in every six months, have for years and even though I'm not yet 40 and nowhere close to 50, I get annual mammograms because my risk is high and because I have health insurance that covers semi-annual screening and annual mammograms. Not everyone else is so lucky.

For many women, especially those in rural areas and underserved communities, Planned Parenthood is their only source of health care.

On Valentine's Day, when everyone else is thinking about chocolate, roses and love, I'll be getting my breasts poked and prodded, smashed and imaged to make sure that I don't have cancer, and then I'll go and see a nurse about a study in which I'm participating because I'm part of the research. I'm putting my money where my mouth is or my breasts where my feet are or something like that because I believe in a cure.

I'm just not sure I believe in raising funds for an organization that has cut off funding for exams and mammograms in a hugely under served segment of our population. When breast cancer is detected early, the 5-year survival rate is 98 percent - almost 100 - but that requires early detection and on Tuesday, news broke that Susan G. Komen cut off funding to these programs at Planned Parenthood.

Official announcements state that they have implemented "more stringent eligibility and performance criteria to ensure our funds are used for the greatest need, which unfortunately may affect some long-time grantees of Komen." On Tuesday, Komen announced that it would sever ties because Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Congress; Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) is investigating Planned Parenthood for possibly using taxpayer money to pay for abortions.

Last year on the Cleveland walk, women cited trouble raising funds because of the link between organizations. Some of the people they approached didn't want to "pay for abortions." So, they didn't. That is their prerogative, and frankly, Susan G. Komen can do whatever they want with the funds. It was freely given, without strings attached, without rules about where to spend it. If I or my supporters want to fund Planned Parenthood, we can do it directly.

Many people are claiming the withdrawal to be politically motivated and whether or not it was spurred by politics, it has become a polarizing issue. People are upset. I'm upset. I don't know if I want to walk 60 miles in the name of Susan G. Komen. I definitely don't know if I want to raise money in their name.

Susan G. Komen has never been above reproach – nobody is. There have been questions about the amount of money that has gone into administrative functions as well as their approach toward branding and other cancer organizations, but it has done a lot of good.

I just don't know what to do.

I don't know how to stand with Planned Parenthood and walk with Komen.

Tag: Susan G. Komen Planned Parenthood

Proprioceptors

2012-02-01T08:14:00.001-05:00

I fear that I am starting to hate my Physical Therapy.

It's not the work I despise, or the people in the office that isn't an office but an overgrown playroom filled with rubber bands, balls and boards. (The people are great.) It's leaving the office.

Finding the time to leave the office to do something for myself, focusing on me for the hour and a half it takes to get there, race through my exercises and get back to the office, makes my blood boil. I've had to take cabs twice in a week because I just couldn't leave the office on time, and I'd been prepping people for weeks.

By the beginning of the third session, I realized I'd have to cancel. By the end of the fourth, they managed to convince me to come in after work, and even then, I felt guilty about leaving the office sometime close to the end of the day and not two hours later.

I still keep going, though, trying to make my ankle somewhat better or less bad or more stable at least, and I continue to run through the exercise designed to work on my proprioceptors, the nerve endings that tell my body where it is, where it should be and how it is moving.

Proprioceptors detect subtle changes in movement, position, tension, and force, within the body, and they can trigger protective reflexes.

Obviously, that's an area in which I need help.

I've never been one with balance. As a child, I tended to cling to the rail rather than fling my body out there on skates. Watching the roller derby on Saturday and ice skaters Sunday made me think of how I'd end up: Sprawling.

Part of my problem rests with hypermobility. Loose joints. Mine tend to move beyond the normal range of motion, and it carries over from joints to the rest of my life. I tend to go beyond the normal range of motion.

Last week, between PT sessions, I found myself addressing several "fire drills" at work, not to mention working a 17-hour day and spending massive amounts of time pulling together photos for my grandmother's funeral. She's not dead, but chances are that will happen soon, and I've been tasked with a photo project that requires spending hours looking into the face of a woman I know and love in anticipation that we will soon lose her.

By the time the weekend came, I had no idea which way was up and then, I stayed up too late, slept too little and laughed so hard that I cried. I lived life fully. I just didn't do it with balance.

My balance, gait and fear of falling are all on the table in PT, though. Sometimes, I just cannot make it all work, and sometimes, I just need to put myself first. PT has made me face that choice and I'm growing to hate it because I know that it's right.

Tag: Balance

Widmann, Mozart & Schubert

2012-01-31T09:00:00.003-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, under the direction of conductor Christoph Eschenbach, the National Symphony Orchestra tackled Armonica, an original work by Jörg Widmann, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944 "The Great."

The pieces differed greatly, from Armonica featuring Christa Schönfeldinger on the glass harmonica to the amazingly warm and fast paced clarinet solo (performed by the composer of the first piece) in notes penned by Mozart more than 200 years ago.

The glass harmonica (aka armonica) took a place of honor on the stage, near the esteemed director and in front of the concertmistress/first violin. What from a distance appeared as a clear, almost white cone ringed in bands of metal was actually a set of spinning glass disks or bowls on a common with larger/lower-pitched bowls on one side progressing to smaller, higher-pitched bowls on the other. The spindle turned by way of a foot pedal and sound was produced by touching the rims with moistened fingers.

"How does one decide they're going to play that?" my friend and I wondered and threw out suggestions from finding one in a flea market to spending hours, days, an entire childhood playing household glassware filled with varying amounts of unknown beverages. Whatever it was that moved her to the instrument, though, Schönfeldinger clearly had it mastered.

The piece – Armonica – reminded the audience of nothing so much as the soundtrack for a horror film. A thriller. Something set in bygone years. Audrey Hepburn in "Wait until Dark" raced through my head as the man behind us whispered, "Don't open the door!"

Historically, the other-worldliness of the instrument was linked to associations with troubled and even demonic mental states. It was even used in demonstrating hypnotic states using magnets or "mesmerism". We weren't sure when the afternoon started with ethereal sounds, but the music of Widmann's piece was somewhat dark and mysterious, building to a crescendo and taking us with it.

It was in homage to the legacy of Mozart that Widmann composed his piece Armonica, and Widmann soon took the stage for a solo in Mozart's work that was as light and bright as his own was dark and mysterious, and Widmann wowed the audience with his clarinet skills. The man in the aisle seat came for that piece and that piece only, taking late seating and leaving at intermission, and the music made my once-clarinetting friend wonder what might have happened if only she'd practiced more.

While light and bright, the concerto ranged to the far less so. It was filled with ranging emotions and brilliant shades of every imaginable color, inspiring thoughts of spring and waltzes, warmth and laughter. It was almost impossible to imagine how one man could make such sounds come from a bit of wood touched with metal, but somehow, he did. And with quick fingering and simple themes, it was wonderful.

After the intermission, the Schubert piece opened to a somewhat smaller audience – so many of those who'd come for the Armonica or Mozart piece stayed for only that much. Armonica. Mozart. Those who stayed, though, for Schubert, enjoyed a lovely performance of the "Great" symphony. It couldn't compare with a piece that opened in Washington with Benny Goodman (the Clarinet Concerto) but nothing much could. All in all, it was a very wonderful afternoon.

Tag: Music National Symphony Orchestra Kennedy Center

DC Roller Girls

2012-01-30T08:30:00.003-05:00

"Next time," I said, time and again. "Next time, we're going to sit in the seats on the floor."

I just didn't know what kind of seats were the best when I walked into the January doubleheader of the DC Roller Girls. I didn't know what to expect of any of it, but when a friend of a friend said his wife competed, I found myself with three friends in tow for my first roller derby.

Until Saturday afternoon, my experience with the sport was limited to Roller Games, Rollerball and Whip It! To be fair, I barely remember the television show from the 80s and Rollerball was both bad and a sport only tangentially related to roller derby. Whip It, though, not only came with a great soundtrack, it brought attention to a growing sport that highlights female empowerment.

Actually, roller derby actually started in the 1930 and professionally roller derby grew in popularity in the 1940s. In the following years, it turned into more of a show than a sport and one of my friends compared the event to professional wrestling, wondering loudly (and often) if the event had been scripted. While it was in the past, these days it's not, but her question was understandable with hip-checks, fishnet and old-fashioned four-wheel skates.

"This is awesome!" I cried time and again from the seats that we did get, first row at the side. We didn't take floor seats as the man at the door told us to sit where we wanted without getting too close to the ring. The track.

Unlike the team in the movie, the DC Roller Girls participate in the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, which offers exactly that: A flat track. The ring isn't inclined. The women (teachers, nurses, writers, artists, librarians and work-at-home moms) aren't racing at an angle. They are racing, though.

"I need a faster camera," I moaned almost as often as I extolled the awesomeness.

The lack of speed didn't stop me from trying to take pictures, from trying to capture the look and feel of the event, and I could only hope that I'd improve as time progressed because I would come back. I planned to keep bringing more people with me. It was a wholesome, high-speed, entertaining way to spend part of a weekend.

The sport reminded me nothing so much as hockey with bodies slamming into one another. Unlike the puck sport, though, the women were wearing far few pads with knees, elbows and heads covered in addition to teeth (with the mouth guards) but the rest of the gear consisted of things like hot pants and fishnets, sleeveless shirts and ribbons. Each of the jerseys bore a name and number as unique as the woman who wore it. Lucky Penny. Lois Slain. Yankee Scandal.

Yankee Scandal rocked.

Frankly, they all did, much like the whole experience. Filled with women who formed the league in 2006, practicing in a Rosslyn garage, they were both new and experienced skaters as well as "seasoned athletes and former couch potatoes" and they took hits that would have left me sprawling for days.

As we tried to think of names for ourselves, as we enjoyed PBR tallboys, cookies the size of our heads and candy from the DC DemonCats' mascot (a catwoman in skate), as well as trying to figure out how to capture the scene with pictures or words, we gave into the event and just enjoyed the match ups between the Majority Whips and the Cherry Blossom Bombshells, Scare Force One and DemonCats.

The next local event will be held Saturday, February 25 at the DC Armory with a doubleheader pitting Majority Whips against Scare Force One and the Cherry Blossom Bombshells against the DC DemonCats. Between now and then, the DC All-Stars will represent the East Cost at The Big O, an invitational roller derby tournament hosted by the Emerald City Roller Girl in Eugene, Oregon, Feb. 10-12.

Between now and then, I also plan to work on my action photography and to recruit more friends to join me. Someday soon, the DC Roller Girls will sell out the armory and I hope to be inside the doors when they do.

Tag: Roller Girls

Less naked, still good

2012-01-29T11:30:00.006-05:00

For those unwilling or unable to be knocked naked by a nutty, chocolate, caramel creation for whatever reason – apprehension, dietary restrictions, a case of "never nude" – I also baked vegan Oatmeal Cranberry cookies for Saturday's event.

Based on Quaker's "Best Oatmeal Cookies," I tailored the recipe to remove animal products like eggs, butter and refined sugar (which can be processed with animal bone char) and to include a mix of whole grain oats, wheat, rye, barley, triticale and flaxseed.

"That means the cookies are healthy, right?" a friend asked me.

"The cookies are healthy," I agreed.

"And the brownies? Are the brownies healthy, too?"

"The cookies are healthy."

Where the brownies were heavy and heavenly, the cookies were light and crumbly in all the right ways. They made a perfect end to a lovely meal shared with friends. Both recipes will be repeated.

Vegan Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients
1-1/4 cups (2-1/2 sticks) vegetable margarine
3/4 cup demerara sugar
1/2 cup cane suga
Egg substitute equivalent to one egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 cups five-grain hot cereal mix (or oatmeal)
1 cup dried cranberries

Preparation
Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, beat margarine and sugars until creamy. Add egg and vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg; mix well. Add oats; mix well.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake 8 to 9 minutes for a chewy cookie or 10 to 11 minutes for a crisp cookie. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. Store tightly covered.

While clothes remained on throughout the eating of both brownies and cookies, there was much talk of nudity and I cannot say the talk wasn't inspired by a party in the mouth.

Tag: Baking Vegan Cookies Recipe

Knock 'em Naked

2012-01-28T08:58:00.002-05:00

With a lucky bit of timing, I managed to honor National Chocolate Cake Day by baking Knock 'em Naked Brownies. While the name belies the fact that they are in fact made with cake mix (not brownie), the Knock 'em Naked part was what inspired the baking.

Chocolate cake mix mixed with evaporated milk, nuts and butter, topped with caramel and chocolate and more of the doughy batter...

I'd wanted to bake something like them ever since I sent cupcakes in jars to a NYC friend. The layers of yellow cake and chocolate inspired thoughts of so many tastes I could combine and layer in jars and share with friends near and far. Funfetti! Angel food with cherry frosting! Turtle brownies!

And then, I found the recipe for Knock 'em Naked Brownies (courtesy of The Pioneer Woman).

1 box (18.5 Ounce) German Chocolate Cake Mix
1 cup finely Chopped Pecans
1/3 cup Evaporated Milk
½ cup Evaporated Milk (additional)
½ cup Butter, melted
60 whole Caramels, unwrapped
1/3 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
¼ cup Powdered Sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix together cake mix, chopped pecans, 1/3 cup evaporated milk, and melted butter. Stir together until totally combined. Mixture will be very thick.

Press half the mixture into a well-greased 9 x 9 inch square baking pan. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven and set aside.

In a double boiler (or a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of boiling water) melt caramels with additional 1/2 cup evaporated milk. When melted and combined, pour over brownie base. Sprinkle chocolate chips as evenly as you can over the caramel.

Turn out remaining brownie dough on work surface. Use your hands to press it into a large square a little smaller than the pan. Use a spatula to remove it from the surface, then set it on top of the caramel and chocolate chips.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from pan and allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate for several hours. When ready to serve, generously sift powdered sugar over the surface of the brownies. Cut into either nine or twelve helpings, and carefully remove from the pan.

Chocolate, caramel, and pecans layered to make culinary perfection and a party in my mouth. Once I saw the recipe, I knew I had to have them. To make them. To bake them in a jar.

I have no idea what stemmed National Chocolate Cake Day on January 27, but I'm proud to say that I celebrated with the best of them with plans to share on January 28. The day after National Chocolate Cake Day. Chocolate hangover day? The restart of resolutions? The rest of our lives?

Time to knock 'em naked. That's enough for me.

Tag: Baking Chocolate

Staying in bed

2012-01-27T08:28:00.002-05:00

Some days just don't seem worth the effort it takes to get out of bed. Unfortunately, I never seem to find out until I'm too far from the covers to crawl back under them.

The day started cold but sunny. At least, it was sunny by the time I left the house, far later than intended but early enough to make my meeting and things seemed to be going well. Well enough. Enough. Long walk on a cold morning. Work.

Temperatures had risen a bit by the time I left the office for my appointment and everything seemed to be going well. I'd checked the times on the metro website, bundled and dashed to the station, catching a train just as the bell started to ding.

"Doors closing."

I found myself surrounded my men in 10-gallon hats and I felt like a half-pint in stocking cap with a puffball on top. At Metro Center, I changed lines and boarded a Red headed northwest to meet a woman about a tooth or three.

Everything seemed to be going just fine until the conductor started making announcements about single-tracking, delayed service and shuttle buses. And then, two stops shy of my destination, we stopped moving altogether and hung out for a while at the platform to a station where I'd waited a half hour a week before for plans that just didn't happen. I knew the station didn't have service.

My nerves frayed as I waited, wondering about the nerveless tooth that caused so much pain. And the two others the woman planning to poke and prod, freeze and tap. I wasn't looking forward to the appointment to which I was already late. I was hungry, tired and in pain. I'd reached the point where I just wanted to go home. Instead, I went up and tried to catch a cab.

A woman who followed me out grabbed the only one that I saw and I waited, cursing under my breath even as I called the office to tell the doctor I'd be late. I didn't know the area well enough to know if I could just walk. I didn't know where I was and I certainly didn't know where I was going.

Eventually, a cab driver picked me up and took me there, chatting the whole way. He hadn't had a fare in two hours. He forgot to run the meter, offered me a completely arbitrary rate and realized he didn't have change for a 20.

We'd gone a mile and a half.

"Do you have anything smaller?" he asked.

"I don’t," I said, wishing my wallet held something other than two bills totaling $21.

"Do you think they do inside?"

"I don't know. I've never been here."

"Can you check?"

I ran into the office and breathlessly asked people I'd never seen if they could make change. They couldn't. The cab driver suggested I drive around with him when I went back to the car.

"I can't," I said. "I'm already 15 minutes late to my appointment, and I have no idea how I'm going to get back."

He'd forgotten his phone, so I couldn't call him to take advantage of the change I wouldn't be getting as I foisted the bill into his car and went back to fill out paperwork, realizing I didn't even know the address for my company. I called my boss – she didn't answer; our company line – it had the old address; and the accountant, who gave me the address.

Then, the fun really began and I almost cried. My teeth were X-rayed, poked and prodded. Frozen. Tapped. I found out that I needed two crowns (without root canals at this point) on adjoining bottom teeth and to have a third completely deconstructed, packed with antibiotics and put back together again. If that didn't work, I need to have my tooth pulled and a piece of metal drilled into my jawbone with a fake tooth attached.

It wasn't just the pain that I envisioned (though, I'd had plenty of that given my recent dental work) but the associated cost. I couldn't afford to rebuild two teeth and deconstruct/reconstruct a third, much less undergo surgery for an implant. I'd paid for nine plane tickets for three trips for myself and a bunch for my family in the next couple of months. Two safaris. A trip to Zanzibar. Hotels and cars and tours yet to be paid.

I'd been eating beans for months. Pureed. Because my mouth had been hurting longer than I could remember and it would continue to hurt for quite some time because I figured I could replace only one tooth at a time, which put the painless horizon somewhere in 2015 (provided nothing else happened).

It was a bad day. I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and pretend the day hadn't happened.

But then, the cab driver came back. He'd found change and he brought it to me. And the girl who'd kind of fallen off the face of the earth with donation money from our fundraiser shot me an email. And I helped a very drugged/drunk/mentally challenged couple find the bus that they needed. And I had a good night volunteering. And everything seemed to be all right.

None of that would have happened if I'd stayed in bed. Maybe it's good that I didn't know about the bad stuff when I crawled out from under the covers.

Tag: Stress Teeth Money

Norwegian Wood

2012-01-26T08:54:00.000-05:00

I once had a girl or should I say...

One of my favorite Beatles songs finds itself intrinsically linked with a sad, sweet little film based on a book of the same name. Isn't it good? Norwegian Wood.

The story penned by Haruki Murakami tells of a young Japanese man in the 60s, torn between his love of a beautiful tormented girl with whom he shares the deep bond of history and a light, beautiful girl focused more on the present and possibly future.

In the context of a struggling political climate, youth revolt and set adrift by his best friend's suicide (part of the bond the boy shares with the girl), the subject matter is deep and rocky but not unnavigable, not even in Japanese. Norwegian Wood offers the most simple story of all: Growing up and falling in love. Boy meets girl. Everything else is just back story.

At times, the film can be hard to watch, emotionally wrought and confusing, a little drawn out, sometimes overdone, overly sentimental or predictable. Mostly, though, it is just sad and sweet with rich textures and wonderful patterns. A harsh look back at an even harsher loss of innocence and well worth the time.

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian wood?
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.
I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine
We talked until two and then she said, "It's time for bed"
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.
I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath
And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown
So I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian wood.

Tag: Movies

SOTU

2012-01-25T08:00:00.002-05:00

Barking dogs and the wail of sirens fill the night. The steady drone of helicopters. Temporary barricades force us to cross the street. We're safer, less of a threat, on the other side. With traffic between us. More barricades line the side that we walk, beside and behind the men in flak jackets with their big, black guns.

On the side we don't walk, I see men and women in camouflage. They seem somewhat out of place with all the dress uniforms, the flak jackets, the guns, yet not really out of place at all. They hunker down in some sort of tent next to trucks that idle loudly.

My path is filled with men and women in suits and the click, click, clicking of heels. It feels more like morning than night and I think maybe that slim crescent of moon just got it wrong. The day's been turned on its head.

For some, tomorrow will be. Just a little. With links and jokes about drinking games to make the evening more entertaining. Shots for shots of the First Lady and Invitees. Shotgunning a beer for certain turns of phrase, for Arab Spring, Euro Crisis or Fair Shake. Wall Street. Main Street. Iran.

I've also seen updates from friends who plan to skip the annual check of our nation's health in favor of watching reality television.

