Aug. 29
Fourteen years today since I formally and legally joined with my fair lady. Love you, and I don't care if the whole Internet knows, which presumably it does. Tonight, we cleared away enough debris in the kitchen to make a lobster and shrimp extravaganza. Prior to the actual cooking, YD decided the opportunity was to good to pass up, so she borrowed the three lobsters to make a shellfish version of "Charmed" on her little Web cam. For the record, LW got Prue, Shay got Piper and I got Phoebe (actual gender of lobsters notwithstanding).
Aug. 28
*Having dropped off the appropriate paperwork, we are now officially home-schooling. A big step (to understate the matter on a grand scale) and none of us, least of all the girls, are sure how this thing will turn out, but it feels like the right course. If nothing else, for at least one year, they -- and we -- will learn the way they want to, not the way a school system tells them to.
*Viewing: "Detroit Rock City" -- Throwaway nostalgia piece about four youths who move Heaven and Earth to realize their dream of attending a KISS concert. Unfortunately, writer Carl Dupre and director Adam Rifkin veer too sharply between outre fantasy rebellion and the tendency toward fond remembrance and social comment. Most of the adults, especially the fundamentalist anti-KISS mother of one of the kids, are nasty caricatures, which doesn't help matters much. Natasha Lyonne, as a disco queen who falls in with the quartet, brightens things up substantially during her all-too-brief appearance; her appeal for appreciation of all music is one of the film's best scenes -- and actually serves to make the four KISSants seem as narrow-minded as those who trespass against them.
Aug. 24-26
*Anticipating another tenancy change-over, we spend most of the weekend gussying the place up, especially on the outside -- notably the front stairs. OD, meanwhile, prepped for a week-long trip with friend Jake and family to northern Vermont. Sunday afternoon I pry YD away from the 'puter and, with neighbor, head off for ice cream and then to one of our long-time favorite haunts. A great chance to read the paper, doze a little and generally slow life down to a crawl for a few hours.
*Book completed: "Unraveling," by Elizabeth Graver -- (In the interests of full disclosure, I'll mention that the author is a faculty member at my place of employ, not that it really matters) Well-crafted, often heart-breaking chronicle tracing a 19th-century New Hampshire woman's journey to a life of solitude, which becomes subsequently enlivened by her budding relationship with two other outcasts. Graver's research on the textile industry in Lowell and its use (in every sense of the word) of young girls helps to make the book's middle section especially meaningful. But far from being some obvious social screed, the book's sometimes painful intimacy is what draws you in and keeps you there.
*Recent musical acquisition: Lucy Kaplansky, Richard Shindell and Dar Williams, "Cry, Cry, Cry" -- Even after hearing frequently about half of the album's tracks on radio, it was still a revelation. The title, and overall selection of songs, seems to imply the multiple meanings of "cry" -- not only as a sound of mourning and loss, but also joy and even faith. The vocals and arrangements are tasteful and ably serve the songs, especially these: REM's "Fall on Me," which sounds like an anthem in the trio's hands; "Cold Missouri Waters," one of the best renditions of survivor's guilt ever written; and, perhaps best of all, "By Way of Sorrow," which sounds like a modern Appalachian spiritual transplanted to Ireland (the fiddle break is outstanding).
Aug. 22
*There must be a sociological paper in here somewhere: A coworker brings his almost three-year-old daughter up to my office. She's a little shy, so I take my Homer Simpson doll off the shelf and show it to her, then put it on the floor for easier reach. She picks up Homer, smiles at it (him?) for a few seconds, then throws him straight into the nearby garbage can. And she's never even seen a "Simpsons" episode.
*Recently acquired materials of Jack Kerouac by the New York Public Library include his own version of fantasy baseball: "Now playing centerfield for the Boston Fords, Pancho Villa!"
Aug. 18-19
*Another weekend spent largely at the grindstone, as we continued our assault on the kids' room and did some long-neglected yardwork.
*A German firm inaugurated the first commercial zeppelin flights in more than 60 years this past week. They're offering only one-hour short-distance cruises, rather than transatlantic flights, but still...Maybe we can look forward to the horse-drawn tram sometime soon, too.
