Thought for the Day

Another from my husband:

"Ray doesn't read books—he reads shelves."

Unschooling Thought for the Day

From my husband:

"Unschooling is like a school where the only subject is reading."

Certainly this summer, that is true. When they're not swimming, out and about with us, or playing with friends, my kids are in the hammock or on the couch reading big, fat books they keep in stacks on the floor next to beds, on tables, in bags brought home from the library. Hooray for having the time to read.

ASK Reads - A Short Story Lover's Delight

I'm participating in this short story evening as a reader. This is the press release.

Arts Society of Kingston - ASK
97 Broadway in Kingston
July 17, 7-9pm
suggested donation: $5

What's life without stories? With this question in mind the Arts Society of Kingston presents ASK Reads; a program of short stories by local and international authors read by ASK's talented performers. On Thursday July 17, from 7- 9pm we will offer four short stories:

Our first story is a dark comedy which flies in the face of the notion that the creative life is "so romantic" as it exposes the relationship between a neurotic writer and his once muse - now wife. It will be read by the talented actor, writer and lyricist Gerrit Graham. Gerrit is known for his many roles in movies like Brian DePalma's "Greetings", and Robert Zemeckis' Used Cars; films in which he starred alongside Robert DeNiro and Kurt Russell respectively. He has also appeared on such television programs as Star Trek: Voyager , Law and Order and Seinfeld to mention only a few.

Next, we'll offer a touching and funny tale about a loving Jewish mother ( who happens to be an athiest ), her son the night club performer ( who could use a more religious mother right about now ) and God. This story, "God on Friday Night," by Irwin Shaw, will be read for us by Nancy Graham. Nancy is a writer and actor who, most recently, has appeared in the Cocoon Theatre's production of The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekov. Another in a long line of talented people who call the Hudson Valley home, she is a resident of up-town Kingston where she lives with her family.

Then comes "Michael's Music" by Paul Cooper. One of ASK's talented member writers- as well as a talented actor- Paul's accomplishments include membership in the famed B.M.I Writer's Workshop under Lehman Engel. He also is the founder of the Hudson Valley Gilbert and Sullivan Music Theatre, and is the author of "Tales of Aunt Ida" published by ReallyReuben Publishing. His newest volume, "Six Modern Midrashim", is soon to be published. "Michael's Music" is a charming fantasy about a young boy who brings the music in his head to life - without the use of voice or instruments! The reaction of his audience is - to say the least - mixed.

And lastly, "Bistro Ouest" by Sidney Norinsky. Sid is another of ASK's splendid member writers who's work includes not only short stories, but also novels and - especially dear to his heart - plays. Sid's theatrical works have been performed at ASK's Tuesday night Playwrite's Lab, and we are fortunate that he has now contributed this short story for our evening of readings. 'Bistro Ouest' concernes a recently divorced man who - by what appears an almost magical coincidence - stumbles upon a group of like-minded characters in a newly opened French restaurant (Bistro Ouest). They appear to offer a kind of social cure to his troubled life. But who are these characters? And do they realy offer a cure?

'Bistro Ouest' will be read by Phillip Levine, the host of Colony Cafe's popular Open Mic Poetry. A skilled dancer, and a poet himself, Phillip is also an actor with extensive experience performing with local theater companies in a variety of productions from 'King Lear' to 'The Fantasticks'. He also has television and movie credits, having appeared in such varied productions as 'The American Revolution' for The History Channel wherein he portrayed Gen. Henry Clinton. And roles in such movies as 'Fear of Clowns 2', among many others.

On Dreams

"A dream cuts and pastes your hopes and wishes so that you will be accustomed to them."


—AJ, about to turn 9

Father's Day Opus 40

A favorite Father's Day place: Opus 40, Saugerties, New York.

What is Opus 40?

"One of the largest and most beguiling works of art on the entire continent."
—Brendan Gill, Architectural Digest

The work is an immense composition of finely fitted stone, rising in ramps and swirling terraces around pools and trees and fountains out of the rock bed of an abandoned bluestone quarry. It spreads out over more than six acres.

It is the product of more thirty-seven years of a man's life. His name was Harvey Fite. He worked alone, using his hands and traditional quarryman's tools, to build his masterpiece.

You can also learn more by reading Tad's Opus 40 Blog, linked from the Hudson Valley Blogroll to the left of your screen.



When I am at Opus 40 I feel as if I am wandering in a dream, a dream landscape. I like to draw the shapes,



or sit and imagine placing and fitting the stones one by one.



My husband likes to draw or take photographs, like this one of our children shooting a movie called The Maze.



According to my daughter, The Maze is about a girl in a maze who meets a heart and a Tiepitum, which is a monster with many eyes.

Once we went to Opus 40 after a wedding had taken place there. There were leftover peonies and ferns in glass bowls waiting to be cleared away, and my daughter and I made fairy houses out of them among the rocks.

I like the title of Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit. At Opus 40 you enter the creative habit even if you sometimes set it aside at home, to do the dishes...

