Waiting for the Storm (Richard Shindell)

The weekend was weird, in that we were dealing, or not, with the unpronounceable hurricane Isaias (four syllables - WTF?!?).  We experienced heavy rains Friday night, calm Saturday morning, more rains Saturday night, back to calm today, with a few scattered showers.  I'm not complaining, and certainly do not miss the days of installing shutters, taking down windchimes, and bringing patio furniture inside.  Plus I have plenty of non-perishables stashed away (PopTarts and canned soups and peanut butter, oh my!), and a Category 1-possibly-2-which-stayed-a-1-and-then-downgraded-to-a-tropical-storm, given all that we've gone through, is not even on my radar (pun intended).  Hoping the rest of the East Coast is as lucky as we were.

However, it did allow me to make good on a promise to Colin, in that I had given him a pair of dinosaur rainboots for his birthday a few weeks ago and vowed to accompany him on his first puddle-jumping adventure.  I had an extra pair, which I brought for Sarah and, by the time he woke up from his nap yesterday, most of the leftover rain had evaporated, but the *one* in her apartment complex parking lot did the trick, and we all stomped and jumped to our heart's content.  What a blast!

NR:  The Travelers by Regina Porter


SONG:  Waiting for the Storm by Richard Shindell

BOOK:  A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes by Eric Jay Dolin

POEM:  Visitor by Brenda Shaughnessy

I am dreaming of a house just like this one

but larger and opener to the trees, nighter

than day and higher than noon, and you,

visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy

milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like.

For each night is a long drink in a short glass.

A drink of blacksound water, such a rush

and fall of lonesome no form can contain it.

And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to

recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.

Did you receive my invitation? It is not

for everyone. Please come to my house

lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright

pages filled with flocks and glens and groves

and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr

in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that

took too long to read but minutes to unread—

that is—to forget. Strange are the pages

thus. Nothing but the hope of company.

I made too much pie in expectation. I was

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a

nightgown in a real way. Did you receive

my invitation? Written in haste, before

leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed.

An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill

or arrive but moves silently in a direction.

Like a dark book in a long life with a vague

hope in a wood house with an open door.

QUOTE:  "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning how to dance in the rain." ~ Vivian Greene

Smiling (Richard Shindell)

I just got back from visiting with a long-time e-mail friend (in August, it will be 12 years), whom I've only met face-to-face once... and that was 9 years ago - this time around, he was in Miami for about 36 hours for a work-related conference, and we decided to get together for breakfast at his hotel. What used to be a daily correspondence has become spotty the last few years, and I take full responsibility - I don't seem to be doing so well in the time management department lately...

Anyway... it was sweet, exciting and ultimately comfortable, as we caught up on kids, spouses and life in general - we only had a two-hour window of opportunity, which wasn't enough time... but it was...

There's a story here - suffice it to say it has a happy ending (and no one was harmed in the unfolding... :-)

SONG: Smiling by Richard Shindell

BOOK: Kindred Spirits: Relationships That Spark the Soul by Dianne Hicks Morrow

POEM: by Jane Gentry - On a Perfect Day

... I eat an artichoke in front

of the Charles Street Laundromat

and watch the clouds bloom

into white flowers out of

the building across the way.

The bright air moves on my face

like the touch of someone who loves me.

Far overhead a dart-shaped plane softens

through membranes of vacancy. A ship,

riding the bright glissade of the Hudson, slips

past the end of the street. Colette's vagabond

says the sun belongs to the lizard

that warms in its light. I own these moments

when my skin like a drumhead stretches on the frame

of my bones, then swells, a bellows filled

with sacred breath seared by this flame,

this happiness.

QUOTE: "There are three ingredients to the good life: learning, earning, and yearning." ~ Christopher Morley

Balloon Man (Richard Shindell)

I posted the following last night to Richard Shindell's discussion list:

I recently returned from the Richard Shindell backyard house concert in Sunrise, Florida - oh... my... god...

It's been altogether too long since he's been in this neck of the woods... and we're hoping to get him back on a more regular basis - he joked early in the evening that he had avoided our part of the state for a while... because of the heat (he self-admittedly sweats a lot)... and trepidation about alligators. Fortunately the weather cooperated with a lovely breeze... and we assured him that, since this particular house wasn't on a canal, not too much danger of the latter - even the minimal traffic sounds joined in... in Richard's words, "in thirds, fifths and unisons"...

