Candy Sandwich

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

2012-01-28T08:58:00.001-05:00

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

2012-01-27T08:28:00.000-05:00

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 totally $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; 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 was just the pain that I envisioned (though, there was 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 of 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

Vienna

2011-11-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

Honestly, I know little to nothing about the city. Mozart. Sausage. Keebler Fingers. A few months ago, I saw a documentary about a piano tuner from Steinway and Sons who caters to clients in the Vienna Concert House.

Not much.

According to the guidebook, Vienna is a "fine romance of a city" with gilded Hapsburg palaces and regal parks on the banks of the blue Danube, a center of art and music, as well as architecture. Gilt and guilt and Sigmund Freud. The little country was the birthplace of Mozart, Freud, Hitler, and the Wiener schnitzel.

We don't have much planned for our time here, which is apparently perfect as "the Viennese love Gemütlichkeit (relaxation)."

I hear there's something to be said for dark chocolate Sachertorte and a plethora of coffee houses, and I would love some coffee. Some pastries. Some time wandering the city and taking pictures.

We planned to take an early train from Prague to Vienna and find our way to the Scottish Abbey where we'll spend the night. No TVs. No radios. Just us and the monastery.

The Scottish side of the abbey dates back to 1155 when Duke Henry II Jasomirgott summoned Irish monks from St. Jakob in Regensburg to come to Vienna.

Tag: Travel Vienna

Two days

2011-11-21T17:00:00.009-05:00

I want to crawl inside my duvet, cover myself in down and sleep until the sun rises and sets and rises again. Unfortunately, that’s not really an option or it is but not one I want to exercise.

Today, we walked a little bit less than yesterday. A big part of that was the fact that we slept far later than expected, significantly eating into our meager hours of daylight, and a big part of that was the fact that I didn’t crawl into bed until midnight 30 and awoke three and a half hours later ready to start the day.

I was not ready to start the day.

An hour and a half later, after checking the weather and the time of the sunrise in Prague, after reading my email and my other email and my two work accounts, after lying in the dark trying to trick my mind into sleeping, I finally did. I slept. Until my friend got up to use the bathroom at 6:30, and after that, I slept again until she got again.

“It’s 9:30,” she whispered urgently.

She jumped in the shower and I pulled on random clothes, lucky to find matching shoes (no socks) and my glasses, looking for all the world like I’d just rolled out of bed for breakfast, which I did, and then we traded places. An hour later, we were out the door to explore the city again.

This time, we went up the hill in the funicular - “Funiculì, funicular,” I’d been singing for days - to ride up the hill and climb up a miniature Eiffel Tower, to make friends with Spaniards we’d meet again later and exchange numbers for Budapest, to see the stations of the cross and a monastery. Churches and palaces and a little street filled with artists’ residences, a vineyard with shriveled vines and fallen leaves, Kampa, a museum and the Lennon wall, the castle and bridge and Old Town (again), the Jewish Quarter, the Tyn, the clock tower, the everything we’d already seen and so many things that we hadn‘t.

We covered the “Best of Prague” in two days and three from both of our travel guides many times over and we’d gotten to know the city. We walked for hours. And hours. And hours.

When we met up with the guys again, our new Spanish friends drinking mulled wine across from the black light show (that we decided to skip), they somewhat marveled over all that we’d seen and I didn’t know the words to make them understand that we’d been walking since 10:30 that morning, that we’d been walking for most of eight hours (stopping for pictures) and climbing stairs, climbing hills, stopping for pictures and walking some more.

Until that point, in the plastic-enclosed porch with the heat lamps and people who told us we were talking too loud, we’d only sat once, to eat pastry and watch traditional dancers with mulled wine of our own and then we walked again. Twelve hours gone. Ten hours of walking. At least. And I’m tired. So tired. I want to sleep for ages but there’s so much more to do.

Tomorrow, we’re up early for sunrise and the St. Charles Bridge and then off to Vienna. To... well... That will be posted tomorrow. For now, I must sort through a few pictures and shower and pack and sleep to get up and do it all again.

Have we really only been here for two days?

Tag: Travel Prague

Defenestration

2011-11-21T08:59:00.002-05:00

Today is our last day (and night) here in Prague. With a little luck, we've managed to avoid open windows. It is, after all, cold. Wintry. Windows are closed.

Frommers, however, sheds some light on the lengthy history of defenestration in the Czech Republic. Apparently people and things have been thrown from windows throughout time with followers of lecturer Jan Hus tossed town councilors out of third-story windows, an even known as the First Defenestration.

The second defenestration came in the 17th century with two pro-Habsburg Czechs and their secretary thrown from an Eastern Window in the Prague Castle.

The narrative includes a possible third defenestration in the wake of the Communist coup d'état and jokes about the possibility of a fourth after the Velvet Revolution.

As for me, my favorite defenestration stories hit a little closer to home with a friend's description of graduate school and students defending theses, trying to use the word in each defense and another story of a second story window and an armful of clothing. As the nursery rhyme said, she threw it out the window, the window, the second story window. If you don't know what this is about, we'll throw you out the window.

Defenestration at its finest.

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor dog a bone,
But when she got there,
The cupboard was bare,
So she threw it out the window,
The window, the second-story window,
If you don't know what this is about,
We'll throw you out the window.

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his Christmas pie;
He stuck in his thumb
And pulled out a plum,
And threw it out the window,
The window, the second-story window,
If you don't know what this is about,
We'll throw you out the window.

Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe,
And he called for his bowl,
Then he threw them out the window,
The window, the second-story window,
If you don't know what this is about,
We'll throw you out the window.

Little Bo Peep
Has lost her sheep,
And doesn't know where to find them;
But leave her alone,
When they come home,
She'll throw them out the window,
The window, the second-story window,
If you don't know what this is about,
We'll throw you out the window.

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
When along came a spider,
Who sat right down beside her,
She threw him out the window,
The window, the second-story window,
If you don't know what this is about,
We'll throw you out the window.

Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down
And broke his crown,
And Jill threw it out the window,
The window, the second-story window,
If you don't know what this is about,
We'll throw you out the window.

Actual window used in the second defenestration as seen yesterday.

Tag: Travel Prague

Walking Prague

2011-11-20T18:06:00.008-05:00

My body hurts in a delicious sort of way, in the way of the knowledge of having done something good with my day, with my life.

After a day and a half of sleeping barely at all on a handful of flights, we’d slept long and hard the night before in our blue room.

“Did you sleep the sleep of the just with nary a thought of the unjust?” my grandpa would have asked a lifetime ago, and I would have said yes. It was true. The next night, though, I would sleep harder.

I awoke around seven. Just or unjust, I just couldn’t sleep anymore. Showers. Breakfast. Plan for the day: St. Nicholas Cathedral and Prague Castle.

We wandered up hills and down, following maps that weren’t really helpful at all and instinct that bore us fairly well in a world of meandering stone streets and short-lived sun with church bells ringing.

Somehow, we managed to catch the noon changing of the guard at Prague Castle, replete with fanfare and men in fur-trimmed capes and then, we wandered inside to visit the Gothic masterpiece of St. Vitus Cathedral with the remains of Good King (and Saint) Wenceslas inside, colored light streaming through stained glass, with flying buttresses and dome.

From there, we wandered and whiled away the daylight hours on the castle grounds, in St. George‘s Basilica and the Old Royal Palace, the Golden Lane and Daliborka Tower. We gave in and bought the licenses to take pictures at the Royal Palace (very much worth it even if everyone else seemed to be taking pictures without it - they were also touching the big ceramic heaters right next to the signs with pictures of an encircled hand with a line through it). We tried to shoot crossbows, too, but language got in the way.

We whiled away the daylight hours and the less-than-light daylight hours and the hours turned to haze and a bit of the dusk. The night. Everything.

We caught lunch at a café in a palace with a terrace overlooking the Town and tore at bits of pastry while we walked in the waning evening light.

Down the hill and to the right, we found our way back to the St. Charles Bridge and into the New Town again, following the script for Day 2, for walking tour 3, for no reason at all and we kept going. Powder Tower. Municipal Building.

At the train station, we bought tickets for a train to Vienna and headed out again to Wenceslas Square, passing a statue of the good king himself and the National Museum before heading deeper into the New Town, past strip clubs and storefronts and found our way to a building that represented nothing so much as a pair of twirling dancers.

Designed by architects Frank Gehry and Vladimir Milunic, the “dancing building” and was named "Fred and Ginger" after the famed partners of yore. The building is considered deconstructive architecture or catastrophe architecture and we’d made our way ’cross town just to see it. (We might do that again in the morning.)

Then, with night and cold firmly entrenched - the sun had set between four and five and it was somewhat closer to eight - we headed back to the Lesser Town we called home for dinner at Olympia, a restaurant recommended by both the man at the desk and our travel books.

We might have fallen asleep at the table but hesitated leaving - the food was that good and the night that cold. Eventually, though, we needed to leave.

“Do you know what time it is?” I asked, squinting to see a glowing clock face.

“No. What time is it?”

“A quarter to 11.”

“Is it really?” my friend asked.

“It is!” I cried, somewhat surprised.

We’d left the hotel almost 14 hours earlier and spent most of the day walking through Prague and taking pictures.

St. Nicholas Cathedral and Prague Castle, the St. Charles Bridge, Old Town and New Town and back to the Lesser Town, in less than 30 hours in the city, we’d covered most of the walking tours in our books, some more than twice, and still had a full day to go.

Tag: Travel Prague

Prague

2011-11-20T08:49:00.002-05:00

No. I've never been to Prague. I know. It's surprising. I've seen so much of the world. Of course, I should have gone to Prague already. How could I have missed it?

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. In the 20 years since the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which overthrew the Communist government in power, the city has become one of Europe's top urban destinations. Given the scenery shots in xXx (starring Vin Diesel), it's easy to understand why. Prague suffered considerably less damage during World War II than other major cities in the region.

Apparently, the most of the historic architecture has remained stay true to form with a cityscape that varies from Art Nouveau to Baroque, Renaissance, Cubist, Gothic, Neo-Classical and ultra-modern.

The Old Town Square is listed among the 1000 Places to See Before You Die as is the Castle District and the Charles Bridge, all of which we have covered. What remains to be seen is whether or not we'll have time and energy for Carlsbad, Cesky Krumlov, the Estates Theater and/or U Fleku, but I do like beer. Even if we miss them, though, it doesn't mean I cannot come back. That I won't come back. Just because I haven't been here before doesn't mean I won't come again.

Winters are supposed to be cold and there's a strong chance there will be snow, which is common between mid-November and late March. I have my boots. My scarf. My gloves. I have my camera and I'm excited to explore.