The people I pass on the way home from work won't sip of anything other than the water they grip in white-knuckled fingers. They talk into handsets clipped to their shoulders, seeming to talk to no one at all. They patrol. They watch. They wait for the President to arrive and he will be there soon.

The President and First Lady. The Vice President. Members of Congress. Members of the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Special invitees. Almost every high-ranking government official in national politics except for a "designated survivor."

My nerves jangle even as I walk home from work, leaving the glowing Capitol with its flags flying behind. As I head home.

I can still hear the copters in my living room.

Tag: Home

March

2012-01-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

"There's some sort of protest outside," I noted, looking down through the window at people who walked up the sidewalk and crossed the street, carrying signs. "I wonder what it is."

Even as I noticed people climbing out of a bus, my mind wandered and I turned back to my desk at the work at hand. I didn't realize until later – much later – that I'd seen part of an annual event marking the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The "March for Life" has been held every year since 1974, a year after the Supreme Court ruling.

On the walk home, I noticed signs and placards overflowing trashcans, pictures of newborn babies covered in mud, food, the day's detritus with the Capitol glowing hazy in a moonless night sky. It was somewhat surreal.

I should have remembered. The anti-abortion rally draws thousands to the District every year. A college friend's husband – a friend himself – has been coming for years, promising to look me up, never calling as he, his brothers and brothers-in-law pile into vans with his uncles and cousins for a road trip, a march and the long drive home.

Over the weekend, I'd seen large groups of teens wearing hats embroidered with "LIFE" and scarves with their parochial school coats of arms. I'd seen priests walking with students that very morning on my way to work, frustrated with the hordes who didn't seem to realize that sidewalks meant bi-directional traffic.

On Saturday, I passed a group against genocide and protesting the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One Sunday, I saw a Muslim gathering with chanting and chest beating in Lafayette Square.

When I walked away from the window on Monday afternoon, I didn't know why people were out. Protests are part of life in the District. It wasn't until later when I saw their convictions in a heap by the trash that I knew I'd seen part of the March for Life.

According to the Boston Globe, "A Gallup poll last year showed that 49 percent of respondents identified themselves as "pro-choice," while 45 percent called themselves "pro-life." The same survey found that 50 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal under some circumstances, 27 percent said it should be legal in all cases and 22 percent said it should always be illegal."

Tag: Protest

La Cage, a folly

2012-01-23T08:30:00.000-05:00

I desperately wanted to love La Cage aux Folles. I'd bought the ticket ages ago and looked forward to the performance in delighted anticipation.

Maybe that was the problem. I wanted too much. Instead, I found myself somewhat disappointed in the Kennedy Center's performance Sunday night and unsure what had happened.

Not only was I not in love, I wasn't in like, in lust or in a state of mutual admiration. I considered leaving at intermission and skipping the second act but stayed in hopes that it would get better.

It didn't.

The entire show reminded me of that time my mom ordered a burger on vacation and they forgot the beef, all filler and toppings. No substance.

Frankly, the men of Les Cagelle were superb. They just didn't seem to work together to deliver a cohesive number at any point and while I think that might have been part of the script, it could also relate to being a Sunday night show after a week of work plus weekend matinees. Something kept it from gelling.

The frequent costume changes were distracting rather than entertaining, and the whole show seemed rushed with more chorus numbers than necessary and less story to carry it through.

George Hamilton's peculiar orange skin tone clashed with the pink of his shirt and red of his jacket. He just seemed tired. Les Cagelles made me wish I were more girl, prettier and far less bitchy because that was the one thing that tied them together. The son seemed spoiled, his fiancée insipid and Hamilton didn't seem quite comfortable singing and dancing. Fortunately, as the straight... straighter... less accessorized man... he had far less of that on his card. For the most part, though, everyone seemed to be phoning it in.

The whole thing fell short. A little flat. For me, at least. Obviously the crowd disagreed, offering a standing ovation and clapping loudly. On the way out, I heard a woman say she had heard it was better than Broadway. Involuntarily, I rolled my eyes and imagined a very short run on the great white way.

The best part of the show had to be the pre-performance warm up with a man in an impeccable red dress, blond wig and killer heels charmed the audience. I'd probably buy a ticket for that performance alone. The rest of the show I probably could have skipped.

Tag: Kennedy Center

Congo

2012-01-22T09:28:00.001-05:00

It didn't snow all that much. Not really anything. Not much at all. Just enough to inspire thoughts of childhood and snow days, sledding in the neighbors' yard until they got wind that we were there and sent someone to yell at us all to go home. Mittens lost. Cheeks ruddy. Noses running with cold.

"It's not time yet!" we'd yell to our mothers when they begged us come in. "I’m not ready!"

In those days, I didn't understand that a quarter meant more (or less) than 25 cents and I got in trouble for showing up closer to 4:30 than 4:15 with the sun almost setting and snow in the air. Smoke from the fires that were stoked at home.

These days, my fireplace doesn't work or it does work and I don't really trust it. Despite the mouse I once saw running down it, I don't know that it's not blocked and my landlord told me not to use it so I don't. On the cold winter days, on the days that remind me of snow days and sledding, I look at it cold and empty and think of the fun I could have with just a little fire.

Instead, I curl in my chair and read a book I have no reason to read but the fact that I have it. A book. A chair. A long day with nothing at all but a world muffled by snow slowly melting and freezing into a sheen of ice somewhere out there.

When I finally finished, when I closed the book on page 368 with a story that was finished and unfinished all at the same time, I sighed and I cried and I stood up and stretched, realizing that maybe I could smell myself. Just a little. So I showered and went out to face the world before the sunset (but not so very long before). I stumbled across leaves covered in ice and bunches of berries half eaten. A squirrel with a nut who didn't seem in the very least perturbed by me, despite the paparazzi effect of my very big camera in his small furry face.

I found myself caught up in a protest with people running and cheering behind and before the cars of their police escort, with cameras and smiles flashing.

"How far are you marching?" called the man next to me.

"Africa," said one of the protestors.

"OK," said the man who looked at me. He tried again, "How far are you marching?"

"To the White House," a woman replied.

"That's far," he said to me.

"At least 17 blocks," I agreed.

"And she's wearing heels."

I went to the post office and came out to follow the marchers a little for no reason at all but to see what would happen. I didn't see anything, though, but police cars stopping traffic and people hollering to stop genocide in the Congo. I didn't know the issue well enough to align myself to the group; though, I categorically oppose genocide.

"I should know more about this," I thought as I eventually peeled myself from the group and headed home. "I should know more."

In the meantime, I found myself taking pictures of the sunset over the Mall, of the Capitol and barren trees. I limped from the very long walk in an unfortunate choice in footwear as I tried to find something to buy at the grocery store, a side journey I'd taken looking for ingredients for a recipe I didn't really need to make, which was fine because they didn't have them. My concerns were those of an overprivileged woman living in a developed nation.

I couldn't identify with the protestors, with the protest, but I spent much of the rest of the night trying to find more information on the cause they were fighting.

Rwanda and the Congo overlapped in the news with words like "massacre" and "genocide" reaching out.

"Why don't we know about this?"

I am afraid to admit, even to myself much less the worldwide web, that I know very little outside of the film featuring Don Cheadle despite the fact that I listen to NPR. I read the Economist. I'm clueless.

Apparently, the November 2011 declared incumbent Joseph Kabila president, a decision upheld by Congo's highest court despite accusations that the election and results are fraudulent.

CNN reports, "International and national election observers have strongly questioned the veracity of the results, citing a lack of credibility and transparency.

"Late last month, Human Rights Watch said security forces have killed more than 24 people and arbitrarily detained dozens more since Kabila was declared the winner."

Voice of America states, "The U.S. State Department has expressed deep disappointment as the Democratic Republic of Congo's Supreme Court upheld results from November's election without fully evaluating irregularities."

Protestors felt that President Obama should intervene to stop the (deadly) violence.

I'm still not sure that I completely understand the issue, but I do much more than I did at the beginning of the day, lounging in my pajamas in my big comfy chair thinking of the snow outside, but I'll keep looking for information and trying to learn more, to share more, with the world outside.. It's just a part of living where – and how – I do.

Tag: Politics Africa

Wintry mix

2012-01-21T07:59:00.001-05:00

Sometime late yesterday afternoon, I discovered we were expecting a wintry mix. It started sometime in the middle of the night, preceding my words, if not my thoughts, and more wintry mixes will come and go and come and go while my words linger and my anticipation peaks and falls. Winter, spring, summer and fall will pass while my thoughts dance in the snowflakes of anticipation.

Thursday night, reading books to kids at the shelter, we read of rainy days and snow days and games. Making a pizza of Pete. Waiting to go out and play. Football and baseball and I cannot even remember the book that I read. It had something to do with games. The one with the bunny, though, waiting through snow. That one stuck with me.

On Friday, I heard reports and saw pictures of snow in Seattle and the Midwest. In the town I once called home, parents who were once children I knew wrote of a snow day and staying in, staying warm, of hot chocolate and mittens and game with their kids. I was a little bit jealous even though I knew snow still might come.

It was just such a strange winter with temperatures ranging from 20s to 70s all within a day and a half. For the most part, it had been unseasonably warm, and as much as I longed for summer days, I somewhat missed winter, too. Snowball fights and flurries of white. A world muffled and blanketed and brightened by snow.

I didn't miss the bitter cold or the difficultly walking to work, climbing snow mounds, fearing the drivers who couldn't see around them. I didn't miss the difficulty in dressing to stay warm outside and cool enough inside, layer upon layer peeled off and put on and swelling my size. I missed bare skin and sunshine but they would come soon enough. They always did.

In the meantime, I had a weekend at home and a forecast of a wintry mix. I didn't need to go to the store. To go anywhere at all, but a little stir crazy if it came to that.

Dog and bear.

That was the book. Bear had a bucket stuck on his head. Dog jumped on the bed. And I have a fort in my living room, a place to feel safe and warm whatever happens outside.

Tag: Winter Snow

Inked

2012-01-20T08:55:00.000-05:00

Whiteboard. Laptop. Three iPads. Handouts in both full color and black and white. The easel in the corner bears an oversized pad covered in the smelly, alternating color of a pair of markers and sheets on the wall are covered in color-coded sticky notes. With my own notebook and pen (I'm not alone), I cannot help but think of a current eBay commercial.

In the short clip, a man in a meeting finds himself ridiculed by coworkers toting tablets. Talking smack. Joking about video chatting with the man's mom who wants her pen back.

"Me Pete, me use pen!" one woman grunts.

"I was in the 16th century looking for Pete's pen," another coworker says.

In the meantime, Pete pulls out a smart phone and buys his own tablet computer on eBay while ink spreads down the front of his shirt.

I'm sure the whole thing is supposed to be timely and clever and maybe it is, on some level. Sitting in a meeting, a working session on Wednesday morning, I cannot help but think how utterly juvenile it seems. Using peer pressure and mocking to drive business to an online auctioning site.

Mark Twain once said, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." He probably didn't mean the power in the tools we had in a business meeting. Actually, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that he absolutely did not, but that didn't mean the quote didn't apply. Maybe I just should have gone with Robert Hughes, though, "A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop."

No amount of technology would help if we couldn't make ourselves understood and sometimes, it just got in the way.

The laptop wouldn't connect to the projector and the iPads wouldn't connect to the network without SSL software, which was probably a good thing as it rebooted itself halfway through the meeting and relaunched itself with a completely new version of the Office suite.

The timeline we discussed had been circulated among the members who were part of the original working group, but with three new members, it was easier to draw it on a board, to pass a piece of paper, than to talk theoretically about something they'd never seen.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes, it's just easier to draw with pen and paper.

Tag: Technology Work

Berks in DC

2012-01-19T08:54:00.000-05:00

"It looks like it's just a bunch of… trash… thrown together," the man in front of me said and I looked up at the bronze countenance of John F. Kennedy.

It was a little lumpy, but it definitely didn't look like trash. The more time I spent with the work of the sculptor, the more impressed I became with his ability to create easily identifiable images with globs of bronze.

"It's actually one of three sculptures in the city," I interjected.

"Of JFK?"

"JFK, Einstein and Mary Bethune by the same artist," I clarified. "They all look a little bit glommed together... You can tell they're by the same artist."

"Oh… Thanks?"

I probably should have minded my own business, but I'd gone out of my way just that day to visit each of the three statues. They were fresh on my mind. From the Albert Einstein Memorial on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences to Mary McLeod Bethune in Lincoln Park to the eight-foot head of John F. Kennedy at the Kennedy Center, I walked something close to 10 miles to capture their images and my thoughts on each.

They were as different in format as they were in subject matter. Einstein appeared somewhat scattered and brilliant on with crazy hair and unfocused eyes, loose papers and foot tilted to one side. His bronzed nose somewhat shined, having been rubbed for luck by onlookers and people cozied up to the statue for pictures.

Bethune floated above the melee of a park that bordered on the edge of a dog park. She appeared with a pair of young students and they were surrounded by words from her last will and testament.

"I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you, finally, a responsibility to our young people."
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The Kennedy bust floats even higher, decapitated and floating well above patrons of the nation's center for the arts. His nose seems untouched.

They're all different but decided the work of bronze sculptor Robert Berks.

Apparently, the city hosts a number of other smaller works by the man, ranging from Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt to Pope Paul VI, Johnny Cason to General William Westmoreland. The works can be seen in a number of museums (the Smithsonian, National Portrait Gallery, National Archives) as well as federal office buildings (Departments of Labor and Justice, the National Institute of Health).

Doing the research, I wondered if the Smithsonian Einstein bobbleheads featured in Night at the Museum II stemmed from the work by Berks and where one might find it. The three major works were the only ones I managed to fit into the walk and the day, but there was always tomorrow, I thought. For the moment, though, I just let the concertgoers get on with their nights.

Tag: Art

Tinker

2012-01-18T08:55:00.000-05:00

"That was excellent," I breathlessly whispered as the credits rolled. "Just... excellent."

I couldn't think of a word better suited to describe the film we'd just seen: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Based on John le Carré's book of the same name, the film delves into a world of Cold War intrigue and espionage in quiet drama.

The opening in Budapest, a city I so recently visited, set the tone of suspense and unknowing and I thought back to that visit often as well as the communist memorials and the distinctly creepy KGB training video I'd seen, culled from hundreds of hours of actual footage.

The farther we get from the Cold War, the harder it seems to remember the very real threat of communist Russia. The USSR. The red.

A recent reading of The Golden Notebook of the idealism of young British comrades and the blacklisting of Americans accused of the same, did little to bring that threat back to life. Tinker Tailor, though, managed to achieve it with seeming ease and seamless cinematography. I felt transported into another time and another place while recognizing bits of places I knew in another context. Budapest. Paris. Istanbul.

With strong performances from an amazingly talented ensemble cast, the acting was absolutely superb and Gary Oldman deserves accolades for his role as Smiley even if the film may have gotten a little confusing at times. An increased use of names not completely well established. Leaps in time and space. Lack of narrative leaving things better seen than heard and/or explained later. And I think I might want to see it again to better understand what I missed.

Overall, I agree with the one word that surfaced from all my mixed thoughts. Excellent. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy took my breathe away.

Tag: Movies

Let Freedom Ring

2012-01-17T09:00:00.002-05:00

Long lines. Cold day. I didn't know what to expect when we planned to meet at the Kennedy Center for the 10th annual Let Freedom Ring! concert. I definitely didn't expect to share the night with the President and First Lady.

Presented as part of the Millennium Stage series, the concert featuring Georgetown University and Bobby McFerrin was offered free (if ticketed) in honor of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. The show started at six with ticket distribution at four, which required joining the line sometime closer to three and leaving my friends' house at two just to get there.

It wasn't my first free, ticketed show at the Center, but something seemed… off. The usher who asked if we wanted to check coats or bags. Closed glass doors at the end of the hall. Metal detectors just beyond that.

"I wonder… who's coming," I said to my friend, suspicions mounting.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The security, the bag check… Someone's going to be here."

It wasn't until later, when we'd gotten our tickets and made our way outside and in to try to figure out what was going on that we had our first inkling. (With hours to go, we somewhat wanted to leave, but I feared a situation like the inauguration where people with tickets just didn't make it due to security. The show would go on with or without us.)

In the line that we joined painfully early, a man, a boy, a university student, told us that one of his friends was singing that night and the singer had told the boy in the line that the president would be there. The President. Mr. Obama.

Tension mounted as we waited in the Concert Hall after security. We had an hour and a half 'til the show, but as the usher reminded us, we couldn't leave our seats within 20 minutes of the performance unless we wanted to watch the concert from the foyer like those who didn't make it.

The man in the seat next to me leaned into my side as the woman in the seat next to him laid her head on his shoulder and took a nap. I talked with my friend. Read a little. Shared a box of Junior Mints from the concession stand as I hadn't planned on the long haul and even if I had, security would have taken care of that, tossing my friend's water and apple slices, forcing a woman to eat her egg before entering (just one, not Cool Hand Luke).

Buzz about the President grew. Confirmation from a friend performing. From a security guard. Must be in the seats by 5:40. Must, must, must. People talked about where the President would sit if the President came and I knew. I used to work in the Hall. I could provide an answer.

"That's the President's box," I said, pointing to the conspicuously empty seats. "I used to work here… I've never seen a president in it."

A man came in with a woman, his date, telling friends in the row between us that she was the last to make it through security before closing the scanners and excitement grew. It was palpable in the warm air.

For what it's worth, most of us wore jeans and sweaters. We weren't prepared for a concert shared with the First Family. We were people who'd waited in line on a cold Monday for a concert in honor of a very great man. I wore jeans and hair styled by a 7-year-old. My friend wore cords with holes in the… seat. The men in that row of boxes wore suits and ties. The women sparkled. They knew something more than we did, but they didn't seem to mind sharing the night with us.

The doors to the boxes closed. The doors to the floor and ushers stood in their frames. Red jackets. Ascots. At the ready. Laughter rose from the audience time and again as everyone waited in nervous silence. Waiting. Watching. On the upper levels people hung over the balconies to see what they could see (and then the ushers stopped them). Cameras at the ready. People at the ready. The choir filled the stage and we waited.

And then the President came with smiles and waves and his beautiful wife, they took their seats in the very simple, very special box I'd never seen filled.

The night was filled with beautiful sounds, words and music.

"Social injustice anywhere is social injustice everywhere," rang through the hall with 2,000 free guests and the First Family. "The buses are still a'comin!"

The tenth annual John Thompson Legacy of a Dream Award went to Clarence Jones, Martin Luther King Jr.'s former attorney and speechwriter, who helped draft the "I Have a Dream" speech, and the words of his acceptance made me cry. Twice. Jones talked of the "wintertime soldiers and all those not there to accept the award, the people who'd given so much, even their lives to the cause.

His speech included a quote from Socrates – the unexamined life is not worth living – and the admonishment that "it's not the years in your life but the life in your years." He talked of not following the path that's already there but going where there wasn't one and leaving a path in one's wake.

Jones talked of crying that night in 2008 and seeing the first African American man elected to serve as President of the United States, a man in the audience who heard him speak. He wasn't crying for the President but for all those who weren't there to see it.

Bobby McFerrin took a seat on the stage, a single seat lit by spotlights and he made the most wonderful music that wasn't like singing, that wasn't like anything any of us really knew. He lifted his feet from the floor. He arched his back and released these sounds that floated through the night. At one point, the audience joined him, humming and singing and providing the back beat.

"Stop," he called and the sounds did. "Go!"

"Doomp do-do-do dah, doomp."

Ethereal sounds climbed toward the rafters. A hum from the audience that died on its own at exactly the right point and even as I wondered if the President and First Lady joined in the humming, McFerrin called, "Bravo."

He handed a microphone into the audience to a woman who wowed us all with her voice. A joyful noise. Laugher and clapping, smiles and joy filled the show. McFerrin came back to the stage for the final song, an organic, unplanned version of laying our burdens down by the riverside and when it ended, I would have climbed onto my seat to clap if I could be cause I could raise my arms high enough.

McFerrin held his fingers aloft in a peace symbol to the President and we were asked to stay seated until the First Family left. With a wave, they headed out to a spontaneous cheer through the audience of "Four more years!"

Music Director Rev. Nolan Williams Jr. led us all in a sing-along as we waited to leave the Hall.

Gonna lay down my burden
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna lay down my burden
Down by the riverside
Ain't gonna study war no more.

I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more

With the words ringing through our heads, we ended the concert, the day, the weekend and a night with the Obamas.

