Cross your fingers

I had a second interview yesterday with a museum, and it went well, as did the first. This is a good thing. Being a housewife is a lonely occupation, and it is making me churlish and resentful of Mr. H who gets to leave the house everyday and spend 10+ hours away. I try to stay busy in the gardens, volunteering, reading, and walking; but it’s more the idea of actually getting dressed that hinders me from leaving the house than the fact that I’m too discouraged to do much more than read online articles and scour the internet for free tarot readings.

So since I’m being painfully honest, I will tell you that I fucked up one question in the interview process, that ubiquitous “what are your five year plans” question. I detest that question, principally because I’m usually still debating what I want to do on the weekend and five years is still, well, five years away.

I blabbered something or other, I really don’t remember, but what I was thinking was this:

Honestly? I don’t set career goals anymore, I set life goals.
I am disillusioned with the current state of my country’s economy.
I am disillusioned by the trend of paying exorbitant sums for higher education, sums that have crippled my peers with student loan debt and stifled the creativity that was fostered when they ‘studied what they loved.’
I am disillusioned to know that a degree(s) in the Humanities is worth less than high school training at the ‘Joint Tech,’ and to see that students and lovers of the Humanities routinely become the butt of jokes.
I am disillusioned when I consider that paying for vocational training is de rigueur and is not only expected but demanded.
I am disillusioned with the system of state education that churns out barely literate students faster than the chocolates on the line in “I Love Lucy.”
I am disillusioned with the trend toward outsourcing and the instability that it has created.
I feel downtrodden when I consider that I will be working until I am 80 (when it is difficult to find respectable and gainful employment at 32).

So forgive me if I sup at the cup of bitterness from time to time, but I can’t in good conscience chirp some drivel about publishing, promotion, and leadership positions when I am feeling so uncertain.

However, if you care to know, my life goals in five years include:

• Deriving 50%+ of my household’s energy needs from non-fossil fuels (w/ the ultimate goal of living ‘off the grid’)
• Personally harvesting 50%+ of my household’s foodstuffs
• Establishing (even quite small to start) a foundation to provide funding for the study of the arts and humanities
• Working within reasonable biking/walking distance of my place of employment
• Setting up a small apiary
• Planting a few more fruit trees
• Working through some more of the Louis Vuitton luggage I’ve been carrying around for two decades
• Running 5 miles without walking
• Drawing and writing a bio-diversity index and map of my property
• Harvesting a successful crop of ginseng root
• Making (and having) healthy babies, just one would be ok...

So what about you… what are your non-career oriented five year plans?

Femme Fatale

I saw her out of the corner of my eye. The light was dim, and the shadows were deep, but I could tell that she was gorgeous. Her long, smooth legs stretched every which way, and she casually looked at those around her not caring who watched her. She had that relaxed, nubile quality, you know, the quality that indicates awareness of her power to attract--and catch.

She was surrounded by dozens more, younger and as beautiful, but without that sensuality that comes with age and experience. Their movements as they milled about didn't have the grace and ease that she had.

I watched her covertly for a moment and picked up my glass of red wine. She uncrossed her legs and stepped out of the shadows. I turned and looked directly at her. My hair fell like a curtain across my shoulders as I stared at her. She was aware of my gaze, but it did not unnerve her.

I took a sip of wine, and moved toward her. I thought she waved in my general direction, but it could have been my imagination.

Mr. H walked into the room and touched my elbow. I jumped and glanced wildly at her to see if she saw my man walk up to me. She did, but she didn't move, she just gazed at both of us. We are an interesting couple to look at, we're both blonds, his tousled and curly, mine long and straight.

I acted casual, shifted my weight to one hip, leaned into my husband, and motioned her way delicately. "Do you see her?"

His eyes widened as he took her in, "She's huge!"

I nodded "I know, she's an Amazon, look at those legs"

He concurred, a gleam of appreciation lit his eyes "She is absolutely gorgeous... let's see if she's still there after dinner..."

When we returned to the dim room after eating, she was nowhere to be seen. And neither were the dozens of newly hatched spiderlings that had just left her web.