Tag: Travel Prague

End of the day

2011-11-19T17:00:00.006-05:00

This feels like the longest day of my life. On most levels, I know I’ve had longer with that 39-hour birthday, crossing in the international dateline and enjoying a quarterlife crisis throughout the flight, but I’m not really sure where yesterday ends and today begins.

I haven’t slept. Not much, anyway. I think I got two hours or so on the flight from Newark to Munich between the movies, the dinner and breakfast again. (I’ll never understand why they woke us so early for plain plane food.) And maybe another hour or so between Munich and Prague but that might be pushing it.

In between getting up yesterday morning and going to bed tonight, I’ve worked eight hours, taken three flights between two continents and spent five hours in the airport in Munich. We thought about going into the city but were dissuaded by the Lufthansa agent who told us of the train’s unreliability, the weather, depression and the possibility that someone might choose to end it all by laying down across the tracks. If that happened, we’d definitely miss our connecting flight.

Instead, we wandered from one end of the terminal to the other, shooting video of the wonderfully clean and efficient bathroom, browsing in stores and eying sunglasses and noting the placement of erotic literature next to kids books. We earned free playing cards by testing our brains and enjoyed a lunch mostly covered by the airline that kept us from eating in Prague.

I drank a beer in the local equivalent of 7:30 in the morning at home.

Then, we went to Prague.

I’d say that we missed most of our first day in the city, but we didn’t. We just shifted it a bit, checking into the hotel and leaving again, without sleep, without daylight, to explore. We wandered the lesser city and toward the Prague Castle, across the Saint Charles Bridge and up to the Old Town Square.

As we sipped hot wine and walked, we got a little lost in the old town before crossing the Danube again and finding a restaurant recommended by our hotel, one filled with smoke, conversation in Czech and with local dishes, with goulash and dumplings, fried cheese and potato pancakes.

We even managed to stay up to 11 local time with our three hours sleep. Words started coming, replaced by laughter and photos and cold, staggering steps back to the hotel where we’d curl up in our blue room to sleep bringing today, yesterday and today or today and tomorrow or the one giant day that is them both and neither at all, to a close.

Tag: Travel Prague

Passport

2011-11-19T07:59:00.001-05:00

About a million things can go wrong with a trip. Any trip. About a million things can go wrong on any given day in any given place and throwing in planes, trains and automobiles in a part of the world where one does not speak the language does nothing to improve the odds.

I've sprained my ankle on trips. Fallen in a shower. Chipped a tooth. I've slept in a sleeping bag liner because the sheets were that disgusting. I've had things stolen, including hundreds of dollars and all of my clothes on the second day of a trip. I once lost a sole on the one pair of shoes that I'd packed. I've forgotten my hairbrush. My toothbrush. Deodorant. I've missed flights. Lost my luggage. My way. My mind. But somehow, everything worked out in the end.

To be fair, most trips have been fairly uneventful. I just travel a lot and with that many trips, something going wrong once in a while starts to add up. I've also seen some of the most amazing things, including several of the seven wonders on pretty much any known list. Give a little, take a little. It all seems to balance out, but the prospect of packing up and taking off can be daunting from time to time.

Today, I'm waking up in Prague… Strike that. Today, I'm waking up somewhere up there, at over 30,000 feet on my way to Munich and then on to Prague because a friend and I shared the brilliant idea of visiting Eastern Europe at one of the coldest times of the year.

Na zdraví!

Having been to Antarctica, I wasn't too worried. We planned to pepper the trip with coffee and cake and coffee cake. Layering. Walking. More coffee. More cake. When we get tired of wandering through dark, cold quarters, we'll leave and head to other Eastern European cities. Vienna. Budapest. Bratislava, anyone?

Despite our [cough] careful planning, though, we knew something would go wrong. Something always does. The real test will be how we handle it. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, we had our first chance to test our mettle before boarding the plane.

A few days ago, my traveling friend realized her passport expired sometime in January, which wouldn't be bad but for the fact that she remembered it in the context of reading a travel guide that said the Czech Republic required six months validity after the trip. Six months. January is not six months away. January is barely two months away and we're waking up this morning somewhere in the air at 30,000 feet.

The numbers do not compute.

The other day, after a little bit of understandable out flipping, much research and calls to pretty much everyone and their mother, including my friend's own mother, embassies, airlines and members of Congress, she made a plan to drive to Philadelphia to get a new (expedited) passport. Or pay someone to do it for her. Or risk getting turned away in Munich or Prague, Vienna or Budapest.

The other day, there was a very strong chance I'd be traveling through Eastern Europe during one of the coldest times of the year, with planes, trains and automobiles in a part of the world where I don't speak the language, alone.

Twenty-four hours and untold amounts of stress later, maybe a little more, my friend had a new passport. Twenty-four hours after that, maybe a little more, we boarded a plane and this morning I'm waking up somewhere up there, at over 30,000 feet on my way to Munich and then on to Prague because a friend and I shared the brilliant idea of visiting Eastern Europe at one of the coldest times of the year.

For what it's worth, my passport is fine. My passport has seven more years until it expires. Unfortunately, that number far surpasses the number of available pages: Three. I have three open pages in my passport, soon to be less as I'm going to three, maybe four countries, within the next week and home again. I have plans to visit Kenya and Tanzania come March, Iceland and Norway in April. I'll need more than no pages at all.

I'll have to deal with my passport when I get home. Get more pages. Get a new one. Something. For the moment, though, I just plan to enjoy the ride. Planes. Trains. Automobiles.