MLK

Laughter

2012-01-16T09:01:00.000-05:00

A million thoughts race through my head, inspired by the day, the observation of the birth of the very Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Meeting a couple in line to see Rosa Parks lying in honor at the U.S. Capitol. Over the hours and hours of that cold evening that turned into night, as the metro stopped running and still we waited, we talked and they told me of coming to see King speak on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Part of the Civil Rights Movement in Dayton, Ohio, they took a train and walked from Union Station to here that day in 1963. The day of King's famous I Have a Dream speech.

I think of the graffiti I saw years ago in New Orleans, Louisiana. A stenciled image of King next to the words "What the hell happened to the dream?"

I think of the man in office now, the commander in chief, and I wonder what he'd think of our first African American president.

The president spoke at the dedication of King's memorial, a dedication that was pushed due to a hurricane that didn't do much to DC but left Vermont in a state of emergency. The face of the memorial will soon change. Or rather the side of it. A paraphrased quote that has led to much discussion - "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness" – will be replaced with something more fitting with the man's character.

Today is a day dedicated to volunteering in his honor. I feel almost guilty for the fact that I haven't scheduled a day of service, but that guilt is mitigated by the life of service I'm trying to live, giving time every week to try to help make the world a better place.

I think that maybe Dr. King would take a lifetime of volunteering over a day in his name and a day spent with friends and their children. He was a man who got into a pillow fight in a Memphis' hotel room, in the Lorraine Motel, on the afternoon of his assassination. He and Rev. Ralph Abernathy pummeled Andrew Young with pillows, and I like to think of him laughing, with feathers flying.

That might be one of my favorite thoughts of a day filled with so many.

Tag: Martin Luther King, Jr

Recording

2012-01-15T09:00:00.003-05:00

"It's so much harder in winter," I groaned in response to the woman who'd just hit me in the back of the head. "We take up more space."

"It's OK," she said. "Thank you?"

She didn't quite know what to say, but I didn't seem upset by the knock and I wasn't. She was just bundling up and her arm went astray.

The symphony was so much harder in the middle of winter. Coats and coughs. I remember when patrons were urged to unwrap their drops between pieces and the explosion of coughs that happened then.

Instruments warming. The chime of bells. A sounding trumpet. The murmur of strings and rumble of a timpani.

"Let's go!" I thought, reading the program, starring things I wanted to come back to see. I would be back soon, coats, coughs and all, and then the lights dimmed. Voices stilled as we were all reminded to turn off our phones and refrain from taking pictures or recording the performance.

That was a shame, though - the lack of recording – as the night opened with Debussy's Préludes, orchestrated by Colin Matthews. One word stuck in my head through the pieces: Cinematographic. Sweeping and grand, gorgeous and powerful, the Debussy and the National Symphony Orchestra stole my breath, and the performance was worth keeping.

The next one, Mackey's Beautiful Passing, did as well for completely different reasons. Introduced by the very expressive, very pregnant solo violinist Leila Josefowicz, the piece told the story of Mackey's struggle with his own mother's death. It was wrought and emotional and I sat rapt with the expressions that crossed the face of Josefowicz as her instrument sang the voice of a woman dying. It was wrought and emotional and deeply personal and for a minute or 20, I forgot the rest of the orchestra.

After intermission, though, they came back with a vengeance for a third and final set with the Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82, by Sibelius, another beautiful piece led by a fascinating conductor. Hannu Lintu had the most wonderful hands and hair for conducting. Spidery fingers extended long and strong in the strangest contortions. With knees bent and back hunched, his arms flew in alternating swings as his graying brown hair bounced. Then, he'd straighten for a more traditional approach before jumping and bouncing himself.

Coughs sent the woman two seats down from me into spasms, dropping things as she convulsed in her seat. Two seats down from her a woman with a crossword set her pen aside to watch the conductor and she almost convulsed herself with laughs of delight.

It was a night worth recording, knocks in the head and all. It was definitely worth the effort to be there.

Lost and found

2012-01-14T08:58:00.001-05:00

I miss my journal, the one I left on the plane on the way to Prague, the one from the Jameson Distillery with a black and white photo on the cover and a plastic zippered pouch on the back. The pouch contained exactly one thing, an earring, half of a pair that I bought in Cusco after four weeks with naked lobes. (I'd lost half of the pair I'd been wearing since early 2000 and felt somewhat bereft.)

"I look like a boy," I moaned intermittently over the four weeks.

"You don't look like a boy," my friends scoffed.

They were probably right. Something was off, though. After almost 11 years with the same small silver hoops, my lobes dangled bare, and on some level people noticed.

"I never knew you had three holes in one ear," a friend observed.

"It's because I'm not wearing earrings."

The earrings were just small, simple hoops. Silver. The kind one buys at music festivals and I had bought them at the HFStival of 2000. Rocking out at RFK Stadium. I put them in and they stayed. My hair didn't pull them out and they didn't make my ears hurt or burn, which sounds like a basic request but I have sensitive skin. Very sensitive skin. Even gold sets my orejas en fuego.

I lost an earring, mourned for a while and went to Peru. Before hiking the Inca Trail, I found a pair of earrings that would suffice and slipped them in. Six days later, I lost one and put its mate in the zippered pocket of my journal in hopes I'd find the first one, and I did. At home. In DC. Two weeks after I lost the journal and earring.

I emailed Lufthansa from the hotel after deplaning, in hopes they'd recover and return it to me. They didn't even bother to acknowledge the request. The journal, the earring, and all of the thoughts and words inside were lost.

For so many years, I'd hesitated to journal. As a child, my brother read mine, the one that included things like what I'd eaten for lunch and how much I like Nancy Drew and how I hoped Corey Feldman would fall in love with me. I was scarred by his teasing (my brother's, not Corey Feldman's). (As far as I know, neither of the Coreys ever mocked me.)

Eventually, though, I started journaling in fits and spurts and then I started blogging.

Every day for most of the past six years, I've written a post. I've written a life and I've gone out and lived it. I've become a lot of the person I want to be while leaving room to grow. But the blog's pretty public. People know about it, my family, my friends. People at work tend to read it, so there are things that just don't enter its pages. Its pixels. Whatever. And those slippery bits went into the journal.

I can only imagine what ran through the head of the person who found it. I wonder if he or she ever read it or just tossed it out.

I'll never have those thoughts back. Those feelings. I'll never again be scared and uncertain of what to expect of the Inca Trail; though, I'll be scared and uncertain and without words of my own to comfort me and show me that I've felt that way before and everything turned out all right.

I found my earring. The missing half of the pair from HFStival. Somehow, it managed to come back to me; it just took a little time. I'd held onto its mate, just in case.

If I'm lucky, maybe, the journal will do the same. I can only hope and wait and give it time.

Tag: Writing

Pythagoras

2012-01-13T08:51:00.000-05:00

I didn't really know much about the man or, well, anything at all. I knew his name from high school geometry classes and the relationship of the hypotenuse, legs and squares in a right triangle. A-squared plus B-squared equals C-squared. The Pythagorean Theorem.

Yeah.

Apparently, he probably didn't write it. In fact, he didn't really write much of anything, which is only a small part of what I learned Sunday afternoon at the National Gallery of Art as I settled in for a Gallery Talk on Pythagoras and Art History from Antiquity to the Renaissance.

Ages had passed since I'd last attended one of the museum's Sunday lectures. When a friend asked if I wanted to join her for a presentation by her neighbor, I agreed without hesitation, without asking the name of the lecture or the name of the lecturer or even what time I needed to be there. I figured I'd find out in time.

Christiane Joost-Gaugier, professor emerita of art history, The University of New Mexico; scholar in residence, American University; and visiting scholar, George Washington University, addressed a mostly full auditorium on a lovely Sunday afternoon, talking of the Ionian Greek philosopher and mathematician. From his birth on Samos to his lingering impact on art and architecture through the ages, the lecturer and neighbor talked of numbers, religion and balance, and I learned a little about the man, the myth, the legend, Pythagoras.

He loved animals. He believed that every living creature of souls and that those souls tend to wander from being to being throughout eternity. He was a learned man but not a writer; I guess his soul doesn't live within me despite the fact that he was also a vegetarian. Hey, now.

He believed in balance and reconciling opposites, in magic, in the power of the number four. In the basic elements of earth, wind, fire and water. I wonder if maybe he would have remembered the 21st night of September. Love was changing the minds of pretenders while chasing the clouds away.

Our hearts were ringing.

Two by two. The animals they came on, they came on by twosies, twosies. The animals they came on, they came on by twosies, twosies. Elephants and kangaroosies, roosies. And they'd have nothing to fear from Pythogoras. Two by two, four, 16 and 64, squares and cubes all held their own magic, their own perfection, and I had to respect a man who believed so much in the power of numbers.

Spheres on cubes. Michelangelo's ceiling and Raphael's cherubs. Rows of double columns. We heard of the significance of five rings in a basilica and how they signified marriage between the number two (man) and number three (woman). How 28 symbolized a month. Moon. And I thought of the full wolf moon lurking outside, waiting for dark and something to howl.

As I walked home, it peaked out. The moon. The howl, too, maybe. All those numbers and thoughts, pictures and stories had made my head spin, and I realized I still didn't know who'd written the theorem.

Tag: Art

Heading home

2012-01-12T08:30:00.001-05:00

Head shaking, the girl in front of me pulls my eyes from my book over and over again.

I'm at that place where I know the story so well I want to devour it, but with each passing word, I see the rest of the book slimming. Slower. Faster. I struggle to find the right pace even as I want to know what happens and don't want the end to come. Not yet. And the head shakes again.

I look out the fogged window and thrill to discover I'm farther than I thought. Closer to home.

The head shaker tugs on her hair and lies to someone I cannot see.

"Look, mother. They're pulling up to my stop. I need to get my bike."

She presses a button the cord and remains seated.

Laughter bubbles from the back of the bus. Voices. A low rumble. A dull murmur. Quiet conversation and still I read.

A man sits next to me. A man? A woman. I'd mistaken the voice from behind for the person next to me and failed to notice her gender. Skin color. Anything at all.

"Excuse me," I say with a smile as I accidentally elbow her. "I'm so sorry."

She looks confused for a minute and comprehension dawns across her round face and she smiles.

"Stop!" a voice calls from the back of the bus.

The cord had been pulled, a light illuminated, but the bus had kept going until the girl called. Stop. Door.

Closer to home, one stop from mine, the liar tugs on another cord and leaves the bus. We wait while she gets her bike and then it's my turn. Ours.

I walk a handful of blocks with a man I met at a stop in the rain. He's my neighbor and has been for years. Maybe, someday, I'll catch his name.

Tag: Commute Bus

Fortitude

2012-01-11T08:49:00.002-05:00

By the time I got home, two hours after I'd left the office, after multiple trains, a 30-minute wait on a wintry night and a long walk home, I found myself frozen, hungry and desperate to pee. I'd had better nights.

Taking the last first and moving to second, I searched for something to eat, hopping from area rug to area rug, red dot to red dot up and down the length of the galley kitchen. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot to the fridge; dot, dot to the sink, dot, to the counter; stretch and reach for a bowl and dot, dot to the microwave.

Back and forth, dot to dot, I jumped through the kitchen, trying to avoid touching the floor, the actual floor, with its icy ceramic tiles. My feet were bare, and I hoped to keep them. Hop, hop, dot, dot, dot, I made a salad with fresh herbs, blue cheese and walnuts, cranberries and honey, and I made my way to the living room to focus on the first of the three needs I'd brought home with: Thawing.

My fingers curled into themselves. My fingernails bore a distinctly blue shade completely unrelated to varnish. Hints of color. The bits of orange that I failed to completely remove in the morning. My nose rivaled Rudolph's but other than a steady drip, I couldn't quite feel it, much like my toes and everything in between, from nose to toes, was just plain cold.

I haven't been warm, truly warm, in my house (other than in bed or shower) since sometime in the fall. Early fall. Late summer? Probably early fall. Not even Saturday's soaring temps managed to warm my house. It just wasn't that warm and my house (a rental) suffered from an unfortunately combination of leaky, cheap windows, a pair of vaulted skylights and heating vents on the ceiling on the first floor.

Running the heat only made the upstairs rather unbearable while the downstairs stayed cold and electric bills soared. I bought fabulously tacky, thermal curtains to cut the draft and settled into my slightly cave-like and cold living room.

I wasn't thawing that fast, though.

So, I grabbed a chair from the dining room, a couple of blankets and a small space heater, moving my chair and my ottoman to build a fort, keeping pretty much everything away from the heater but trying to trap the heat and I waited.

In no time at all, I was warm. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was warm. In my own living room. Granted, I couldn't quite move without dislodging the fort to wrap myself up in the Snuggie I'd used as blanket number two; I worried a little bit that despite the careful positioning, separation and draping that I'd somehow start a fire, and I'd built a fort in the middle of my living room.

"There's that," I thought and realized I didn't quite care. I was warm.

Tag: Winter Cold Home

Flurried thoughts

2012-01-10T07:57:00.001-05:00

"Is it... snowing?" I asked with incredulity as I walked out of the dark bowels of the office building that held my physical therapy.

"It is," the security guard shrugged.

"That's crazy," I replied. "Just crazy."

Two days earlier, temperatures soared into the high 60s. People wore shirt sleeves and ice skates all at the same time. One day earlier, jackets re-emerged for a day in the high 50s with sunshine and mild winter weather, and now, it was snowing.

The flakes flurried faster as I walked home and I picked up the speed, wanting to get my camera, wanting to capture the weather before it changed again, which is was certain to do in a blink of the eye. Snowflakes clung to my hair and eyelashes and dotted the silk of my puffy coat and I laughed at the first real snow of the season.

"How does it feel to be the last snowflake to fall?" I wondered, thinking of fairy penguins on the southern coast of Australia. They clustered on the beach until a small group formed and waddled up to their warrens together.

As we watched, the groups got smaller and smaller, the penguins came in fewer and farther between, like the eventual slow down of popcorn popping. (Eventually, either it burns or all the kernels have popped.) The last little group started waddling and one penguin turned, saw a lonely soul wash in on a wave and ran in an awkward little penguin run back to meet up with him and they waddled together.

Of course, the last little snowflake wouldn't know it was last. The wind would change. The weather would change. And snowflakes would stop falling for a little while. Somewhere else, sometime else, they'd start and stop and start and stop again.

For the moment, though, I just wanted the snow to keep falling, to keep thinking of penguins and Australia, Antarctica and Snowmageddon, to stick out my tongue and dream of snowmen, to feel like a kid again.

It was a lot to ask of a flurry, but I had faith in the snow.

Tag: Winter Snow

Wolf Moon

2012-01-09T08:28:00.002-05:00

It's supposed to be the moon of cold and deep winter snows, with wolf packs howling hungrily outside Indian villages. The full Wolf Moon. The Old Moon and the Moon After Yule.

Strangely enough, though, it's not cold at all. I mean, it's colder than the heart of summer, but more like March or April than January past. Cold and deep winter snows seem so far away. Then, again, so do howling wolf packs. At least, they do until one sees a moon shrouded in clouds.

The light streaks through the skylights upstairs, the one in the hall and the one in the bathroom. Bright. Brilliant.

I would probably know it was a full moon by that light alone. It wouldn't matter whether or not I'd added it to my calendar, but I have. I want to know the names of the moons and when they come. When they're full, three quarters, quarter and new.

It doesn't matter that I have nothing to do with that knowledge, no way to use it, and I wouldn't even know how to begin applying the Native American wisdom to my daily life. The only wolf calls I've heard in recent years would be whistles, which I appreciate but they have nothing to do with the moon.

Nevertheless, I've grown rather attached to the moon and look forward to seeing what comes next. The Full Snow Moon? It sounds right for February in the District.

Tag: Moon

Sunny Satuday in January

2012-01-08T08:44:00.004-05:00

End of the world, be damned, it was a beautiful day in DC, so I went for a walk. The longest walk I'd taken in almost two months, since my November vacation and 10 to 15 miles a day, since Budapest, Vienna and Prague.

A few months ago, it wouldn't have seemed a long walk at all. Eight miles. It definitely wouldn't have taken close to three hours, but three months ago, I hurt my left knee and two months ago, I hurt my right ankle. Things just haven't been right since. Between that and the cold, I've been walking less. Far less. And I've been miserable.

Today, though, with temperatures soaring into the high 60s, I walked out with camera, with no destination, to see what I could see. I headed west and kept walking to the Lincoln Memorial and back again, stopping frequently to drink in the day.

Sparrows outside the Capitol Building. Ice skaters in shirt sleeves at the National Gallery. People walking and running, biking and sitting still. The memorials and monuments were mobbed as were the sidewalks and it seemed as if everyone in a tristate area had come out to play.

Picnics and football, field hockey and Frisbees abounded as I saw people in shorts and t-shirts on the Mall. Shorts. On January 7.

"Let's play football," one man called.

"We are playing Frisbee," his friend replied.

"We can play Frisbee football!" the first man shouted even as the sun dipped lower in the sky.

It sun would set within the hour, too soon for a full game of anything, but the men split into teams and called out the rules that they created on the spot, arguing, agreeing, starting the game. I didn't wait to see how it turned out, but kept walking, watching, taking pictures on a summery, wintry day in January.

The park by my house is swarming with parents and kids, strollers and dogs. Young voices shouted. Dogs panted. The sun set behind me and I kept turning to take pictures, nearly blinding myself with its winter light through my lens and view finder. I turned again to find the moon, almost full and sweet in a soft, blue sky, which darkened around it even as I walked

And I remembered why, exactly, I love living here.

Tag: Walking Photography Home

Beautiful day

2012-01-07T09:45:00.005-05:00

It's not supposed to be 60 degrees in January. It's just not. Even if the last day of last year was the warmest of one of the warmest Decembers in history. It's just not right.

The world is warming. Overpopulation has led to overconsumption of the world's natural resources. We're growing too fast and using too much and generating too much waste as a byproduct of, well, just about everything and the world's getting warmer and colder, wetter and drier in all the wrong places. The world's going to hell, and we're all taking turns driving the bus.

The fact that I toss my organic waste into a bin in my backyard, recycle more than toss and reduce and reuse even more than that, probably won't amount to a hill of beans. Being a vegetarian. Choosing fair trade. Protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Marching for voters' rights, reproductive rights, the right to be heard, seen, dance, none of it will really make a big difference, not in the grand scheme of things.

As hard I as try to be responsible and to live a sustainable life, the world just keeps getting warmer and colder, wetter and drier in all the wrong places, and it's a little bit scary. The fact that the morning dawned warm and bright on an early January day just supports that fact.

Global warming and climate change are considered the planet's greatest threats. Some people claim them a myth. Fabrication. Lies spread by the liberal media. Maybe it's our fault. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's all for the best, I don't know. The reports are conflicting but much of the world agrees that something is happening.

Snowmageddon, two years ago, came in the middle of one of the harshest winters I've seen in the DC area. This year, temperatures have been flirting with the 60s off and on instead of committing fully to the traditional 20s, and while it's been scary, it's been incredibly wonderful to walk to work under warm blue skies without my fingers turning blue. And they do turn blue. To see contrails streaked 'cross the sky and feel a warm breeze on my face.

Last week in Minnesota, confused strawberry plants had started to bloom. It was the last week of December. And as much as I dislike strawberries and don't really mind that they plants will die, I know it's a very bad thing.

So, I'll keep working toward a more sustainable life, toward being greener and crunchier and as planet-friendly as possible in hopes that maybe half a hill of beans will be worth it. My half hill plus your half hill plus the half hill next door might make a difference after all. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the warm day, harbinger or not, because understanding why it's here and that it might be a very bad thing cannot change the fact that it really is a beautiful day.

The World Is Over by Red Wanting Blue

Tag: Winter Weather

Much Ado

2012-01-06T08:28:00.000-05:00

Nothing. That’s what Shakespeare called it, his comedy about love and lethal misunderstanding, Hero and fool. Nothing. I’m not sure what exactly I’d call it, but it was definitely something and probably my favorite bit of Shakespeare.

I bought the tickets on one of the nights that turned into mornings when I couldn’t sleep at a time that was neither. 3:30. 4. Not night. Not morning. Just something that I should have missed lost in slumber’s arms. Instead, I found myself awake and searching online, grinning like the Carroll’s cat when I found a pair of tickets to Much Ado about Nothing.

What more could a sleepless girl want?

Hours later, at a much more reasonable time, the friend I’d invited agreed to join me and weeks after that, we found ourselves at the Shakespeare Theater Company’s Sidney Harman Hall for a Young Prose event geared toward young professionals in the city.