Hey, Hey Momma...a Concert Review--Cleveland, Ohio June 15

Mr. H and I drove up to Cleveland yesterday to see Allison Krauss and Robert Plant perform with T-Bone Burnett at some corporate named venue shaped like a Conestoga wagon. We got there early and sat on a bench on the oxbow of the Cuyahoga (yes the one that burned 40 years ago) sipping rapidly warming beer and watching the crowd.

I was telling Mr. H about this article that discussed how much a woman's breasts move when she's moving and how that energy could be used to generate enough energy to say power her I-Pod. The article said that the movement could be as little as an inch (B-cup) up to 35 inches (D-cup and above)!!!! The weather was hot and sticky and most women were in tanks or strappy shirts, so invariably we started watching for this movement.

About 10 minutes went by, and I lamented the fact that only small-breasted women must like Blue-grass and rock, when a Venus walked by wearing a strappy red dress, with thighs like a Thoroughbred and breasts meandering across her chest like tousling chubby puppies.

We both nodded and stared like hungry babes at a lactating seminar. "Nice" we both concurred, and baby, those girls MOVED!!!

The concert really was incredible, Sharon Little opened, and we were really into her smooth but husky voice and rapport with the crowd.

I thought Allison Krauss and Robert Plant would just perform songs from their album "Raising Sand," but, my friends, they covered Led Zeppelin's Black Dog and the sound was like lightning. I felt like St. Teresa pierced through the heart by an angel, immortalized by Bernini in the throes of a toe-clenching orgasm. Yeah, it was that amazing, but then my association with that song goes back a long way with sex and drugs factoring in as well.

I'll add, too, that a Jimmy Page solo played on the fiddle has its own power. I love Page's solos, music that's gritty with auto dust and grease, industrial dirt, brick acoustics, and steel echoes. But man, a Page solo on the fiddle smells like bayou mud, coal dust, mountain laurel, and it thrums with the intrinsic rhythm of labor that ends when the work is done and Friday night plans that include music-making. It was that good.

It was a little showy, but not overly so, and Krauss gave us a few classic blue-grass gospel songs that really show the power and range of her voice (god, I hate sounding like an AI influenced critic). Plant was quick to point out that that was "American Music" which made me bristle, my nation has given the world a LOT of musical genres not just gospel.

I'm sure it's difficult for artists like Plant, artists who have evolved and transcended the development of others of their species. Artists--and people--who are bored with looking for others who ask intelligent questions, seek challenging experiences, and apply profound reflections to their artwork, and you could tell that Plant really appreciated meeting Krauss and experiencing the evolution of blue-grass.

But I reflected on another sound that's evolving, and it's a sound that's also uniquely American. It's a sound that's barely mainstream, but I've heard it from Buffalo to Pittsburgh (w/ a hard G sound), Detroit to Cleveland, Akron to Chicago. Rust Belt Blues they call it, here and there, it's more like a collective thought swirling around right now that has not been coalesced and claimed.

You hear it played by skinny white girls with teeth shattered by an early addiction to Meth, old black men dressed like dapper gentlemen dog-tired of oppression, mid-aged rockers who remember a dream, and young people crushed into subservience by the capitalist machine yet still a razor's edge away from poverty. It's a sound that will evolve into it's own genre given time and independence.

I heard it as we left the concert, we followed the flow of the crowd the opposite direction of where I parked (damn mob mentality), so we scaled a bluff and worked our way back to the flat of the river valley. At the top of the bluff with a perfect view of the stage a small coven of older cars were parked Lovers Lane fashion and a few people sat around a cooler of beer, pickin', and baby they were grinnin'.

Turkey in the Straw...Turkey in the HEY!