Good Stuff Happening in + around Kingston, NY

The Cool Kingston Campaign, a project of Sustainable Hudson Valley, "is building momentum for a more bike-friendly city with expanded gardens, parks, and tree cover, and mobilizing citizens to engage local government in climate change response. With support from the Fund for the Environment and Urban Life and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), this initiative rallies the community to learn and act on climate change in ways that improve quality of life. Cool Kingston's major project is creating a Green Trail along the Broadway corridor by supporting energy improvements, plantings, public art and cyclist supports such as bike racks, bike route maps and driver education."

Can't wait for more bike racks around here, and a little road space would be nice, too.

The Kingston Victory Gardens Project aims to hook up local urban gardeners, promote fresh food and the donation of surplus to soup kitchens and the like, and begin to organize community gardens. Everyone without a sunny yard should have access to a community garden.

And the garden should be pesticide free. The Ban Pesticides in Ulster County Alliance is organizing in New Paltz, New York for pesticide-free lawns and farming to improve on a recently-passed neighbor notification law. See their link on the Hudson Valley blogroll to the left there.

Yesterday was a bike tour of Kingston, which seemed like a fun idea, but like last year, we thought it would rain. We arrived late and did the tour backwards, skipping most of it. Full info is at Tobacco Free Action Coalition of Ulster County.

I like biking (although I'll like it more when my town is more bike-friendly), but lately my favorite way to do errands within 5-8 blocks of my house is by Razor scooter borrowed from my kids. We got ours for $2 at a yard sale, and I never thought of using it for transportation until a couple of weeks ago. It's perfect for zipping up to my proofreading job three blocks north, picking up copy and zipping home. When people see how old I am they smile or laugh, and it pleases me to be a figure of fun. (PS: Don't ever go over a stick on a razor scooter though. I flew, rolled, and have a nasty painful shoulder that is taking more than a week to heal up.)

Back on topic. Kingston Citizens is a great website and collection of Yahoo groups designed to connect city residents with one another and with their alderpeople. Every locality should have something like that.

Bodily Sovereignty

I think the recent attempt to pass a bill in New York State requiring CDC-recommended vaccinations is an interesting landmark for the issue of bodily sovereignty. While abortion and same-sex marriage are beleaguered or struggling to establish themselves (two other issues that might be considered under the same category—the right to decide about one's own person), parent-activists in New York just defeated Assembly Bill 10942.

A new bill, Assembly Bill 10942A, would make a meningitis vaccine mandatory for seventh graders. After some days of protests over the lack of debate about this, this one is staying in assembly committee for now (according to State Speaker's office). A Senate bill apparently is still active, but they are getting a lot of calls opposed, so this particular organizing on behalf of bodily sovereignty seems to be very effective.

Best Ceramics Projects for Kids

My kids have taken a few ceramics classes, and we have shelves full of fired and glazed objects to prove it.

My son likes to do figurines, whether models of characters he has made up or his own versions of commercial faves like Shaggy and Scooby Doo, Lock, Shock, and Barrel, and Davy Jones. They're fun.

I also love bowls, because we really can't have too many bowls for putting out condiments, snacks, and so forth.

But what I really love are flat-slab sushi plates. Isn't this elegant? Try to get your kids to make you some when they're doing ceramics classes. They're handy, beautiful, and they make your food look like gourmet stuff.

Enormous Changes Every Minute

This is a still from one of my children's first movies, Death is Coming to You, Live! It has been five years since my 11-year-old started his movie company, W.M. Thing. He has made more than a dozen movies, and many more trailers, scripts, and concept drawings since then. He recently turned 11. He is changing so fast—too fast for me. Last night, he and my almost-9-year-old daughter decided to stop going to karate and try some new types of exercise. This morning my son decided to start blogging and he is sitting next to me, posting to his new blog right now. Feels like the big world is invading our sanctuary.

Visiting our karate teacher and telling him we were stopping (I had reached high brown belt, the kids brown), left me feeling dejected. Way back when my kids were toddlers, I read an article in a homeschooling magazine that said sometimes young people will take classes in a discipline, then give it up. Don't worry about the dropping activities, the author said, it's all part of the process. Anything left can be returned to. In my mind I know this is true.

In practice, these little departures are felt as loss just as surely as is my children's loss of their teeth, their baby fat, and their friends—some of whom have moved, some of whom have entered school after years of homeschooling. If falling in love introduces the possibility of loss and grief to a person, having children introduces loss as a constant companion. So many goodbyes.

Right now we are in limbo with respect to new pursuits. A whole lot of writing, animating, moviemaking, music-making is going on, but we need some "out-in-the-world" stuff, and I don't know what it will be...
We've had a year of little goodbyes.

Brooklyn Blogfest

Here we are, well, three of the four of us, at the Brooklyn Blogfest organized by OTBKB. This picture is one of many taken of bloggers that night by fabulous OTBKB photographer, Hugh Crawford. (The rest are at SmugMug.)

The third annual Blogfest drew hundreds of bloggers to celebrate the power of citizen-powered new media, neighborhood activism, and the power of the local merged with the reach of the digital. Brooklyn bloggers have become the new beat reporters, and their stories have invigorated the life of their communities. The evening ended with a rousing shout-out from the bloggers present. The upshot of the evening: the more the merrier, so get blogging. It would be great to do this in the Hudson Valley. Email me if you're interested in a Hudson Valley Blogfest.

