Jeremiah's Aunt

Book.

2011-09-21T21:13:00.003-05:00

A few years ago, I was going through a difficult time.
The details of the difficult time don't matter much. The good thing was that I had people around who loved me and supported me in what I needed to do to get through it.
I didn't know what I needed to do, but I kind of had a sense. I heard about a place where one could have a silent retreat--which was important because an element of what was difficult about that time was that it was noisy. I was taking in a lot of stuff and had no place to put it.
On that retreat, something happened to me. My difficulties didn't all disappear at once or anything like that. But something happened, something that worked a transformation.
The story of that time, the journey I ended up taking, and what that journey held for my life was not something that I could talk about directly. I still can't address it head on, which is why this post is so choppy. The only way to get at it was to tell a story.
So, I wrote a story. The funny thing is that the story I ended up writing was about telling a story. It was about taking something that is inside of you and letting it live in the outside world, where it may have a life you did not plan for it to have. Storytelling is risky that way.
I have no children of my own, but the story also turned out to be about raising a child. It also turned out to be about a lot of other unexpected things. Storytelling is surprising that way.
I recently found out there's a website that lets you publicize a creative work if you want to invite people to help you release it into the wild, as it were. It helps musicians raise the money to release their own CDs, directors to create their own movies, and authors publish their own books. The story I wrote--which is called, of all things, "The Story"--has had much help along the way already from people encouraging it into existence. I would like to take the step of getting it out in the world more, so I am going to make it into a book, and I'm going to ask for help getting it published.
I've recruited a talented young illustrator, so part of the cost of publishing will be her fees--to be put toward her college fund.
Watch this space. I'll be announcing more details soon.

About where I work: Peaslee Neighborhood Center

2011-08-25T12:25:00.001-05:00

I was reminded recently that I have not written an update in a while, particularly about my new job, which is Administrative Assisting at Peaslee Neighborhood Center. Peaslee is a non-profit with a unique history. I love telling the story of Peaslee because it is about seemingly overwhelming odds and the incredible tenacity of those who challenged the odds. I'll quote from the "Peaslee-for-the-People-Project," a well-photocopied paper in the file cabinet here:
"In the summer of 1982 the Cincinnati Board of Education closed the doors of Peaslee School. That corner at 14th and Sycamore in Cincinnati's inner city had served the education of our neighborhood children for over a hundred years. An old school building had been torn down several years before leaving a vacant lot and a small, modernly equipped, newer annex we called Peaslee Primary...
"The school stood vacant for fourteen months...We felt that the loss of the school was connected with the beginnings of loss of the fabric of the neighborhood.
"But our neighborhood, called Over-the-Rhine, had faced losses before and the people who were hit would rebound to fight harder next time. Those fourteen months proved to be such a time...
"Parents who had fought for the school, community supporters, our Over-the-Rhine Community Council, and our neighborhood development corporation pulled together to work out a proposal for usage of the school and an offer for purchase. After negotiating back and forth (over six months) with the School Board we came up with the agreement that the community would put $15,000 cash down and be given one year to raise the remaining purchase price of $225,000 plus that year's maintenance cost. We envisioned a building that would belong to the low-income community and be used as an educational and cultural center for our integrated neighborhood. Community control of this building would also help to stabilize the low-income housing around it. But the $240,000 plus price tag made that look like an impossible dream. We knew our real work had just begun...
"Our community has an average annual income of $6000/year per family. One person in our group sat down and figured out how many people would have to donate $10 to achieve our goal. I think that's when the $225,000 price tag really began to hit home and we began to realize that we'd have to get outside our community for financial support and explain what Peaslee was and could become for us. We'd have to convince 22,500 people!
"One thing that helped was...we drew up a tentative timeline so that we could see how much we would need to have raised by March, then by August, etc. This helped set goals along the way and broke down the enormous sum to smaller attainable amounts...
"The fundraising committee was made up of about six core members. We decided to meet every week for a business meeting then follow with a work session. The business meetings were times to discuss ideas, divide up tasks, and keep in touch. For the work sessions we'd invite more people and do things like fold brochures, prepare bulk mailings, and write thank you notes. We wanted to have a large-group meeting inviting more citywide supporters every six to eight weeks. We were able to do this about three times and it was helpful for us to feel the broader support, as well as to have fresh ideas and new contacts...
"With the help of the development committee we put together proposals for several foundations. A great breakthrough for us was a grant support of $25,000 from the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. This grant legitimized us with the more conservative Cincinnati Business Community. From there we were able to get a listing from the Chamber of Commerce giving us business addresses and pre-addressed labels. We sent out word about our grant and asked each business to contribute $100. Because we had been able to keep our project in the media, both through newspaper editorials and television coverage of events, the businesses began to adopt us as a 'community working to improve itself' and that increased their monetary support...
"During our fight to keep the school open we had met radio, television, and newspaper reporters. We renewed those contacts with the media during this campaign by inviting them to events and press conferences. For example, on Martin Luther King Day we were able to get into the building and held a 'Clean Up/Fundraising Kick-off,' where we invited neighborhood people to come straighten up and mop down the building and read Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech...
"As our last two months closed in we had to meet and assess where we'd come and how far we had to go...At this meeting we decided to approach the School Board, present the details of all we had done toward earning our money, plus all the positive things we had done toward education aside from Peaslee (work in other neighborhood schools, support of the tax levy, development of the Education Task Force at our Community Council). We were able to tell them that we were confident that we would have $200,000 in cash by the deadline...Because of our community's hard work and broader community support we were successful in having the purchase price reduced to $200,000 plus the maintenance costs...
"On December 14, 1984 we were able to turn over $209,239.13 to the Cincinnati School Board and received the keys for Peaslee School."
Dream the impossible dream.