Continuing the ongoing tale of Jedi (my German shepherd) and Dixie (the neighbor’s damn turkey)…

It’s almost high summer and the temperature during the days has reached nearly 90 degrees a time or two. I have no compunctions about wandering around the house in just a bikini bottom, so this has become my uniform of choice while I tweak resumes, write cover letters, and search the internet for jobs. We’re far enough out and the neighbors all have day jobs, so I wander in and out of the house and gardens in said uniform, too. A couple of weeks ago, I opened the back door to let Jedi out, and caught a flash of white out of the corner of my eye and saw my dog’s eyes narrow w/ a wolf-y gleam, his head drop below his shoulders, and his long legs stretch in a sprint. I swear he was grinning.

Fuck!!! I caught sight of him racing to the edge of the woods (where his electronic collar usually stops him), and his ears lay back for a moment as he crossed his line. The turkey crashed through the brush just ahead of him pip-pip-pipping the whole time. I ran into the house, and threw on Mr. H’s wind-breaker that hung at the back door, his heavy work boots that shouldn’t be at the back door, and a leash, and I clomped through the back yard as fast as I could.

I yelled for my dog and pushed into the brush, trying to keep an eye out for poison ivy, the turkey, and thorny multiflora. Low brambly branches snagged my ponytail and tore my bare legs. I couldn’t see anything but the steep embankment and a wall of briars, and I could only hear the turkey’s high-pitched pipping and the jangling collar of Jedi. I’m not sure if the Doppler Effect applies to turkeys and dogs, but it was soon evident that they were behind me, so I turned around and pushed through the brambles that had closed behind me as if I had never pushed through. The two raced up through the back, through the herb garden, and out toward the front. I clumped behind, legs bleeding, hair straggly, ponytail twisted, cursing dogs, turkeys, and briars.

When I reached the front, all was still and I looked around leash in hand…where the hell---hell no… Cat-cornered, across the street in the old section of the cemetery and behind a tombstone, I saw white feathers flying, and the top of my dog’s back. I wanted to stop and throw up, but I clomped across the road yelling “Jedi!!” “Jedi, NO!!!” He stopped and looked at me over the stone, then renewed his efforts more vigorously. I ran into the cemetery to stop the carnage.

He straddled the turkey and ripped at her feathers, I’ll spare the gruesome details, but the turkey lay with her head on the earth and looked peaceful and Gandhi-like as she resigned herself to her perceived fate. I pushed my dog off her and clipped his lead to his collar. I smoothed her wings over her back, picked up the turkey, and she nestled into my shoulder. Jedi continued to lunge at her, and circled my legs with his lead. Every few feet I had to stop, whirl around, and yell "SIT!!!".

I suddenly heard a familiar engine whining up the hill. Oh yes, my friends, John Deere’s finest, pulling a hay wagon at approximately 8 mph with a line of cars a quarter of a mile behind. Every one of those drivers waved, just as friendly as if I had been selling flowers at the side of the road, and not standing in a cemetery in a flapping windbreaker and bikini bottom, with bloody legs, a wild black dog, a bloodied turkey, and a scraggly Punky Brewster-like side ponytail.

The earth, of course, did not swallow me whole, and I spent the rest of the afternoon applying echinacea salve to the turkey’s back and reviewing the major decisions of my life.

*the turkey lives yet*

We shall overcome... what?

I read a New York Times article and its subsequent comments this morning and it has stayed with me. My thoughts have run from one extreme to another, and it is still difficult to sort and develop concrete observations about it.

The article discussed the greying of tenured professors with politically liberal opinions and the replacement with young (Gen X) professors of moderate political opinion. It didn't make a huge sociological statement, just reported w/ little substantiated fact (e.g. no data that indicated all baby boomers were liberal or that all Gen Xers were moderate) that this trend was occurring. Commenters (as we do) pointed out holes in the research, issues not discussed, and questioned the article's objectivity. I'll not expand on any of those issues.

But one commenter, alarmed by the implications of the trend, observed that Generation X was the generation "that didn't know history" and I sat up at that.

First a background, American History as American Social history is a relatively recent undertaking. The decision to focus critical examination and education not on political events, but rather on the ideas of change and acculturation has been steeped in controversy. Historians, from the turn of the century, through the 1970s, used the nuances of both the political and social environments to shape interpretations of American history.