Tag: Travel

Golden Dragon

2011-11-18T08:59:00.001-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, two friends and I enjoyed Thai-Chinese-Vietnamese fare with a German twist at the Studio Theater.

The Golden Dragon is both the title of the play and the name of the restaurant where the drama opens, unfolding in the restaurant itself, the convenience store next door and the apartments upstairs. Written by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Germany’s most produced playwright, and directed by Serge Seiden, the play introduces a cross-section of culture with people living quite literally on top of each other with the restaurant downstairs and stacks of apartments up.

With a blank set and minimal props, five actors play 15 characters in an undisclosed developed nation, a cityscape, with undocumented kitchen workers and the people around them. Lives overlap. Stories overlap, but the characters seem blissfully unaware of the world around them and the play forces the viewer to draw her own conclusions as to what it all means.

"Y'all interpret it," said one of the actors in a post-performance discussion. "We'll just do it."

Even just doing it seemed rather hard, though, with roles that cross lines in gender, age and ethnicity as well as species with the retelling of an old, familiar fable. Not all of the characters were likeable. In fact, few of them were, and one audience member complained of not getting to the characters at all. Another stepped in to say that the fragmentation of the cultures, of the play, the story – the very structure of the play itself – supported the meaning.

It was all rather discombobulating with three or four worlds colliding in the same place, at the same time, with distinct storylines and characters played by a handful of actors. Even the discussion seemed rather splintered with actors coming out separately and someone cleaning blood off the stage in the background, but somehow it all worked.

Playing with age, with gender and ethnicity, combining theatrical conceits with a naturalistic approach, allowed the viewer, this viewer, at least, to see beyond the stereotype and the audience became the storytellers.

I'm not sure that I'd want to see it again. I definitely wouldn't want to go through the arduous process of slipping into and out of so many skins in such a small space, but I'm glad the actors at the Studio Theater did. They managed to portray a tragedy, to tell a story we all know is taking place in the world today, with both humor and dignity.

I really did enjoy the Thai-Chinese-Vietnamese fare with a German twist.

From the Studio Theater,
In the cramped kitchen of an Asian restaurant, four cooks pull the tooth of a young Chinese co-worker. His tooth ends up in the Thai soup of a flight attendant—who overhears the fight of a young couple who live above the restaurant, whose fighting disturbs the shopkeeper of the dry goods store next door to the restaurant, who is more connected to the young Chinese man than anyone suspects.

A kaleidoscopic look at a globalized world, this play by one of Germany’s most innovative and adventurous writers unfolds in brief and fierce comic scenes. Five actors cross age, race, and gender to play fifteen characters in this vicious, poetic, and surprisingly moving investigation of how intertwined our lives really are.

Tag: Theater

OK

2011-11-17T08:57:00.005-05:00

I should have kept walking. Even as a bus passed, which wasn't my bus, I knew mine would come soon. Or one that would get me closer to home. Or something.

It was late and a Tuesday. Wednesday wouldn't be better. Nor would Thursday. Or Friday morning. Sometime, in the midst of it all I had to finish a major report and volunteer a couple of times and pack because I planned to fly far, far away Friday afternoon. Friday night would be lost and Saturday morning. And the week, the month, the year. At some point, I'd wake up and it would be 2023.

I'd gone out for dinner with a friend of a friend who'd become a friend of mine and a friend of his. We ate fried food, wursts and pulled pork and pickles, deep-fried pickles, at tables outside on an unseasonable warm November night, before going elsewhere and elsewhere again.

At some point, I realized how late it was and how far I was from home and that I needed to get up in the morning for the report and the volunteering and the packing.

I walked my friend of a friend, friend of mine, and the friend of his to a corner near the place where they were staying and headed toward a bus that wasn’t my bus or a metro. Anything that would get me closer to home late on a Tuesday night because I was tired and far from home with a swollen ankle.

And so, I walked a few blocks and a few blocks more. I called the metro line to try to figure out the quickest, fastest way home.

"Next bus," I told the voice at the end of the line. "Ride guide..."

"I thought I heard you say [XYZ]," she replied. "Did you say [XYZ]?"

"No," I replied.

"I'm sorry. Let's try this another way."

"No... No. No. No!"

I spent unfortunate amounts of time finding nothing about upcoming rides and kept walking, all the while trying to figure out how to get home, and then something caught me.

The words were scrawled in the pavement, drawn by a figure, a key - that would be a bad idea, a stick.

"Are you OK?"

"I don't know," I thought. "Maybe... Yes? I think so. I'm not sure."

I walked past it, heard a bus that wasn't mine and stopped. I walked back to the corner and the question to take a picture.

"Are you OK?"

I heard a second bus. My bus. The one that would take me closer to home, but I wanted the pavement picture. The question. It was worth almost missing the bus and then, I ran. Despite the pain in the ankle, the work clothes and backpack, despite the camera bouncing and the knowledge that there would be another bus, I ran.

My ankle hurt. And looked like an idiot. The bus waited for reasons unrelated to me, and I caught it. In no time at all, I was home again, and I was OK.

Tag: Weeknights

Gypsy jazz

2011-11-16T09:00:00.001-05:00

Gypsy. The name alone sets my heart aquiver with thoughts of people with dark skin and hair, people who speak Romany, who live by seasonal work, itinerant trade, and fortune-telling, who travel.

People who roam.

The name might have brought me to the Kennedy Center on Sunday night but it was the music that kept me there with gypsy jazz violinist, Tony Ballog, and Roma Nota.