Scott Christopher Damien Pircher, August 12, 1975--June 15, 2011

2011-06-18T14:21:00.003-05:00

I've been flooded with memories, things I haven't thought about for years.
His kitten Trapper Keeper. He used to tease me with it because the kitten on it was so cute--we'd play a game where he'd hold it up and I'd pretend I'd lose all interest in everything else to coo over the cuteness of the kitten.
My sister had read me The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe while I was in kindergarten. I found out he knew the book then, too.
In first grade we sat next to each other--gosh, I think we sat next to each other in every grade, thinking back. We must have been organized in every room alphabetically, ensuring Pancella and Pircher would have a lot of interaction over the course of nine years. Other things we had in common--walking home for lunch, coming to school early to attend Mass before the start of the school day, even more than was required (the whole school was supposed to go on Mass on Wednesdays). I think he want because he was an altar boy. We were born in the same month. And we were both reading the same sort of books. I know because in second or third grade I wrote a story in which I mentioned the sea god Poseidon, having just read Robert Graves' Greek Gods and Heroes. When Scott read my story, he argued very insistently that I had the sea god's name wrong. He was called Neptune, he said.
The years we were in school together were the dawn of the computer age. In 4th grade or 5th, when we were 9, 10 years old--1984, 1985--we used to draw computer screens and "program" them. The computer screen would show a command prompt. We'd give it to a classmate and ask them to "type" in a command on the drawn keyboard. Depending on what command they'd type, we usually had to draw the next screen--we couldn't predict all possible results in advance--so we had a screen ready that said "PLEASE STAND BY" which we displayed while we got the next bit ready. A precursor of the hourglass cursor!
We also both wrote stories. I wrote a murder mystery once--there was a lot of Agatha Christie in the school library--in which Scott was the killer. For the next half of the school year, it seemed, he retaliated by writing a series of stories in which I was some terrible criminal or kept meeting untimely demises. It was my first hint that it was possible for me to hurt his feelings.
We were the two captains of opposing teams in Girls Chase Boys, which I've written about before. My chief memory of it now--besides how impossible it was to successfully caputre him; he could squirm out of any entrapment or turn double agent when appearing to ally with our side--is of the two of us meeting on the battlefield with the air of mutual respect one only has with a well-matched opponent. No firm boundary line between worst enemy and best friend.
In recent times--most of all this past year--we reconnected online, in touch through the magic of Gmail chat. Knwong someone else out there shared memories of being 5 to 13--not just that the memories were shared, but that we placed equal value on those memories--was a tremendous gift. He had to type but one line about Miss Rita, our first grade teacher, and I knew he remembered her how I did.
One day back in grade school, I was having a really rough time. We were all out in the park, and someone had done or said something that made me feel like dirt. I can't remember what it was now. But I remember that I was near tears when Scott came by, and I broke down crying and confided in him the sadness I felt. He listened and comforted, in an awkward pre-teen boy way. Later on--and I never found out why; maybe, probably, I again did something that hurt his feelings, because I was an awkward preteen girl, and I know now that I could be thoughtless--he mocked me by making fun of what I'd confided in him. Oh, how that hurt.
But, you know, there's grace enough. Recently I was in a spot where I really wanted a male perspective on matters, and I happened to be chatting with Scott. I plucked up the courage to confide in him about something I wasn't telling a lot of people. And he was great about it--asking good questions, giving me plenty of room to talk, ultimately offering wise advice. The risk was worth it. I can hear Scott now--"It's always worth it."

Why I Am Grateful (a tiny poem)

2011-05-27T11:20:00.002-05:00

When he smiles at you
His eyes give benediction.

Haggis!

2011-04-11T08:51:00.002-05:00

S. called me up Saturday night; this is the S. of "Free Veggies" fame. "My neighbor is selling haggis," she said.
So yesterday afternoon I wandered down a few blocks, purse in hand, and knocked on her neighbor's door. "Word on the street is that you are selling haggis," I said. No, I didn't. I gave her a bit more context for my actions than that; I told her I knew S.
I bought $5 worth, which means I may have to conduct some haggis-tastings, because $5 buys you an awful lot of haggis. S.'s neighbor told me stories of the Cincinnati Caledonian Pipes and Drums Band and their Tartan Day Ceilidh, which had been the night before. The festivities included a haggis-eating contest. (I had to ask--just how much haggis would one have to eat to win a haggis-eating contest? Answer--one cup haggis, half-cup of neeps, half-cup of tatties. [Neeps and tatties are turnips--or in this case rutabagas--and potatoes.] The premium was speed, not quantity.)
I'm planning on letting the boys in the house try the haggis. I'll just tell 'em it's a type of sausage.

Work.

2011-02-12T16:51:00.002-05:00

Last Saturday the Formed group had its monthly gathering to discuss the month's topic. (Follow this link if you're asking any of these questions at this point: "What is Formed?" Why do they gather monthly? Where can I find out more?") This month's topic was "work." Happily, one of the members of Formed is the man to whom I've referred in this blog as Our Glorious Leader, Kevin Rains, who owns a body shop, Center City Collision. Where better to discuss the concept of "work" than a place set aside for the fixing of cars, yes?
Kevin started us out with a short but meaty reflection on the place of work in Scripture. He pointed out that in the beginning God worked--the first passages of Scripture record God's six days of Creation. Because we believe in three Persons in one God, and that wherever one member of the Trinity is, the others are as well, we know Creation was the work of a community of artists.
Kevin also talked about order and chaos. He mentioned that in the Message, Peterson calls chaos "a soup of nothingness." The Spirit of God broods like a bird over this abyss--note this, Kevin said; God is not mired in the muck. He asked (he meant to ask rhetorically, but most of us raised our hands!), "How many of you sometimes feel mired in chaos when you work?"
The God who spoke light into existence can and will strengthen us if we ask. We should not forget work is hard, though. Our task as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, Kevin said, is to help bring order out of chaos. And good golly there's a lot of chaos out there. But discouragement and despair won't help. Kevin said he tried to frame work in this way, and it sounded to me like a useful prod to keep on keepin' on: "If you didn't do the work you do--if no one did the work you do--what would happen?"
The actual talk on Saturday was a discussion with Chuck Proudfit, Greg York and Robert Lockridge, who each first spoke on their own and then did a roundtable with questions. But if I do all the talking here, I wouldn't be engaged in creative work with a community of artists, so if someone else who was there wants to chime in about the rest of the day, this would be welcomed.