Another Parenting Rage...Free Range

Free Range Parenting is the next big thing in raising kids, having sprung out of a notorious woman's decision to let her 9-year-old ride the subway. That gave rise to a blog she authors, Free-Range Parenting, articles like this one in the Globe and Mailand this Newsweek piece by my buddy Louise, publisher of Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn.

On a homeschooling list I subscribe to, a mother wryly commented, "sounds kind of like trying to homeschool your schooled children to me." I agree.

So many parenting and educational theories amount to what I call "closet unschooling." In the case of "free-range parenting," parents have caught on that shuttling kids from one activity to another stresses the whole family. Children without enough free time are hampered in their creativity, blocked from taking initiative, and, as the Globe and Mail article says, feel infantilized.

Other examples of closet unschooling: at a Montessori school, there's a homey room full of "work" activities—children can "iron," "sweep," or "do dishes"—the only thing missing is their real home, where there is real work to be done. At the high school I attended, we had an "open space"—a large room where we could hang out in groups, see other students working, kind of an agora, except not outside. How I would have preferred the real thing. In democratic schools, children choose their own activities and participate in decisions affecting administration. It's like real life, but ideally, real life should involve multigenerational interactions, not social units separated by age.

Parenting by instinct, intuition, and personal authenticity, can be done without a book, a kit, or a list of tips.




What takes the place of drama classes and school plays at our house: the Play Art Theater, with productions scripted, produced, directed and acted by the owners and operators.

Homemade Veggie Booty

Discovered in our kitchen: easy to make, cheaper & more nutritious than the commercial variety, requires less packaging, and is unlikely to be recalled:

1. Make a nice big bowl of popcorn

2. In a spice grinder:

sesame seeds
nori torn up to acceptable size for grinding
kelp granules
(equal amounts of these will do fine)

Grind to a coarse meal.

3. Sprinkle on popcorn and salt to taste. Enjoy avoiding salmonella and the vast snack aisle at the market.

Women in Science, Women in Dance

Two worthy Hudson Valley field trips today:

1. The Cornell Extension Agroforestry Center at Acra (check out their programming link for more info):

My kids are participating in a four-part series of 2-hour programs on Women in Science. The blurb for this proram, which we're enjoying (it's a mix of talk, experimentation, record-keeping, other activities, and watching a DVD):

"Meet women scientists who boldly explore new worlds in this four part series. The Wonderwise: Women In Science Learning Series is a curriculum developed by the University of Nebraska that introduces real scientists to young people. This curriculum was designed for teaching 8 to 12 year old children the basics of scientific investigations. We will watch a DVD about Adriana Ocampo, who searches through Belize for traces of a crater caused by an asteroid that hit earth 65 million years ago. As a space geologist, Adriana compares craters that exist on other planets with ones that are known to exist on earth. We will conduct hands-on experiments that investigate geology. The final day of the series will include a field trip to the Gilboa Museum to view some of the world’s oldest fossilized trees."

Good stuff, great facility, if a little far north for us.


2. Kaatsbaan International Dance Center

Located on 153 acres of land near the Hudson River in Tivoli, New York, at a historic site (the former estate of Eleanor Roosevelt’s grandparents), Kaatsbaan hosts dance residencies, performances, and an "extreme ballet" summer camp for dancers aged 14-plus.

We went to a well-attended free rehearsal of the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, which will perform for paying audiences this weekend.

The dance was energetic, the space capacious, but I appreciated the response of my kids: "I hate watching other people dance. They should just let everyone who wants to, get up and dance."

Joining the performance was ruby-throated vocalist Bente Kahan, a "Jewish-Norwegian performing artist, whose production company Teater Dybbuk - Oslo, aims to convey Jewish-European culture and history through drama and music." She sang two heartbreaking songs about the loss of home and family.

This is one of those great nonprofits that is combining land stewardship with a compatible mission, and we'll be going back for more, whether my kids want to or not.

Food Flower for a Happy Spring!

I've been reading a good macrobiotic food book, The Self-Healing Cookbook by Kristina Turner. Just reading her lists of yin and yang veggies had me off to the market for some roots and shoots I haven't eaten in a while.

In back, there's a really cool food mandala, I guess you'd call it. Others have criticized the "food pyramid" concept and I felt it was time to revise mine, so I made a food flower. Here's a discussion of different food guide shapes suggested by kids. In my opinion, everyone should make their own guide with its own shape, including the foods that make them feel best, in the amounts that make them feel best. I should have put kombucha in the blue ring instead of with the 'tiny amounts' foods in the petals, but otherwise this is my ideal diet.

The Cherry Orchard

I am please to be spending cherry blossom season in this production of Jean-Claude van Itallie's translation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. I will play the part of Charlotta Ivanovna.

My favorite birthday present (back in December) was the 13-volume Constance Garnett translation of Chekhov's stories. One for a desert island Top 10.

Homeschoolers take note: there will be a school performance at 10 am on April 16—call the theater and say Oswegatchie sent you and you can reserve seats at $7 a pop.

It is what it is.