Richard was in grand form, with excellent musicianship, warm vocals and such a great sense of humor and smile which flashed early and often - he talked about his parents loving the few songs of his that sounded "perky", realizing that the content of most of his repertoire was "deeply troubled"... and worried that they were somehow to blame... :-)

He spoke of feeling right at home in his hotel room in Coral Gables (about an hour south of the show), which had an Argentine deli directly across the street - he also told a wildly descriptive story of Balloon Man colliding with a dog walker (14 golden retrievers!)... and then said he just made that up...

More great chatter, none of which I can remember right now - I'm still floating (balloon woman?... :-)

Below is the setlist, in no particular order except for the first song and encores:

Beyond the Iron Gate

Acadian Driftwood

Sitting on Top of the World

another cover, which I've gone completely blank (none of the ones from South of Delia)...

Last Fare of the Day

Get Up Clara

The Island

Balloon Man

Sparrows Point

Hazel's House

The Kenworth of My Dreams

Transit

Reunion Hill

Are You Happy Now

There Goes Mavis

Encores:

Arrowhead

She Belongs to Me (Bob Dylan)

My friend (hosting the concert) asked if I'd sell Richard's merchandise at the break and at the end, which I was more than happy to do (since I of course have them all and could explain which songs were on what CDs) - Richard also gave me a step-by-step tutorial on the proper method of drinking yerba mate (with the gourd, straw and loose tea)... since I said I'd given up coffee a year ago, segueing to that beverage (although in the less powerful teabag form... :-)

Hope we don't have to wait another 7 years for a repeat performance - can't wait to hear reports from the remaining Florida shows!

P.S. SMM here, here, here, here and here...

SONG: Balloon Man by Richard Shindell

BOOK: Millennium Folk: American Folk Music Since the Sixties by Thomas R. Gruning

POEM: Chansons Innocentes: I by e. e. cummings

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

QUOTE: "My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down." ~ Louisa May Alcott

Spring (Richard Shindell)

From Today's Writer's Almanac:

Today is the first day of spring, the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. The Earth is tilted on its axis, so as it travels around the Sun each pole is sometimes tilted towards the Sun and sometimes tilted away. It is this tilt that causes the seasons, as well as the shortening and lengthening of daylight hours. On this day, the north and south poles are equally distant from the sun, so we will have almost exactly the same amount of daytime as nighttime.

I love living in South Florida (we moved here 16 years ago this month) but the seasons are not easily discernible - when we lived in Atlanta, the four quadrants of the annual calendar exhibited visible lines of demarcation: fall's crunchy leaves, winter's frosted lawns, spring's bursting dogwoods and summer's oppressive humidity.

It's basically always warm, green and flowering in my part of the state (not that there's anything wrong with that!) - in fact, I, who have had a black thumb for most of my life, now appreciate being able to make almost any plant flourish under my oftentimes neglectful care. We have a yard full of various hibiscus, bougainvillea, bromeliads, crotons, an assortment of palms, ixora, liriope, thumbergia, and so many others - suffice it to say if it's vegetation, it grows with little or no help. I even have a gardenia bush on the side of the house that blooms for only a month (mid-April to mid-May), although it whacked out this year, started producing blossoms in January and it hasn't stopped yet - what a treat!

Spring is a time of rebirth, renewal and reawakening and I seem to be going through a bit of that myself... trying to find my way back from scramble mode to equilibrium, starting with cutting back my working-outside-the-home hours (soon, I hope) and downsizing my volunteer/committee work - it's continued with reclaiming my home office/guest bedroom (after Sarah's departure) and an ongoing effort to purge/consolidate/streamline. I appear to be breathing more and stressing less - I can already envision more reading for pleasure and walking for health... :-)

I have a calligraphic print on my dining room wall entitled Chaos: Where Great Dreams Begin - the text reads: "Before a great vision can become reality there may be difficulty. Before a person begins a great endeavor, they may encounter chaos. As a new plant breaks the ground with difficulty, foreshadowing the huge tree, so must we sometimes push against difficulty in bringing forth our dreams."

Here's/cheers to embracing change in order to achieve vision - puuuuuuuuuusssssssshhhhhhhhhhh!

SONG: Spring by Richard Shindell

BOOK: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

POEM: Starting With Little Things by William Stafford

Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands --

Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.
Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.

Tomorrow the world.