On Prayer, with Mary Laymon

2010-12-04T14:16:00.003-05:00

Just got back (literally, like seconds ago) from a gathering downstairs at the Speckled Bird. It was a Formed gathering. (By the way, I love living in a hyperlinked world. Cuts down on the amount of space I take up explaining things. Go find out what Formed is and then come back.)
Mary Laymon spoke on the month's focus, prayer. She loves talking about prayer, and I love listening to people talking about what they love. Some thoughts, random but may give a taste of the experience of being there:
--Prayer can, and has, saved lives. "Save"--we talked about how "save" can mean "To heal and make whole."
--The voice of God is within all of us.
--It takes time and practice to learn to hear God's voice. He's quiet. But He is also willing to wait until you are willing to listen.
--If you're an extrovert, and you have a chatty sort of personality, God may chat with you right back, but there are other "languages" in which God may speak to you--it may not just be the classic sort of Inner Voice model. God can speak through songs, through images, through relationships, through dreams, through nature.
--How do we distinguish God's voice from our own voice, or the voices of darkness and destruction? a) God's voice will be congruent with Scripture, so it will direct us toward love of neighbor, love of the poor; following it will also produce the fruits of the Spirit: kindness, gentleness, peace. b) There will be an "echo"--God will be persistent, so we may hear the same message, see the same image, experience the same circumstances, over and over again until we stop and pay attention. c) A key way to check--ALWAYS take what you think you're hearing from God and check it out with a trusted "soul friend" who has some practice discerning God's voice. d) Sometimes you'll only know it's God's voice through hindsight--"oh! That's what God was saying! I should have listened!" or "Gosh, I'm glad I listened!"
--We practiced different prayer methods. We prayed using a picture, asking God to use the image to reveal something to us. Then we had a choice of activities: praying by molding clay without having a preconceived notion of what the clay should look like, praying while walking, praying while studying nature, lectio divina (praying using Scripture), etc. etc.
--To pray, you have to be brave. It's scary to be intimate with God--He wants to transform us. We'll see things in ourselves that aren't so lovely.
--God wants to heal us not just for our own sake but so that we can be a blessing to others.
--If you go are willing to trust God enough to go into a scary place, God can take you back out of it.

First Sunday of Advent

2010-11-28T21:02:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Angie F., who invited various writerly folk to do reflections for the Vineyard Central Advent gatherings this year. This is what I contributed for today.

My family’s Advent wreath has a wire base, four metal candleholders, plastic holly leaves and berries. The greenery is splotched with purple and pink wax from, oh, probably forty years’ worth of candles. The candleholders likewise are well and truly blackened. We could get two years out of Advent candles, since we only lit them at suppertime; in the second year, on Christmas Eve, Mom liked to keep the candles burning until they melted to nothing. So the flames charred the sides of the candleholders which are four-petalled, like flowers.
The Advent wreath had to be fetched today, the first Sunday of Advent, from the basement, from wherever it had been stashed—someplace we’d put it with the thought that of course we’d remember where we put it, and of course we never did.
The Christmas decorations also live in the basement. The tree, the lights, the ornaments, the crèche would all be brought forth three Sundays from now and would not return to their homes until Epiphany or, if we were feeling particularly liturgically correct, the Sunday after that—the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. From January until the fourth week of Advent, I could visit them down in the basement.
Go there with me now. We’re in the basement of the house I grew up in. I’m a little kid, seven, eight, nine, ten. I’m wearing roller skates, and I’ve been skating for hours—goodness knows how the rumbling of the metal wheels on the concrete floor has been reverberating through the house. But I’ve taken a break from racing a circuit around the main room. I’ve gone back toward the washer and dryer, turned left at the wooden drying rack with its spokes like a turnstile, past Dad’s workbench with its ancient tools that none of us, Dad included, have the handyman wherewithal to use well. Back here is the water heater, the furnace, and a shelf of Christmas decorations—also a tiny squeeze space granting secret-passage access to the main room.
I’ve turned on the bare bulb above the workbench and I’ve dug out the crèche. I don’t unwrap any decorations or fiddle with the box of lights. I don’t get out Mary or Joseph or a shepherd or sheep, Wise Men or their camel or the angel Gabriel. I leave the stable empty of everyone, but I turn a key on its side, feeling the resistance of the gears, and when I let go, a tiny metal spool unwinds, and even tinier metal teeth on a metal comb catch on the bits of spool that are raised like Braille letters. The music box in the crèche plays “Silent Night.”
I listen a while, and then I return to skating, stopping or slowing at times to listen for the chime of the song. I go back upstairs and wonder through the day if I am really hearing it still or just imagining it. A music box, as it slows, sounds out its chimes at longer and longer intervals. When you think it has run out of faith, as if an Advent candle could melt to nothing before its vigil is complete, another note will ring, sweet as any that came before.

God is good--all the time! And all the time God is good!

2010-11-20T17:23:00.000-05:00

Hello!
It has been a rather long time since I have written about my employment adventures.
Not long ago, I was working as a pre-kindergarten teacher. More recently still, I ceased being a pre-kindergarten teacher. They say you do not understand what something is really and truly like, from the inside out, until you do it. So it was with teaching--once I got through student teaching, finding a job, and then running a classroom, it was clear it was not for me, not at this stage of my life. It was not fun having to tell the people I worked for, people I had great respect for, that they would have to find a new pre-kindergarten teacher two months into the school year. It was even less fun saying goodbye to the kiddos.
It's all worked out, though. I got a job at my parish, St. Joseph's. I am there part-time helping with administrative matters, "office-y stuff" as I called it when one of my friends asked recently what exactly I am doing. I started this past week. We sent out a mailing to families of people who had died and who had their funerals at St. Joe's--we wanted to let the families know we will be remembering their loved ones at Mass this weekend. We also sent out our annual appeal letter. So far, this is similar to the sort of activities I was involved in at Our Daily Bread--letting people know what is going on with the parish, providing a means for staying involved.
St. Joe's has been my parish for almost five years now; I started attending there shortly after moving to Cincinnati. It's a lively place where the most amazing gospel music is wedded to the Roman Rite, the Catholic liturgical form I am most familiar with. So it reminds me a teensy bit of Mass at St. Thomas, my old home parish, after it became the center for the Vietnamese Catholic community in St. Louis. It is a place where the soul of the music we sing helps to shape the experience of Eucharist. "The Spirit is alive and well here at St. Joseph," one of our regular announcers is fond of saying.
Before I started the program where I got my Master's in Teaching, I was taking classes towards a Master's in Lay Pastoral Ministry at the Athenaeum of Ohio. So, interestingly, parish work was something I've been long interested in. I just didn't know how to go about getting involved. Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Free Veggies