This overused tautology is my latest candidate for the AARP (American Association for Retired Phrases); it is merely a screen for pervasive anxiety that might as well be specified, to wit: it is terrifying, exhausting, draining, poignant. It moves me to tears, to rage, to vengefulness. It is remarkable, fantastic, outrageous. Let's start saying what it really is, instead of feigning the detachment we all aspire to but aren't likely to attain, if we're honest, in this lifetime.

Heart of Glass

Millerton, New York. I love it there.

Last Friday, my family and I (that's husband, 10-year-old boy, 8-year-old girl) visited the aromatic and delicious Harney Tea store. Favorite teas of the moment: White Christmas, Paris and Rose-Scented.

Then we crossed the street to Gilmor Glass, where we were fortunate (it being a week day) to find a husband-and-wife team of art glass blowers on the job, spectators welcome.

For an hour we grilled them, learned about their training under Czech, Italian and Siberian glassblowers, and watched the making of a goblet and several glass hearts (shown above) for Valentine's Day. This heart is dipped in gold leaf and slowly cooled for 24 hours in a special oven. Broken and irregular glass can be re-melted eight times before it's no good anymore. The dog that hangs out in the workshop does not step in broken glass and get hurt. These and other facts await you at Gilmor Glass. Oh, and if you want to buy anything there, better bring a credit card.

(We have some ice cream bowls from Gilmor that someone got us as a wedding present, long before we ever drove through Millerton. Exquisite.)

Then it was up the block to independent biblioparadise Oblong Books and a chat with kids books maven Michelle Charles, who has a children's books radio show and podcast linked from Oblong's page.

We didn't even have time to walk on the rail trail. Millerton gets a 5-star field trip rating from this unschooling blogger.

One View of Giving Away Old Stuff

This is from my 8-year-old daughter:

"Within each toy is a concealment of memory. If I give away my toys, I am giving away precious souvenirs and cherished gifts. Each toy has some memory, some purpose for being in your life. It could be annoyance, messiness, dirty-ness, it could be anything."

I don't know why I bother reading Gaston Bachelard.

Internal Restructuring Chez Nous

We're working up a strategic plan around here and doing some reorganizing of job descriptions.

It all reminds me a little of Hansel and Gretel. In that story, the parents can't wait for attrition to reduce their costs, so they give their kids the big heave-ho.

We're not gonna do that!

In the current iteration of our plan, my husband's job description emphasizes "job search activities." "Making money" has been added to my job description. I started proofreading this week. It was pretty fun, and I am working for a magazine I'd read anyway, except now I go more slowly, hold a red pencil, and get to mark up the margins.

My sister, who used to be an editor at Cambridge Press, is on call if I get in over my head. And my Uncle Bob, who is now an angel hovering around me as I do the work he did for fun at the end of his life, is coming to mind a lot. He used to call me to talk about the books he was proofing or make fun of the publishing industry.

"There are three words that begin with H that no writer should ever use," he once called to say.

"What are they, Uncle Bob?"

"Hermeneutic, haptic, and heuristic. All that's just hogwash."

Dearly Departed

That car down there done died. It needed a new engine for $4,500 and we said nay.

After much anxiety and soul-searching and careful deliberation and reading of consumer guides and a visit to a new car dealer, we rushed to a used car lot and impulsively bought a 2003 Ford Focus. We couldn't stand to give Enterprise Rent-a-Car another dollar.

The new car looks a lot like the old one and so far, it runs.

Better World Travel Club to the Rescue

"We work for cars," a friend recently said. Meet our boss, a Volvo V70 that gets us everywhere we can't walk to and often makes us wish we lived near a ZipCar agent.



Yesterday was our second breakdown in a few months, and as I write we are getting a tow to the Volvo dealership in Wappingers Falls, making good use of the 100-mile free tow feature that comes with our membership in Better World Travel Club.

I want to testify that Better World works just as well as AAA, because so few people I talk to even know about it. A travel club that gives roadside emergency assistance to cars AND bicycles, advocates high emissions standards, facilitates eco-friendly travel and puts out an energy-smart e-newsletter, plus auto insurance that offsets your first ton of carbon for free? Yup! Better World also keeps a "triple-A watch" to remind you why you decided to leave the "Arrogant, Anti-environmental, Archaic" auto insurance giant in the ditch.

I don't know what to do with this high-maintenance car. We have talked about a hybrid but in reality, we feel that junking a car is a pretty giant energy consumption right there, so we are doing the best we can to hang on to this one, offset its emissions, and get the best mileage we can out of it. We like the Volvo safety record—my entire family walked away uninjured from an accident in our last Volvo, which was totalled.

A while back I wrote to Volvo to ask them if they are working on hybrid technology or other ecotech and a VP wrote back to say, basically, "No." It was weird and discouraging, considering that the company has a reputation for being, and selling to, the enlightened.

The Daily Doggerel

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The breast feeds
And the penis seeds.

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Feast or Famine

Living in a jobless yet wealthy family is kind of strange. When I was in my 20s and lost a job, which happened plenty, I ran out and got temp work. The money came in immediately and I continued living paycheck to paycheck. Now, if my husband loses a job, we sell stock to live until he gets another job. He takes his time and waits for the right thing—last time the wait lasted three years. My point here is, we are jobless but not destitute, we need to tighten our belts right now but how tight? Who knows? Feast and famine at the same time.