The climax was finally reached during an address by Carl N. Degler at the 1986 American Historical Association’s annual meeting. At this meeting, Degler implored historians to focus neither on the political environment nor on the conflicts that beleaguer every nation, but rather to focus on the comparative nature of what it means to be an American. By asserting this Social History methodology of interpreting history, Degler contributed to the AHA's ushering in of a new era of American historiographical thought. Social history thereafter effectively displaced the Political history that had been loosely taught in American schools since Webster published his first Reader. Social history filled a niche in American historiographic thought that was necessary for generations of scholars to connect and identify with that elusive definition of an American. Historic study became a study of change over time, not simply a record of events.

This influenced the pedagogical environment of the 1980s, and American public schools re-structured texts and teaching methods. My education was different, though. For my first 9 years of education, I attended a private academy, where the administration reviewed these new methods and threw them out because they smacked of Marxism and relativism. That school was incredibly stifling and toxic in many ways, but they relied on records of wars and political events to structure American history education.

While an undergrad, I found a used book-store at the edge of a residential neighborhood where many professors dumped their books. I picked up works critical to political and social history debate for $.50 to $2, copies that were dog-eared and filled with marginalia. Scrawled notes that questioned the stated premises. That was when my true education began, but it was critical to have a background knowledge of recorded American political history, the history written by the conquerors, in order to understand the context and perspective of the vanquised.

My peers, even those who profess to love history and have studied it at institutions of higher education, have not had the fortune to study history as I did.

While it is important to recognize that patterns of subjugation begin with the narrow control of perspective--not simply fact--history education has focused on issues that are essentially pedantic if a foundation based on fact with a stated perspective has not been laid. The most alarming aspect of history education, though, is the complete absence of the concept of citizenship and awareness that an informed citizenry should make decisions based on historic precedents. Without knowledge of those precedents, civic responsibility cannot exist.

The current trend of cultural history divorced from political context and non-reflective of broader implications is as alarming as current mathematic pedagogical trends that favor teaching functional use of calculators over memorization of formulas, tables, and methods. Public schools are for training informed citizens not simply workers, right? Right?

chirp, chirp, chirp, wind blowing, papers swirling,

tumbleweed enters stage left

cue the Old West wah wah, waaaaaah music...

Fool for the City

My current state of employment has inspired me to get to know the "city" I have lived in for (oh god) five years. Inspired may not be the right word, although no-alternative-and-bored-witless sounds so harsh.

When we moved here 5 years ago, the crossroads half a mile from our house was still a village, and the no zoning aspect appealed to mine and Mr. H's very libertarian world view (village building inspectors who volunteer two hours once a week typically don't care if you build a steel-lined fallout shelter in the backyard, city inspectors have to feel like they are really earning their tax-supported dollars and demand blueprints, surveys, and gas line checks before you plant a tree). Since then, however, the village voted to become a city, replete with all the bureaucracies, community development, and yes, property taxes of a proper city. Additionally, they changed the name from a perfectly serviceable name that hearkened to the English ancestry that settled the area and mined the ridges for coal, to the township name prefaced with the word new.

Despite the formalities, the area still has a creepy hybrid of backroad mentality and urban expectations. The urban expectation floored me when I saw the councilman for our 'ward' (10 farms and a dozen or so residences) at the Memorial Day parade... the conversation went something like this:

Councilman: "I heard you pissed off so-and-so when you used an out of town company to replace your septic system... Buy New____ we've got to support local business..."

Me (shocked): "Um, did so-and-so tell you that he misquoted me by $3,000, and planned on installing a system that wouldn't meet county code?"

Councilman: "Well, uh, he said you were rude on the phone."

Me: "Well...he does run a shitty business, doesn't he?"

But the backroads mentality is the fun part. Not quite Deliverance, it's still as interesting to see what brand of folksy wisdom comes out of my neighbor's mouths as it is to see what they put out on the curb on trash day (contracted privately or by Bill who drives a pick-up with a wood slatted bed with "Bill's Rubbish, Trash, and Tire Hawling" painted on the side...yes, I'm not kidding).