Aug. 17
And they say August is a slow news period for Boston. In the space of some 72 hours, the Patriots officially suspended star receiver Terry Glenn, for whom the phrase "talented but troubled" was invented; the over-achieving but slowly disintegrating Red Sox scuttled manager Jimy Williams, unleashing a torrent of analysis -- from the economic to the psychological -- by pundits and fans alike as to the motivations of management; and Acting Gov. Jane Swift admitted she and her husband covered up the fact that he'd been married three times before, not just the once.
Photo links added Aug. 20 to paragraph below
Aug. 14
A day trip to the Cape, where we met up with LW's sisters, and their respective spouses and sprogs on vacation. In fact, most of the time is spent with the former watching the latter scampering up and down beaches and in and out of water, easily pairing up in many different combinations. Not that we had scheduled it to happen this way, but the visit serves as a heartening and affirming corollary to the previous night's events.
Aug. 13
One phone call at a little after 10 p.m., and a very sobering and thought-provoking experience follows: I'm asked to chauffeur an acquaintance and two of her three children away from an untenable domestic situation. The older of the kids, normally awash in brash, pre-teen know-it-allness, plaintively asks why they can't buy the house her friend's family is selling instead of having to move in with a relative. When her mother -- scraping by in a low-paying job far more the province of high-schoolers these days -- explains the economic impossibilities, the girl presses her case: "They could sell it to us for free!" OD, understandably, is upset by the situation, but she couldn't have received a much better lesson in the importance of education and career planning.
Aug. 11-12
Photo links added Aug. 16 to paragraph below
*Well, lo and behold, we arise on Saturday morning and OD unilaterally declares she's ready to begin the Great Renovation of 2001 Phase II: Kids' Room. So with considerable zeal, she attacks the walls and by evening has (with some parental help, of course) made an impressive impact. The next day she brings in chum Jake, and while this liaison does not make for the most efficient of operations, goodness gracious, we've got about half of the demolition done. YD has been slower to warm to the task, but was dutifully pitching in. One activity that appears to be curiously popular among the younger set: pulling nails out of the lathe boards. One reason, however, has to do with the fact that if you bend nails the right way you can spell out your name.
*Viewing: "Sleepy Hollow" -- Tim Burton's imaginative, if overly graphic reworking of the legend, with Ichabod Crane now presented as a haunted, ill-at-ease New York City constable determined to bring science and reason to his vocation, assigned upstate to solve a series of murders -- and, of course, finding scandal and greed intertwined with the mystery. Burton being Burton, however, he's not so inclined to dismiss or explain away the supernatural in some Scooby Doo-like denouement. If you can accept that premise, as well as some improbable chase sequences, you're liable to do fine.
*Book completed: "Strata," by Terry Pratchett -- the first non-"Discworld" Pratchett entry I've read thus far, which chronicles the attempt of three unlikely allies to solve the mystery of a "flat Earth" located in a little-known sector of the galaxy. A little heavy on science and cosmology, and less of the characteristic deadpan, restrained British humor in supply. But Pratchett gives the story an appealing dimension by making the protagonist, as well as one of the two supporting characters, female, and -- for the most part -- not calling attention to their gender.
Addendum
For more on the recent grand adventure, there's this. (Warning: possible irreverence).
Aug. 10
Settling back into routine, with an afflictive, near-incapacitating, just-plain-awful heat wave to keep us company.
*Book completed: "Elvis and Nixon: A Novel," by Jonathan Lowy. Fairly forgettable semi-fictionalization of the stranger-than-truth 1970 White House meeting between these two inwardly tormented men. Lowy tries to interpolate other plot threads involving two Vietnam vets -- one physically damaged, the other spiritually and emotionally -- and an assortment of other minor characters, some real or recast, to offer a kind of cultural-historical snapshot of the US. But the invented or imagined dialogue for Nixon and Elvis seems awfully facile (and often drenched in self-pity); perhaps that time is not far enough behind in our collective rearview mirror.
*Viewing: "Scary Movie" -- terribly disappointing. I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for silly, even smutty or coarse stuff, and had thought this send-up of slasher movies something would be along the lines of Zucker-Abrahams. Nope. The jokes are simply bad, the pacing equally so and the sheer aggressiveness of the sex and drug-related humor -- and a general aura of meanspiritedness -- made it difficult to watch.
