Monthly Archives: November 2010

November 30, 2010 · 6:26 am

High on music

When I started this blog, I set out to share periodically words of the good writers, including song writers.

Yesterday I heard an old favorite on the radio and, as I was alone in a well sealed car, I sang loudly along.

John Denver wasn’t among my favorite artists growing up–I don’t think he was much of a singer–but I have always admired him as a song writer. There are a few of his songs I’m not particularly fond of, but there are many more that are outstanding and have endured over the decades.

I do miss the guy. I wonder, if he hadn’t died so young, what inspiring works he might have created as he matured.

My favorite John Denver song is “Rocky Mountain High.” I can’t say why exactly, as I’m not as moved by the outdoors as many people are. I’ve seen the Rockies and they’re lovely. But it’s just not my scene. Either way, musically and poetically, it’s a beautiful song.

“Rocky Mountain High” came out about the time my good friend Cathy moved to Boulder. Cathy would be the first of us to see the Rockies, while the rest of us knew about them only from the song.

Each time I hear it, I hear something new in the lyrics. There was some controversy when the song first came out and the FCC tried to have it banned from the air for its possible drug reference. It has been written that Denver explained publicly—including in congressional hearings—that the “high” was simply the sense of peace he found in this mountain setting.

No matter, Denver can paint a picture with simple words and phrases that are easy to sing along to. I am a terrible singer, but don’t hold back in the car. Yesterday I was thrilled, after months of effort to heal my lungs, to be able to hold those long notes as long as John Denver did, even though I know I sounded awful. That’s the beauty of a Bose nine-speaker sound system that can drown out its owner.

Here, you try it. This isn’t the best version vocally, but the only other clip I found omitted my two favorite verses.

Rocky Mountain High
Words by John Denver; Music by John Denver and Mike Taylor

He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door

When he first came to the mountains his life was far away
On the road and hangin’ by a song
But the string’s already broken and he doesn’t really care
It keeps changin’ fast and it don’t last for long

But the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
The shadow from the starlight is softer than a lullaby
Rocky mountain high

He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below
He saw everything as far as you can see
And they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun
And he lost a friend but kept his memory

Now he walks in quiet solitude the forest and the streams
Seeking grace in every step he takes
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake

And the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
You can talk to God and listen to the casual reply
Rocky mountain high

Now his life is full of wonder but his heart still knows some fear
Of a simple thing he cannot comprehend
Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land

And the Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
I know he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly
Rocky mountain high

It’s Colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
Friends around the campfire and everybody’s high
Rocky mountain high

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November 29, 2010 · 9:53 am

Cyber schmyber

Another one for the “only you” category. Such as, Monica, only you would eat a dog biscuit at a gourmet show. Or, Monica, only you would lose your Internet on Cyber Monday.

Having never shopped online on Cyber Monday, I was all set to give it a try. Last night I decided to do my scouting and be prepared to start at midnight or at least in the dawn hours.  As soon as I set out on my recon, my Internet connection was broken. After several attempts to reset the modem and router and 31 minutes on hold with Comcast, I gave up. I’d start this morning anew. I awoke to see The Washington Post noting Comcast’s glitch as well. Seems the gitch could affect a fair amount of the east coast.

It is back up now, but I had put one item in my Amazon shopping cart this morning when the crew arrived to begin our long awaited central air installation and notified me that they’d be shutting off our power for a large part of the day.

What to do? Perhaps I’ll dash off to the mall, three days late for Black Friday, and return later to scrape up the Cyber dregs.

Gotta run from the blackout. Happy cyber shopping to the rest of you!

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November 27, 2010 · 10:25 am

Literary lunacy

I don’t read a lot of books. Maybe two a year, three at the most.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to read, but it takes me a long time to finish a book. For one thing, I read slowly and, when I am really enjoying a book, I go back and re-read sections, just to wallow in the setting or absorb the dialogue. I like to live in a book and, as with a good movie, I carry the story around with me a while before moving on to the next one.

Also, because I travel a good bit and don’t own a Kindle or a Nook, I find some books too bulky to carry on a plane.

This weekend, after three months, I finally finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It is her first novel, which is hard to believe, given the maturity of the story and the real-ness of the characters.

The story takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s. It is about a community of maids and the women they serve. The chapters are written from the perspectives of different characters, so it took some skill to make the technique work as beautifully as it did.

I won’t say anything more because I want you to read the book, but I would like to share two sentences I especially liked and returned to several times. The character is describing an error she made in a newsletter, which resulted in widespread negative consequences but had reflected her true feelings, as if perhaps she had done it deliberately.

“…it was like something cracked open inside of me, not unlike a watermelon, cool and soothing and sweet. I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”

I am going to miss those women, but they’ve left me with a whole new outlook on insanity – why fight it?