I’m not sure that I necessarily qualify as a young professional. Or young. Or professional. But somehow, I ended up on the events mailing list and found myself invited to a night of salsa lessons, beer and theater in the heart of DC with Shakespeare portrayed by a theater company in his name.

The salsa complemented the Cuban flair given the romantic comedy about young lovers conspiring with a prince to bring others to their state and trouble caused by said prince’s meddling brother. Traditionally set in northern Italy, the company moved the story to Cuba of the 1930s, giving it a sultry tone while staying true to the text, and I fell ever more in love with the character of sharp-tongued Beatrice.
http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/plays/details.aspx?id=309&source=l

“I want to be her when I grow up,” I thought and not for the first time.

Beatrice was clever and funny and a genuinely happy soul if staunchly opposed to the idea of marriage to anyone, in general, and Benedick, in particular. Of course, he’s the only one suited to match her wit and the ensuing verbal sparring is certain to delight anyone with half a heart for words.

“ I pray thee now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”

“For them all together, which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them: but for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?”

“Suffer love. a good epithet, I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.”

“In spite of your heart, I think. Alas poor heart, if you spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never love that which my friend hates.”

“Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.”

Sigh.

Of course, the fools of the constabulary are also good for a laugh and a play on words or seven.

“And Master, sir, do not forget to specify, when time and place shall assert, that I am an ass.”

With laughter and dancing, music and quick wits, it was the perfect way to warm a cold January night. I would sleep well after that.

Tag: Theater Shakespeare

Cold wait

2012-01-05T08:58:00.003-05:00

"It's too c-c-cold to sit," I stuttered through chattering teeth.

"What's that?"

"It's too cold to sit," I repeated with a smile, pushing my hands deeper into my pockets and wishing I'd given up on skirts. Not even running tights could help while standing on a corner late at night with temperatures well below freezing.

"I thought I'd give you the option," he grinned back at me and moved a box to the ground next to the bench.

He seemed much warmer with a suit and tie, overcoat, gloves and silly knit hat. I should have pulled my own hat and scarf from my bag but that would have required removing my hands from my pockets.

"Thank you."

We stood for a while, shivering in the night.

"It's supposed to get warmer tomorrow," he said. "Up to the 50s by this weekend."

"That's great!"

We talked about weather a while and agreed we'd been rather fortunate so far, knowing full well that February tended to bring the big snow.

We talked about buses, debating coach versus train and staying for the convenience of the routes of the former and speed of the latter.

We talked about neighborhoods. Jobs. Volunteering. How we found each and the minutes passed quickly.

"That's you," I said, seeing a bus approach from over his shoulder. He was in the middle of telling me about finding his job, his fiancée, grad school.

"I'm Josh," he said as he stuck out his hand.

"Kristin," I smiled.

He shouldered his bag, picked up his bag and boarded the bus.

"We can swap stories when I see you here again."

"That would be great."

And the bus pulled away.

Even with flashing lights across the street, with firefighters offering care to an apparently injured homeless man and the shrill siren call of the ambulance that followed, the rest of the wait seemed rather dull.

Tag: Commute Bus

Comfort me

2012-01-04T09:00:00.002-05:00

There's something distinctly unsatisfying about a bowl full of lettuce on a cold winter's eve.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't love lettuce, especially a fresh herb salad topped with a dollop of honey and dried cranberries, bleu cheese and walnuts. It's actually one of my favorite things in the world. It's just not filling after a long day of work. It's not comforting after a two-mile walk through on aching joints on a cold, dark night. Subfreezing, even.

"Comfort me with apples," I thought, but even that wouldn't do. Not unless I roasted them with potatoes, onions and cheese. Creamed them into a soup. Baked them into a crisp. A cobbler. A crumble.

I wanted macaroni and cheese, golden and gooey, made with real butter and cheese. I wanted it fresh from the oven in a casserole dish meant for six and I would eat half of it all at once, cutting first a reasonable size piece from the corner and then a second smaller piece right next to that and then just evening up the edges until half the tray was gone and I felt warm, sick and full.

"I'm never doing that again," I would think.

I wanted bread and cheese. Thick creamy soup steaming in the chill of my dining room. A mug of mulled wine around which to wrap my freezing fingers. Glühwein. Gløgg. Hot buttered rum, even if it is basically just hot rum with melted butter and water with a handful of spices.

Squash stuffed with corn pudding. Cornbread. Cheesy grits. Garlic potatoes mashed with bits of the skin. Beets and carrots tossed to the place just between soft and firm.

Words whirled through my mind, words like scrumptious, sumptuous, salty, sweet and savory, rich, tempting, tasty, tangy and I rolled them around my mouth, tasting them as my mouth watered.

In the end, I settled for the fresh herb salad. The bleu cheese, walnuts and cranberries topped with a dollop of honey. It is one of my favorite things in the world, after all, and I really don't have any of those other foods in my house, nothing close really but the apples. It's not a new year's thing, not a resolution. I just don't ever have any of that other stuff, but I have plenty of apples.

With a little hot cereal, with rye, barley, oats and wheat, they would do just fine to comfort me on a cold winter's night.

* Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love. - King Soloman

Tag: Winter Food

Back to work

2012-01-03T11:27:00.002-05:00

It feels like weeks have passed, months, even, and I picture baby horses trying to get to their feet, all wobbly and uncertain as they try to figure out how to stand. How to work. What it is that we do here and how we work together.

Of course, it's not like I stopped working at all, but I haven't actually been in the office, at my desk, since 2011 and that feels like more than four days, give or take.

Already today, I've had to remember passwords to a system I haven't used since November and whether or not the file sent in September included the most recent data (it didn't) or if anything changed after the end of October (I'm pretty sure it did) and how to update the file using the aforementioned system, which has apparently gone offline in the intervening months. (It shouldn't have.)

I've picked up a timesheet and refilled the electric kettle. Answered questions. Made my breakfast and returned to such weighty thoughts as the impact of Crystal Light on the charcoal in my self-filtering water bottle (I just want to try it), what I'd do differently if the world really was going to end and whether or not I could finish creating the reports we'd requested in April 2009 for migration by Thursday.

I've packed my lunch, remembering what it is that I eat at work, and walked a couple of miles in subfreezing temperatures just to get here. I've remembered that my left knee still hurts and that I should be wearing my ankle brace even if two months feels entirely too long for either.

I've met with a client, talked with a developer and emailed my boss. Before work, I checked in with my boyfriend from 4th grade, texted a friend from college and made plans to meet with one of my book clubs. We're reading the Golden Notebook. (At least, a couple of us are reading it; everyone else is mired in the first 80 pages, floundering and discouraged.)

I haven't quite regained the rhythm of writing in the morning rather than over lunch or writing at all, figuring out what it is that I have to say, if I have to say anything. I feel rusty, old, cold and tired, creaking rather loudly, but with a little bit of time, I'll be back to full speed. We're back to work.

Tag: Work Writing

Shopping

2012-01-02T11:03:00.004-05:00

My priorities might be a little warped. In fact, in terms of general society, I'm sure they are and I have heard from various close friends over the years, in loving tones, that I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I just don't think that I want the same things out of life.

After Christmas, I found myself the owner of a book entitled "How to Shop for a Husband: A Consumer Guide to Getting a Great Buy on a Guy," which I would have loved had it been a novel instead of "how to" because, frankly, I didn't know I was in the market.

It's not that I don't want to get married. I'd love to find a man with whom I wanted to share the rest of my life and do just that, but it isn't at the top of my life. It isn't even in the top five. I've found myself sharing a bed, with arms wrapped around me and a literal weight on my shoulders, researching terms like "millstone" and "albatross," both of which have to do with both weight 'round the neck and the sea, and I felt like I was drowning.

I've been in the same position – bed, arms – reading the details behind a cultural exchange to Cuba and trying to figure out whether or not I could afford it. Bed. Arms. If I carry the one and stop eating between now and June... I didn't book the trip, not from bed, but I considered it, seriously considered it, much more than I thought of the bed and arms because I'd rather shop for trips to Cuba than a husband.

Maybe I am too picky, as the book and my sister suggest, but maybe I'm just not in the market. I'm not looking for a motorcycle, watch or chinchilla, either. I don't need a new daily planner, dishwasher or daybed.

Of course, in the post-Christmas flurry of steals and deals, I keep finding messages in my box of things I didn't know I wanted and some that I'd just forgotten I did. I am almost out of shower gel and paying only half price, isn't bad. I would have bought it anyway. And I could definitely use a new pair of jeans. And a filter for my camera.

There are a million things out there that I'm not searching for, some that I am and several things that fall somewhere in between. While I'd rank a husband higher than a hibachi grill, I'm not sure that there I need to rush out and buy either (not that I'd refuse if I found one). There's so much else upon which to focus.

Maybe I'll change my mind and re-prioritize only to find myself facing empty shelves, returns and damaged goods. A fire sale? A flea market? For now, though, I just cannot bring myself to push the cart and stand in line waiting for check out. I don't think guys are consumer goods.

Tag: Life

Unresolved

2012-01-01T09:00:00.001-05:00

With a brand, spanking new year starting today, I feel like maybe I ought to resolve something. To run faster and jump higher. Eat cleaner. Live cleaner. To become a better person. Honestly, though, I haven't resolved anything yet except for maybe to keep calm and carry on.

In this new year, I want to continue to eat healthy foods and exercise as much as I can, knowing when I need to take a break and let myself recover. I want to keep spending time with family and friends, to see as much of the world as possible and try to make it a better place by volunteering, giving time and money to charity. I want to patronize the arts through museum and theater memberships and book clubs, but none of that's new. I did all of that in 2011 and 2010 and, really, for as long as I can remember.

Last year came in with a crash and went out with a whisper. The bits in between were fairly good. Great, even, at times. Miserable at others. I made mistakes in 2012. I didn't always like the things that I did or the person I was, but I cannot regret them because they've made me the person I am.

Frankly, I kind of like me, the person I am and the things that I do. For the most part. Outside of the mistakes.

Live and learn.

Last night, I didn't do anything but spend time with me. I could have gone dancing. I would have gone dancing and loved every second of it but for the fact of my aching ankle and running nose, the head that wouldn't stop spinning and the pressure to make it the best night of the year. And it would have been a good night. It could have been a great night, but the fact that it was December 31 would have little do with it.

Instead, I cleaned a little, watched movies and nursed my cold. I ate food that made me feel better, food that I wouldn't regret in the morning. Fresh fruit and whole grains, veggies and hummus. I started the new year with a clean house and a clean conscience, waking up early with a whole day and a whole new year in front of me.

It might sound lame to some. In fact, I'm sure it does, but last year, I spent Christmas in Antarctica. In the spring, I hiked the Inca Trail and I spent my birthday hiking in Iceland, making plans en route to go to Kenya and Tanzania in the new year.

I raised thousands of dollars for breast cancer research and gave a little bit of my body and a year of my life to participate in a study for the same. I will walk again this fall, registering after 120 miles, and have started recruiting a team. In the meantime, I need to get well so I can walk without pain.

I edited parts of my aunt's first book. I touched the lives of dozens of prisoners through letters and books and raised money and awareness to help keep the program alive.

In the past year, I've read books to kids at a domestic violence shelters as well as to my own nieces and nephews. I've spent time with family. With friends. I've slept too little, worked too hard and seen so much of the world, making plans to see more, do more, live more.

Last night, I struggled to stay awake until midnight, which probably sounds lame to others, but I couldn't care less. Last year, I was a mess in Buenos Aires. I've been in the desert, en route to Beirut and in New York City on New Year's Eves past. I've kissed loves at midnight. Eaten grapes. Eaten pork and sauerkraut. I've toasted and resolved and none of it made any difference.

This year, I have my whole day, year, life in front of me and the only thing I've resolved is to live it fully.

Tag: New Years Resolutions

Visiting hours

2011-12-31T09:31:00.003-05:00

I'd like to say she was sleeping but I don't think that's it. She was just lying there in the warm, dark room with her mouth open. For a moment, I worried that maybe she'd gone but her chest rose and fell and I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding.

"Mom? Someone came to see you," a voice called.

"Oh," she promptly replied without moving.

I looked around the room. The mattress on the floor. The wheelchair. The television. I looked at the pictures over the bed, the cross, her children. Anywhere but the woman in the bed. The stranger who used to be someone I loved.

She used to practice for weeks before I came to visit just so she could beat me at Boggle. She'd turn the board this way and that, keeping it for days, trying to find every possible word. She'd take words, phrases, Merry Christmas or a quote from the paper and make lists of every combination of letters that made words and she'd share them with me when I got there. The lists. The words.

The last time we played, two years ago, two and a half, she struggled to find three-letter words.

She's tiny. Frail. Her wrist hurts. She cannot hold tissues in her good hand and cannot feed herself. She'll never walk again, having broken her femur last summer and the surgery almost killed her. It did kill her. She flat lined but they revived her. That's when everything changed.

She wasn't quite sleeping when I came to visit but she wasn't awake. She didn't know I was there. Who I was.

"I love you," I said as we left.

"That's nice," she said.

"It is… It is nice to be loved."

Sometimes, it just isn't enough.

Tag: Family

Snowing

2011-12-30T10:53:00.003-05:00

"I hope your flight is canceled."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

It's snowing. It very well might be canceled.

Tag: Travel Family

Right here, right now

2011-12-29T16:03:00.005-05:00

I should stay longer. I could stay longer, despite the cold, but right here, right now is all I can take.

We visited Grandpa's grave today. He's been gone for a little more than eight years and my nephew and I talked about the week that Grandpa died. I was on my way out to the house to babysit the kids while my sister headed to Pennsylvania to visit an ailing friend.

I was at a gas station. Mom called. Everything changed.

We went to visit Grandma today, too. She's still here but not really at all.

"I love you, Grandma," I said as we left.

"That... That's nice," she replied.

She didn't look at me once. To be fair, she was sleeping when we arrived, but I'm not sure she would have looked at me if she'd been awake. Apparently, the words don't quite fit together anymore. She wouldn't know who I was because she didn't really know who she was. Where she was.

Last night, I stayed at my mom's house. We fed the horses, the cats, worked on a puzzle. Tonight, I'll sleep in my sister's house, the house I know from childhood as my grandparents' house filled with my sister, her family - my family - and their things. Filled with the smells of the soup we made together.

I really should stay longer, but right here, right now, I can't. I need to go home.

Tag: Family Travel

Waiting

2011-12-28T07:56:00.004-05:00

I didn't expect to be back at an airport so soon. I'd barely unpacked and before repacking again, setting another loop into the cycle of getting ready to go, leaving piles of laundry washed and unfolded, clothes folded and unshelved, Christmas presents and toiletries in the middle of my bedroom floor.

All I want is oatmeal and another three hours of sleep. Instead, I find a seat at the gate and turn on my laptop, logging into the VPN and starting work early, watching the sun rise over the Potomac and listening to the roar of jet engines as planes head north, toward the monument poking up in the distance and bank left.

Flights around me are delayed. My flight is delayed and I wonder about the feasibility of making my connection of meeting my mom when my mom plans to meet me at the airport. I will call her from Philly.

Planes still en route when they were destined to leave are turned quickly and the gate agents run through boarding zones quickly. Anxiety levels rise as people pull their belongings together, checking their boarding passes again to make sure they're at the right gate, on the right flight, going where they think they need to be.

I remember a time, more than a decade ago, when one of my friends somehow boarded the wrong flight to DC. He didn't realize his error until he found the plane descending into National instead of Dulles. These days, it seems impossible that such a thing might happen. On a big plane, at least.

Last week, heading to South Carolina on a tiny little plane that required us all to leave our bags at the door (even my small duffel) and to duck while making our way to the seats, the gate agents warned us to make sure that we left by the proper door time and again and checked our boarding passes as we made our way onto the tarmac and onto planes.

"Make sure you exit through the right door," the agent calls. "I can see someone going to the wrong plane right now."

Other than the small puddle-jumping planes parked on the tarmac, it seems rather hard to board the wrong flight, but competing announcements and combined boarding areas make tensions rise.

"If you're waiting for the 8:35 flight to Orlando, that's the next flight. This is the delay 7:30 flight to Orlando and this flight is full. Please take your seats."

"The flight to Charlotte is delayed."

"If you're waiting for a flight out of gate 35A, please wait upstairs."

Cities and numbers ring through the air. Detroit. Philadelphia. Orlando. Charlotte.

"Is that seat taken?"

"It's the last call for our flight to Orlando," the woman next to me barks into her phone. "I don't know where you are."

She stands in the walkway, looking back toward security, the bathrooms, the DC Market Place store, with bags in hand. Volunteers for later flights and even later free travel groan as they're told that they aren't needed. That they must board the plane. I have yet to hear any announcements about my own, but the time keeps changing on the board over the stairs. And I keep working.

The sun rises higher. The sky lightens to blue and gold reflects into the waiting area from the glass of the restaurant outside of security. More and more people fill the area, the seats around me, standing in the walkway, leaning on poles and tensions mount even higher.

I didn't expect to be back at an airport so soon.

Tag: Travel

People's Tree

2011-12-27T10:36:00.005-05:00

I fell asleep on the plane. Weeks of doing too much, a weekend of doing too much, and sleeping too little had finally caught up with me and I curled up in my seat in the exit row with my coat on my lap and my head on the door and I slept.

"Do you want anything?" the flight attendant asked as she rolled past.

"No, thank you," I said with a smile.

"You were snoozing when I came through before," she drawled.

"I'm just so tired," I groaned.

I closed my eyes again and drifted my way back to Dulles, toward home. Family and Christmas, South Carolina and airport faded in the rearview mirror as I headed back into the District. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed but I had a stop to make.

Pulling into a spot by the reflecting pool, I locked my bags in the car, knowing it really wouldn't make a difference if somebody wanted them: My car unzipped. I just knew I wouldn't make it back out again if I stopped at the house and I didn't know how long it would be there.

The Capitol Tree, the People's Tree, stands about 60 feet tall – the height of a six story building – on the Capitol Lawn. It's been planted in a five-foot hole and cemented in place. Citizens of California created the decorations this year and 10,000 LED bulbs light up the night. The star at the top is the same star that's been used year after year. The star that I've gone to visit for year after year as it topped my favorite Christmas tree.

In a box under my bed, I have ornaments and decorations. A ballerina from my childhood, Santa on a surfboard from the year I went to Hawaii, and the World Trade Center from a boy I used to love among many, many other things. They just stay in the box under my bed.

I haven't had a tree in years. In the past few, I've been pretty much as far away from home on the holiday as anyone can get – Africa, Antarctica. Even when I've been home, it's been almost an accident, snowed out of the places I wanted to go and enjoying Chinese food and movies with Jewish friends. Besides, if I put decorations up, I'd just have to take them back down again.

Instead, I just walk past the Capitol every day on my way to work and again, later, on my way home. I try to make a pilgrimage sometime with my camera and snap pictures of the tree I share with some many people. The People. And I know I'm home.

Tag: Christmas

Rocket man

2011-12-26T13:46:00.003-05:00

Rocket Man lyrics and Lego wizards. Papa figures out how to open an other box, leaving the room to find a sharp instrument and coming back with toys, toys, toys. The fervor of Christmas morning didn’t quite fade but rather transformed into something else, the girls playing together, with us, with each other and breaking in all of the new gifts.

I stayed in my pajamas ‘til noon. Sitting on the couch, reading with the girls, playing games, listening to Christmas music. Instructions. Conversations by phone and over running water, laughter and the clink of just-washed glasses, about to be filled.

We looked up the lyrics to Rocket Man and played the song to remember the way they fit together. It made sense at the time and would forever bring me back to Christmas and South Carolina.

In Chicago, my nephew changed into his pajamas at two (in the afternoon) and crawled into bed on Christmas Eve. He figured that the earlier he went to bed, the earlier he’d wake. His parents figured the same and made him get up. He ended up sleeping later than we did.

Farther north, another nephew got up and went into his father’s shop for a shave and a haircut.

“A shave? You’re shaving now,” I moaned and we talked of Christmas gifts sent and received.

I fell asleep by the light of a Christmas tree and to the whispers of small girls. Presents and stockings. Games. Mimosas. Coffee and rolls, croissants and strata. A lazy day on the couch. At the table. Puzzling and playing, talking and laughing. Phone calls to the people we love. Text messages expressing the same.

“Daddy’s on the naughty list. Daddy’s on the naughty list,” one of the girls sings as her mother puzzles, I write and Papa reads. Cookies are shared. Wine poured. Tonight, I go home and this week, I work. For now, we’re focused on candy canes and family.