To D.C., with AC
The mid-point of this family trip had me out in a pasture at dusk somewhere in Bethesda, Md., indulging in my little-utilized wolfen tendencies. Clustered around this vignette: a stopover in the Big Apple, approximately 36 hours in a veritable lap of luxury, a helluva lot driving and, most of all, some very enjoyable time spent with in-laws -- all in tropical weather that seemed to blanket the entire East coast.
*Thursday: Off and running, less-than-satisfactory rental arrangement notwithstanding, we crowd into the car with snacks, books and other boredom-easing items for the first leg of the journey. The trip to New York City passes astonishingly fast by our lights, and suddenly we're driving down LW's old Manhattan neighborhood, a street of restored brownstones. We check in with our hosts, a semi-retired couple (he, a commercial architect; she, a former ad agency exec-turned-author) with an Abyssinian, a Burmese and a mourning dove who likes to employ human heads as perches. We spend the afternoon at the Museum of Natural History, where OD and YD find an unconventional but characteristic means of relating to the exhibitions. We also take a ramble through Central Park, finally stopping for shade, rest and recreation at what would be the first in a quick succession of sites with unlikely namesakes: a Motown goddess; an animal-loving American president's unsuccessful attempt at third party politics; and a controversial Civil War general -- or perhaps the Indian leader from whom his middle name was derived .
*Friday: Painfully and slowly, we escape NYC via the Lincoln Tunnel and New Jersey Turnpike. Not as steady a pace as the previous day, alas, with bottlenecks entering and departing Delaware as well as the Fort McHenry Tunnel outside Baltimore. But we make it to our hotel in one piece, exhale, then head out to Family Dinner Party #1, where relatives of one kind or another and representing several different stages of life talk, laugh and cavort. In the gathering darkness, a group of us -- heavily skewed toward younger demographics, of course -- had a round of "Sheep and Wolves" which proves to be highly entertaining, thanks to the athleticism and spirit of our Alpha wolf, LW's cousin John.
*Saturday: Aaaaah. A day (or half of one, anyway) in which we could revel in our status as hotel guests: "complimentary" breakfast, cable TV, housekeeping service. (No names here, as I wouldn't want it construed as an official D&Q endorsement, but here's the atrium skylight). Then it's off to Family Dinner #2, with formal birthday observances, more conversation and, er, considerable merriment involving liquids of more than a few varieties. We wind up with some of the younger relatives back at the hotel watching a forgettable "Saturday Night Live" oldie (during Kevin Nealon's tenure as "Weekend Update" anchor) and having an absolute blast. Too much fun, too late a bedtime for us all, and we wished it could've gone on even longer.
*Sunday: Miraculously, we manage to drag ourselves to breakfast and then oh-so-slowly pull our luggage together to throw into the car. I fully expect to start nodding off at the wheel, but lo and behold, by early afternoon we're cruising down 95 toward Philly (I accidentally on purpose miss the route for the Delaware Memorial Bridge, thereby saving us a little on tolls) and I think, y'know, I believe I can make it all the way home. By the time we make a brief pit stop somewhere around Exit 8 on the Joisey Pike, we realize that by gum, we might actually arrive by mid-evening instead of midnight. A torturous crawl through the George Washington Bridge adds about a half-hour, but it's barely 9 p.m. and we've pulled up to the front door. Bloody stifling inside, of course, and there's three days worth of newspapers to catch up on, but we are considerably relieved and satisfied, as well as tired.
Perhaps even more significantly, we survived being bung together in a car for some 20 hours with nary an argument or cross word. Who needs a mobile TV/VCR combo? Give us books, games, snacks, AC and equitable access to the CD player, and we'll do fine.
July 28-29
*Our household is together again, as on Saturday we rambled out to the Berkshires to gather OD from her camp. A more subdued and far less noisier farewell luncheon than last year, probably because so many were bone-tired -- OD certainly was, having pulled an all-nighter; she was asleep within 15 minutes of our departure, and crawled into bed practically as soon as we arrived, where she stayed for a good 16 hours. But then again, this is an older group and somewhat of a different kind of camp. In any case, OD appears to have had a fine time, and regaled us with the in-jokes, crazed activities and personalities that made up her three-week sojourn.