2010-07-27T07:23:00.003-05:00

M. parked the box truck on the sidewalk next to St. E's at one o'clock in the afternoon. S. drove up in her car moments later. I could see it all from my window--the produce boxes stacked five high or more in the back of the truck, S. chatting with curious local folk.
S. works for an outreach at a church in the Cincinnati suburbs. They'd gotten a huge donation of veggies, way more than they could distribute, so she'd offered to take it here to Norwood where she knew the need was also great. Plus, she knew she could recruit people to do drive-by veggie drop-offs to friends and strangers.
All told, she'd brought half a pallet of potatoes, cucumbers and yellow squash--enough to justify the use of a moving van.
I came down from my apartment in time to see most of the potatoes go. There had only been a few sacks of those--nothing like the boxes upon boxes of squash and cucumbers. Local Vineyard folk showed up on bike, in cars, on foot, to take what they could carry and share it round. S. called or texted others she knew who hadn't shown up just so they wouldn't miss out.
When cars would pass, she'd shout like a carnival barker: "FREE SQUASH AND CUCUMBERS!" Many cars slowed and parked in response, and many a box disappeared from the truck via this method. Other cars' windows were rolled up, the drivers protected by a/c from the scorcher of a Saturday. I amused myself wondering what they made of the scene--a woman yelling something unheard, surrounded on all sides by produce. S. got me to put a notice on the chalkboard outside of church: "FREE VEGGIES." That ought to have cleared up some confusion.
I brought out some grocery bags I had stockpiled so people wouldn't have to take a whole box if they couldn't use veggies in bulk. After a few folk had made use of this option, S. said to me, "We're running out of bags." I played Elijah and assured her, "The bags aren't going to run out." Sure enough, M., another Vineyard bud from down the street, soon offered to bring bags from her house's stockpile.
S. works with a Hispanic ministry; she was occasionally switching off yelling "FREE SQUASH AND CUCUMBERS!" to its Spanish equivalent. Doing this caught the attention of a fella who was headed to a church in Northern Kentucky, a Hispanic outreach one hundred members strong. We sent him on his way with eight boxes or so. "God provides!" S. told him cheerfully in Spanish.
We were never overwhelmed with a horde of people all at once, but folks came in a steady stream. We heard the word was spreading through the neighborhood--squash-and-cucumber recipients passing the news on to people on their front stoops. My friend D. and I went knocking on doors to see if a delivery might be welcome.
By three o'clock the box truck was empty, and S. was beaming.
At Mass the next day, when the priest came to Jesus' words, "Take this, all of you, and eat it," I heard S.'s voice ringing loud and clear, "FREE...!"

The End of the Year

2010-05-22T19:40:00.002-05:00

One of the second-grade objectives is to discuss inventors and inventions. Another is to formulate "how?" questions--the beginnings of scientific inquiry. So this week I gave the students a challenge. I gave each table of children (six tables in all) some supplies--a double-A battery, a flashlight lightbulb, and aluminum foil. I told them to try to invent something.
A girl at one of the tables made the important discovery that if she wrapped the battery in the foil, the battery became warm. (In fact, the battery can get quite hot. Impressionable youth that may be reading this: this is an experiment that should only be attempted with adult supervision!) Some minutes later, a whoop of triumph came from a girl at another table: she had succeeded in getting the flashlight lightbulb to "spark," as she put it. Soon all the tables were giving her method a shot. Some could replicate her results, some couldn't; it's tricky to get the metal rim of the lightbulb to stay in contact with the foil, and to keep the foil in contact with both ends of the battery. But it's pretty darn cool when it works.
I asked them to try to explain what happened. One boy (who said he helps his dad with electric stuff all the time) said that the foil reflected the light from the lights on the ceiling, and that's what gave the lightbulb the necessary electricity; that, plus of course the nitrogen gas inside the battery.
We have five days left. Everything that needs to be graded has already been assigned, already turned in. The trick now is to continue our routine as closely as possible so as not to encourage more craziness than will naturally happen in the final week of school. That means we will still do language arts and science and social studies in the morning and we will still do math in the afternoon. I will still give out worksheets. The class has not yet risen up in mutiny.
We had a school concert yesterday afternoon. One of the songs was a Motown-inspired declaration of love for pizza (imagine first-through-fifth graders harmonizing "Pizza! Pizza!" to the tune of "My Girl", and you'll get the general gist). I was able to handle it up until the point a young'un went to the mike and started intoning a spoken part mid-song. Then I gave out a helpless cry of laughter that prompted a bunch of students to turn around--"Oh," I saw their thought balloons saying. "It was a teacher!"
Also enjoyable: a song about proper handwashing techniques set to the melody of Beyonce's "Single Ladies."

Of Rainstorms and Rossini

2010-05-01T16:37:00.002-05:00

The recent spate of bad weather in Cincinnati reminds me I have neglected to share a story from a week or two back in the second grade classroom, a day when I was flying solo (my mentor having to be in another room). It was a day when we didn't have "specials"--art or music or gym. We had done our math work as always just after lunch; I believe after that we were doing something related to social studies, but in the middle of it a massive storm hit. There was thunder, there was lightning, there was wind and great pelting raindrops. I was unprepared for everyone's reaction--one student asked to sit elsewhere in the room instead of next to the windows because she was afraid of thunderstorms. Other boys and girls were getting up to go stand at the windows to get a better view. It was chaos. So I said, "Everyone back to your seats, and I will tell you a story."
Magic words. I said, "Let me tell you what Miss Pancella's mother did when Miss Pancella was a little girl and there was a storm. Miss Pancella's mother--Mrs. Pancella--is a very wise woman. She knows a lot about calming the fears of children. I believe she became so wise because she had, not one--" I raised an index finger--"Not two"--I continued counting off and showed the count on my hands--"not three, or four, or five, but SIX children." Gasps of astonishment all around. "And Miss Pancella is not her first, not her second...but the sixth! So she had plenty of practice before I came around.
"When Miss Pancella was a little girl and a thunderstorm rolled through, Mrs. Pancella put a record on the record player. Who here knows what a record is?"
A little boy raised his hand. When I called on him, he said, "It's like a CD, only bigger."
"Close enough. This record was of the William Tell Overture. Now, you've probably heard part of the William Tell Overture--" I hummed part of the ending, the "Lone Ranger" portion. The class all agreed--yes, they knew it. "That part sounds like galloping horses; the beginning part sounds like the approach of a storm. There are low drums for far-away thunder, and notes that are like drops of rain--plink, plink, plink! And cymbal crashes for lightning. Mrs. Pancella would play that whole record so we could listen to the storm come and go. Somehow a storm was less scary when it was in music."
"Hey!" somebody called. "The rain stopped!"
Everyone looked out the windows and confirmed it. There was a brief outbreak of chaos again as everyone celebrated, and then one of these magical thinkers said, "Miss Pancella made the rain stop with her story!"
But of course, Miss Pancella did no such thing. Mrs. Pancella did.

Poisson d'Avril!