QUOTE: In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." ~ Margaret Atwood

Before You Go (Richard Shindell)

This is the first Saturday I've had "off" (as in no major commitments/
obligations/events) in weeks and weeks and weeks - I'll spend it catching up on laundry and paperwork, as well as writing my holiday cards, ordering all my presents via Amazon.com (to be sent to my mom's house, where I'll wrap, using Publix green bags, upon our arrival Christmas Eve) and making a Holiday Mix CD, one of my very favorite parts of the season.

I've spoken before of my tape-now-CD-making ability... and each year, early- to mid-December finds me compiling songs I enjoyed listening to from holiday CDs the previous season - I then sit down with those piled around me, and "channel" the flow of the mix. One of my best, from 2005, begins with Joni's River and ends with Dar's The Christians and the Pagans, with lots of wonderfully creative songs in between - I do tend to choose the original, eclectic tunes over the standard traditional ones, as I appreciate a new retelling of the Reason for the Season... which ultimately is Love...

Below are links to some terrific internet radio stations, featuring much of the music that ends up on my mixes - enjoy!

Folk Alley Holiday Stream

Pandora Holiday Station

I particularly love the text of a holiday card I've sent in past years:

This holiday season, mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion, and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Offer encouragement. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you are wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate. Be kind; be gentle. Laugh a little. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Speak it still once again.

SONG: Before You Go by Richard Shindell

BOOK: Love Came Down: Anglican Readings for Advent and Christmas by Christopher Webber (Editor)

POEM: A Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior by Ben Jonson

I sing the birth was born tonight,
The Author both of life and light;
The angels so did sound it,
And like the ravished shepherds said,
Who saw the light, and were afraid,
Yet searched, and true they found it.

The Son of God, the eternal King,
That did us all salvation bring,
And freed the soul from danger;
He whom the whole world could not take,
The Word, which heaven and earth did make,
Was now laid in a manger.

The Father's wisdom willed it so,
The Son's obedience knew no "No,"
Both wills were in one stature;
And as that wisdom had decreed,
The Word was now made Flesh indeed,
And took on Him our nature.

What comfort by Him do we win?
Who made Himself the Prince of sin,
To make us heirs of glory?
To see this Babe, all innocence,
A Martyr born in our defense,
Can man forget this story?

QUOTE: "Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas." ~ Dale Evans

Are You Happy Now? (Richard Shindell)

A few personal musings tomorrow re: Halloween - this now...

From Gimundo.com:

Dark Chocolate Can Help Your Heart

8/20/2007

Chocoholics, your time has come to rejoice: Recent studies show that a daily dose of dark chocolate contains antioxidants that can lower blood pressure, helping to prevent heart disease.

There's no need to gorge on the stuff, though – chocolate is notoriously high in calories and fat and the effects of overindulgence will soon show up around your waist. Less than 30 calories, or approximately one-quarter of an ounce, is the perfect amount to satisfy both your sweet tooth and your body. So now, there's always an excuse for dessert.

The lucky folks at Consumer Reports taste-tested a wide variety of dark chocolate bars to find the best of the bunch. If you're in the market for a heart-healthy indulgence, here are their top five picks.

1. Cacao Reserve by Hershey's Extra Dark

2. Lindt Excellence Extra Fine Dark

3. Chocolove Organic Dark

4. Valrhona Le Noir Amer Dark Bittersweet

5. Scharffen Berger Semisweet Pure Dark

SONG: Are You Happy Now? by Richard Shindell

BOOK: Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond

POEM: Dispatch from the Home Front: Halloween 2001 by Tony Brown

like every other year I sit outside with a guitar

while kids roam in small packs

from lit door to lit door

the costumes tonight are not that frightening

angels and fairies and superheroes abound

a few bloodsuckers and ghouls

a sprinkling of skeletons

no terrorists

the adults pretend to be scared

jessie (the giraffe from across the street)

solemnly hands me M & Ms from her stash

when I put the Snickers in her pumpkin

“honey,” I tell her

“it’s not a trade – it‘s a gift”

and she solemnly takes them back

the young girl in the bathrobe and curlers

wearing the sign that says

I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON

says to me

“I want to hear you play your prettyful music”

so

I hand her candy

and I pick up my guitar

to play a song appropriate to the season

(a song by the Grateful Dead)

for this world’s recent ghosts

this world

where unimaginable ashes

sift down on children’s beds

in one part of this world

the very rocks and baseballs

smell of abrasives, jet fuel, burning rubber, corpses

in another part of this world

they are making the mail glow white

long enough to kill what lives on the words

in another part of this world

this guitar would be

illegal

in that country a shrouded woman

has been carefully picking food from a minefield

(food that was airdropped in my name)