With Alfonso Ponticelli on lead guitar, Jason Vanderford's rhythm guitar and Joe Kyle on string bass, Ballog took the stage for an hour that flew even faster than his bow on the strings and feet on the floor.

That stage, the Millennium Stage, dominated the north end of the foyer with an awkward arrangement of people sitting on chairs, stairs and the carpet surrounding two dance floors. Couples who looked like they knew what they were doing swung 'round the floor with those who looked like they didn't at all. Children ran and twirled. Adults moved their feet, their hips and their heads to the beat. Even on the chairs, the stairs and the carpet, people danced.

Gypsy jazz or Gypsy Swing is been accredited to guitarist Django Reinhardt and has become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture where it's more commonly known as "Jazz manouche." The music includes a mixture of folk and swing music in a fairly acoustic setting with the main instrument being a guitar.

Born into a family of gypsy violinists, Ballog started playing the violin at age 7. "In high school, he received the first place award for four consecutive years in regional and national violin competitions. Following the completion of his high school education, Tony attended the University of Miami and studied with George Zozoffsky and Louis Krasner."

Program notes indicate that "He has performed with highly respected world class musicians, such as Kruno Spicic, John Jorgenson, Doug Martin, Adrian Moignard, Benoit Convert, Gonzalo Bergara, Robin and Kevin Nolen, and Howard Levy. Tony's professional career began at age 17."

Sunday night's event was part of a two-week festival of Swing music entitled Swing, Swing, Swing. Other events include Jazz on the Elevens: A Tribute to Billy Taylor, featuring Ramsey Lewis, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Danilo Pérez; The Manhattan Transfer with special guest Jon Hendricks, and An Unforgettable Tribute to Nat King Cole by George Benson and the NSO Pops.

The Millennium Stage, "created in 1997 and underwritten by James A. Johnson and Maxine Isaacs, features a broad spectrum of performing arts, from dance and jazz, to chamber music and folk, comedy, storytelling and theater." The daily performances are free and open to the public.

Tag: Music Kennedy Center

Pain in the a... nkle

2011-11-15T08:59:00.004-05:00

I was on the phone with my sister when the first bus passed.

"Damn it," I cried in frustration. "That's my bus... Damn it."

"Can you catch it?" she asked.

"It is stopped at a red light... Ouch! No."

"Can you get someone to hold it for you?"

"No... There's no one... Damn it. I'm going to have to wait for an hour or walk," I moaned. "I'm three miles from home."

The next three buses that passed - the 38B and two Circulators - didn't even slow in their path as I stood at the curb at the bus stop, under the sign, and waited. All the while the tears welled in my eyes and I fought the urge to vomit from pain.

That's why I called my sister in the first place. The pain. I'd sprained my ankle and while she lived one time zone and several states away. I wanted to hear the voice of someone who cared.

Granted, I also wanted to vomit and seriously considered stopping in the emergency room as I hobbled past but I knew they wouldn't do much but make me wait several hours, examine me in a broom closet or the like, and send me home with an elastic bandage. (I don't even take painkillers so that side would be a bust.) Instead, I called my sister and hobbled to a bus stop to watched my bus and three others pass.

And then I kept walking.

"Can you take a cab?"

"They won't take me," I sighed. "In the end, I get abused by the drivers so much it's not even worth it."

I kept walking. Slowly. Hobbling.

"This is really bad."

I'd sprained my ankle before. All of my joints tended to roll; I'd grown somewhat used to it. I even had my own crutches at home but most of the time, I could walk it out.

There was that time I'd torn every ligament on both sides of my ankle, the same ankle, and spent the week walking on sand. That was probably the worst but this time I wore lace-up combat boots that hit me mid calf. They'd kept the ankle from rolling too much, I thought. I hoped.

"Something's not right," I complained with tears in my voice. "I scared I'm doing more damage by walking now, and I'm not going to be able to walk to work in the morning."

"Is there someplace you could get a coffee and wait?"

"It's a Sunday night on K Street. Everything is closed," I replied. "I'm about to sleep in a tent at Occupy DC. That's across the street."

"You could do that," she agreed, laughing at me.

I could walk to the metro and home from a station, a mile to a mile and a quarter on the other side. I could try to get a bus that would get me about as close (if any actually stopped), or I could wait for the next bus.

"What time is it?" I asked my sister time and again. Sparse minutes had passed.

In the end, I walked about a mile and waited a half hour in a shelter with a woman with no legs. I was glad I had brought a heavier coat given the relative heat of the day but wished for gloves, hat and scarf.

"Get home safely," my sister wished.

"If you don't hear from me, I'll still be waiting on this stupid corner."

In the grand scheme of things, upright at the corner was better than flat on my back outside the Kennedy Center where I'd been somewhat earlier but when the bus for which I'd been waiting pulled around a Circulator and gunned for the light, I almost screamed. I wouldn't - I couldn't - wait another hour and the thought of more miles on my aching ankle made my head spin.

Frantically, I waved while the legless lady shouted and something got through. The bus stopped halfway into the intersection and the driver waited patiently while I first hobbled to the door, then climbed inside and found a seat. The stench of the bus kept my stomach roiling and the man behind me belched irregularly and seemed on the edge of vomiting himself.

Eventually, I made it home. Only time will tell how much damage I did. Right now, there's a golf ball on the side of my right ankle.