With that mental backdrop I and my family drove up to Hudson, NY yesterday to see an HDTV rebroadcast of the Metropolitan Opera's current production (in English when we would have preferred the German) of Hansel and Gretel.

The opera's themes of starvation and scarcity, gluttony and waste, nourishment versus malnutrition, devouring and even a crumbling social order are introduced by painted curtains that rise over each act, depicting an empty plate, a blood-smeared plate, and a smashed plate. The parents' abandonment of their children plays out in their hunger and need.

The design was aiming at a kitchen somewhere between the Depression and World War II, we guessed, and the story resonated well with both periods. In the first act, the mother, having banished Hansel and Gretel to the haunted wood, eats food miraculously brought home by her husband—sausages and sauerkraut—in the most outrageous of several more instances of eating while singing (surely one of the great taboos of the operatic art), tucking food into some corner of her mouth so that when husband Peter tells her that the haunted wood’s witch eats children, she runs to the sink and vomits real food! (The sinks alone fascinated me: Hansel breaks a milk jug in the family sink, then his mother vomits there, in Act II, a magical sink in a forest-room soaks dream dishes in frothy suds and the Dew Fairy dries them).

In the haunted wood, the children fall asleep with help from the Sandman and dream, not of guardian angels but of guardian chefs who lay a table with the only proper nourishment we see in this show—a balanced meal of many colors, clearly not over-cooked, and a tureen of consommé served by a dapper fish. One of the guardian chefs was my brother, but since they wear identical fat suits and masks, I was unable to spot him. Act II is full of lullabies and gorgeous music, and I liked the fanciful staging, Hansel and Gretel pickpocketing their strawberries from tree-figures in suits with branches for heads.

In Act III this production let the very real themes of this story rip, and I, my husband and our ten- and eight-year-old boy and girl were left unsettled by it. The witch's kitchen, the third and last of the opera, is oversized and metallic, reminiscent of a slaughterhouse, which indeed it is. The witch trusses up Hansel like a goose and then, using a funnel and hose, force-feeds him pastries that she has pulverized to paste in a blender, a mockery of the inhumane techniques used to prepare foie gras—the cannibalism of the story extended to suggest that to eat animals is to eat our own kind. (Lapsed vegan talking.)



After the brother and sister gleefully lock the witch in the oven (where we watch her burn) they dance, and Gretel nonchalantly smears a chocolate Hitler mustache under the nose of Hansel, who ends the opera by taking a big bite out of the broiled witch’s leg. If nobody in my family liked Act III, it may be because it so successfully elicited our horror and disgust, no-doubt thanks to close-up views of the stage action. All in all I think I would prefer this menacing version to the beirgarden aesthetic that seems to prevail in productions of Hansel and Gretel. A rich, even (necessarily) nauseating treatment of a dense and resonant fairy tale.

PS: Do we LOVE the HDTV Met broadcast program? YES! The venue we attended, Time and Space Limited, has been doing great avant-garde and community work for decades. They can use the full houses this is bringing in, and anyone who can't afford to visit the Met in person certainly deserves a cheaper way to enjoy opera. Bravo, Met.

Axed! Canned! Sacked! Jazzed! A Red Eft Kit

The mild-mannered developer of the house was humming along in a garden full of bugs yesterday when BLIP!—his connection to his virtual work world vanished! The phone then rang and he was told that his betters were faced with some "tough decisions."

As a certain six-year-old we know would say, "Flying Fatso Happy New Year!"

Scary legal documents that subsequently arrived by FedEx prevent me from offering further details, but suffice it to say, my hubbie has been liberated from the digital dungeon where he has done his best to make better for these last two years.

One doesn't know whether to feel exhilarated or anxious, and maybe there's no difference between them.

Thoughts fly.

Refuse to work for The Man ever again!
Unjob!
Cancel that Netflix sub!
Sell gas giant and find shotgun shack-like dwelling!
Continue as usual and assume answers are in transit!
Leap and the net will appear! Do what you love and the millions will follow!
Start a green business! But don't work all the time!
Run out and apply at needy Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, pronto!
Shop WalMart!
No! Mustn't do that! Keep buying organic-expensive-local-quality! No! Stop shopping, eat snow!

So. Thoughts fly and cliches follow.

I searched on "what to do when you lose your job." Everyone agrees to these preliminaries:

1. Don't panic.

2. Find out when COBRA starts.

3. File for unemployment.

I try never to say this, but DUH! How about...

Red Eft's What to Do When You're Axed, Canned or Sacked: Get Jazzed!

1. Pull out a giant piece of paper and doodle what you would most like to do with your brief time left on Earth, now that this phase of your wage slavery has ended. Include anything and everything, moneymaking or not.

2. Celebrate. You no longer work for people who don't appreciate you. A celebration needn't be expensive to be boisterous. It's OK to cry at a celebration. OK to throw a plate at a wall. Just remember you don't want to be spending money right now replacing broken plates.



3. Order (through your neighborhood independent bookseller) Making a Living While Making a Difference: The Expanded Guide to Creating Careers with a Conscience. The third edition, just out from New Society Publishers and printed on 100% recycled paper, was written by our tenant, Melissa Everett, director of Sustainable Hudson Valley. It even mentions the aforementioned mild-mannered but SACKED developer very briefly, near the beginning. Buy this book for yourself, for friends and enemies. Buy it by the bushel so we can raise Melissa's rent and retire early!