she runs and lifts her child from the ground

raising his head high up onto her shoulder

vainly trying to keep the frightening blood from spilling too much

it will take her years to fall asleep again

when she does fall asleep

she will dream of picking up a yellow bomblet

wrapping it in swaddling clothes

suckling it until it blooms hot and bright

but she will not cry

as she holds him in that dream

we all dream that dream these days

we all hold our children closer

while holding back tears

a dream like that

is not a gift

it is a trade

we have all already given

more than enough in return for this one

and you do not let go of your tears

when tears are all you have left

Halloween night

I am pushing aside the veil between the worlds

a mourning person waiting for dawn

pretending to be scared to cover real fear

while I give sweets and prettyful music

to my neighbors’ children

we are all a long way from home

if I knew the way

I would take you home

QUOTE: "Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold." ~ Judith Olney

Howling at the Trouble (Richard Shindell)

SONG: Howling at the Trouble by Richard Shindell

BOOK: Second Nature by Alice Hoffman

POEM: After Love by Maxine Kumin

Afterwards, the compromise.

Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.

Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips

admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door

blows aimlessly ajar
and overhead, a plane

singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except

there was a moment when
the wolf, the mongering wolf

who stands outside the self
lay lightly down, and slept.

QUOTE: "In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principles contain it or stand against it." ~ Jane Smiley

The Last Fare of the Day (Richard Shindell)

Living With the Dead by Alice Sebold
September 11, 2005, The New York Times

Oakland, Calif. - And where do the dead go after they have sucked down their last breaths and drowned in the rafters of their homes? After they have died in the aftermath of fiery explosion? Do they gather, as some believe, together, and ascend to an otherworldly level; or do they remain, watching; or disappear altogether? Do they wait to hear the stories we will tell?

The truth is, none of us knows what the dead do. But on earth, where we remain, the living become the keepers of their memory. This is an awesome and overwhelming responsibility. And it is simple: we must not forget them.

These first weeks after Hurricane Katrina, this fourth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, are not the dangerous days. The dangerous ones are ahead of us—always. They are the days when if we are not careful the dead will fall away from us because of our neglect.

There are the grieving families who will never forget. The co-workers and neighbors who survived, who, like those left living at the end of war, may be haunted for the rest of their lives. Why was one person taken and not another?

What I would wish for us is that we would turn away from being obsessed by numbers or by politics, and sit with our dead. That we would listen to what they have to tell us instead of doing the easier things: tossing back and forth volleys of blame, recrimination and muscular public bluster.

No, New Orleans will not come back as it was. And yes, it will come back.

No, a new building is not the World Trade Center, but there can still be a new heart for downtown Manhattan.

But no matter what, you cannot bring the dead back. They are gone.

What can the living do in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, where loss has greeted us twice on a national scale in such a short span of years?

Do the dead wish you to suffer? Do they want you to watch CNN and Fox News for days on end? Do they want your guilt or pity? All of these things are like jewels to them. In other words—valueless where they have gone.

Instead, a woman wants her husband not to forget her but to go on and live. A child longs for a lost mother's arms again. A man grows peaceful when his partner finds new love. Some of the dead, I imagine, get enraged at these things. They are dead after all. They get to do and feel—I hope—what they want to.

The living who were close to the dead have a well-marked path of grief to walk down. But what about the rest of us? What can we, the distant—those of us who live in Nebraska or California or the very tip of Maine—do?

You are in your kitchen or your backyard or stuck on an endless elevator ride. You are sitting with a book in the park. Perhaps it is an image you remember having seen. A handmade grave of sheets and bricks. "Here Lies Vera. God Help Us." Perhaps it is the voice from a message left on an answering machine. "They have told us to remain at our desks. I'm O.K., Mom. I love you."

Perhaps it is less specific: Bodies falling from high windows, bodies floating in muddy water. Bodies wrapped in dirty bedding and tucked along the sides of bridges and highways. The faces of the missing, taped and tacked up on a wall.

Whatever it is that comes to you in three months, six months, a year or more, don't turn the page of your book and forget, don't stab the elevator button trying to hurry up the trip. Stop.

These tragedies, it's worth remembering, grant us an opportunity to understand what is perhaps our finest raw material: our humanity. The way we at our best treat one another. The way we listen to one another. The way we grieve.