*Sunday, I head out to the Old Manse in Concord for what I had thought would be an afternoon music session organized by an acquaintance, only to find that a Civil War encampment was in progress. Ordinarily I'd have been content to spend time there, but blast it all, I've got the instruments in the car and I haven't played tunes in an age. So I made my way east to Somerville and The Burren. Another pleasantly small gathering which included father-and-son accordianists, and I left quite satisfied -- albeit earlier than I might've liked.
July 27
*Bertie Felstead, one of the last survivors of the famous World War I holiday truce recounted in John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches," died earlier this week, at 106 years old. Hope he and his old German combatants-turned-foes are still playing that game of soccer somewhere.
*Viewing: "Mystery, Alaska" -- there's a W.P. Kinsella quality to this story, about a tiny Alaskan village which has taken hockey to a ritualistic level (a board of "elders" decides who is worthy to play in the all-important Saturday Game), and gets its proverbial day in the sun thanks to a Sports Illustrated cover story and an opportunity to host the New York Rangers for an exhibition game. Although most of the attendant melodrama is by the numbers, there's a few good touches, including one local wife's observation that the women of Mystery have far fewer choices for life and vocation than even the most downtrodden of the men. Would've liked to see the film depict the Rangers' attempts at adjusting to the village's mores and customs, to inject a different set of personalities and perspectives; as it is, they're a generally faceless, anonymous bunch, androids on skates.
July 26
*Ahhhh. Cool air, clouds and rain chase away the Heat Wave of the Summer, which is somewhat easier to bear with three instead of four in the household.
*My good doctor avers that I am in fine fettle. Would've liked better to have acted out that car commercial in which 40ish man's doctor informs him he has "40 years left, 50 tops," inspiring him to cavort around to The Specials' "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later Than You Think)." But I guess it's not something an HMO does.
*For the umpteenth time, the Northern Irish Good Friday accord seems to be tottering toward oblivion. Have to wonder if the population at large has started to regard such portents as a lot of "Wolf!" cries.
July 21-22
*We welcome home youngest daughter from her two-week sojourn, which we gather was perhaps not as grueling an ordeal as one might have thought from e-mails and phone calls. Swear the kid's grown about two inches since last month, but that might be parental fancy as much as anything. So once more top-40 radio and computer games reverberate in our little household. Ah well, it's a familiar sound.
*In honor of her return, we spend a goodly part of Friday and Saturday putting the apartment back together again, with a few improvements and refinements. There's a ways to go yet, but not for a few weeks.
For the final evening of our empty nest preview, we indulge in a home-cooked seafood meal (salmon steak, heavy on the garlic; boiled shrimp and curry mayo dip; scallops thrown in with pasta) and a couple of viewings:
=="O Brother Where Art Thou?" -- a hoot, which too many people seem to be trying to take seriously. Ethan and Joel Coen tranpose the myths and legends of "The Odyssey" to those of the Depression-era American south, where Agamemmnon, Antinous, Scylla & Charybdis, Cyclops et al are replaced by the likes of cornpone and corrupt politicians, alluring creek bed washerwomen, Bible salesmen of dubious character, TVA engineering and insecure outlaws. But it's the quirky touches that make this truly distinctive, like George Clooney's hairstyle-obsessed Ulysses, or the Ku Klux Klan rally that seems to draw upon "The Wizard of Oz" as much as "Triumph of the Will." Any shortcomings are redeemed by the soundtrack, with Ralph Stanley's chilling a cappella rendition of "Oh Death" an unlikely but spot-on backdrop for the aforementioned Klan rally.
=="Billy Elliot" -- the story of a working class Durham boy who passes up the manly art of boxing for the risk of scorn at learning ballet is a familiar enough standard. What makes the film effective are the ways Billy's renaissance through dance is contrasted with the struggles of his coal miner father and older brother; Billy capers and leaps through his neighborhood in unmitigated youthful abandon, while his brother scurries a similar route in a desperate attempt to flee riot police. Nice ironic touch: the middle-class husband of Billy's dance teacher, idled himself by economic uncertainty, decrying the miners' strike.
July 20
*By the way, here's what the kitchen looks like now.