Family.

Time to put the computer away.

Tag: Christmas Family

Bets off

2011-12-25T00:30:00.005-05:00

Four hours of sleep might not have been enough. I should have slept on the plane. Or taken a nap. Or... something. The synapses in my brain had long since started misfiring by the time the slivovitz appeared. I could barely form sentences earlier in the day and I tried to hide my yawns in the folds of a napkin.

I suppose I could have napped instead of watching Planet Earth but the scenes from Antarctica, whales and penguins that I could actually identify as Adelie reminded me of my Christmas past and there seemed to be just too much to do with conversations to be had, food to be eaten and pop-up books to be read.

Hours later, though, even after the kosher plum brandy, I was still awake, talking and laughing. We’d watched the Saint Olaf Choir, some of the Mormon Tabernacle and a bit of the pope’s midnight mass.

Cookies and milk were set out for the man with a plan and we tracked his progress west via NORAD as Santa followed the sun.

“Where do you think he is now?”

“What time is it? 4? 4:30? Eastern Europe?”

“Syria?”

“Bulgaria.”

And onto Western Europe. The Azores. Eastern Canada. The girls has long since gone to bed by the time the cookies and carrots were eaten, the milk drunk. By the time the stockings that had been hung on the railing with care were stuffed and the luminaries (in glass instead of paper, given last year’s lawn fire) blown out. By the time I curled up to read by the light of a Christmas tree (one of eight in the house) and realized that Christmas had already come. That I'd been up for 20 hours.

I could only hope that the girls would sleep in a little. Their father had given them permission/encouragement to wake me by jumping on me and/or the bed, preferably me in his words and the bed in mine.

In the morning, though, far too early, I heard little voices and whispered, “Hello!”

“Hello!” whispered back and two girls came running. “Santa’s been here. I want to open my present!”

Each had a present under their own trees to open, something left by Santa to tide them over until a more socially acceptable time, something close to now.

The 5-year-old opened her gift beside me and shrieked in a whisper “I got my unicorn!” running down the hall with the toy wrapped in her arms as the 10-year-old tried to herd her back to her room with “just another half hour.”

At seven, all bets were off.

“Wake up, Nana! Santa rearranged the furniture! The stockings! My stocking! Wake up!"

Tag: Christmas

Sleepless

2011-12-24T07:45:00.003-05:00

I don’t remember if the alarm actually sounded, the first of the three I had set. I’d been fully awake for an hour, more or less, when it should have gone off.

“Sleepsleepsleepsleepsleep,” I chanted silently as I curled under the covers and waited for sleep to come. “Fivefivefivefive.”

I didn’t want to miss the alarm. The alarms. My flight.

A list of last minute items to pack raced through my head. Glasses. Barrettes.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t traveled before. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a bag of toiletries ready to go, a one-quart bag with fluids in containers of three ounces or less. Sample size perfume. A toothbrush in a case. I’d just been distracted all week, juggling work and volunteering, volunteering and work and a handful of other small crises that didn’t really matter at all but took my mind off... Well… everything until I crawled into bed.

“I shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee…" I thought as I lay there, thinking. "Sleepsleepsleepsleep... Fivefivefivefivefive... Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee"

It did make sense at the time, the coffee, the long night of wrapping and talking, of making connections and making plans to move our nonprofit into the future. The sense somewhat faded as I watched the clock move from 11 to 12:12 to 1:37 with an alarm set for five.

Sometime in the night, I sorted everything in my mind that needed to be sorted and I fell asleep and sometime in the morning that was probably still night, I awoke and forgot it all. It didn’t matter, though. The world was depending on me to do anything but get to the airport and board the right plane.

I'm still waiting on that last bit. According to one of the cacophony of announcements I've heard with flights boarding for Nashville, Toronto and Buffalo, Binghamton and Columbus, I have plenty of time. My plane's still in Dayton.

Tag: Travel

Losing track

2011-12-23T09:00:00.001-05:00

I've lost track of days. I think on some level I know that today is Friday, but yesterday could have been Friday or Saturday or Monday. I really don't know. Days and nights have just lost their meaning.

I forgot what it felt like to lose, truly lose, track of time. I don't mean the sense of going out to run errands and realizing that day's almost over. I mean the complete melting of one day into the next, the lack of delineation, a vast expanse of time filled with so many things.

Yesterday - was it only yesterday or last week or last month? - I worked my seventh of eight shifts in a retail environment, wrapping books for donations. The night before - was it really only the night before? - I volunteered with the same project in another capacity.

Volunteering. Working. Christmas parties and shopping and shipping. Plays. Concerts. Bus rides 'cross the city and back again. Short days. Long nights. I know exactly where the time has gone, every minute of it, and it feels almost elastic. Stretching to fit so many things. Not stretching enough.

I still need to pack. To work and volunteer, sleep, read and write before Christmas comes. Is that really the day after tomorrow? I have so much to do. What day is it now?

This hasn't happened in years. Not in more than a decade, I think. When I first moved to the area, I held three jobs and lived 50 miles outside of the city. I didn't know if I was coming or going. Mostly going, I think. Or was I coming? I can't remember now.

This weekend, I think, everything will calm down. A three-day weekend with family and friends followed by a short intense week of work – just work – and maybe a little more volunteering but nothing like the 38 hours I've volunteered in the past week and a half and then another three-day weekend. At some point, I'll start to regain my sense of time and then a new year will start.

Tag: Holiday Charity Time

Long night

2011-12-22T08:55:00.002-05:00

Just one year ago, it was the longest day of the year, the longest day of my life, if you don't count the birthday on a plane and crossing the international dateline. It was the December solstice. Winter at home and the very heart of summer in Antarctica, which is where I was headed one year ago.

The Drake Passage. A broken tooth. Rubber boots and penguin poo. Aitcho Barrientos. We watched adolescent seals mock fight each other, drawing blood but not ire.

I saw my first iceberg. I saw my first whale. I rode in a Zodiac for my first and second times and I stepped foot on my seventh continent.

The sun never really set that night. It just dipped low in the sky and hid from view for a very short while in a dusky twilight sort of night before rising again. It was the closest I've ever been to a midnight sun.

A year later, I found myself firmly entrenched in an odd Winter Solstice with an unseasonably warm, rainy day. Yesterday, temperatures soared, rain poured, and the day seemed to end before it had really begun. We reached the solstice in the middle of the night here on the Eastern Seaboard, at a half past midnight, and winter arrived.

In American Indian culture, the day marked the start of storytelling season. In the Mayan calendar, it marked the beginning of the end of days in the current cycle. In the world of retail, it marked the end of guaranteed two-day shipping for Christmas, and for me, it marked the beginning of a slow climb back to summer, to long days and short dresses, sandals and sunscreen, walks and talks late into warm nights and that... that was a very happy thought. One to last all the long night.

Tag: Winter

Billy Elliot

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

It wasn't quite a carol that I expected, not with words like "raid" and "steal," "tosser" and "swine," but the notes filled the air as the second act opened to Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher and a Christmas concert at a community center in Billy Elliot, the musical based on the 2000 film about a boy who just wanted to dance.

The tale of a motherless, blue-collar boy who traded boxing gloves for dancing shoes, a story peppered by violence and strife in a town struck by a miners' strike, might not have been the traditional holiday fare. With picket lines and police violence, a forgetful grandmother singing of an abusive relationship and coarse language, it was no Messiah singalong, to be sure, but the crowd didn't seem to mind, clapping enthusiastically and rising for a standing ovation at the end.

In New York, the musical won 10 Tony Awards and 10 Drama Desk Awards, including best musical in each. Sir Elton John drafted the score, Peter Darling the choreography, and Ian MacNeil a simple but effective gliding set that complemented the scenes set by a talented cast. A rotating troupe of five young men fill the title role night after night, dancing and singing with power and grace.

The musical was received by a festively-attired group with red dresses and sweaters, red trousers, skirts and scarfs. Sparkly bits. Smiles. So many smiles. People were ready for a night at the Center, the musical and the Opera House. Crystal chandeliers. Velvet seats and curtain. A holiday outing that exceeded, in opulence, at least, the one onstage.

So merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
May God's love be with you
We all sing together in one breath
Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
We all celebrate today
'Cause it's one day closer to your death

For those interested in the Messiah Sing-along, this year's event will take place Friday, December 23. Guest conductor Barry Hemphill will lead "the Opera House Orchestra, a 200-voice choir, professional soloists, and a very enthusiastic audience in a glorious 'sing-along' of excerpts from Handel's masterpiece." Tickets are both free and required, to be distributed beginning at 6 p.m. on the day of the performance in the Hall of Nations. The words "raid" and "steal," "tosser" and "swine" will not be included.

Tag: Musical Theater Kennedy Center

And it shows

2011-12-20T08:30:00.003-05:00

I think I'm losing my status this year. Not that I really have all that much to lose, but my United Airlines premiere status is about to take off without me. I am short on miles.

I'd say that I haven't really flown that much this year, but that's a lie. I've flown enough. Lord knows I've flown enough. United knows that, too, but they don't want to give me credit for all the flights that I've taken, not even on their partnering airlines.

My trips to Peru and New Orleans for Jazz Fest just came on another airline, which doesn't count. Neither does my trip to Iceland, and apparently, I'm not getting miles for the 4,000+ miles I flew between Newark and Munich (where I sat in the airport for hours because my next flight was canceled) because of the code under which it was booked.

I'd booked the ticket, K Class (meaning economy) through Continental Airlines, which has merged with United, but it was operated by Lufthansa. United doesn't give credit for K Class tickets on Lufthansa. It gives credit for K Class tickets on Continental but the name on the tail started an L and ended with an Ufthansa, so no miles for me.

For those having trouble keeping up, welcome to the club. It's taken me several weeks and 6 phone calls to sort that out and I still don't have the miles.

Unfortunately, I had booked the slightly more expensive and incredibly less convenient ticket specifically for the miles. To keep my status. And even more unfortunately, I discovered that I would not be getting the miles over the weekend. Two weeks before the end of the year. And I need to fly 1,867 miles by December 31.

White whine.

So many people live in such dire conditions. One in seven households struggle to put food on the table in the United States alone, and this is a developed nation. I should get over myself. The fact that I won't be able to board first, check a bag for free or upgrade for more legroom without paying more really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but I've still spent the better part of the week trying to figure out where I can go by the end of the year.

It would cost $600 to visit my sister and it's not quite far enough, not even if I connect. It costs twice as much to fly to my friend's place in Oregon, far more than London, and about as much as a trip to Paris, Zurich or Rome. If I were willing to spend NYE in the air, I could get to Australia for about the same price. Beijing? Moscow? Crazy.

The prices. The destinations. The thought that I might book a ticket as far away as possible just to keep my status, even though I've apparently used about 42,000 miles this year, I have over 230,000 miles, just not enough "elite qualifying miles" this year.

It is not just about status. I love to fly. I always have. No matter how many clouds fill the sky, it's always sunny at 30,000 feet and when I disembark, there I am. Someplace new.

I know that it's crazy, but I still might fly somewhere for the status. I suppose there's probably a 12-step program for it. One step. Don't do it. I'm just not sure I'm ready to quit.

Tag: Travel Flying

Holly, jolly, my foot

2011-12-19T14:50:00.008-05:00

I haven't been walking much lately. Like not much. At all. Most people in my life seem to think that's a very good thing but it's played havoc on my mental well being.

Five weeks ago, a little more, I twisted my ankle. Looking at my iPod instead of the ground, I stepped on the edge of the sidewalk and rolled my ankle, landing in the grass in front of the Kennedy Center, moaning in pain. Eventually, I picked myself up and made my way home. It took a little too much walking peppered by a lot of swearing but I made it.

For the next several days, I took it easy. Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation. Harkening back to my days as an athletic trainer and pulling a brace from my drawer, I did everything one is supposed to do to heal an injured ankle. Then, I went to Europe.

The next several days, the next week or so, was a blur of long, cold days on my feet, walking, walking, walking. I think I averaged something between 10 and 15 miles a day six days in a row, which honestly isn't that much for me because I generally walk five to 10 miles a day except when I'm training. And then I walk more.

Unfortunately, though, it was too much for my poor, injured ankle. By the time I got home, I was convinced something had broken. I saw a doctor who gave me a scary prescription and sent me for X-rays, telling me to stay off my foot, and I did except for the getting across town for the X-ray thing. A week later, I lost the ability to walk for a couple of days. I was forced to make a decision between upstairs and bathroom and downstairs and kitchen because I couldn't do both.

I called the doctor again. She said she'd mailed me a letter saying to stay off of it. A letter. Mail. By way of the U.S. Postal Service. She said she'd send me another with the name of an orthopedic surgeon who might be able to help. Two weeks later, I managed to get onto his schedule.

In the meantime, my five- to 10-mile days have reduced drastically. I've relied more heavily on my car (getting into an accident one night and requiring a tow to the shop for a new starter on another), the metro and bus. I've worked from home. I've spent days without walking. Without sun. Without human interaction. And slowly it's killing me.

At the beginning, I worried about possible weight gain. This morning, I realized I'd been so depressed that I'd forgotten to eat and lost almost eight pounds. If something doesn't change soon, I will cry out another three by the end of the week.

According to the songs, Christmas is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. The hap, hap, happiest season of all. But lyricists fail to account for the outlay of cash, the pressure to be cheerful and jolly and wear sparkly red sweaters and Christmas bulb earrings. To find time for cooking and baking, shopping and shipping, spending time with friends, with family, at the airport waiting on flights sure to be delayed due to inclement weather because it's the middle of winter. Bad weather. Short days. Plus the stress of spreading assets due to all those damn cookies. Seasonal affective disorder. Holiday blues. It's a hard time of the year.

Some of us struggle with the holiday on a good year. Throw in a hefty helping of car problems, money concerns, a head cold, aching ankle and knee, and a pinch of coworkers slinging words like "unprofessional," "condescending" and "harsh." Stir in 35 hours of volunteering and untold hours of volunteer coordination. Scoop out coping mechanisms like exercise and sunshine. Shake violently and cool at 50 degrees (the temperature inside my house).

It's a wonder I'm not crying in the corner, and I don't even have serious problems.

I know I have a lot for which to be grateful. The family and friends with whom to spend time. A car that mostly runs and enough money to fix it. A job that lets me work at home and insurance to get my joints fixed, too. As soon as the last one happens, I'll start walking again and be able to see all that. In the meantime, I'm trying to avoid the corner and crying, happy that the blues have helped curb cookie binges.

Have a holly, jolly Christmas, and when you walk down the street, say hello to friends you know and everyone you meet. They just might need a little holiday cheer.

Tag: Christmas

Bow on top

2011-12-18T08:58:00.003-05:00

"That's it?" the woman asked.

"Yes," I smiled, handing her the Nook I'd just wrapped. "We don't have ribbons, but we have stickers with bows."

"That's it?" she repeated. "You don't put a bow on it?"

"We don't have bows."

She glanced over at the display with the electronic reader and I could see her seeking out the one behind the counter with the ribbon and bow.

"But…" she repeated. "You don't put a bow on it?"

"We don't have bows."

She wrinkled her nose in disdain.

"That's it? You don't put a bow on it?"

"We don't have bows."

I didn't know how to make it any clearer. I didn't have a bow. I had no ribbon and couldn't conjure it out of nowhere. I didn't even work in the store. Barnes and Noble had afforded us the opportunity to gift wrap for donations. They provided the paper, tape and scissors and they provided the customers. I just wrapped the purchases and collected donations from those who wanted to give. For what it's worth, that woman was not one of them.

In the two weeks before Christmas, I'd signed up for three shifts at the store, three chances to make a little money for our struggling non-profit, an organization that sent books to prisoners. Those three shifts turned to six as other groups canceled and six into nine, including the each of the last four shopping days before Christmas. As the event organizer, I tried to fill the shifts and when that didn't happen, I took them myself, shifting my schedule and wrapping, wrapping, wrapping to the sounds of Christmas classics.

Personal gifts. Office gifts. Toys for Tots and white elephant exchanges. Travel books. Kids books. Several copies of the Steve Jobs' biography. I wrapped two pairs of puppy-inspired book ends in a row as the women in line discussed my gift wrapping technique and how good they were. They just didn't want to take the presents home. One woman stopped a fellow volunteer mid-wrap and took over the package herself. (She paid us anyway.) Several asked us if they needed to pay before the wrapping, and all the while, my head rang with ring ting tingling of a holly, jolly Christmas this year.

It's been a decade or so since I last worked retail at the holidays. A decade or so since I last felt the holiday rush and the mad panic that escalated as the days grew shorter and slightly longer again nearing Christmas. I'd almost forgotten the money people tended to throw at stores the closer we came to the holiday itself, guilt inspiring larger purchases. I'd all but pushed insanity induced by repetitive Christmas carols from my head.

I kind of missed it.

I didn't necessarily miss getting abused by customers. When I said we didn't have bows, I meant exactly that. Asking the question four times wouldn't conjure one and I wasn't waiting for that magic number before ponying up.

"Well, just because you asked so many times and so not very nicely, here. Have a bow!"

I more missed people like the men who followed the Nook buyer, the funny pair of men who made me laugh by asking, "Do you mean you don't have any bows? I don't think we're following you and we really just wanted bows."

I enjoyed the time with my fellow volunteers, getting to know them better, seeing others in a Christmas/Chanukah/shopping and book loving frame of mind, and making a little money for a worthwhile projects. We even managed to make others aware of the work that we did and recruited a few new volunteers. That made it all worthwhile, the Christmas retail experience wrapped up neatly. Just without a bow on top.

Tag: Holidays Volunteering

Thermal

2011-12-17T11:32:00.002-05:00

Curling up in the big chair in the corner, the "captain's chair" as my brother called it, I held a bowl in my hands and watched the steam rise. Beside me, on an end table, more steam rose from the mug of tea that I'd poured and both seemed somewhat comforting on a cold winter's morn. The fact that I could see my own breath, though… That was the opposite of comforting.

At first, I thought it was the oatmeal. The tea. Something outside of my body heat that gave form to my breath. It wasn't that cold outside. How could it be so cold in the living room that I saw my own breath? It just didn't make sense.

I huffed for a while, watching the condensation in wonder. I just wanted to make sure that I saw what I thought, and then, I snuggled into the Snuggie that came to me as a joke and prayed that the UPS delivery man would arrive sooner rather than later. If not for him, I would have worked upstairs in relative warmth. Actually, if not for him, I would have gone into the office and enjoyed the benefits of a federal boiler at work, pumping out heat. The cold outside (and in) had highlighted the appeal of working long winters. I could see my breath in my living room.

Granted, that was my own fault, in part. I left the thermostat lower than low. Warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing, but that was about it. Turning up the temperature wouldn't make a difference. On the first floor, the heating vents edge the room along the ceiling. With an open floor plan and skylights at the top of the stairs and in the bathroom, with a non-functioning fireplace and single pane windows, the heat went up and out without warming anything at all.

Space heaters made smaller spaces somewhat livable for a while, as did the Snuggie, but the electric bills soared and I could still see my breath.

Waiting for the UPS man to arrive, I warmed my fingers around the bowl of oatmeal and endless cups of tea. The space heater, Snuggie and computer in my lap helped keep me warm and I used the last one to try to find a solution, ordering thermal curtains and the hardware to hang them. I didn't know a way to cover the skylight, but it's a start. Something has to help. I can see my breath in my living room.

Tag: Cold

Another one percent

2011-12-16T09:00:00.001-05:00

In the midst of this holiday season, as I wrap gift after gift to raise funds for the DC Area Books to Prisons project, and with all of the talk on the one percent with 42 percent of the wealth in the United States, I cannot help but think of another one percent: The segment of our population serving time.

One percent. One out of every one hundred. In jail.

For the most part, we tend to ignore that part of the population, to pretend they don't exist, these men and women in jail. They have been locked up; they must have done something wrong. They should be punished.

But our prison system isn't about punishment. It's not about rehabilitation either. It's a holding pattern. A place to while away time before getting out and coming back because our recidivism rates are terrible, as are those of incarceration, in general.

One percent.

We have more people in jail than any other country in the world in terms of both percentage rates and sheer human beings. Belly button counts. And still we ignore them. We pretend they don't exist. According to a June 2006 study by the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, on any given day more than 2 million people are incarcerated and over the course of a year, 13.5 million spend time in prison or jail.

Drug-related convictions drive up the figures, including both violent and nonviolent crimes. And the people convicted, the inmates, the convicts, wait inside and bide their time. Unpunished. Un-rehabilitated. Holding. Until they get out and come back again.