Tag: Pain Sprain

Locks of Love, Take V or VI

2011-11-14T08:56:00.006-05:00

My hair is gone. Actually, it's not gone. Most of it is in a bag on my couch, 10 inches or so gathered in a thick ponytail and banded by rubber. Another few inches were trapped in the collar of my sweater, the drape, the bristles of the broom that swept it away. I know where it went, and it's not ceased to exist. It's just gone from my head.

Childhood, they say, is wasted on the young. The most beautiful of all life's seasons. A promise that is never kept. As grownups, we tend to idealize those days, but they were hard. Learning to walk and talk and read and write. Learning to reason. Doubling in size and doubling again. Those days were difficult for all of us.

It was even harder, though, for those who didn't fit in, for those who were different for any reason at all. The boy who didn't celebrate birthdays. The girl who lost both her parents and lived with an aunt. The girl 'cross the street who put paste in my hair and lived in a house split into apartments with a man who had a shootout with the police.

Once a month or so, sometimes more, I read books to kids in a domestic violence shelter. The kids are sweet and maddening and filled with love and anger and confusion. They're just kids handling a little more than their classmates and struggling to fit in. Life is more difficult for them, but mostly, they can hide their scars.

For some kids, it's a little harder. Anything constitutes a reason for teasing and kids could be downright cruel. Some kids look different. Too tall, too short, too skinny, too fat, with dirty clothes and dirty hair, too perfect with nylons in the third grade. Some kids don't have hair.

Some of the kids have cancer, which is bad enough on its own. Every year approximately 2,200 children under the age of 20 are diagnosed with brain tumors and radiation treatment can cause permanent hair loss. Then, there's alopecia, an auto-immune disorder that causes the hair follicles to shut down. It affects 4.7 million people in the United States alone. Additionally, children may suffer from skin disorders, burns, accidents, dog attacks, etc. Whatever the reason, and classmates generally don't care, a lot of kids don't have hair.

Most wigs are made to fit adult heads. Too big for children, they tend to require the use of tape or glue to keep them in place and the adhesives can burn the scalp. The styles of adult wigs are not age-appropriate. Synthetic wigs can mat and frizz with excessive styling, and wigs based with human hair are just plain expensive.

Enter Locks of Love, a public non-profit that provides hairpieces to financially-disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss from anyhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif diagnosis.

"Our mission is to return a sense of self, confidence and normalcy to children suffering from hair loss by utilizing donated ponytails to provide the highest quality hair prosthetics to financially disadvantaged children. The children receive hair prostheses free of charge or on a sliding scale, based on financial need.

"While wearing a hairpiece is certainly not a cure for these children, it can help restore some of the normalcy to their everyday lives that most of us take for granted. It is our goal to help provide a foundation on which they can begin to rebuild their self-esteem." [Locks of Love]

Ten years ago, I made my first donation. My brother-in-law (a barber) cut off my ponytail and I sent in about 16 inches of hair. Since then, I've done it four more times, maybe five (I can't really remember) with the most recent being Saturday.

Until Saturday, I had mermaid hair. Thick, flowing, long enough to cover my breasts should I suddenly grow a fish tail and find myself confined to the water without access to shirts. It had gotten so long I found myself pulling it back more often than not and breaking rubber bands. I couldn't quite reach the end of it when I pulled it straight for hot rollers. After pulling it back for Halloween, I found bobby pin bruises on the back of my head and it didn't even stay up through the night. There was just too much of it.

So, I cut it off.

I loved my hair. It was long, thick and flowing. The color garnered comments from both the hair washer and stylist who'd assumed it and the streaks running through it unnatural, but they weren't. They were mine, gifts of god and genetics, and someday, they'll fade. I am growing older and my hair will gray sooner, rather than later.

In the meantime, though, it's a renewable resource. Maybe someone else can enjoy a little more of my life with it on his/her head. I'll soon remember what it is I do with my hair. It hasn't been that long since it was this short and it'll grow back. It always does.

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum

Most of what I really need
To know about how to live
And what to do and how to be
I learned in kindergarten.
Wisdom was not at the top
Of the graduate school mountain,
But there in the sandpile at Sunday school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -
Learn some and think some
And draw and paint and sing and dance
And play and work everyday some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world,
Watch out for traffic,
Hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

Tag: Hair

Daily deals

2011-11-13T08:29:00.003-05:00

Every morning, my inbox fills with deals. From aggregators like Living Social and Groupon to travel sites, every airline operating in the free world, clothing and shoes, restaurants, health, beauty and cosmetics, home goods, camping and hiking outfitters, and races, the bulk of the messages try to sell me something.

“Discount!” they scream. “Savings! Free! Limited time!”

Buy! Buy! Buy!

And with a click of a finger, I can. I don’t have to pull out my wallet - I have memorized the 16-digit number on credit card. Even if I didn’t, the stores where I’ve shopped keep that information on file so they can cut the number of steps I need to take to buy. Amazon even offers a PayPhrase for Express Checkout.

As if I need the help.

On more than one occasion, I’ve found a purchase confirmation in my inbox, in the midst of all the sale messages, and wondered what just happened.

On Tuesday night, three boxes waited for me on the front porch. Four boxes, actually - two taped together. It wasn’t my birthday. I hadn’t been Christmas shopping. They were just things that I’d bought over the past couple of weeks.