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November 26, 2010 · 3:21 pm

Lest I stumble

My apologies for being late with the blog today. I got lost.

After hearing how much I’d been enjoying the Pandora app on my iPhone, my son suggested something else he thought I’d like: StumbleUpon.com.

For those who have not yet stumbled on it, this service takes subscribers to Web sites, blogs and videos based on what it knows about them. Like Pandora, what StumbleUpon knows about you is based on a little info you provide up front as well as the thumbs up or thumbs down rating you give each site. And, like Pandora, it’s free.

StumbleUpon is described as a discovery engine that uses collaborative filtering and smart recommendation technology. Okay, then.

When I signed up, I provided only some general information about my topics of interest but chose not to fill out a customized profile, detailing everything from my height (5’4”) and Myers Briggs personality type (ENFJ) to my astrological sign (Sagittarius) and political leaning (anarchist; just kidding but that was an option).

I decided I’d first put in only the general information and see where it took me.

The first place the service stumbled upon was a Flickr video of a kitten riding on a turtle.

After that, it directed me to:

  • A site called “belly bites” and specifically to a post on “29 healthiest foods on the planet” (Note to self: tell the system I don’t like titles appearing in lower case letters)
  • Naturopathyworks.com, and an article on food cravings, including a chart that tells you, “If you crave this…” then “What you really need is…” and “Healthy foods that have it”
  • A Flickr recipe for Warm Toasted Marshmallow S’more Bars
  • Another Flickr recipe for Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies. They’re green and look disgusting. Thumbs down.
  • An article in The Globe and Mail:  “Thinness—and female unhappiness—is big business”
  • A Wikipedia entry on the “Neuroscience of Free Will”
  • Quotes from Albert Einstein
  • 15 Palindromes
  • True Stories Told in One Sentence. Thumbs up; I shall return to this one.

Finally, while I discern what all these hits say about me, I will leave you with the last one. I had trouble figuring out where it came from. It simply told a story:

“Girls are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. The boys don’t want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples from the ground that aren’t as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they’re amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who’s brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.”

If StumbleUpon makes me six hours late for posting my daily blog, some self discipline will be in order. Maybe Wikipedia has something on the Neuroscience of Will Power.

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November 25, 2010 · 10:15 am

The little things

Drip, drip, drip. That’s what I awoke to this morning. Cold rain against the window on a dark morning. My sore nose that kept me awake all night in need of Kleenex.

I went to bed angry at the woman who sprayed me with mucus on a four-hour bus ride from New York City on Sunday.

So I woke up this morning in a really bad mood. My throat hurt and my head was pounding. The 40-degree, rainy morning slapped me in the face.

Then I remembered it is Thanksgiving.

After a steaming cup of white tea, appreciation washed over me. I became thankful for tea, Sudafed, Tylenol and for generic-brand cherry-flavored throat spray that expired in 2002 but still brought relief.

Now I am ready to give thanks. Most people will honor the day by expressing their gratitude around the dinner table. Mine would take too long, so I’ll do it here.

Today I am thankful for:

  1. A couple of hours of alone time, while my husband and son run a 10-kilometer race. I will be even more thankful if they return free of injury and colds.
  2. The fact that, even though it was my turn, and yesterday was my stepmother’s birthday, she and my father are hosting dinner today. If I had to do it feeling the way I do, I’d be crying right now.
  3. My son’s safe arrival home, on 420 miles of angry interstate and foggy mountain roads.
  4. Community—my church community, my family and friends, colleagues and clients, the Jazzercise girls and my neighbors
  5. The best weekend ever in New York, and the 25 years of marriage that led to it
  6. Running water, a toilet that flushes, light that comes on whenever I flip a switch, heat (and I hope within the next three weeks, the installation of central air conditioning)
  7. Punctuation
  8. Medication
  9. Elvis, the homeless cat who brightens my life once or twice a day.

Now, let’s watch the parade.

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November 24, 2010 · 9:46 am

Fowl play

A year ago, three days before Thanksgiving, I facilitated a medical  meeting at a large urgent care center. As I was setting up for the program, the meeting coordinator and I were exchanging pleasantries, mostly about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

I asked her if the center was expecting to be busy on the holiday. I thought this was a logical question. She just looked at me as if I had three heads and said, no, that she couldn’t imagine why that would be the case.

Huh. I would have thought, based on our family’s experience, that urgent care centers would be staffing up and stocking up with extra bandages, sutures, balms and epinephrine.

I recall a time when one kind of accident or another defined Thanksgiving tradition. One year it was a severe oven burn. Another it was a deep laceration caused by a broken glass concealed in a sink full of dish suds. Once—though on a different holiday, perhaps July 4th—someone drank bug spray. Another time one of my cousins nearly lost a toe, though I can’t recall exactly how.

When I look back, one memorable Thanksgiving springs to mind. Thankfully, no humans were harmed.