Recidivism rates are soaring as is prison overpopulation. Crime continues inside the bars and gangs flourish.

With all the news lately of the 99 percent and the one percent, I cannot help but think of the one percent about which we don't really talk, and wonder when we are going to do something about that.

Tag: Prisons

High cab perspective

2011-12-15T08:58:00.003-05:00

It might not have been so bad if I'd called when the car died. When it failed to start. But I had somewhere to be. Something to do. A volunteering project I'd organized and I couldn't quite skip. The car was fine in the lot.

I'd meant to take the bus but an email for work kept me in the house just a minute too long. Leaving the house and swinging a bag to my shoulder. I awkwardly shuffled toward the corner. Half a block down, I saw the bus pass.

"Fudge," I mumbled and shuffled back.

I wasn't supposed to be walking (or shuffling) at all. I decided to drive to the metro, park on the street, and the car would be there to take me home at the end of a long night of volunteering after a long day of work.

On the way, I decided to stop at the grocery store for snacks to share with the other volunteers. It was a long night and I hadn't eaten all day. If I were hungry, they probably would be, too. Goldfish, gingersnaps and bananas would fortify us, I thought and bought and hurried back to the car.

It wouldn't start. It wouldn't anything. My car had quit. Died. Failed to start. My words failed that time. Not even a fudge.

After a minute or three of pivoting from one bad leg to the other, I decided to go to customer service and let them know I was leaving my car in the lot until I could find someone to deal with it.

"Sure thing, sugar. Are you leaving it over night?"

"I... I don't know. I don't think so."

"Just let us know."

Then, I hobbled out. To the metro. The volunteering. Time with friends. The sniffling and sneezing that had started on Sunday seemed to progress on its own, and my head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. That could have just been the lack of sleep, though, as I’d found myself awake between the hours of 3:00 and 5:30 in the morning. It all faded, though, as we talked and wrapped, made money for the organization and spread information about the work that we did.

When all was said and done, when we were done, at least, we cleaned up the area and headed out to the Metro by way of the White House.

“Stop walking!” a friend urged me.

“But we’re so close… Don’t you want to see the ugly tree?”

She looked at me quizzically.

“It really is ugly,” I insisted.

She’d never seen it, so I dragged her to the Ellipse and explained the things in the “President’s Park,” the tree that replaced the one that had been damaged by wind, the state trees, the Yule Log, etc.

“Is there really a Yule Log?”

“It’s an entire fire pit.”

We watched the trains circle the tree and circle their villages and go absolutely nowhere at all. We saw the trees and the lights, the Yule Log and Santa’s Workshop, the White House and the Washington Monument. As we walked back toward the metro, we passed Santa himself, waiting for a cab.

And then, then I went back to deal with my car.

I’d called the shop earlier in the evening. They expected my car and gave me the number of a company to call for a tow. I’d touched base with them and called back once I confirmed that my car absolutely would. Not. Start.

“Give me five minutes and I’ll give you a call to let you know when a driver can be there,” the dispatcher said.

“Ten minutes,” he said when he called me back.

“Almost there,” he said when he called with the credit card confirmation.

“Where are you?” he asked when 30 minutes had passed.

The driver had gone to NW instead of SW. He was a few city miles away. It would be another 25 before he pulled into the lot.

“Is that stick?” he asked doubtfully when I asked if I should shift into neutral.

“Um, yeah?”

He continued to look at me scornfully as I twisted the wheel to straighten the tires, as I climbed into the cab with a bad knee and worse ankle, as he pulled up to the shop on a tight, crowded street and asked me where he should leave the car.

“I have no idea. It needs to go there and I cannot pay for another tow.”

“Are you paying cash?”

“I’ve already paid.”

He parked the car in traffic while he called back to the dispatcher to make sure I was telling the truth and chatted a bit. Fortunately, at a half past 11, there wasn’t much traffic to block. Eventually, he decided to put my car in the drive and watched me scornfully as I slipped from the cab slowly, taking care of my injured extremities. He dropped the car as I filled out the after-hours ticket and dropped my key in the slot and then he pulled out, leaving me to limp a mile home in the cold, dark night.

I got in sometime after midnight. Tomorrow had already come; I’d figure out the car later. I hadn’t eaten a solid meal all day. My head swelled with pressure of the cold that had taken hold, and even the uninjured joints had started to ache with the cold. All in all, though, it was a pretty good night. I’d done a lot of good during the day and I made it home again. That was all that really mattered.

Tag: car

Christmas with a conscience

2011-12-14T08:30:00.002-05:00

Having reached the ripe old age of 36, I've realized that none of my friends or family members (kids aside) really want or need anything because my friends and family members (kids aside) buy what they want. When they want it.

There's something to be said for finding the perfect gift. For getting the perfect gift. For realizing someone else knows me well enough that a coffee table book with New Orleans graffiti combines four of my favorite things in the world – books, photography, the Big Easy and street art. For the most part, though, I don't need anything and my people don't need anything except maybe jobs, security, love. A better world. A brighter future. Things that weren't listed in the Black Friday ads.

If we are going to focus on tangibles in the midst of this recession, we might as well embrace this season of giving by giving back. Alternate gift-giving ideas abound and they're mostly better than anything I could write, but a few ideas from my own Christmas list include:

Reduce, reuse, recycle: Re-gift. If you have it, if it's new and you don't use it, consider giving it to someone else who would. While you're at it, clean out your closet and take things to a local thrift store. Look inside. Get creative and make something. Go to a street market (or Etsy) and purchase homemade items constructed with recycled items.

Give time: Spend time with friends and family. Volunteer in someone else's name. Give activities that people need. Last year, a friend helped me dispose of the electronics that had lingered for a year and a half since I'd moved. It was priceless.

Give to a non-profit: Think of an issue important to your family and friends and give related organizations money in their names. Many will send cards or small gifts acknowledging the gift you've given. For example, DC Books to Prisons will send a bookmark acknowledging the gift.

Buy a cow: Goats, pigs, sheep, rabbits, chicks, honeybees and llamas can be given through Heifer International as they partner with individuals and families around the world to promote sustainable livestock and agriculture to alleviate hunger and poverty.

Give a microloan: Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.

I don't remember the last time I awoke early and excited on Christmas. Strike that. I do. Last year, I awoke and came to deck to see a whale breach off the bow of an icebreaker near the Antarctic Peninsula. Nobody put a bow in it for me and it wasn't stuffed in a stocking. Though, I might have been wearing three pairs.

This year, more than anything, I want my family to have money and health enough to stop worrying. I want my grandma's mind back and in lieu of that, peace of my mind. I wish my friends without jobs could find them. I want to stop reading to kids at the domestic violence shelter because there are no more families there and for the kids from César Chávez Public Charter High School to stop selling recycled art for their project to help rebuild New Orleans because it's been rebuilt.

I wanted to ask Santa to provide volunteers to fill the shifts on the fundraiser I organized, people to wrap books at a local Barnes and Noble to make money for DC Books to Prisons. The initial three shifts grew to six and six to nine and it seemed impossible to find people to work them, but then I did. We did. And all nine were filled. Granted, I'd be working eight of them myself, but others would be there beside me and my gift from Santa would bring the funds we needed to answer so many other requests through the year.

Santa's been good to me, so I'll do what I can – giving my friends and family love and support, reading at the shelter, buying recycled art from the school kids, and I'll keep giving, tangibles and intangibles, year round.

For it is in giving that we receive.
- Francis of Assisi

Tag: Christmas Gifts

New Orleans and Back

2011-12-13T08:01:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, on one of my few trips out of the house, on the one where I combined coffee and conversation, books, baking and Christmas shopping, I stumbled across a group of wonderfully articulate and charming students from César Chávez Public Charter High School.

Fortunately, I didn't actually stumble across them. My trips out of the house were limited by an aching ankle. I more hobbled past them and they called out in hopes of gaining attention for both their cause and their ware: Recycled Art being sold to send high schools students to New Orleans to help rebuild.

I couldn't refuse.

The artwork included journals with covers decorated by the students themselves, checker boards, and artwork for hanging. There might have been more, but I found myself drawn to the tables covered with stacks of journals and listening to the students' talk of the project.

"Students participating in the New Orleans and Back Community Action Project (CAPstone) travel to New Orleans to learn about and actively engage in the rebuilding of the city. This is a comprehensive academic and community service effort that allows students to closely examine the dynamics of a different community as they help the residents of New Orleans deal with Hurricane Katrina's aftermath."

The young man who pulled me into the tent offered a clear and succinct description of the project and the artwork. The young woman who helped me pick out a journal for my nephew told me it was her third trip with the program and that she would be going to Xavier University of Louisiana in the fall.

The two-week course of study includes a balance of work and policy with a week in DC hosting guest speakers focused disaster recovery and housing conditions in New Orleans and a week in the field with fieldwork, engaging with policy actors, and cultural exploration. It's New Orleans. Culture is key. Program participants interact with community activists, grassroots organizers, local committee members, and legislative lobbyists as well as local families.

The sale at Eastern Market marked part of an effort by the students to raise eight to ten thousand dollars for the trip to match money raised by teachers and administrators at the school.

The project's official website declares "The mission of our schools is 'to develop young people who will make this world a better place by influencing the public policies that affect their communities.'" From what I saw this weekend, they're well on their way.

Tag: Charity

Bieber buyout

2011-12-12T08:30:00.009-05:00

For those uninfected by Bieber fever, a Bieber Buyout might be an alien concept, one rendered even more incomprehensible by the reality of sitting at a table in the midst of the phenomena, surrounded by more than a hundred teenage fans of young pop singer Justin Bieber. Strangely enough, that's exactly what happened Sunday afternoon.

I'd shown up at the bookstore to gift wrap presents for patrons as part of a holiday fundraiser for the DC Books to Prisons project. A few teenage girls milled around the space at the bottom of the escalator and near the stand displaying Nooks when I got there, and their numbers grew as we set up the table. As we carried rolls of wrapping paper and scissors. As we set out flyers and the can for donations.

By the time we pulled up our chairs and waited for the hordes (read: handful spread out over the next several hours) of customers who wanted our service, the numbers of girls with cameras and signs, Bieber t-shirts and phones, had grown well past a hundred and they swarmed the stacks, the table, the store.

"What is this?"

"I have no idea."

We watched in bewilderment and listened for an explanation. Soon, we overheard a girl talking. Bieber. Concert. Buyout. Using my netbook and the store's free wireless internet, we searched online for more information and found out that we were in the middle of an official Bieber Buyout.

"A buyout is an organized event where Beliebers from the same state/country/city gather at a particular location to buy all the CD’s in the selected location. The first ever Belieber buyout was in New York City in America and was suggested by Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun. Since the first buyout, fans have organized several other buyouts and some got lucky because Justin ended up going for them."

The website describing and dedicated to the phenomena - bieberbuyouts.com – outlines the steps for organizing a buyout, such as strategizing what the organizer wants to get out of the buyout (emphasizing that one should not organize an event to meet the man but rather to help people in need), picking the date, time and location, getting the word out via social media and determining whether or not a dress code is desired.

It continues with event-day suggestions such as eating breakfast to prepare for the long day, arranging a ride, packing a camera, meeting other Beliebers, singing one's heart out, buying all of the Justin Bieber CDs available and having fun.

Unfortunately for those of us at the gift wrapping table, nobody wanted to have those CDs wrapped nor did they choose our organization as their favorite charity (not that we could take the CD anyway - no prisons on our list allowed them.) Instead, we sat and watched as numbers grew, pictures were taken and girls cheered for the man who came into the store.

"Scooter!"

Even though my friend didn't think she could pick Bieber out from a lineup and I knew his reputation only slightly better, having seen interviews on morning talk shows (he seems like a talented musician and an genuinely decent guy), we knew it wasn't him. We just didn't know who it was in a winter cap, who had sent hordes of teenage girls a titter and a twitter and giggling madly.

"Who is that?"

"I don't know!"

He spoke for a minute, rode the escalator up slowly followed by girls and came back down to pose for pictures near the door.

Hours later, after the man in the hat had left, after the crush had reached critical mass and the girls disbanded, as customers started to fill the store and request our wrapping expertise, we discovered that we'd been in the presence of the manager who had spurred the buyout trend, a "charitable" act wherein fans buy all of his client's product and donate them to a "worthy" cause (TBD). A smart man, to be sure.

Unfortunately, the act somewhat dwarfed the actual charity present, but we didn't expect a great turnout and the buyout event was somewhat entertaining.

The singer was in town for the 30th annual "Christmas in Washington" concert Sunday night. According to local news sources, the president even joined him in a song. The concert will air Friday on TNT.

Tag: Music Volunteering Books

Full Long Nights Moon

2011-12-11T08:54:00.008-05:00

Also known as the Full Cold Moon

"During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun," or so says the Farmers Almanac.

Hobbling downstairs, I went out with my camera to take pictures of the full long nights moon. I hobbled up to download them and then down again to take a few more with different settings. It was hard to see what, if anything, I'd captured of the full bright orb in the dark winter sky. Fortunately, it was the long night of the name (less than two weeks from the longest night of the year); I had plenty of time to hobble up and down, in and out, to play with my camera, to play with the settings.

By next year's Full Long Nights Moon, I hope to have a full set of full moons and an equally full understanding of how to photograph them.

Tag: Moon

Monsters

2011-12-10T08:28:00.001-05:00

"$1,200?" I thought. "That can't be right."

It seemed a lot to pay for a book. An awful lot. But when I clicked through the link, that's exactly what it was. A book. Monsters Of The Household Variety. Intrigued by a children's edition that cost more than my first car, I kept reading.

"This colossal tome tells the tale of the mischievous, yet lovable, critters - light bulb popper, remote control remover, hot water runner - responsible for your everyday household calamities. An endearing work of art by Ruth Ashton, stitched with incredible detail on soft cotton pages."

The pictures were gorgeous with cotton and stitching, bits of loose thread and a boy leaning over the edge of the book, leaning on the edge of the book, and it was almost as tall as he was.

The boy wasn't a toddler.

According to the description, the "colossal tome" was 25.5 inches tall, more than two feet, and almost as wide with 24 cotton pages. Both the monsters and text are stitched into place, telling an artful, creative and very expensive short story. Very expensive. $1,200.

If the price tag gave me pause, opening the page made my heart race. It wasn't the book itself, which was gorgeous, or the beauty of the pages, which were gorgeous, too, but my overwhelming fear that I'd somehow end up buying the thing. That terrified me.

In my mind, I accidentally added that to the cart instead of the Penguin Threads edition of Black Beauty that I meant to buy for my niece (at a much more reasonable $16), and I would fail to notice my error. I wouldn't realize the mistake until after it shipped and I wouldn't be able to cancel the order or return the book because it would be delivered to my house without a signature and stolen off the front porch by someone hoping for something equally valuable but slightly more welcome by the thief's family for Christmas and inside my head, the story kept growing.

That's what happens when I have too much time to think and not enough human interaction.

For two days, I found myself curbed. The ankle I'd sprained more than three weeks ago decided to emulate a French sanitation worker during the height of summer and strike. It stopped working completely and I found myself confined to my bed, deliberating between camping upstairs with access to the bathroom and downstairs with access to the kitchen.

The one time that I left the house, desperate for a little company and/or food (more food than anything, my cupboards were bare), I went to the grocery store and ended up in a (very, very minor) car accident, which didn't worry me nearly as much as the $1,200 book on my screen. At least, I had car insurance.

Tag: Money

My turn

2011-12-09T08:52:00.001-05:00

"Can we read something without rape and incest next time?"

I'd intended the question to be my only input to the next selection. We'd recently finished a pair of books - God of Small Things and Once Upon a River - with particularly violent and disturbing imagery, beautifully written, which made the scenes all the worse, and I wanted a break from the theme.

To be fair, I contributed to the trend, picking up between book club picks, Coetzee's Disgrace and a series of other dark and twisted books. It didn't matter, though. I was over it. I wanted light. Fluffy. Nancy Drew. Sweet Valley High. Anna Karenina. Bring on the adultery and farming as long as it's consensual between unrelated adults.

Over the weekend, I'd tried something similar in terms of cleaning my mind. I followed an NC-17 film on sex addiction accidentally seen with my dad, with a Hallmark Channel holiday hit. One I'd already seen. Twice. Puppies and Christmas would have to suffice in lieu of brain bleach.

Somehow, though, in making the next selection, I realized I had a few more restrictions. Someone suggested classics and Faulkner bubbled to the surface. James Joyce. George Elliott. Henry James somewhat appealed. Wuthering Heights didn't. I wouldn't have minded rereading Catch 22, but the name simply surfaced and sank again.

An iPad circled the room and we searched for lists of classics and must reads, should reads and would reads and "we could read this!"

"Tracye should pick!" I urged. "She hasn't chosen in ages."

"When's the last time you picked?"

"I don't remember but Tracye should pick!"

The iPad made it back to me and I found myself searching for something that light, yet classic, that not too many of us had read and/or wouldn't mind reading again. Something without too many pages. (Having read Anna Karenina together, we weren't adverse to long books but had too many short weeks between now and then.) Something without rape or incest.

"I guess that rules out Lolita!"

From Absalom, Absalom! through Zorba the Greek, there were so many choices I felt daunted by the list, struggling to pick the perfect book.

"The Golden Notebook?" I suggested.

"Doris Lessing!" someone piped in. "I haven't read it."

None of us had.

"Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. Fearing the onset of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks... it is the fifth notebook -- the Golden Notebook -- which is the key to her recovery and renaissance," I read from the Guardian's website.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/book/fiction/9780007247202/the-golden-notebook

"Bold and illuminating, fusing sex, politics, madness and motherhood, 'The Golden Notebook' is at once a wry and perceptive portrait of the intellectual and moral climate of the 1950s -- a society on the brink of feminism -- and a powerful and revealing account of a woman searching for her own personal and political identity."

"That sounds perfect!"

We decided on the book and started talking dates and times as another woman took the iPad and started scrolling.

"This definitely includes sex."

"I'm OK with sex, just no rape or incest!"

"Communism?"

"Stop reading!"

"672 pages?!"

"Stop reading now!"

She'd picked the last book. And one not long before that. And Anna Karenina might have been hers, too. She didn't have a choice, so the woman walked away from the iPad and we decided to meet halfway. To read half the book, to meet and talk in a few weeks and then to finish and meet again. There was no obligation to do any of it at all, but we'd set ourselves a goal and book for the next two months and then we'd do it all again. At least, it wouldn't be my turn.

Tag: Books Friends

Pink boots

2011-12-08T09:27:00.000-05:00

In a room filled with business suits and portfolios, I looked down to discover I was still wearing pink rubber rain boots. Nobody noticed.

I'd like to say that I managed to carry them off, having built my outfit around the weather outside, but I fear that my coworkers and clients have just stopped noticing and started expecting things like floral footwear from me. Little black dress. Pink sweater. Tights. I'd meant to change shoes when I got to the office. I just forgot for a while and ended up in the meeting with my feet sweating in waterproof boots that reached up toward my knees.

The rain woke me and pushed me back toward sleep all at the same time. It pounded steadily on the window next to my bed and the roof outside. The skylights. The world at large. Newscasters promised that it would turn to snow overnight and melt by the time we got up in the morning. For the moment, though, we only had rain.

They somehow neglected to mention the fact that it would continue all day and into the evening, the night, alternating between heavy showers and torrential downpours, drizzle and misery. The boots came in handy. I just didn't really need them in the morning meeting.

Sometime between one meeting and the next, I changed into the shoes that I'd carried, a pair of pretty little ballet flats. Simple. Black. Grateful that my feet were dry. I'd walked a couple of miles to work in the heavy shower/torrential downpour/misery phase of the cycle and even at noon, my skirt was still wet. My leggings. The down puffy coat I'd worn under my rain jacket, which dripped from a hook in the corner of my cube.

In my ballet flats, I made my way to another meeting, one in a room that had been double booked.

"Are we meeting in here?" a man asked.

"Staffing?" I replied.

"Um, no…" He looked confused for a minute. "Do you live on the Hill?"

"I do."

"I see you walking to work in the mornings," he replied and I considered my morning commute with a start.

I'd changed out of the boots, so that couldn't have been it. He must have just recognized me. My hair. My face. I hoped I hadn't been making funny ones as I walked but I was mostly happy outside in the mornings. Mostly. Just not today.

I should have and could have taken the metro but for the fact that I wanted to do something on the commute that I absolutely cannot recall and probably didn't do. In the end, I just got wet. And cold. And to work on time. It didn’t really strike me that I might have gotten to work another, dryer way.