Who can forget the funerals of the firemen lost in the twin towers? Who can imagine the funerals to come in the weeks and months ahead in Louisiana and Mississippi? We won't be present, in front of our television or through the newspaper, for all of them. The press itself cannot, beyond a certain point, do anything but name and count the dead.

So grieve for the particular lives that come to you. Think of the grandmother slumped in her wheelchair under a plaid blanket, or the body of a young financial analyst from West Virginia who was never found but whose smiling face still greets us from a Web site of the dead. Let them guide you to understand that it is our absolute vulnerability that provides our greatest chance to be human.

Look up from this newspaper you are reading, ignore the morning traffic you may find yourself in tomorrow, turn off the television one day this week and watch the moon. Think of the dead of 9/11 and of Hurricane Katrina. Stay there a moment. Remember them.

Obviously, just as when John F. Kennedy was assassinated... and the Challenger exploded, we all have frozen in time where we were and what we were doing during the horror - on 9/11/01, I was just sitting down to the fourth in a series of all-day Childcare Rated Licensing meetings at Nova Southeastern University, attended by the best and the brightest in the preschool field.

Five minutes into our session, someone received a cell phone call that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers - when she apologized for taking the call and announced its content, our moderator was snappy with her, saying that, horrendous as it was, it wasn't anything we could do anything about and we needed to move ahead with our agenda. A few minutes later when the second plane hit, everyone realized it was not an isolated incident - the moderator seemed extremely embarrassed to have minimized the first occurrence.We disbanded the meeting but no one left just yet - we all gathered in a small office with a TV and watched the proceedings unfold again and again on instant replay before our unbelieving eyes.

I stayed until about 10 and then headed to the office - I wanted to make sure the children were as shielded as possible from the news. I set up a TV in our teacher workroom and we used the honor system so staff could make sure their classroom was covered and come up one at a time to satisfy their need for information - it was extremely difficult to carry on "business as usual" with the children, but we had to behave as if nothing was wrong. Naturally a steady stream of parents came early to pick up their children, not only in an attempt to keep them safe but also to tangibly hold a loved one while so many in New York City had lost their own - one of the hardest things I had to do that day was to stay publicly calm and strong... and on the job... when all *I* wanted was to be home with my own children.

I called the boys when they got home from school and I phoned Sarah in Orlando and told her not to risk driving to Pembroke Pines but to stay where she was - it broke my heart for us all not to be under the same roof during this crisis (especially when people kept saying that Disney World was the next logical target) but it felt like the right decision. I stayed until the last child was picked up at 6 p.m. and then raced home to immerse myself in the television news barrage - although I felt my senses (and sensibilities) were under assault, because I had been virtually deprived of information all day (except in small sound bytes) I was drawn to the screen in an attempt to process the reality, finally realizing that no matter how many times I watched, with tears continuously streaming down my face, it was still going to end up the same way.

I do believe that the nature of my job helped ease the healing process for me - as I went in search of articles for my parents on how and what to say to their children about the tragedy, it was a learning experience. We are all changed from that day forward, or at least we should be - the greatest ongoing lesson for me was tell the people you love that you love them every single day... and I still do.

SONG: The Last Fare of the Day by Richard Shindell

BOOK(S): Afterwords: Stories and Reports from 9/11 and Beyond by The Editors of Salon.com, David Talbot (Foreword)

Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from The New York Times

9-11: September 11, 2001 (Stories to Remember, Volume 2) by Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee, Jill Thompson, Kieron Dwyer, Steven T. Seagle, Duncan Rouleau, Aaron Sowd

POEM: For the Falling Man by Annie Farnsworth

I see you again and again
tumbling out of the sky,
in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt.
At first I thought you were debris
from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall
or fuselage but then I realized
that people were leaping.
I know who you are, I know
there's more to you than just this image
on the news, this ragdoll plummeting—
I know you were someone's lover, husband,
daddy. Last night you read stories
to your children, tucked them in, then curled into sleep
next to your wife. Perhaps there was small
sleepy talk of the future. Then,
before your morning coffee had cooled
you'd come to this; a choice between fire
or falling.
How feeble these words, billowing
in this aftermath, how ineffectual
this utterance of sorrow. We can see plainly
it's hopeless, even as the words trail from our mouths
—but we can't help ourselves—how I wish
we could trade them for something
that could really have caught you.

QUOTE: "The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists." ~ Bill Clinton