My mother had just moved into a house in Arizona with slick terra cotta floor tiles that ran from the kitchen to the bedroom area.

We were roasting a large turkey, which neither of us could lift alone. When it came time to remove it from the oven, my mother and I each took an end of the roasting pan. On the count of three we would lift it to the stove top. One, two, oops, one of us dropped her end. The roasting pan toppled and the turkey was ejected, landing on the slick tiles with such force that it turned the corner and slid down the hall toward the bedrooms.

That might have been the first time I heeded the 10-second rule; hey, what’s a little desert dust?

Bon appétit. Et soyez sûr.

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November 23, 2010 · 9:11 am

Hi ho silver

This is a big week. In addition to Thanksgiving, my husband and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. That’s the silver one.

It’s been a great run so far, but frankly I don’t think I am old enough to be celebrating 25 years of marriage.

My husband and I celebrated last weekend in New York City. We stayed up late, walked for miles and hung out with our young peers. We saw a Broadway show, had great meals and hit some swanky night spots. Very different from  any prior mental image I’d had of such an occasion.

The first silver anniversary celebration I remember was that of my Aunt Mary Lee and Uncle Henry. And they were ancient; I think Aunt Mary Lee was 43. From what I remember, the party room was full of old people dancing to old people’s music. I wore about six inches of crinoline and wondered if I would ever live long enough  to be married 25 years.

Here. See for yourself.

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November 22, 2010 · 9:21 am

Work stoppage

Here is a suggestion for office managers all over the United States. You might as well close up shop this week because little is going to get done.

I admit it has been a while since I worked in a traditional office setting. But for the 20 or so years that I did, what I remember about the week before Thanksgiving—except for the occasional harried lame-duck Congressional session—is the fervent exchange of information pertaining to food for three full days preceding the holiday.

I predict that, for the next two and a half days, the majority of office computers will be connected to Epicurious.com or the Food Network and that cookbooks will be pressed against the glass of copiers churning out recipes to be shared among staff members. Conversations normally confined to the lunch room will spill generously into working hours, as colleagues seek other’s advice for the best way to satisfy Aunt Minnie’s taste for goose liver pâté.

Just walk down the hall and you’ll hear the great debates—stuffing cooked inside the turkey or out? Roast turkey or deep fried? Giblets in the gravy or not? Pumpkin pie or pecan? How many fruits and vegetables can be slipped into stuffing without the children tightening their lips? (In my house, the answer is zero.)

More e-mail will be generated between employees and their families than within the company, so as to make expectations clear about arrival times, covered dishes and football schedules.

One person (there’s one in every office) will be attempting the latest Martha Stewart centerpiece and individual place decorations and feeling the need to draw her colleagues into the challenge.

A worker or two will try not to get caught missing of an afternoon, while dashing out to buy napery.

Okay, so the word is out. But am I wrong?

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November 20, 2010 · 10:17 am

How to write it

This is Part Three of a three-part series on writing. The series incorporates stated views of several well-known writers and their observations about the craft.

Over the last two days, we have commiserated with some of  the world’s noted writers in confronting the difficulties of writing and we have read their reasons for writing.

Today, we’ll wrap up the series by pretending to ask them for advice on what makes good writing. Here’s what they said:

Stephen King – “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.”

King also said that, “In truth, I’ve found that any day’s routine interruptions and distractions don’t much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.”

Mark Twain suggested, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” 

Twain also said word choice is critical: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Anton Chekhov  — “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” 

Baltasar Gracián – “A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.”

Jean-Luc Godard – “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end… but not necessarily in that order.”

I find this final quote relevant to modern day writing. In the following passage, substitute the word “diaries” with “blogs” and you’ll see what I mean:

Ann Beattie — “It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.”

Once again, would you care to share writing techniques that work for you?

See you Monday.

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November 19, 2010 · 7:12 am

Why write it?

This is Part Two of a three-part series on writing. The series incorporates stated views of several well-known writers and their observations about the craft.

If yesterday’s topic piqued your interest in coaxing out your inner writer—and especially if it didn’t—you might be inspired by the words of noted writers of the last few centuries.

Given the opportunity to ask them why they write or what they get out of the writing process, this is what they would say. Perhaps at least one of these will appeal to you:

E.L. Doctorow – “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

Lord Byron – “If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.”

Kingsley Amis – “If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

Jules Renard – “Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” 

Gloria Steinem – “I do not like to write – I like to have written.”

Apparently, writing isn’t always deliberate for songwriter Joan Baez. I suspect other writers can relate to the inspiration she describes: “It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.” 

Tomorrow we will take tips from Mark Twain, Anton Chekhov, Stephen King and others as they describe their techniques for producing good written works.

In the meantime, I’ll ask anyone who cares to answer:  Why do you write?

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