And here's what we took out, more or less. (Bike and rack not included)
*Book completed: "Kit's Law" by Donna Morrissey -- young Newfie girl in remote harbor town is suddenly left to care for herself and her mentally ill mother. At the beginning anyway, Kit is a reticent, plucky yet believable heroine; she's at once closely bonded with but distanced from her mother, who speaks in catechetical-like sequences (which makes a major plot revelation quite ironic). Morrissey can't seem to end the story, though, and after a while the breast-beating and arch dialogue -- mostly concerning Kit's relationship with the local reverend's noble, romantic son -- becomes repetitive (as does the use of the phrase "rotting dogberries"). Still, Morrissey's evocative writing style makes it hard to dismiss this one.
Elsewhere amidst the rubble...
*Stunned and surprised as I was to read that scientists discovered what they believed to be a buttock-print of Bigfoot in the Cascade Range of Washington, I was rather more interested in following the exploits of our household's junior members in their respective vacation spots: OD, calling us practically every day from camp to inquire about the arrival of her report card and remark on the cool weather in the Berkshires (that's what long pants are for, dear, we respond); YD, apparently less than enamored of her horse camp instructors, but making friends and giving her grandfather a crash-course in pre-teen management.
*As a reward for our toils, we indulged in some viewings:
=="Anna and the King" -- updated, straightforward version of "The King and I," based on the diaries of Anna Leonowen during her service to Siam's King Mongkut. Jodie Foster is, as most always, terrific, full stop. Yun-Fat Chow handles well the complexities and contradictions of Mongkut, imperious and commanding but a loving father, toeing the line between tradition and progress even as he relies on the custom of cuncubinage, with tragic results. The increasingly personal diplomacy between the two is enjoyable and moving.
=="Angels and Insects" -- Mark Rylance is the very essence of modesty and self-effacement as a shell-shocked, down-on-his-luck scientist who finds refuge in the home of his benefactor (Jeremy Kemp), and rapture, for a while anyway, in the love of his beautiful but quirky, fragile daughter (Patsy Kensit). It's patently obvious that social parallels are being drawn between the natural world and class-conscious 19th-century England -- especially through the character of the thoroughly despicable oldest son, Edgar (Douglas Hanshell) -- but it does not diminish the film as a whole. In fact, Rylance's realization of his professional and personal lassitude comes at just the right time. Kemp's lament on the supremacy of hard, unsentimental science over the hopeful benevolence of spirituality is ironic and poignant.
=="A Simple Plan" -- disturbing backwoods thriller depicting how three men's discovery of a small fortune at an airplane crash site turns into a nightmare of deceptions, suspicion, treachery and violence. We know, of course, that the money won't make them happy; what perhaps we're not prepared for is the ease with which Bill Paxton's Hank -- the most educated, socially upstanding and stable of the trio -- slides into expediency, nor the Machiavellian scheming of Hank's wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), plotting intrigues even as she nurses her infant daughter. It's Hank's poor, damaged brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton, looking like a dissipated Rick Moranis) who emerges as the film's unlikely moral center -- and, it turns out, has insights into the family history Hank never grasped. Jacob's guile during one pivotal scene is at once out of left field yet unnervingly plausible, suggesting that blood ties may win out, however tenuously, over naked greed.
July 14-17: Fall of the wall
So what do you do if you're two mature adults and your children are out of the house for a considerable period of time? Hm? Of course. You tear up your kitchen, mainly to be rid of crumbling walls and left-over lead paint. So after painstaking prep work involving wallpaper and duct tape -- producing some grotesquely fascinating patterns -- we commenced to pulling 'em down on Saturday, as well as snapping off lathe and poking out plaster. We had most of it done by later that night, and so on Sunday we awoke to non-existent walls and mounds of debris.
Of course, anything involving lead paint removal is an exercise in anal retentiveness and obsessive compulsiveness: Triple bag the rubble, walk on a paper towel or newspaper carpet in the non-contaminated areas of the apartment, wash everything, floors, walls, surfaces, twice. At least. Meanwhile, of course, you don't eat or sleep regularly and your stamina is such that you start later each day because you just can't spring out of bed and take hammer and crowbar in hand to wrench out stubborn plaster and nails. Our major interlude was a Sunday night spur-of-the-moment Chinese dinner in the backyard of our Bulgarian neighbors, washed down with beer and conversation about children, hopes, dreams, regrets, and most anything else common to adults in their early 40s.