4. Look at it this way:

Actually, no. Maybe you'll look at it however you look at it, moment by moment. You might like to ignore condescending people who tell you how to look at it ("could be a good thing," "hey be thankful you had a job at all, ever," etc.). Being fired may suck. Losing your job may turn out to be the greatest gain of your life. Your moods may swing from speechless astonishment to logorrheic excitement. We who've been here, that is to say, AXED, support you in your ambivalence. We won't say "hey, you could be dead, or terminal, or blah blah blah."

5. Remember that only by refusing to do the wrong thing can you find the right thing. Save space for the right things and CAN what does not serve.

Stage Dog

I'm in a production of The Cherry Orchard, and my character, Charlotta, is supposed to have a little dog, but the director is wary of working with animals, and who can blame him? So I'm using a puppet.

I am mighty envious of my brother, a staff actor at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, who just finished a stint in War and Peace as Tsar Alexander, pictured here with his delightfully well-mannered, highly trained fellow cast member, Jumpin' Jack Flash, a Maltese.

Great Snow Vacation with Kids—Lake Placid & Burlington

We just got back from 11 lucky days of snow and fun in Lake Placid, New York and Willison (near Burlington), Vermont.

Highlights for us (though there are tons more things to do in these places):

LAKE PLACID
Family-owned Maple Leaf Inn—right in town, had a room with a kitchenette, reasonably priced (children under 10 stay free with parent). We could walk to the outdoor Olympic speed skating oval, which had public hours in the afternoon and at night—with a bonfire and holiday lights, the skating oval is not to be missed! I love skating while it's snowing!

The sleigh ride at the White Face Club with draft horses, jingle bells and plenty of blankets was most serene. If you've never had a sleigh ride, put it on your list of things to try.



Christmas dinner at Jimmy's on Main Street, overlooking Mirror Lake, was notable for its low-key atmosphere and reasonable price (try feeding a family of four a Christmas dinner at one of the fancier places for under $100). (If you're looking for hotels, a friend of mine stayed at The Golden Arrow and really liked that.)

For Cross-Country skiing, we loved Cascade Cross-Country Ski Center. Beautiful groomed trails, kid-friendly, nice people, spacious wooden lodge with big fire, veggie chili and Glögg—a sweet, hot wine beverage—and a brown-bag table for those who bring their own lunch. Here we are on one of their tree-filled trails:




The trip over to Vermont, on a car ferry across Lake Champlain, afforded spectacular mountain views, but on the way back—whoa!—white caps, water washing across the deck, a rocking ferry, spray freezing on our windshield so we couldn't see where we were going, yikes, I'm too much of a landlubber for that!

WILLISTON, VERMONT
Not far outside Burlington we found this family vacation jewel: The Catamount Outdoor Family Center. Jim and Lucy McCullough converted their 500-acre farm to a year-round haven for mountain bikers & hikers, skiers, sledders and snowshoers. The green B&B, which is attached to the ski center, was originally built by the first governor of Vermont, and the house is full of character and history. Jim and Lucy wisely made their center a non-profit so it will be around for future generations, and it's a rich resource to their community, with kids programs, local high school ski team training, night skiing on two lit trails and a sledding hill that will give you quite a chiropractic adjustment on a cold day.



We loved it there and hope to return for biking. Jim and Lucy have the right livelihood thing down pat, and they make a mean baked oatmeal, the recipe for which they readily share:

Amish Baked Oatmeal

3 cups oatmeal
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 scant tsp salt
2 beaten eggs
1 cup butter or olive oil or some other oil
1 cup milk

Mix, put in baking dish or ramikins (that's how we had it—YUM).
Bake 30 minutes, 350 degrees farenheit.

Can't recommend Catamount highly enough for family fun!

Was Tolstoy Left-Handed?

Several southpaw sites, which give me, another leftie, pleasure, claim the Count for one of our own. But a quick online search turns up only portraits of him, like this one, as a rightie:



Did the artist lie? Did Tolstoy pretend? Have the sinistral activists been passing a bum meme?

I'm hoping someone who reads this will know.

Nightmarish Chez Moi

My kids have nightmares about dismemberment, monsters and Count Olaf.

Here is the nightmare content of the sleep period from which I just awakened (or DID I?):

-my mother-in-law is angry with me

-my mother invites a big crowd in to a buffet meal just before we all have to get in a car and leave. "Mom, do we have to clean this up before we go?"

-to a guest I say, nearly in tears, "Everything in this house is broken or about to be broken."

-I have to drive to Syracuse and back in one day, without a map. After lots of guesswork I say to a man who has called my cell phone, "I can see the Carrier Dome!"

-my friend will be coming with me, my kids and my husband on this long car trip. "We'll have to eat in the car, there's no time." I say. "No!" she says, "I can't do that, we'll have to stop!" That's after we clean up the buffet dinner. We will arrive home very late.

-I don't know how to get all these people in the car to leave on this trip.