Later, after the flats and the meeting and a heavy downpour of work in the afternoon, I found myself slipping back into my pink striped knee highs and the pink rubber rain boots for a quick trip on the metro and less quick walk to the church where I volunteered. I didn't even change out of the boots there. I gave in and embraced my inner rubber-boot-wearing self. Pink and flowered on a cold, wet, almost-winter evening.

Nobody there seemed all that surprised by the boots either.

Tag: Rain Commute

Thai massage

2011-12-07T08:29:00.002-05:00

"This might have been a bad idea," I thought with a start as the little woman with the long black hair stepped between my crossed legs and pushed my foot toward my head. I gasped.

"Too much?" she asked.

"Maybe a little."

A Thai massage sounded like a good idea two months ago when I booked it or six months ago when I purchased the voucher but the appeal of the Thai somewhat faded in light of a sprained ankle and Bikram-banged knee. I'd pushed it too far a couple of months earlier and paying someone else to push it for me just seemed stupid.

Of course, my only other options consisted of rescheduling (a near impossibility with impending expiration), a cold stone massage (the thought of which sparked shivers), and a deep tissue massage. A couple of years ago, I experienced my first of the last and the last of them, too, and I left my deep tissue massage with bruises lining my spine. In the end, I kept my appointment, packed a bag of loose fitting clothes and planned to tell the masseuse of the pain in my legs.

She didn't quite listen, though, or maybe she did. I didn't know. I'd never had a Thai massage and while I experienced a few moments of exquisitely excruciating pain, it didn't make me cry. Or black out. Or... they weren't exactly ringing endorsements for something based in a spiritual tradition and designed to heal a person physically, emotionally and spiritually.

For centuries, Thai massage was performed by Buddhist monks as one component of Thai medicine. It is considered more energizing and rigorous than classic forms of massage with the therapist using her hands, knees, legs, and feet to form a series of yoga-like stretches. On a mat. On the floor.

The little woman with the long black hair pressed my body into the floor and pulled it up. Pulled me up. She bent me into a pretzel and then folded me in half. In my loose, comfy clothes and the reading I'd done online, with the minimal instruction from the therapist who told me to lie on the floor and that we'd stretch, I thought that maybe I was prepared for the session. Then, I realized I wasn't.

I discovered a few things about myself during the hour-long session.

* While stopping to address an iPod midstretch is somewhat disconcerting, so is Amy Winehouse screaming, rap music in a spa and utter silence while someone else breathes over me;
* I've never been that physical, that close to someone else without an exchange of body fluids;
* My right leg is both stronger and more bendy than my left;
* I'm awfully bendy; and
* I have limits.

In the end, though, my ankle hurt less than it had as did my knee and the tension that had been growing in both my lower back and my shoulders had somewhat lifted. The pretzeling did me good. I just decided to wait a few days to see how I felt before booking the next appointment. I wanted to make sure the good feelings lasted and that, despite my initial impression, it really wasn't a bad idea.

Tag: Health Fitness

Funky

2011-12-06T08:00:00.001-05:00

Man walks into a doctor's office and says, "Hey, doc, my arm hurts when I wave."

"Then, don't wave," the doctor says.

My head hurts. I think it's a side effect of my painkillers. Somewhat ironic, I think, given that the little white pills are supposed to kill the pain, not cause it, but my ankle feels (mostly) fine.

For the most part, I shy away from painkillers. I think that pain is there for a reason. If my ankle screams when I walk on it, maybe I shouldn't walk on it. I did tear ligaments. Then I walked mile upon freezing mile on it for a week, which didn't help, so my doctor prescribed rest, an X-ray, physical therapy and pain killers.

It wasn't until I got home from the pharmacy that I really looked at the notes. Seizures. Habit-forming. Breathing problems. Apparently, I shouldn't crush and snort or inject the medicine, not that I'd ever considered that, but it might cause life-threatening side effects, overdose, or death. Drug abuse. Addiction.

"I really don't want to take this," I thought, especially in relation to the work-related Christmas party or work itself. Though, The prescription might have come in handy when accidentally watching an NC-17 flick between my ex and my dad, and a couple of times, I have given into the pain and the need to kill it. A couple of times. With care.

But still I have a headache. Not only that, I just really funky. Nauseated. Aching. Hot. My words do not seem to come together in quite the same way they sound inside my head (or any way at all), and I found myself watching Two and a Half Men with Ashton Kutcher last night. Something's not right with this stuff. Not right, at all.

Tag: Television Health Pain

Apple Strudel

2011-12-05T08:30:00.003-05:00

Inspired by my great dessert exploration of 2011 and my quest to find the most perfect apple strudel in central Europe, I spent part of the weekend making and baking my own.

It was my first apple strudel and both easier and harder than I imagined. It's something I definitely want to try again.

Ingredients:
Pastry
1/2 cup margarine
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup yogurt

Filling

1/4 cup melted margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1-1/2 tsp. cinnamon
4 apples
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:
Cut margarine into the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder. Stir in the sour cream and mix well.

Roll out as big as possible. Spread with 1/4 cup melted margarine. Combine 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

Prepare about 4 apples and slice onto the rolled out pastry. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup raisins on the apples and then sprinkle with most of the sugar and cinnamon. Roll up like a jelly roll and seal well.

Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Spread more melted butter on top and sprinkle with rest of sugar mixture.

Bake at 350º for about an hour.

Apparently, there's an icing that can be drizzled on top, but I kind of liked it dry. Or with ice cream. Ice cream would have been perfect.

Tag: Baking Apples Recipe

Shame

2011-12-04T09:04:00.003-05:00

"You do realize that we just took your dad to a porno," he said as we walked to the car.

"I know. You're right. If the soundtrack had been 70s guitar instead of dirges, it really would have been a porn flick."

As it was, we'd just seen Steve McQueen's award-winning independent film Shame.

"Brandon is a 30-something man living in New York who is unable to manage his sex life. After his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment, Brandon's world spirals out of control. From director Steve McQueen (Hunger), Shame is a compelling and timely examination of the nature of need, how we live our lives and the experiences that shape us."

Michael Fassbender and director McQueen, originally paired in Hunger, have joined together once again to delve into the world of addiction - sex addiction – in a gritty, raw drama, quiet and intense. Carey Mulligan (An Education) rounds out the cast playing the wayward younger sister with issues of her own and both Mulligan and Fassbender have received awards and nominations for their performances.

Whether or not one might be sitting between her father and a date, the movie would be hard to watch, filled with nudity and joyless sex. Mulligan's rendition of New York, New York was beautiful, heart-rending and a little too long. Fassbender effective looked like he'd gotten his naughty bits caught in a meat grinder during most of the sex scenes.

The hardest part, though, was understanding how Brandon (and to some degree) ended up where and who they were. There was no back story. No set up. And no resolution. But maybe that's the point. It doesn't matter how they got there. The two are who they are, addicted. Unhappy. Struggling to survive.

"That was like 'Leaving Las Vegas' with sex instead of alcohol," I noted as I climbed into the car.

"And a porn film."

"And a porn film... There's that."

Dad didn't seem to mind too much.

Shame won the 'CinemAvvenire' Award and the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for best film at the London Film Festival and Best British Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards. To date, McQueen, Fassbender and Mulligan have each been nominated for and have won a number of other awards between these events, the Hollywood Film Festival and New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

Tag: Movies

Big sound

2011-12-03T09:00:00.002-05:00

"Such big sound," I thought watching the petite woman on stage. "How does such big sound come from such a small woman?"

Violinist Midori, under the direction of maestro Christoph Eschenbach, continued to amaze throughout her performance of Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 15. Midori began studying violin with her mother, Setsu Goto, at a very young age and in 1982, the 11-year-old played as a surprise guest soloist in the New York Philharmonic's traditional New Year's Eve concert, receiving a standing ovation and the start of an illustrious career, including her position as a U.N. Messenger of Peace.

As such, it seemed only fitting that the violinist played the work of pacifist Britten. At that moment, though, accolades meant nothing. She was just a woman, small and strong, with her violin, making music that echoed throughout the hall.

The music was restless and somewhat frenetic, rising and falling, chattering and pleading. Beautiful. Almost discordant. It wasn't exactly our favorite piece of the night, as well executed as it might have been (and it was). It was just in good company with Sidereus by Osvaldo Golijov and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1.

Golijov, born in Argentina to Eastern European, appealed to my brother who once shared the man's homeland. Though, Sidereus was written in homage of an American musical champion. My brother said it reminded him of nothing more than the sweeping landscape of American cinematography, of something grand and indecipherable like Syriana.

Golijov took the name of the piece - Sidereus - from the title of a treatise published by Galileo - Sidereus Nuncius, the Starry Messenger. It was written after Galileo's first sighting of the moon through a telescope, a fittingly grand and indecipherable landscape.

The evening ended with Shostakovich and the Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10, Written while he was a student at the Leningrad Conservatory, the composer was still a teenager when he wrote this first symphony. The formal description talks of a "juxtaposition of moods" and "orchestral coloring", of "solo moments" and "brash, full-bodied climaxes" and even a "vaudevillian, 'lowbrow' tone," not that I really know what that means.

What any of it means. The music soothed and lulled and I lost track of time as I followed the notes through the air, as I noted the explosion of coughs in the brief pauses and the collective intake of break when the music started again. I lost myself in the music.

Such big sound.

Tag: National Symphony Orchestra

Legwarmers

2011-12-02T08:29:00.001-05:00

When I gave up them up in the mid-1980s, I never thought I'd wear legwarmers again. I ascribed to the philosophy that if you were old enough to remember a trend, you were too old to relive it. Then, again, I was never trendy. Not in the 80s. Not now.

A quarter of a century ago, I wore the leg coverings/footless socks to dance classes. Jazz. Tap. Kristin in a leotard making a fool of herself in a studio freezing because nobody could afford to heat the cavernous space at the prices they charged parents to teach their offspring a pas de bouree or to shuffle off to Buffalo. Hop, shuffle, hop. Hop, shuffle, hop. Shuffle, ball change.

I tried wearing them over my pin tucked jeans once or twice, but Mom had none of that and sent me to my room to change. She had no appreciation for Fame. Or Flashdance. Though, she did let me watch the latter at an unfortunately young age. The former, she couldn't help. My friends and I watched the TV show religiously, dancing around living rooms.

Fame! I'm gonna live forever. I'm gonna learn how to fly, High!

I was too honest to sneak them out of the house for school and kept them for dance classes and dance classes only. They helped.

Then, I grew up. I stopped dancing. I was terrible, anyway, and horribly embarrassed to be the only 4th grader wearing a bra under her leotard at the annual recital at the Scottish Rite auditorium. My legwarmers passed into oblivion.

Or so I thought.

A few years ago, legwarmers apparently became trendy again. At least, they became available again and while I first scoffed at the idea of wearing sweaterlike, footless socks over my trousers, I soon realized that they would make skirt and dress wearing far more comfortable as winter approached so I bought a pair. Or two. Or… More than two.

And my house is cold in the winter. Downright freezing. I've paid hundreds of dollars on a monthly basis in heating costs only to have a pipe burst in my kitchen while I slept upstairs. I had ice under my kitchen sink for weeks before that.

A pair of skylights, with a very open floor plan, single pain windows and a crawlspace under the house failed meant I could see my breath as I huddled under my Snuggie (given in jest and used almost religiously) in tights under running tights under fleece pajama bottoms with an equal number of layers up top.

Legwarmers couldn’t hurt.

Temperatures outside are still fairly reasonable – in the mid-50s. Inside, they're about the same. It was 56 last night, so I gave up, gave in, and pulled out my Peruvian legwarmers as I curled up with my Snuggie in my favorite chair and read.

There was nothing trendy about that. If the trend has ever existed, I'm sure it's long since passed, but nobody's ever accused me of keeping up with the times.

Tag: Clothes Cold

Unstitched

2011-12-01T07:38:00.003-05:00

My right shoe crinkles when I walk. I'm not sure if anyone's noticed but I hear it with every step that I take. A soft sort of crackling.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Actually, it's more like "crunch, shush, crunch" because it's only right shoe that crinkles. The left one sort of shushes in an orthopedic way, which the right one did until I had to tape it together.

Halfway on my two-mile walk to work, I realized that something wasn't quite right with my right shoe. It was a little loose. Open. Airy. My right shoe breathed far more than it should because my shoe had come undone.

"Well, that's going to be a problem," I thought and kept walking.

I didn't really want to wear these shoes today anyway. They actually prompted me to change my shirt and my sweater because I felt rather frumpy and that was before the side came unstitched.

Generally, I carry a second, nicer pair of shoes in my bag. Heels for the office. But today, with a sprained (maybe broken) ankle, I decided to go with only the ugly functional shoes. Sturdy. Solid. At least, they were solid. Until this morning.

It was not the first time I'd blown out a shoe. It wasn't even the second or third. I'm not sure what I do to shoes, but on more than one occasion, I've found myself trying to cobble footwear together using office supplies. Binder clips. Tacks. Today, I've used packing tape and staples and the packing tape crinkles when I walk.

Crunch, shush, crunch.

I have no idea how I'm going to make it to volunteering and then home again. I'm just glad it's not raining to bring a splash into the mix.

Tag: Walking

Sheer stupidity

2011-11-30T08:59:00.002-05:00

Lagged. Lagging. Falling behind. I seem to be suffering from lag of the jet and ache of the ankle as well as general ill effects of traveling so far for such a short time to walk mile upon frozen mile with too little sleep.

Maybe I’m not really suffering from jet lag at all but sheer stupidity.

Not so long gone are the days when I’d follow a red-eye flight with a commute to the office, luggage in tow, for a full week of work. Still here are the 5 and 6 and 7 a.m. flights on a Monday morning followed by the commute to work, luggage in tow, for that full week. I'm getting older, though.

This time, I added a day of padding, of recovery, after the trip, but I’m not sure it helped with 24 hours of wakefulness after only three hours of sleep, after night after night of too little sleep.

I’m tired, in pain and severely lacking in the holiday spirit with wonderfully, if unseasonably, warm days after a gorgeous week visiting another part of the world, doing my Christmas shopping at open-air markets with mulled wine in Prague, Vienna and Budapest. All in all, they are a silly complaints. Castles and cathedrals filled my days, cakes and conversation, my nights.

According to the Guardian, one in seven Americans lives below the poverty line. One in seven families is "food insecure" and will have problems putting food on the table. One in six Americans lives without insurance.

The ankle I think I might have broken? I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, which is the earliest I could get, but I could have gone to the emergency room when it happened or yesterday or today. I could have gone to the doctor in Prague, Vienna or Budapest, and had the ankle examined. Addressed. For very little money out of my pocket because I have insurance and I have money in my pocket.

I have food on my table. In my fridge. In my stomach. I have fresh produce in winter. Granted, it’s winter produce as I eat seasonally and locally. With a focus on apples, pears and root vegetables, it’s fresh and abundant.

I have a table. A fridge. A home. A job. A family. I have everything I need and more. A week in Central Europe. Castles and cathedrals, cake and conversation.

Sheer stupidity, indeed.

Tomorrow marks the first of December - 25 days until Christmas - and I’m working to change my attitude and focus on what I have and what I can give. I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but I will seek ways to give a little every day. Tonight, I volunteer. And maybe tomorrow, too, depending on the doctor’s appointment and jet lag. If not volunteering, I will do something. I just need to figure it out (and get off my feet).

Tag: Giving

Apfelstrudel (and other sweet things)

2011-11-29T07:58:00.004-05:00

Somehow, I stumbled into it, a dessert exploration of central Europe. On the first night, I wanted raspberry cheesecake, but it was actually strawberry, so I went with the strudel. On the second, the apple pie sounded good. On the third, I just couldn't help it.

Then I went to Vienna. Apfelstrudel is a traditional pastry in Austria and in many countries in Europe that once belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire (1867–1918). How could I say no? In Hungary, I delved into an apple tart and a cherry streusel just to round out the experience.

In between, I tried and shared such things as gingerbread, strawberry coffee cake and Sacher cake. I didn't eat all of these on my own. Though, several I did. (I also walked miles and miles and miles and had trouble finding vegetarian food.) It doesn't matter, though. I'll own my desserts with pride

Apfelstrudel (Christmas Market, Vienna): A little bit of heaven in my mouth, this pastry was perfect on an icy night, heated up in a little microwave at the stand and eaten warm as I walked around a Christmas market. It was more apple than crust and properly spice with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Apple Strudel (Olympia, Prague): Despite the lovely blend of a crisp puff pastry with sweet apples, raisins and walnuts, the best part of this dish came in the form of the accompanying cinnamon ice cream. It was rolled in sweet little crumbles and served in its own little bowl atop baked apple slices.

Apple Pie (Stará Praha, Prague): A little strange with chopped apples rather than slice, this pie did a great job of balancing fruit and crust with decent, cinnamon flavor.

Cherry Streusel (Centrál Kávéház, Budapest): Delicious with a butter cookie sort of base and a crumbled topping, I'd give four apples to the cherry streusel but for the fact that I bit into a pit and a half and feared losing a tooth. Other than the pits, I ate it all. I loved Centrál Kávéház.

Almatorta vaníliakrémmel (Tom George Étterem, Budapest): All flake, no flavor, this Apple Tart with vanilla ice cream came without the cream, which would have been the best part. The apple had no flavor at all. I didn't finish it. I barely started it and cannot understand waiters who feel compelled to ask.

"Did you like it?"

"It was fine."

...

"No, I didn't like it."

Other desserts:

* Trdelnik (Prague): Hot with a dusting of cinnamon and sugar, and nuts, this ring pastry is sweet, a little flaky and the perfect inexpensive snack.

* Gingerbread (Prague): Warm and fluffy and dotted with chocolate, this star-shaped treat was best enjoyed on a cold autumn's eve and a picnic in the Old Town Square with women dancing onstage in some sort of traditional garb.

* Strawberry something or other (Prague): We thought it was cherry. I hate strawberries. After one bite, I was done.

* Sacher Cake (Demel, Vienna): I will be quite content if I never eat this again in my life. Ever. It was dry, dense, terrible.

Now, I feel compelled to make, to bake, a strudel of my own. Stay tuned this weekend for a potential baking binge. Recipes welcome as are friends to share coffee and strudel. Despite the review above, I really do prefer the baking to the eating.

Tag: Travel Baking

Lennon Wall

2011-11-28T08:58:00.003-05:00

In Prague’s Mala Strana neighborhood, under the St. Charles Bridge, there’s a wall that I love.

Generally speaking, I’m not a wall lover. Walls serve a purpose, of course, and I appreciate them for breaking the wind, holding up ceilings and the like, but there’s seldom reason to actually love one.

This one, though, is something different. Something loveable. This wall combines two of my favorite things: Graffiti and the Beatles. Even more than that, the wall symbolizes free expression under Communist rule.

During the totalitarian era, when communism ruled, western pop songs were banned, especially Lennon’s songs because he touted freedom and peace. When he was killed in 1980, Lennon apparently became something of a folk hero and someone painted his picture on the wall along with song lyrics, a completely defiant act in a time when musicians were jailed for playing his songs.

The wall was whitewashed but the words came back. The images. It was painted white time and again, but they kept coming back. People kept covering the wall with graffiti.

Some say the lyrics Lennon penned helped inspire the Velvet Revolution, and maybe they did. Just a little. The wall and the tributes to a man who sang about peace represented more than mourning. The mourners risked prison for their “subversive activities against the state.” The wall adopted a political focus and developed into a forum for airing grievances against the Communist state.

These days, the wall’s no longer whitewashed. The Knights of the Maltese Cross who own it allow the graffiti to continue and even though the image of Lennon has long since been covered, tributes to the Beatles remain amongst other graffiti.

In my life
There are places I'll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life, I'll love you more
- John Lennon

There are places I'll remember, all my life. This might just be one of them, even if it is only a wall scrawled with graffiti.

Tag: Travel Prague

Coming home

2011-11-27T08:34:00.024-05:00

One of my favorite things about travel is coming home.

I'd been up for the better part of 24 hours with only three hours of sleep; though, I did sleep a bit on each plane. As much as I could, anyway. It was just plane sleep, upright at 37,000 feet and in the company of strangers.

On the last flight, though, I opened my eyes and watched the world pass, waiting for the landing gear to drop, for the city I call home, for Georgetown, the Watergate and the Kennedy Center. The Lincoln as we flew over the Memorial Bridge. The obelisk. The Capitol, with my neighborhood beyond the dome. The Jefferson. The 14th Street Bridge. Down. Down.