A dress, a couple of prints transferred to canvas, espresso pods for my machine, the boxes didn’t contain anything that I really needed except, maybe, the coffee. (It was cheaper than a coffee shop.) I would wear the dress to work and did on Wednesday, and I’d been courting the custom canvas prints for half a year. I’d been waiting until one of the aggregators offered a coupon and that one, I bought. Twice. But nothing essential came to my door.

For the most part, I delete the messages. I get up in the morning, check my email and clear out my inbox, blindly, ruthlessly hitting delete because I really don’t need things. I don’t need anything at all, and the glow of retail therapy doesn’t last. Even when the deal comes from a store that I like, when a message appears with sale items in my size from stores where I shop in brands that I love, I hit delete.

Every once in a while, I slip - dress, prints, coffee - but I’m getting better. I’m trying. The deal consolidators are the worst.

Pushing thoughts on consumerism aside - and I do have things to say about that - I’m really just bad at using the vouchers. Spending $10 to get $20 at Whole Foods sounded like a great idea until I realized that I never shopped there, prices were high and I’d walk out another $50 in the hole.

I feared using a voucher for a massage at a new place because bruises lined my spine after my last deep tissue massage and cold stones sounded much better in July when I bought it. I’ve forced myself to restaurants I love on nights I didn’t trying to squeeze in a dinner before the voucher expired and treating friends to a meal covered a little by voucher and a lot by plastic. I’ve let the deadlines pass and vouchers expire.

The other day, looking at my LivingSocial account, I realized that happened almost a year ago. I bought vouchers for a trio of photo books that I fully intended to use, and then I left the country. I forgot to use them. I forgot about them completely and they expired. They dropped completely from both LivingSocial screen and mind.

Frustrated at my own idiocy, I contacted the company. Not LivingSocial but the photo book company. I explained the situation and asked if there was anything I could do, if they’d be willing to honor the price that I paid rather than the books that I bought, which cost so much more. After a couple of messages back and forth, they did more than that. They gave me the books. All three. They put the credits on my account.

"Hurray for great customer service!' I thought and realized it did sway my opinion. I wanted to give them my business, to buy the books and so much more the next time I was in the market for photo gifts.

I have to admit, though, that over the past year I have gotten better about only buying things that I have been courting for months. I have dates set up in my calendar to visit dresses and coats that I want to make sure I still want them and to see if they’ve gone on sale. The custom canvas prints had taken months of planning. A friend and I bought a deal on a trip to Kenya, something we’d been discussing since 2008 and while it wasn’t quite right, we worked with the company (plus three others and an African airline) to make it our own.

I know that things don‘t make people happy and that consumerism and overconsumption are very real problems in America today. I spend less than I make, try to be a conscientious consumer and appreciate all that I have. In the meantime, I’ll sit back, happy in the glow of good customer service and a computer screen as I string together pictures from places I’ve been, reliving the memories, retelling the stories to myself and anyone who will listen.

Tag: Shopping

Slatkin, swooning and Saint-Saëns

2011-11-12T08:58:00.003-05:00

Under the direction of internationally-acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin, cello soloist Gautier Capuçon and the National Symphony Orchestra won the hearts of their audience Friday night. Young and old, the audience was filled with both; a child barely more out of toddlerhood strained to see from the seat in front of me and while his father tried to still him, he was extremely well behaved as well as so young and so slight that I could have seen around him had he stood on the back of the chair.

Behind me, a slightly older boy sat with his parents, talking excitedly when it was time to talk and sitting quietly when it wasn't. Three seats down, a woman nearly swooned when the young cellist returned to the stage and started to play Massenet "Meditation" in an encore performance accompanied by the orchestra. The artist himself was rather lovely but that wasn't the draw. Not entirely. The notes that he drew from his 1701 Matteo Goffriller haunted the hall.

When he finished, shouts of "Bravo!" sprang from the crowd and they were well deserved. My arms hurt from clapping and my heart from caring but one could not not clap and not care with such beautiful sounds filling the night.

Slatkin, I knew by reputation, at least, and as well as from a distance, as he'd served as the NSO's music director from 1996 to 2008, including the time I'd worked in the Kennedy Center's concert hall. This season marks the 81st for the orchestra and its 40th with the Center. Capuçon performed with the orchestra under Slatkin once before, the Double Concerto of Brahms with his brother, violinist Renaud, in February 2007.

The night opened with Anna Clyne's , a piece that seemed to appeal to both a new music crowd and those in a classical mindset. Capuçon then took the stage for the Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33 by Camille Saint-Saëns followed by Massenet. The haunting. The swooning.

After intermission, the orchestra continued and concluded with Rachmaninoff and his Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, another beautiful piece, if not exactly inspiring of swoon. The boy in front of me had left at intermission and frankly, it was probably past his bedtime. It was well past mine when the music stopped playing, but I wouldn't have missed it.

"What a Friday night," I sighed to the man next to me who laughed and agreed.

"What a Friday night."

Tag: National Symphony Orchestra Leonard Slatkin Kennedy Center Music?

FotoWeek DC

2011-11-11T11:59:00.005-05:00

A thousand words. That's what they say each picture is worth: 1,000 words. As I wandered through the 14 individual photography exhibitions of FotoWeek Central, though, my words left me completely.

With over 50,000 square feet of space in the old Borders at 18th and L, I couldn’t imagine the volume of included work with four satellite locations including FotoSpace, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, George Washington University, and the Pepco Edison Place Art Gallery, not to mention the FotoWeekDC partners hosting events in conjunction with the festival.

My words were gone.