Giant Food

When I was a kid, we shopped at the Giant. That says it all. It was a vast, freezing place that we had to meander through endlessly to find what was on my Mom's list. I much preferred our occasional visits to the local grocer in a nearby town. Maybe they didn't have as much stuff, but the temperature was reasonable and you could walk across the entire floor of the place in ten seconds.

Now, my favorite place to shop is a food co-op with TWO aisles. I can find pretty much everything I need there. The only problem with the co-op is I have to drive to get to it. But I can walk to Hannafords, my town's version of the Giant.

Despite its size and subzero climate, Hannafords hasn't been so bad, because they had a special organic area on the left side of the store where I did all my shopping. This summer I got used to walking downhill to Hannafords early in the morning and getting my shopping done while nobody was there. Toting my bags home was a good strength workout.

Then they did a bad thing.

They started taking all their organic and whole foods and shoving them in among all the other highly-processed crap they sell. The transition is now virtually complete. What was the organic section at my Hannfords is now the cookies and chips section, and if I want "my kind of food" (those edibles least likely to kill me in this 21st century), I must wear roller blades or plan to spend the day wandering the toxic-smelling aisles of the wasteland that is contemporary American food, except where "organic" has made some inroads. I know this is probably a good development for the crapeaters, who may now incorporate some pesticide-free fruit or brown rice into their diets, but I am vexed. I want my ghetto back.

Surrounding the Dragon

So as I said before I have a lipoma on my arm.

It may grow or it may not. If it grows it may become uncomfortable. If I don't have surgery now, and it grows, it may be harder to operate later. Maybe. Who knows.

I'm going to try to get rid of it myself. Illustrated above is the acupuncture technique known as "surrounding the dragon," which a friend taught me so I could do it myself every day. The rest of these items she suggested or I found online by poking around. Who knows if they'll work but I think I'll give it several months and if the thing isn't growing, consider it a success.

Lipoma Reduction Regimen

chickweed tincture
lecithin
Omega oils (flax, borage, Evening Primrose, cod liver)
Aboca Cleanse and Detox Phytosolution
digestive enzymes
topical: rosemary oil, castor oil alternated with Topricin homeopathic ointment

I will revise this post later to reflect my results.

January 2008:

Many times I have thought the lipoma was getting smaller. But then it looks bigger again. It doesn't seem to have grown. Could be a bit smaller. Certainly ain't gone. Of the above, I'm out of everything except flax oil and digestive enzymes, which I haven't been taking every day. After a few weeks I ran out of acupuncture needles. Right now my strategy is to ignore the damn thing and hope that it will feel lonely and go away.

Death Penalty

My sisters and I were emailing about the Presidential race because of a narrowly-drawn internet quiz that ranks the Democratic and Republican candidates according to your level of agreement with them. (What about the other parties that participate in our vibrant participatory democracy, you ask? Don't ask.) For two of us, support for the death penalty was a deal-breaking issue. For me, it's tied to torture—the torture of the detained, the torture of the detainer and the torture of medical professionals who should not be asked to administer lethal injections and other staff saddled with the responsibility of committing executions.

Must read:

Albert Camus, "Reflections on the Guillotine," from Resistance, Rebellion and Death.

Must hear:

David Isay and Stacy Abramson, producers, Witness to an Execution (audio).

These 2008 U.S. candidates oppose the death penalty: Elaine Brown, Dennis Kucinich, Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama, Mike Gravel, Ron Paul.

How Cats Smell

Once while improvising the dialogue for a movie, my daughter, aged three at the time, said, "My mother calls me Miss I-Love-You because I smell nice."

It's true that smelling nice goes a long way toward making a creature lovable.

One reason I am a cat person is that cats smell nice.

Today our cat, Pat Lavender Will, smells like:

a tatami mat.

Nice smell.

Other days he smells like:

cookies baking

bread rising under a dish cloth

pretzels just out of the oven

forest after rain storm

a bed of moss sitting under a fern

my edition of Great Expectations

A cat, curled and sleeping, smells most intensely of the nice smell s/he's smelling of on that particular day. The fur of the somnolent cat traps the aromas of happy human emotional memory. This is one way in which cats heal humans. Also, their purring quite possibly cures ills (theirs and ours) through vibration, but I don't want to stray from the topic of Cats Smell Nice.



This may not win me friends in certain quarters, but dogs never smell like the items on my list. Too often, dogs' coats smell of sour cheese and their breath of poo. When I meet a nice-smelling dog, I confess, I am surprised. Glad, but surprised. And cats don't drool, but I don't want to go on comparing and comparing, like some people do, for example the makers of the Hollywood movie Cats and Dogs, a vehicle so stereotyped and rejecting of cats that it inspired my daughter to make an oppositional film critical of Dogs, called Dogs and Cats.

For a spiritual moment with your feline friend, enjoy reading aloud "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey," by Christopher Smart, 1722-1771

Magnetic Reaction Incident

"There is no pain. The magnetic field and radio waves are not felt."

—Online Medical Encyclopedia on having an MRI


There's a funny swelling on my arm that I noticed this summer on vacation while taking a walk along the lake road with my mom. "Hm, this is funny," kind of thing. Below the elbow.

My naturopath thought it might be a lipoma or a cyst. He said go see someone who can order an MRI. I found an osteopath that is actually! covered! by! my! health! insurance! (United Healthcare). He thought it might be simple swelling from an injury or possibly a sarcoma. I had the MRI today.