From my seat on the plane, I thought of the times – so many times – I'd stood on the bridges, the shore, the terrace of the Kennedy Center, and watched the planes pass. Gravelly Point beckoned. The tower sparkled in the soon-to-set sun.

And we touched down.

With a ding, the seat belt light turned off. Disembarkation. Bag claim. Cab. Home. To my pictures and my stories, my laundry and my life. Even as I left the airport, I knew I wanted to leave again, to see more of the world and to come back home.

Things to remember (in no particular order)
* Sunrise on the St. Charles Bridge: Sigh.

* Kafka's house on Golden Lane: While Kafka lived in house number 22 with his sister Ottla in 1916-17, he wrote stories for A Country Doctor, which I bought in that very house. I also picked up a tome of Czech folk tales for my sister's kids there. I'm sure they won't appreciate it nearly as much as candy or toys but maybe someday, they will understand.

* Defenestration: The action of throwing someone or something out of a window.

* Dancing building in Prague: The Dancing House (or Dancing Building) or Ginger & Fred (Tančící dům) is the nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building in downtown Prague, Czech, designed by Frank Gehry in coordination with Vlado Milunić.

* The gilded church of St. Nicholas and the other church of Saint Nicholas with a fabulous chandelier: We might have walked past the church a few times before realizing the objects in Prague maps were definitely closer than they appeared. There are three St. Nicholas churches in Prague.

* Vienna: Catacombs are not located on church roofs (aka, Elevators that feel like they’re going up probably are).

* Funiculi, funicula. A shudder, a stop, a pause on the way up. Empuje!

* Hungarian waiter with an Irish lilt: I was right and he sounded Irish for a reason - five years in and around Dublin.

* Ankle: I think I might have broken mine.

* Gellert baths: Cold, wet and lost after someone stole my towel for either the deposit or sheer inconsideration, the towel theft somewhat ruined what might have been a lovely experience.

* Last day: Even with the damp, seeping cold, a transit ticket I didn’t need and communist misery at Memento Park, I [heart] Budapest.

* Christmas markets: The ones in Vienna were great and the one in Budapest even better with more beautiful, more artistic and higher quality goods plus goulash in bread bowls.

* Sensitivity: Waiting for my friend to take a picture of an entrance to an apartment building in Buda, a woman approached with suspicion and fear. After spending much of her life under a communist regime, our lack of Hungarian couldn't assuage those feelings. We couldn't make her understand that it was just an interesting picture. Nothing more. Nothing less.

* Lennon and Lenin (John and Vladimir, respectively): The Lennon Wall in Prague's Kampa neighborhood is well worth a visit, even for non-Beatles fans, as is Memento Park outside Budapest. What does one do with monuments when a regime ends? The Communists saved Hungary from the Nazis, a good thing followed by years of misery.

* Raoul Wallenberg: A Swedish businessman, diplomat and humanitarian, Wallenberg saved the lives of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary from the Holocaust, losing his own life in the process.

* How great it is to come home.

Hotels:
* Red & Blue Design Hotel, Prague: Style and design in the heart of Prague with a gorgeous view of Petrin Park and a quick walk to the Charles Bridge for sunrise. A quick walk to everything we wanted to see.
* Benediktushaus Guest House, Vienna: Monastically simple but clean, warm and welcoming in the heart of Vienna.
* Bohem Art Hotel, Budapest: Great location, excellent service and oh, so trendy. I considered skipping the rest of the sights and spending my days in the breakfast room with pink champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice.

Restaurants
* Centrál Kávéház (see " Hungarian waiter with an Irish lilt"): With fabulous food in a fantastic atmosphere, this place was definitely worth two out of three dinners we ate in Budapest. We probably should have gone there for the third as well because Café Kor wasn't that great.

Tag: Travel Home

Home again

2011-11-26T08:27:00.002-05:00

And so the story ends.

The adventure is over. The coffee drunk. The cake eaten. And for a moment, at least, I am sated.

As with the coffee and cake, I know I will be thirsty again, hungry again, craving something warm and sweet, and soon, I will travel again.

For now, though, I'm heading home.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,
Home again, home again, jiggety jog.
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Home again, home again, market is done.

Tag: Travel Home

Failing

2011-11-25T18:06:00.005-05:00

My words have start to fail, as has my body. I’ve started searching for things like “broken ankle” in my limited time on the internet as bruises and pain radiate from the one I was sure I had sprained two weeks ago. It just keeps getting worse and the miles upon miles we‘ve walked have done nothing to help.

The subzero temperatures have dulled the pain by numbing my leg, but I have run out of painkillers. It is time to go. In another day or two, several hundred miles and across an ocean, I’m sure I will to recover. For now, I need sleep. Three hours or so until the wakeup call and the alarm. And the other alarm. And the trip to the airport.

Sometime in the midst of it all, I hope to sleep. To think. To write. First, I need to wrap my head around it all, the experiences, the days, the trip itself.

We’ve named ourselves Team Tri. Three cities in three countries with three different languages and forms of currency not to mention topography and history; though, the last one might overlap a bit, especially between Austria and Hungary.

I managed to spend the last of my Hungarian forints on dinner tonight at Centrál Kávéház, our second there but first with the Hungarian waiter with an Irish lilt. If I could, I would have packed him up and put him in my overstuffed bag, but alas, he had tables to serve and I had to find room for the gifts I’d bought in the Christmas markets in Vienna and Budapest, freezing my fingers and toes under my dripping nose while sipping mulled wine.

Before the last market, we visited Memento Park - a frost-covered space filled with monuments from the days of Communist rule - and after we bathed in the fading opulence of the thermal baths at the Hotel Gellert where I had the misfortune to see the lady bits of an elderly woman with a walker. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one as she propped a leg up (with help) under the stream of cascading hot water at the edge of the pool. Sometime in the midst of it all, we saw the first McDonald's behind the Iron Curtain and I rounded out my strudel experiment with a cherry streusel.

Sometimes, life's full of cherries. Sometimes, you get the pits.

Everything seems a blur of coldness, beauty and pain and I need time to sort it out, restore it, and myself. What I really need, though, is to go to sleep. We fly so very soon.

Tag: Travel Budapest

Black Friday

2011-11-25T08:55:00.002-05:00

While people at home race to find the best deals on the greatest gifts, lining up early this morning or even late last night, I am enjoying my last full day of this whirlwind holiday in another, very cold, part of the world.

If we do shop today, we'll likely hit the Hungarian Christmas market in Vörösmarty Square with cottage-style wooden stalls and an outdoor stage, traditional honey cookies, mulled wine, cinnamon and fir.

Apparently, the famous Gerbeaud Confectionery to one side has an Advent Calendar in its windows with the pages turning over day by day, with decorated windows opening daily at 17.00.

The Gerbeaud Confectionery is one of the things we're "supposed" to see in this city that offers five of the 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.

Castle Hill
Danube Bend
Gerbaud
Gundel
Hotel Gellért

Castle Hill is a 1.5km long hill, overlooking the Danube. Within the castle are the Mátyás Church, the Fishermen’s Bastion and the Royal Palace and the Castle offers wonderful panoramas of the Danube, its bridges, and of the Pest side.

The Danube, the second-largest river in Europe, cuts a path through the hills to the north of Budapest. In the words of Lonely Planet, "Over the millennia the unrelenting mass of the Börzsöny Hills on the left bank and the Pilis Hills on the right have forced the river into a handful of tight, bunched curves, creating arguably the prettiest stretch of the Danube."

Gerbaud offers sweets and the Advent Calendar. The award-winning Gundel restaurant is one of Europe's best and probably out of our price range. The Hotel Gellért is a famous, first class four star hotel in Budapest, Hungary, erected on the right bank of the river Danube between 1916 and 1918 in the (Secession) Art Nouveau style.

The Gellért Spa, connected to the hotel directly, offers indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a wave bath, sunbathing terrace and thermal spa, most of which will be nullified by the fact that it's the end of November and freezing.

As for our own lodging, we're staying in a hotel/art gallery across the bridge, a place that offers fresh squeezed juice and pink champagne free with breakfast daily. It's going to be hard to go home.

Tag: Travel Budapest

Champagne

2011-11-24T19:18:00.012-05:00

Champagne and freshly-squeezed orange juice started a day that ended with a waltz playing on the iPod, the Blue Danube in honor of our evening cruise. In between and after, we walked Pest and Buda, picnicked under a statue dedicated to pestilence and enjoyed dinner with the new friends who understood me just as little as I understood them, even when I spoke Spanish.

It’s cold in Budapest. Buda. Pest, almost as cold as it was in Vienna and entirely too cold to spend hours and hours and hours outside but we only have one more day and despite the cold, the aches, the exhaustion, there’s just so much to see.

“Getting yourself out the door is the hardest part.”

“Especially when there’s champagne and cappuccino.”

The day started with champagne and freshly-squeezed juice started a day that over and back, up and down the Danube with the flat plains of Pest, the hills of Buda in between with basilicas and statues, Parliament and palaces. The lobby of the Four Seasons beckoned in its art nouveau beauty and we visited twice.

We walked the Chain Bridge that joined the two parts of the city and rode the funicular to the top of the hill, enjoying the view of the city, the cities, and the river below.

We learned of the importance of the raven with the ring (the symbol of Matthias Corvinus) and tied together what we’d learned of Franz Joseph and his beloved Sisi with the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian story. The coronation of the couple at the church on the hill. Maria Theresia with a solo trip to a palace she’d built in the city.

We learned of the uprising of 1956, an event the cropped up several times over the day, and discussed the controversial sides of keeping versus removing a monument dedicated to the Communist liberation of the country from Nazi rule.

Pairs of bronze shoes on the embankment, a Holocaust memorial, brought tears to my eyes, and some of the buildings still bore bullet holes as cranes rose high over the city. Much of the city, the cities, had been torn down and rebuilt and torn down and rebuilt, time and again, and it seemed almost as if Matthias should have gone with a phoenix rather than raven.

Despite the cold, gray weather and the aches in my bones, my eyelids and soul, Budapest was everything I could have hoped. It had started with champagne and fresh squeezed-orange juice, after all.

Tag: Travel Budapest

Budapest

2011-11-24T08:53:00.002-05:00

Today marks our first full day in Budapest. Buda. Pest. Obuda. The city actually became one from the three with their unification on November 17, 1873. The metropolis is separated into 23 districts, 6 in Buda, 16 in Pest, and one consisting of Csepel Island.

Straddling the romantic Danube River, with the Buda Hills to the west and the start of the Great Plain to the east, Budapest is considered the most beautiful city in central Europe. Baroque, neoclassical, Eclectic and art nouveau (or Secessionist) buildings. Parks. Museums. Boats. We brought our swimsuits for the Turkish-era thermal baths, and look forward to cheap, abundant and excellent food and wine.

Of course, Budapest does have a history of organized crime, pollution and fast-food eateries at every corner, not to mention the graffiti, but I kind of like graffiti. Street art. Expression. And that's only part of its history.

According to Frommers, "Budapest is home to the oldest metro line in continental Europe, the second oldest in the world after London. It has the second-largest Parliament building in Europe, again being beaten only by Westminster in London. The Dohány Synagogue is the second-largest working synagogue in the world after Temple Emanu-El in New York City. Budapest has the world's largest cave system of thermal water with 80 geothermal springs running below it. Széchenyi Thermal is the largest medicinal bath complex in Europe."

I've wanted to visit Budapest since reading Prague: A Novel by Arthur Phillips. No, really. It's about Budapest. Trust me. And today, we're here, staying in one of the top hotels in the city and getting our fill of life, if not Turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone at home and a very happy birthday to one of my oldest and dearest friends, Autumn.

Tag: Travel Budapest

Christmas Markets

2011-11-23T20:58:00.003-05:00

I'm not generally a big shopper when I travel. Or when I stay home. Or… I'm not a big shopper, but I have to admit that the Viennese Christmas markets were a huge part of the draw.

Vienna hosts around 25 Christmas markets ranging from large to small. Mostly located in larger squares and pedestrian zones, the markets sell food, drinks and seasonal items from open-air stalls. Granted, the Lebkuchen (gingerbread), gebrannte Mandeln (toasted almonds), Waffeln (waffles), Maroni (sweet chestnuts), Bratkartoffel (baked potatoes), Bratwurst (fried sausages) and hot Glühwein (mulled wine) and Punsch (glogg) won't be making it home, but they could make for a very bright spot in a couple of cold days.

With festively adorned trees, pony-riding, trips on the Christkindl Express and fairytale scenes portrayed in artistically-arranged displays, there should be plenty of fodder for our cameras., and I've been finding gifts in the stalls selling decorations, toys and other festive ware.

With snow falling and fingers freezing, we walked from stall to stall, market to market. Twenty-five feels like a conservative estimate with one outside our door and one down the street and one down the street from that and the next corner and the next. By the end of the night, I had punsch on my coat and gifts in my bag and solidly frozen fingers and toes with a running nose.

The street markets enjoy a long tradition, with a history in Austria (as well as the rest of German speaking Europe) dating back to the Middle Ages. The 'December Market' dates back to 1294 and is regarded by some as the forerunner to the Christmas Market.

While the rest of my family and friends look forward to Black Friday at home, I'm getting a jump on Christmas shopping far from home.

Tag: Travel Vienna

Walking All Night

2011-11-23T16:57:00.013-05:00

“I love Vienna!” I cried as we emerged from Demel onto Kohmarkt in the hazy half light between dusk and street lamps. “We can walk around all night!”

A few minutes later, I said it again as we turned onto the Graben with all the glitter of Christmas decorations and shop windows. The street served as something not unlike a town plaza in shape and width. As my friend read from the book, we wandered down a side street and back again to view the “effulgently Baroque Pestsäule (Plague Column), commissioned by Emperor Leopold I to thank God for delivering the city from a particularly virulent plague.

Back again, we wandered down the street, window shopping and shooting pictures of bright Christmas displays. At the Danube Canal, we crossed Franz Joseph to take a picture of the water and city beside it, walk signals with bikes, a building with a Christmas tree in lights and then we came back again to walk the Ringstrasse.

In 1857, Emperor Franz Josef (he was a busy man) ordered urban redevelopment and in place of the century old walls between inner city and suburbs, a crop of imposing new buildings grew from the open space.

The book recommended hopping streetcar No. 1 or 2 for a ride ’round the city center, but we were walkers - we can walk all night! We’d risen at 5:30 that morning for a two-mile trip to a bridge and back again. The ring didn’t seem that long and having triangulated between map, map and reality, we’d realized that objects in Vienna were closer than they appeared. That’s what we thought, anyway, until we’d wandered down the Fing, off and back again with side trips to see churches, Freud’s apartment, nothing at all.

In front of the Rathaus, we visited the city’s largest Christmas market, wandering through row after row of stalls, buying presents, buying pastries and wine, and snapping more pictures as our fingers and toes slowly froze. After an hour and a half or so, we kept walking. And walking. And walking. More time ‘round the Ring.

For hours we walked in the freezing night, visiting markets, sights, nothing at all in below-freezing weather. At one point it snowed and we tried capturing that, too, in our photos. (That’s before we grew too cold to take any pictures.)

About three quarters of the way around the Ring and almost six hours after leaving the café where we’d eaten a very light lunch, we gave up on the trail and headed into the city center to visit St. Stephens Cathedral, which soon would be closing. As in at 10.

With mass in session, the church was mostly closed, but we managed to see a bit from the gates as spotlights lights filled the darkened sanctuary with splashes of color. In the distance, we could hear a dull murmur of voices and in the chapel to the right, candles flickered in the darkness.

Soon, we headed back into the night to see what we could see. On the train on the way into Vienna, I flipped through the magazine I’d brought from home - the newest Bon Appetit - where I found a piece on the writer’s favorite restaurants, cafes and bars in Vienna itself. I’d been carrying the magazine for days without knowing it touched on Vienna.

After the church, we went to Loos American Bar (no sightseeing, no pictures), described as “one of the most beautiful in the world.” And it was. Absolutely gorgeous. It was also the smallest bar I’d ever visited and filled with the drunkest people. If not for the mirrors and a shifting away from the blond man at the door who expounded endlessly with his eyes at half mast, I would have felt claustrophobic. A seat would have been ideal; instead, we left after one drink and the return of feeling in 10 fingers and the same number of toes.

Walking back to our room at the monastery (which, for the record, was perfectly lovely and in the best of locations, felt like a dormitory with breakfast like coffee hour in a fellowship hall), we lost our way a little with plaza after plaza with closed Christmas market after closed Christmas market. Eventually, though, we made it.

And realized we were starving.

Somehow, between travel book, magazine and the internet, as well as checking the times posted on windows and doors, we managed to find a restaurant still serving dinner. It only took another 2-mile walk, but we could walk all night! The Augustliner (sister to another place recommended by the magazine) nourished our bodies and souls with schnitzel and dumplings.

In the morning, getting up early for the breakfast cum coffee hour and walking out into the subfreezing day, my legs screamed in pain. I’d spent too much time walking on tightly-clenched muscles. I needed a massage. A hot bath. Muscle relaxants. Instead, I drank ordered the house special from Café Central, somewhat convinced that the apricot liquor would fix my right leg and break the left.

More walking ensued - to the Ring and outside it for a freezing (not frozen) fresh foods market and to and around Schönbrunn, a palace reminiscent of the splendor of Versailles and back to church, a bookstore, the hotel for our bags and to the station where we caught a train to Budapest.

With less than 27 hours in the city and scant hours of sleep, we didn’t quite manage to walk all night but my legs don’t quite know the difference. Fortunately, the thermal baths of Budapest (and a handful of Spaniards) await.

Tag: Travel Vienna

Morning train

2011-11-22T18:50:00.006-05:00

“Are we in the right place?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

The station looked different, older, than two nights before but the sign outside said we were Hlavni Nadrazi and our driver seemed confident as he dropped us off at the curb.

“Yes.”

As with all other doors in Prague, I pulled when I should have pushed, but a second try let us into the dilapidated grandeur - my favorite kind - of an old hall filled with tables and statues, globe lights and peeling paint.

“Are you sure?”

We took an escalator down to a hall we recognized, one with more modern flair, fluorescent lights and bustling shops. In the bookstore, I tried to find a Czech copy of Alice in Wonderland, to no avail, and almost regretted not going to the black light show based on the same theme. Almost. Not quite.

The five hours of sleep that slipped into something like four, three and a half, three, when apnea woke me coughing and choking, passed too quickly and we rose at 5:30 with showers and last minute packing to dash to the bridge for sunrise shots and back again for breakfast, the car, the train station.

We planned to catch the 8:39 train to Vienna, hoping to catch a few hours of daylight on the first of our two-day visit. After popping into the bookstore, we stood in the hall with other travelers and watched the board, trying to figure out what platform we needed.

“S is to the left, J is to the right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“S platforms are to the left. North. J are to the right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You see how some of them say ‘1S’ or ‘3J’? Those are S and J platforms. S are to the left. J are to the right.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

Behind us, a couple from New York loudly talked about the lack of platform next to the name of our train, the Franz Schubert to Weiner Neustadt by way of BRNO, Breclav and the like. I was tempted to ask if they planned on the same train, the same destination, but feared we might end up responsible for something of which we weren’t exactly sure.

“Look! We have a platform. 5S!”

“To the left.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

We walked to the left, pulling our bags behind us, and headed toward the ramp at the end of the hall. Wiener Neustadt. 8:39. We’d found it.

On the train, I asked a conductor where to sit. She asked if we had a reservation and told us anywhere. My friend asked a man the same question with the same response. We found our way into a six-person room and took seats, slightly panicking as were so many of the other passengers, unsure if we were in the right place. The seats seemed to be empty but we didn’t know if someone else with a reservation might come and evict us, if we’d have to pull down the bags and roll through the car looking for something else, sitting apart, something.

An older man joined us and the train took off. Rolled out. Steamed forward. Out of Prague and through the Czech countryside , green and lush under a blue sky
My friend read aloud from the guidebook, telling me things I’d already told her and things I didn‘t know about the price of tickets for public transportation and the popularity of coffeehouses, as the man in the corner tried to sleep. I envied him that. Sleep.

When he left at the first stop, two others joined us, a woman in white boots and sweater and a man, both with laptops, each our own age, in our compartment with three computers, two seats of headphones and one travel guide. When they left, a single man joined us with headphones in and eyes closed and when he left, we were alone on our way to Vienna.

Tag: Travel Vienna