The event Thursday night, YOUNG@HEART 2, featured a couple hundred of the Brightest Young Things' favorite shots of celebrities, the city and people who live here. We missed the "do-not-miss PHOTO PANEL discussion" for a chance to wander the photos, to think and laugh and cry, all on our own, and we did. We laughed at the Quechua women wrestling free style, a lucha libre in layers of skirts and bowler hats.

We wondered at the beauty in nature, in trees and flowers and reflections in rainy leftovers. A red umbrella in a snowstorm. Light and water and children's faces. The shots of oil on water from the Deepwater Horizon were just so beautiful and tragic and… beautiful.

We blanched at the sight of scars – on people, on landscapes, the stories accompanying images of child brides and gang violence, death and despair – and some of the images we really couldn't handle at all.

"Our lives really aren't that bad," my friend whispered as we walked.

Nobody stood close enough to hear, but the images seemed worthy of hushed and reverent tones, of slow steps and deep thoughts, some of which weren't related to the pictures at all but the stories they inspired and the words came back.

FotoWeekDC began three years ago, in 2008, as a weeklong celebration "of the power of photography." The first festival attracted over 20,000 participants, including both professional and amateur photographers as well as photography lovers, and a host of partners. The next year, it became a non-profit organization and providing educational opportunities for photographers, new venues for exhibitions and new programs for students and youth and last year, over 40,000 persons participated in the FotoWeekDC Festival.

More than making me want to be a better photographer, which they did (I went home and played with my camera), they made me want to be a better person.

2011 Exhibitions include:

* World Press Photo Exhibition 2011 - World Press Photo
* RAVE Retrospective - International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP)
* Flash Forward 2011 - Magenta Foundation
* Beyond Witness — New Approaches to Crisis Photography - Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
* 2011 FotoWeekDC 4th Annual International Awards Competition Winners
* The Nights of 9/11: Photographs by Hale Gurland - Contact Press Images
* The 2011 Uncover/Discover Series - FotoWeekDC
* Right Before Our Eyes - PhotoPhilanthropy
* Facing Change: Documenting America
* 2011 WPOW Annual Juried Exhibition - Women Photojournalists of Washington
* Alberto Schommer: Retratos y escenarios (Portraits and Scenarios) - Embassy of Spain
* 2011 FotoWeekDC 4th Annual Youth Contest Winners
* Through The Lens of DC Youth - Critical Exposure
* 2011 FotoWeekDC Cherry Blossom Festival Contest Winners
* The Exposure Project Launch - Fernando Batista & Photographers
* 2011 FotoWeekDC Thumbnail Show - All images submitted to the 2011 International Awards Competition

The exhibitions include photojournalism, commercial photography and art photography and all are free and open to the public with a festival pass.

Technically, the festival ends Saturday, November 12; however, some of the associated events will continue for days, weeks and months to come. For more information on ongoing events, see the citywide schedule of events.

Tag: Art

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T08:55:00.008-05:00

To those who served,

To my dad, my brother-in-law and both of my grandpas,

And those who continue to serve, at home and abroad,

Thank you.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Tag: Veterans Day

Frosty Moon

2011-11-10T09:00:00.003-05:00

"Oh, no," I sighed into the phone. "I see police cars. That is not good."

From where I stood at the curb, I could see colored lights flashing and the burst of headlights as cars turned in the middle of the street.

"My bus is so not coming."

Strangely enough, though, I didn't leave. I just stood at the curb, watching traffic go nowhere and catching up with my sister.

"What are you doing?" she asked when I called.

"I wanted to make sure you were in for the trip," I replied. "I know it's late but it's so hard to reach you."

It was an hour later for me than for her but I'd grown somewhat used to it. Late nights. Being tired. Wednesdays.

Wednesdays always killed me with early mornings, days full of meetings and volunteering 'til nine. By the time the bus dropped me near my house, it was closer to 10 and I was cold, tired and hungry. On Wednesdays, by the time I got home, I had trouble deciding between dinner and sleep, broccoli cheddar and bed, and often tried to combine the two, which never worked in my favor.

Ever.

With some sort of diversion on K, it would just be that much later as I stood on the curb and talked about anything and everything under the sun with my big sister. Under the moon. A Frosty Moon. A Beaver Moon. Time to set the traps and collect furs before swamps freeze.

While the swamp of DC wasn't freezing yet, it would soon. I had mittens in backpack. Gloves. Glittens. One pair of each as morning walks to work chilled my hands. By afternoon, I'd forget about them and the next morning, I'd grab another pair.

Across the street, Occupiers milled around tents where they'd been for five and a half weeks before the full Frosty Moon.

"What are they going to do when it snows?" my sister asked on the phone.

"I don't know," I replied. "Freeze?"

Though, a man I'd talked to on Saturday said he was ready for winter with a Snuggie and wool blanket on top of the space blanket and winter sleeping bag. It didn't seem like anyone was going anywhere at all.

We talked about mortgages and jobs, family and love as I waited for the bus that just wasn't coming.

"I could take a taxi," I said. "But I could use that money for something like charity."

"Or dinner in Prague," she added.

"Or that," I agreed.

There was always that. Dinner in Prague. And we talked about travel as the police finally started moving.

Eventually, the bus did come and I made it home, later than usual but not before spending almost an hour with my sister and not too late to eat my broccoli cheddar soup someplace other than bed. I even got to see the moment the moon was its fullest. 20:16. It glowed bright and full in the sky, reflecting off windshields.

A full Frosty Moon.

Tag: Commute Moon