Tuesday saw us rest most all the day, finally arising to do some more wipe-downs for a couple of hours. By then, we were able to move pretty freely around our very bare kitchen, and the under-the-breath grumbling and flashes of despair from the previous days had largely faded. I can think of a half-dozen other labors I'd have preferred doing, but damn it all, we did it. The "we" being the key word here, because my wife is, in addition to being lovely and talented, indefatigable and resourceful. Glad I have her on my side.
July 7-11
With children--Friday night and Saturday morning sees us helping YD prepare, in every sense of the word, for her two weeks with grandpa and horse-riding camp in Virginia. The trip to and from Logan is mercifully non-eventful, and the airport interlude is not particularly stressful. Nonetheless, we collectively collapse for most of the afternoon upon our return.
Sunday, and OD's turn to shove off for camp. With deep breath and a borrowed cellphone, we head off on Route 2 in the Ford Torturous...and, yes, everything's fine. OD quickly finds half a dozen camp mates from last year, and our departure barely registers. We stop off in Shelburne Falls for a rendezvous with Me Mum, and a lighter-than-expected dinner, as the cafe inexplicably ran short on several menu items. Oh well. The ride back is a wonderful reminder of how gratifying adult conversation is, especially when unfettered by the presence of youth with ears a-burning.
Without children--Three vacation days, spent in a leisurely paced relax-work-relax mode. There's a deadline to finish our household rearranging, but not a firm time-frame by which we toil, making the experience quite pleasant, thanks.
...like on Monday, when we take the opportunity for a couple of viewings:
*"Lucky Numbers" -- personal points for being set in Harrisburg, Pa., where my paternal grandmother lived for some years. This tale of a minor TV celebrity's attempt to scam the Pennsylvania lottery has some charms: John Travolta (whose close-cropped hair makes his facial features seem larger than normal) is at his unctuous best; hearing Lisa Kudrow spout profanities takes a little getting used to, she holds up pretty well; and the tangled alliances these two form neatly walk the line between pathetic and hilarious. But somehow the movie doesn't feel as funny as it should -- the dialogue doesn't help much, nor does the performance of Bill Pullman as the Laziest Cop in the World.
*"The Net" -- for a little while, anyway, the mainstream film industry standard-bearer for neo-Luddite, anti-tech paranoia -- if, of course, you can believe Sandra Bullock as a reclusive computer geek or accept the tech application and theory on display. What differentiates this, and not in a bad way, necessarily, from similar movies is that the love-interest betrayal happens early on instead of at the end, and there is never a face-to-face encounter with the Ultimate Evil Mastermind character.
July 5
*I escort OD and friend Jake to the weekly contra dance in Cambridge, the first such event I've been to in years. It's a treat rediscovering the little social mores and quirks of the dance scene: gauging how energetically you should swing the person you're with; the dynamics of eye contact on swings, gypsies and doh-se-dohs; and the implied, instant intimacy that comes with partnering up spontaneously. Much more of a treat, though, was to have OD ask me to dance, and to see how easily and enthusiastically she's taken to it -- to the point where she feels empowered to critique the performances of her various dance partners. Sometimes, I really think there may be hope for these teenage years.
*Some recent musical acquisitions:
==Nick Drake, "Fruit Tree" -- Much like Anne Briggs (q.v.), Drake found his muse difficult to channel, at least in ways that brought him joy and satisfaction. Unlike Briggs, however, he could not find a way to ultimately master, or at least live with, this shortfall. But his songs, while ranging from somber to bleak, have a quiet dignity to them. There's also an occasional glimpse of an almost child-like hopefulness: "I was raised to love magic." His voice, so wistful and fragile, was as perfectly suited as his 1960s-London-style guitar accompaniment.
==Kat yn 't Seil, "Liereliet" -- A Dutch group I saw a few years back at Old Songs, featuring lovely close-harmony vocals. One revelation from this album: hearing Dutch sea chanteys.
==Various, "Nordic Roots 2" -- Having been suitably impressed with the first volume, I couldn't help but snap this one up. Highlights: "Wild Honey" by Boot, with driving, intricate rhythms underneath a superbly rendered fiddle; the Scandinavian-Celtic meshing of Swap; and the fortifying vocals of Varttina.
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