2010-04-12T20:12:00.002-05:00

With a $2.95 binder from Staples, paper from the Archbishop Alter Library's printers, and two hundred ninety-six hours of hard labor, I have laid my research paper to rest. (I'm exaggerating a bit. Two hundred ninety-six is the number of hours I worried about the research paper, not the hours I actually toiled.) Thus my academic activities are drawing to a close--not done with 'em yet! There's still a capstone presentation to go!--and so it seemed a good time to pick up my cap and gown for graduation.
I'm looking at them now, all bundled in their happy cellophane wrapper with a label proclaiming the contents in clipped cadence. The package includes, for example, "1 TASSEL: REGULAR. BANDED. BLACK." Graduation accoutrements don't mess around.
I just got back from Spring Break, aka Research Paper Last Chance Gulch (if I didn't do it then, there'd be no way to concentrate on it before its due date, Thursday of this week). Our school--and here I'm talking about where I'm student teaching--had its last pre-Spring Break day April 1st. In other classrooms and out on the playground there were parties and Easter egg hunts; in Miss Pancella's class there was a math test. "How the Teacher Stole Easter" is what they'll title my life story. I did, however, seek to expand the second graders' cultural horizons with trivia I'd learned in high school French class. "Do you know what they do on April Fools Day in France?" I asked them. "People go around sticking paper cut-outs of fish on other people's backs, and then they run away shouting 'Poisson d'Avril!' 'April Fish!'" Oh, my kids were mighty intrigued by this. They worked hard on the pronunciation of "poisson"; they asked me to write the words on the board so they could spell them correctly; they wrote them on Post-Its and slapped them on my back. In retaliation, I stuck construction-paper April Fish in every one of their backpacks for them to discover discover on their arrival home.
In other news--yes, the reason I have not been writing about school for a while (besides the fact that I've been writing for school; see the topic "research paper" above) is that I have spent forty days listening to, and writing about, forty versions of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. And yes, in case you were wondering--the most common reaction, when I tell people this, is "I can't believe you spent forty days listening to Jesus Christ Superstar. Yeah--I can't either, but the blog posts are testimony, and I'm the only one with access to the jeremiahsaunt.blogspot.com account, so I must have done it.
Back to teaching. And graduation. And this year of apprenticeship approaching its end. I figure it doesn't hurt to ask--do you know of schools that are hiring? There are about twenty-five of us entering the labor pool at once, and I'll vouch for one and all.

The Easter Vigil

2010-04-03T18:07:00.003-05:00

Listening to my last two Jesus Christ Superstars today (two because I had a duplicate, and I wanted to make sure I did indeed listen to 40 different versions, as advertised). The first: Karaoke JCS--all the backing tracks. I love this because I love singing along! The second is the 20th anniversary London revival from 1992 starring Paul Nicholas. I haven't any comment on that one yet because I've just put it on now.
Tonight is the Easter Vigil. I doubt I'll be online after that, and besides, even if I was, by the time I get home it will be Easter Sunday. So I had best write now.
The great JCS Lent is drawing to a close. Tonight at Mass we will light a fire and light the Easter Candle from it to show the light of the risen Christ breaking into the world after crucifixion and entombment. This is the part of the story not told in Jesus Christ Superstar--which isn't a strike against it. We don't tell that part of the story when we proclaim the Passion of Christ on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. We leave Jesus in the tomb.
Today I had the unprecedented experience of being offered condolences on Jesus' death. I was in conversation with a boy who didn't quite know what was being commemorated these few days; when I told him someone had died, he said, "I am sorry for your loss."
These last forty days have been about that loss. I've listened to it sung, and screamed, in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish and Russian. I've heard three decades' worth of re-envisioning the source material, which was itself a re-envisioning of source material nearly 2000 years old. But I was caught off guard by his expression of sympathy.
I'll leave you with that. My sympathies are with you on the death of Jesus. What a devastating loss.
And then tomorrow--a new song.

Good Friday

2010-04-02T21:59:00.002-05:00

Jesus Christ Superstar awards, Part II...
Best Pilate--Oh, Barry Dennen, hands down. Just the way he hisses "You hypocrites! You hate us more than him!" when the crowd is declaring its allegiance to Caesar would let him win it. Or when he whispers the last words of his lines after he has Jesus flogged: "You've got to be...careful. You could be dead...soon." His Pilate has pathos and tragic hero potential--which is all the more impressive given that he's a middle manager/bureaucrat. I love how Dennen takes us through Pilate's sneering dismissal of Christ to grudging respect to fear for his safety and final anger mixed with sadness.
Best Mary Magdalene--Again, there's no contest. Yvonne Elliman owns this role. Like Dennen, she packs everything into her performances. The "brown album" version of "Everything's Alright," for instance, has self-assurance to the point of swagger, but also a kind of gentleness and vulnerability.
Best Jesus--This is tough, but I think I have to give this to the Jesus of the original Japanese cast recording, whoever he may be. He always makes the right choices for how to deliver his lines. He doesn't belt out the high notes on "Gethsemane," for instance, which would seem to be an instant disqualification, but everything he says is invested with believable emotion. He also brings a dignity, a gravitas to the part which is too often lacking.
Best Judas--I'll be honest--it's tempting to just say Carl Anderson here. But I cannot get over Roger Daltrey in the BBC2 rendition. Wow. Carl Anderson may own the role, but Roger Daltrey is schooling everyone on how you put on a rock opera. (Just listen to the music on the video I've linked.)

Maundy Thursday

2010-04-01T21:36:00.002-05:00

Tonight, the Part I of the Jesus Christ Superstar awards. I think I can speak with some authority now on whose interpretation of various characters was the best. So let's get to it, shall we?
Best Herod--Oh, let's give this one to Alice Cooper from the '96 London "cast recording" (in quotes since Alice Cooper wasn't actually in the cast of the show--he was just recruited for the recording). He plays it more circus sideshow than campy lounge lizard and so stands out from the crowd.
Best Simon Zealotes--Kelly Hogan, from Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection. Again, part of the appeal is the casting against expectation--hey, look, a chick is singing this song!--but you can't win a prestigious award like this on shock value alone. Her take on an often over-the-top number is restrained, soulful, bombast-free.
Best Caiaphas--I don't remember a particular Caiaphas sticking out, so let's just give this one to a representative from the former Communist bloc on general principle.
Part II coming soon...