Two very nice technicians positioned me on my stomach with my head turned in a way that would be comfortable for an owl but was rather severe for a mere human and told me not to move. This was after much finessing of pillows and towels; they did their best. After the first image was done—I assume it was done because the random knocking and buzzing had stopped—maybe during the second image, my arm began to tingle and spasm. This happened only from the elbow down, the part of me that was inside the smaller tube. The rest of me was crammed inside the larger tube, the one you see when you look at a picture of an MRI machine.

After 40 minutes or so of that, right before I was going to squeeze the panic button and tell them thanks but no thanks because my neck and shoulders were aching so much,the technicians popped my tray out of the MRI oven to give me an injection of gadolinium (look it up and ask if you're going to have it!) before the contrast images. I said "I'm having a weird sensation of tingling and spasms. I can feel the magnetism and it's rather unpleasant."

Nurse: That's probably your arm falling asleep from the awkward position.

Me: No. I don't feel it unless the machine is taking an image. It's the magnetism I'm feeling.

Technician: She's probably right. Some people are sensitive to radiomagnetic fields.

Oh yeah! I forgot! Cell phones, electrical lines, microwaves, all that good stuff that's not really so good, and sometimes we notice its effects! I thought of William Hurt at the end of Altered States, when his arm goes all barmy and primeval, with what appears to be throbbing string cheese spiraling under his skin. It felt like that looked, if you know what I mean.

Nurse: How about this injection? You ready?

Me: Not if this gadolinium stuff is going to make these sensations stronger, because I don't particularly like them.

Technician: That won't happen. The way it was explained to me, it's like a whole lot of little tiny magnets in your tissue, to make a better image.

Yuck?!

I reminded myself that I was engaged in a safe and painless process and said well, okay.

I don't know what my bump is yet, but I do know that having an MRI is not necessarily a sensation-free experience. It took quite a bit of googling to find out anything but the "MRIs are Safe and Painless Unless You're a Severe Claustrophobe" School of Radiology.

I searched on MRI and sensitivity, sensations, tingling, radiomagnetic, may experience, I feel sensitive, electromagnetic, etc. Finally I reached various organizations that deal with ElectroSensitivity or Electrical Hypersensitivity.

I'm kind of sensitive to the term sensitive.

Feels like a way of blaming the canary.

My arm still feels weird.

I hope someone else who has experienced the sensations that can accompany the realignment of atoms in the human body will find this and feel a little less alone.

Check out:

Electrosensitivity—UK

Powerwatch

Here's a tune composed with MRI machine sounds as the percussive track

Here are MP3 files of the MRI machine sounds

That last site is for kids but it's better for adults about to have an MRI than the adult sites I looked at, except for the fact that no one mentions possible side effects experienced by those with electromagnetic sensitivity, and maybe they should.

Yoo Hoo, Anyone Home?

Not much, actually. I'm out running around a lot. Run, red eft, run!

How did I spend my summer, you ask?

Well my dear, I was eck-ting! I even got paid to do it! Somehow I got roped into being a cast member in a murder mystery dinner theater. This one takes place on a boat that goes up and down the Hudson. I played a 50s beauty queen in one and a Texan sheriff in the other (see if you can find me as Sheriff Wesson!)



I like to think I brought a heavy dose of realness to these roles. It was gobs of fun and I almost made enough money to pay for the IPhone I got my hubby for his birthday! Here he is modeling it:



Yes, you've seen Fred MacMurray at his merriest and now you've seen my husband at his geekiest. He has been enjoying hacking the thing and the two of them are inseparable. "Iphone therephore I am," he has been known to say.

Other cool things about the summer: my son got up on two waterskis, my daughter started studying the harp, my parents got to visit their summer home in a new incarnation— beautifully rebuilt, painted and decorated by my sister, and a different sister, who was to be married in September narrowly escaped a bad match when her fiancé, a few weeks before the big day, backed out. One can only breathe a sigh of relief! Close call, girlfriend!

Favorite recordings heard this summer: the dramatic monologues of Ruth Draper, the new CD by Joanna Newsome, Nabokov's Lolita read by Jeremy Irons

Favorite readings read this summer: essays by David Mamet, even when they bug me which is often; Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis, the story "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed" by Robert Olen Butler, anything and everything on Ubuweb

In literary news, I had a story published on Pindeldyboz

And in much more significant literary news, the phenomenal Grace Paley passed on. As summer becomes fall I will read and re-read my favorite story of hers, "Wants," I will wish she'd lived to see those wants fulfilled, and I will remember her as a generous, kind, receptive teacher. When I met her at a writing institute she came and sat down at a table next to me at lunchtime and struck up a conversation like we were old friends. She looked a bit like my grandmother, but she wrote like nobody else.

Scene Studies

I'm taking an acting class, my second one with the same teacher and most of the same folks. Serious fun.

What are your favorite books on theater/performance/acting?

A few I have been reading:

Uta Hagen's Acting Class DVD (you can watch some of it online)
Respect for the Actor by Uta Hagen
True and False and Writing in Restaurants by David Mamet
John Heilpern's Confe