A couple days ago I stopped at one of the businesses--a seasonal greenhouse, funerary and lawn ornament store--to look at the pots. The owner, a 50-ish woman who strongly resembles Saturday Night Live's Pat, and wears Red Wing boots, cotton shorts, a wife beater, and a Browning hat leaned on the Contact paper covered counter and played with the bell while I browsed.

Me: I'm looking for a couple of big pots [ding] for a banana tree and a palm tree that I want to re-pot. [ding]

Her: Whelp, there's thems in the corner, those over there... [ding, ding]

Me: Hmmmm, ok, well I better let my husband know before I drop $120 on pots [ding]...

Her: [ding] yeah... before he kills you... [ding, ding, ding]

Me: Yeah. [ding]

Does anyone else find that remark bizarre? I can't tell, I've been here too long. But what about you, any conflicts between the sacred urbanity of the city and the profane primitivism of the country in your neck of the woods?

The Piano in the Corner

Our pictures are grainy and yellowed, and we laugh at the funky clothes, our mom’s hairstyles, and the ankle-deep pile of the shag carpeting. My sister and I posed for the camera, Christmas, birthdays, first day of school. That’s the two of us, arms around each other, wearing my mother’s heels and the cream lace curtains that hung from the living room window for most of the eighties. That’s the two of us in our footed pajamas, backs to the camera showing off our identical waist-length shiny blonde hair. Nearly every indoor picture was posed before my mother's natural mahogany upright piano that was a 10th birthday gift from her doting parents. In the pictures from that day, she's nearly bursting with pride and excitement.

The instrument served as an axis mundi providing a continuum throughout my childhood. It was a familiar feature of middle-class Americana, the piano in the corner. Richard Bushman in The Refinement of America indicated that this 19th century parlor fixture was tangible proof that a family could afford luxuries, items beyond the merely functional or practical, and indeed, whether or not anyone played was irrelevant to the social prestige the instrument afforded a family. The piano may have served as a Victorian plasma television, but in our household it was nanny, confidante, and income generator.

The satin-finish Story & Clark entertained my sister and me for hours. I would like to say the time was spent practicing and learning to play, but my mother was the only pianist in the family. Instead, the three foot pedals served as gas, brake and clutch for my own make-believe drag races, the lid that protected the ivory keys held fast a corner of the sheet that stretched across the living room when I built tents, and the “floor is lava” game was never complete without leaping from the back of the couch to the piano bench. All the fistfuls of dandelions we brought our mother were put on top of the piano in a jelly jar, until our senior pictures assumed this place of honor.

For my mother, the piano served as therapy, and she played in solitude. I’m sure she had visions as a child of her family gathering around and singing merrily, but my father preferred silence. Often while outside playing I would hear her music, and I would sit under the back window to listen. She played mostly old Protestant church hymns "It is Well with My Soul," "A Mighty Fortress," "Shall We Gather at the River," and the like, but I thought she rivaled Liberace. She poured her heart into making music, and I know that she would mourn that piano like a beloved family member should anything happen to it. I remember the deep sadness that surrounded my grandfather’s funeral, and the hours she played. Our old black cat, Abby, kept her company while she grieved. The cat sat on the shelf typically reserved for sheet music and reached out from time to time to pat my mother’s cheek tenderly.

My mother brought in extra income after school by teaching piano lessons to other people’s children. The tick of the metronome kept me company as I played with my Lincoln Logs, and we all celebrated when a struggling student graduated from Haydn’s Surprise! to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik…and played it successfully… all the way through.

My favorite memory, though, is of sitting next to my sister on the piano bench pounding out “Heart & Soul” by the hour. Sometimes we would play it adagio at the low end, and it would sound like a funeral dirge, and sometimes she would throw in a little jazzy riff that impressed me to no end.

So what about you. Was there a piano in your household? An axis mundi in your life? An inanimate object that’s as familiar as a relative? I want to hear about it if there was…


Heart and Soul