Tenebrae

2010-03-31T19:26:00.004-05:00

Today's Jesus Christ Superstar was arranged by Nick Ingman (a conductor/arranger who has worked with many in the pop music world as well as in film scoring; Shakespeare in Love is one of his more famous projects) and released in 1971. The LP includes a letter of reference from none other than Tim Rice, who sounds in it as if he was listening over my shoulder this Lent:
"Since the original record release of our rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar in October 1970, Andrew Lloyd Webber and I have been very lucky in that many musicians and singers have recorded their own treatments of selections from the opera. Some of these versions of Superstar have differed wildly from our original recording but as long as the new interpretation stands up in its own right as an interesting piece of musical production we don't mind whether it's performed by a symphony orchestra, a rock group, a middle-of-the-road choir or by a brass band (all of which has happened). If it's serious, and if it's musical, we are delighted and feel it can only help the work as a whole."
He goes on to particularly praise Nick's orchestrations, which are certainly pretty interesting, a mix of symphony and chorus not quite as easy-listening as Percy Faith but not quite rock and roll, either.
The other interesting bit in Tim Rice's blurb is toward the end, where he says, "I knew that we had no need to worry about Nick's work not being serious or musical, and I knew that we would have no need to avoid speaking to Nick for the next few years. (There are a few gentlemen who have tackled Superstar in such a way that I do not feel a strong friendship would be forged were Andrew and I to meet them.)"
Ouch!
And speaking of arrangements not quite passing muster with the creators, Greg sent me this li'l tidbit. Guess I won't be listening to that version next year!

The Disciples

2010-03-30T20:14:00.002-05:00

I know nothing about this recording of Jesus Christ Superstar other than it is from the 70s, so I am not going to comment on it. Instead, let's continue our wrapping-up theme. Today I want to talk about my New Favorite Line.
I call it that even though I don't think I had an Old Favorite Line. I have favorite songs--early on in my life, I could just listen to "Everything's All Right" over and over, and later my allegiance switched to the "Trial Before Pilate." But individual lyrics? None of them stood out in particular.
Then I engaged in this Lenten experiment. When I heard the original Broadway cast recording, a moment came in the "Trial Before Pilate" I had not heard in the recordings I knew before this Lent--the brown album, the movie soundtrack, or Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection (a version we will get to soon). It came right after Pilate seethes:
"Look at your Jesus Christ.
I'll agree--he's mad. Ought to be locked up.
But--that is not a reason to destroy him.
He's a sad little man,
Not a king or god--
Not a thief--I need a crime!"
The crowd answers him in staccato rhythm. I couldn't make out what they were saying in this version. I heard the same shouts in the BBC Radio 2 version but still couldn't make them resolve into intelligible speech. Finally I had to consult Greg. He said the mystery lines were:
"Kill him! He says
He's God--He's a blasphemer.
He'll conquer you, and us,
And every Caesar!"
(In some versions they say "And even Caesar"--I prefer "every.")
Why is this so fantastic? Because it cuts right to the heart of the Jesus Problem. Far from being "harmless," as Pilate later claims Jesus is, He is the most dangerous character there can be. And killing Him is not going to solve the problem He poses. Brendan Kennelly sums up the paradox well in his Book of Judas poem "No Image Fits":
"I had not understood that annihilation
Makes him live with an intensity I cannot understand."

Holy Week!

2010-03-29T20:03:00.003-05:00

We are on the last week of Jesus Christ Superstar!
So, first up--the original Australian cast from 1972. Good Pilate in this one, and the Judas is willing to go off the beaten path of notes more often than some. Very effective use of a children's chorus singing "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ/Who are you, what have you sacrificed?"--especially because gradually a women's chorus picks up the chant. Jesus tends to indicate Drama by singing...at...half...speed.
I'm going to do some summing-up on my Lenten experience this week. First, let's take a look at how the decades are represented. Now, this isn't the full list--Greg still has a couple recordings to send me, but of the thirty-eight I have (yes, he did find a replacement for the duplicate), by far the most come from the 1970s--eighteen in all. And of those, none are from later than, I think, 1975; they cluster mostly around 1972. The next most-represented decade is the 2000s: thirteen recordings there. I also have seven recordings from the '90s, and none--NONE--from the '80s (unless, as I said, the recordings I have not gotten yet are from that benighted decade).
I would say that the largest stylistic variation are in the 70s recordings--what with Moog Superstar and The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar and the two--count'em two--easy-listening offerings. The 2000s had Surferstar and what was billed by the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra as a "21st century tribute," but even these were pretty faithful to the original, whereas Soul and Moog just spun off into the ether.

Took a break from listening to Jesus Christ Superstar...

2010-03-27T20:45:00.002-05:00

...in order to watch Jesus Christ Superstar.
Yes, it wasn't on the schedule yet, but tonight I sat down with a few friends (several of whom had never seen it) to watch the 1973 movie version.
We had palms on hand as decorations, which made one of our number speculate that the evening would be like a Rocky Horror event in which we'd become part of the action; this didn't happen (well, okay, there was a little bit of dancing along to the "Simon Zealotes" scene) but we did provide some commentary as we watched, a la MST3K. I'd never before noticed the similarity of the "Damned for All Time" riff to the Batman theme!
I promised some additional commentary on the emotional effectiveness of kitsch--why, in spite of my instinct to sneer at it, I still found The Living Strings and Living Voices' JCS heartwrenching. The best quote I can offer on the subject comes from Bill Flanagan's book U2 at the End of the World. He's reporting on a conversation Bono was having with friends about meeting the artist Jeff Koons. Koons told Bono that the most generous kind of art lets its audience decide how to react to it. Flanagan says, "Koons's philosophy suggests that with so much of contemporary culture devoted to trying to con some emotional response from people, the most honest art is a glass sculpture of a puppy, or one of those paintings of little waifs with big eyes--because that obvious, corny, simplemended art that wears its intentions on its sleeve is the only art attempting no subliminal manipulation."

Can you believe it took this long for it to happen?

2010-03-26T20:10:00.002-05:00

I got a repeat Jesus Christ Superstar today. Given the crazy logistics of tracking down 40 different versions of the rock opera, you'd have thought this would have happened sooner, but Greg is a resourceful man. Nevertheless, today's version was the London recording featuring Alice Cooper as Herod. So--no new review today, and I am not going to listen to the next recording until I confirm that Mr. Matzker found a spare. Not to say that 39 versions of JCS doesn't also have a ring to it...

Sing Along With Judas

2010-03-25T20:15:00.004-05:00

Today's Jesus Christ Superstar was from 1971. "Music from the Rock Opera Played by The Living Strings and Living Voices."
Quoth the Greg Matzker: "All I am going to say is, don't hate me for this one."
If earlier this week we had elevator music JCS, today we had glee club JCS. The Living Strings, Google informs me, were the creation of RCA Records when mood music had its heyday. All right--do you remember the pilot of WKRP in Cincinnati, where DJ Johnny Fever (who wasn't Johnny Fever yet, but that's another story) played The Hallelujah Tabernacle Choir's rendition of "You're Having My Baby?" Think of that, and you get a sense of what this was like. WIth very precise, clean harmonies surrounded by swelling strings from some unbilled European orchestra, male voices and female voices trade off on lines like "Nazareth, your famous son/should have stayed a great unknown/Like his father carving wood, he'd have made good."
The name should have been a tipoff. Hey, at least it wasn't Living Marimbas--another actual part of the Living Strings cohort. But "Living Voices"? As opposed to "Dead Voices," I suppose, which are nototoriously hard to record?
Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but as I listened I started finding it emotionally affecting in spite of, or perhaps because of, the off-the-charts kitsch. More to come when I am more awake...

Argentinian JCS, 2007

2010-03-24T21:24:00.002-05:00

The ending countdown has begun...we are in the last ten days of Lent (we don't count Sundays, remember) so these are our final ten Jesus Christ Superstars!
Can't say much tonight as I am very tired. But I should mention that I watched a bit of the movie Romero this evening after listening to my daily Passion opera, and all of the talk by well-intentioned people advising Romero not to take the sacrificial path...yeah, it sounded kinda familiar. "We are occupied...have you forgotten how put down we are?"

1974 Dutch JCS

2010-03-23T19:45:00.002-05:00

This Jesus Christ Superstar surprised me. I didn't expect such drastically shortened versions of songs, for one thing. It was (mostly) sung in Dutch, so I'm not sure which verses hit the cutting room floor, but with a number like "Damned for All Time," where Judas usually explains quite a bit about his motives for turning Jesus in, he got maybe a couple of lines sung before we were moving on. Any time there was customarily a few verses, there'd be at least one missing--with the exception I think of "King Herod's Song." Why the heavy Reader's Digesting of the music? Was it to get the whole musical on one LP instead of two?
Another surprise was the much more prominent role of choruses. On "King Herod's Song," for instance, every refrain ("So you are the Christ, yes, the great Jesus Christ" or words to that effect) was sung by a whole troupe of voices. It made it seem like the crucifixion was a far more communal act instead of the decision of a few powerful men.
The occasional smattering of English into the mix was something else that got my attention--in "Hosanna" the crowd sang, "Hey JC, JC, won't you smile at me?" instead of the Dutch equivalent, and in "Superstar" they sang "Who are you, what have you sacrificed?" and "Do you think you're what they say you are?"
I'll never know if they would have done the 39 lashes in English or Dutch, since the "Trial Before Pilate" was cut to bare bones. The only thing left was a staccato shout of the crowd and Pilate's final lines, and the only reason I know it was Pilate's final lines was that the last word sounded like "marionette"--and the English original has him ending with "Die, if you want to, you innocent puppet!"

Heaven's Hold Music

2010-03-22T22:22:00.002-05:00

The aptly-named Percy Faith released his take on Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971, the year after "the brown album" came out, some months before the first Broadway performances, and two years before the movie. In the early 70s, JCS must have been inescapable...how inescapable, you ask? Percy Faith had a minor Adult Contemporary hit with "Everything's All Right"--a finger-snappin' string-heavy easy-listening instrumental. Imagine--you could have heard it playing in the elevator!
He doesn't do "Damned For All Time" or "Judas' Death" as mood music, which is just as well.
He also released an album of orchestral arrangements of Beatles songs in 1970. These two recordings are sold together these days. Should I comment on what it would be like to go from listening to "The Ballad of John and Yoko" (with its "The way things are going/they're gonna crucify me" chorus) to "The Trial Before Pilate"? No, I don't think I should.

Drew Sarich as Jesus (Really)

2010-03-20T22:38:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I was wrong. Yesterday's production of Jesus Christ Superstar featured St. Louis boy-who-done-good Drew Sarich as Judas. Today's was the one where he played Jesus. Greg wanted me to hear both versions so I could decide which I liked better.
And I have to say, Jesus wins hands down. If only for "Gethsemane"--the best version I've heard yet. Sarich is able to pull off the trick of going through the emotional wringer of Jesus' agony in the garden while still nailing all the high notes. More often I've heard the actor playing Jesus being technically proficient or emotional--or simply screaming. This was heart-wrenching but it was also some seriously great singing.
This production featured a female Herod--first time I've heard that. She would have impressed me more if she hadn't kept stumbling over her lines. I do think making Herod a trouser role for a chick is an interesting idea; I hope some other production I hear this Lent tries the same thing.
Pilate, in the trial scene, right after the 39 lashes, suddenly started speaking lines in German (this production was done in Germany). I wonder what he was saying--it didn't seem to fit the rhythm of what his next lines would have been ("Where are you from, Jesus? What do you want, Jesus? Tell me"), though those lines were omitted. It's interesting to me how jarring it is to hear someone talk after two hours or so of straight singing. It's also interesting to me that I don't find it at all strange that all the lines of dialogue are sung in JCS.
I was making invites for a JCS-watching party as I was listening to this. (It'll be Saturday, March 27th at 7 pm. Email me for further info.) For the front of the invite, I drew the angels from the cover of the brown album. I remember how as a kid I puzzled over that image, not actually getting what it was supposed to represent. I also remember when I first realized that the music from the first half of the show was more often than not "recycled" in the second half, and what a wealth of ironic commentary on the action was available because of this.

Drew Sarich as Jesus

2010-03-19T20:52:00.002-05:00

Listened to a version of JCS today starring the St. Louisan Drew Sarich as Jesus. Intriguingly, I discovered that not only does my St. Louis friend Greg know him, but one of my Cincinnati friends does as well. (Does that make him their personal Jesus?) (So sorry. Couldn't resist.)
A good production, and Drew sang well. Once again I had it on for my drive to/from school. We've been talking about nonstandard units of measurement in the second grade class I'm student teaching. I can now say that the length of my trip to school is eight Jesus Christ Superstar long; that is, it takes from the overture to "Pilate's Dream" to get there.

1972 Original London Cast, or, if God is an American, then Pilate is...

2010-03-18T20:22:00.004-05:00

Here's a good place to talk about accents. Have you ever noticed that when someone is supposed to be a Roman soldier/governor/emperor/what have you on stage or screen, they speak with a British accent? Go back and check out your standard sword-and-sandal epics, and you will see I'm right. It is as though the way we moderns think of Empire is through the Rule of Britannia, and we just transfer that back 2000 years or so.
British is the way Pilate "officially" sounds in JCS--a crisp, upper crust accent full of disdain--and I don't think it's just because the role's originator had spent fifteen years in London. I think that we just expect Romans to sound like this now (when really, shouldn't they be sounding a bit more like Tony Soprano?).
All of this to say Pilate had it tough in this version because everyone had a British accent.

Remscheid Cast

2010-03-17T20:48:00.002-05:00

Lent is officially half over (this past Sunday was Laetare Sunday); it took me half of Lent to find a solution to my not-enough-hours-in-the-day-to-listen-to-Jesus Christ Superstar dilemma. The last couple of nights, as you may have noticed, I skimped by falling asleep to JCS--which makes it kinda hard to blog about JCS. Today I thought, hey, wait a minute. It takes me about a half-hour to drive to work.
I took my computer with me.
It was great, especially today with the Remscheid cast from 2003. I'm guessing this is a German production, but they sung in English (with just a slight tendency to overenunciate giving away the accent), so it was quite singalongable. Wonderful springlike weather, great driving music, and I got up to "Gethsemane" by the time I got home. Gonna try this again tomorrow!
This was a good production, fairly standard. I'm beginning to notice how long a shadow was cast by the early JCSs--the brown album and the movie in particular. Most people seem content to, for instance, simply imitate Carl Anderson's adlibs at key points in "Heaven on their Minds," which is contrary to the whole idea of soul singing. This Judas was like that, whereas the Jesus in this version did actually dare to change the timing of a word or two. Props to him.

Jesus Christ Surferstar

2010-03-16T22:41:00.004-05:00

No, I'm not kidding. There is indeed a 2-CD set, "Inspired by the original soundtrack album," of tributes recorded by surf rock bands (Urban Surf Kings, Susan & the Surftones, The Atlantics). They don't skimp--this isn't a highlights reel, it's the whole show. Ever found yourself thinking, "You know, I love JCS, but what it really needs is to be vaguely reminiscent of the theme song to The Munsters"? Then this compilation is for you. Bonus: The cover image--Jesus riding a wave on a cross-shaped board. (Still not kidding.)
What's odd here (besides, you know, the whole concept) is that some bands elect to perform the songs as instrumentals while some include at least some of the lyrics. So the first words heard are "It seems to me a strange thing mystifying," and there's an Elvis-ish spoken section in "Judas' Death": "Aw, Mama, does he love me too?"

The Moog and the Dutch and some folks speaking Spanish on one of two continents

2010-03-15T20:29:00.003-05:00

Playing a bit of catchup with the Jesus Christ Superstar versions I neglected to comment on last week.
1974's Moog Superstar reminded me of the lounge music revival of the early 90s, which means I was picturing JCS playing breezily in the background as hipsters drank martinis. What can I say about it...? Not a lot of vocals, a whole lotta Moog. Moog trying to be harpsichord, Moog trying to be out on some astral plane or another. Oh, and "I Don't Know How to Love Him" featured a female vocalist reciting the words as poetry. Before this, I thought that William Shatner's pop music/beat poetry delivery was something unique; maybe she was performing a homage to the Rocket Man?
Dutch 2005 came next. This seemed like a fairly standard version...until, again, "I Don't Know How To Love Him." Do you know the number one surefire way of impressing me? Going a cappella. And that's what the Dutch did! I suspect actually that the "backup band" here was a pre-existing a cappella ensemble, both because of the precision and innovation of the harmonies and because the Netherlands have a thriving a cappella scene.
I can't imagine why I haven't heard this attempted before--going instrumentless added to the intimacy of Mary Magdalene's confession here.
The other great innovation in this production was another Magdalene-moment--in the midst of the "39 Lashes," we start to hear Mary screaming, and then everything fades out but her solo rendition of "Could We Start Again Please?" It was a fantastic stopped-time setup. When it ended with her going back into hysterics as the countdown resumed, it was a devastating moment.
I'm listening now to either a 2004 Spanish cast recording or a 2001 Mexican one. (It came with two labels.) This one features a heavy reliance on dance-music beats--haven't heard any full-on remixes yet, thankfully, but the night is young.
Gonna obey the letter of the law if not the spirit tonight, and gonna keep this on as I head to bed...I will report on what effect this might have on my dreams.

"It is...from the devil."

2010-03-13T20:56:00.002-05:00

I think I heard from the opposition today.
One of my friends (who shall remain nameless--unless he wants to identify himself--because I didn't ask whether I could quote him) told me about asking a Russian exchange student for the newly translated-and-released Jesus Christ Superstar from Moscow. The student said he would not get it for him for the reason quoted in the title of this post. I listened to Moscow '92 a few days ago (is it the first Russian recording? Couldn't tell you for sure) and didn't think there was anything objectionable in it. As I've said before, though, I know there are people who find the very idea of JCS blasphemous, and perhaps the Russian exchange student was one of those.
Or maybe he was thinking of the version I listened to today.
This was the first JCS I found disturbing. A whole bunch of separate elements combined to give me this impression. In the overture, sections of the score were unexpectedly repeated or omitted--and when you're as familiar with the score as I am, any deviation is attention-grabbing. But I didn't think that was so bad at first because variety is the spice of Lent.
Then it seemed like the songs had gotten out of order somehow--was Jesus singing "Poor Jerusalem" immediately afterward? It was the melody for it, but what the words were of course I can't say. It was strange to hear it here because this song comes in most versions right after "Simon Zealotes" (or "Simon de Fanaticus," as his name is wonderfully rendered in the Dutch JCS I listened to yesterday).
Things just got weirder as they went. The melodic setting for the last moments of Jesus' trial before Pilate (where he sings, "Where are you from, Jesus?") showed up right after "Everything's All Right," but again, what were they actually singing? As this continued to happen, I formed a theory--maybe the Russian translators decided the audience wouldn't have the background knowledge of the story necessary to make sense of the show, and so they added musical numbers to provide more backstory. They just recycled melodies used elsewhere so as to preserve the show's integrity.
But what was this? "Hosanna" was like a dance remix of everything, incorporating elements of "Simon Zealotes," "Superstar," "Strange Thing Mystifying," "Death of Judas," "Last Supper," and probably a couple of other things I didn't recognize in regurgitated format.
It didn't make sense. And it certainly did not preserve the integrity of the show. It was like putting the show in a Cuisinart.
What else bothered me...
...the heavy reverb placed on most of the voices most of the time, making them sound less than human. It gave the impression the singers were stranded inside a cavernous, desolate space.
...the way choral parts were buried deep in the mix. I strained to hear them. Again, the impression was of great distance between everyone.
...the "wobble" used in some of the songs to make the instruments sound out of tune. This effect was used a lot in "The Temple"--together with another restating of the "Poor Jerusalem" theme.
...making "I Don't Know How To Love Him" a duet. ???? And then adding some of the melody to "King Herod's Song" into it--yeah, that musical theme does not have the connotations you want in this part of the show.
I could go on, but I'll spare you. I'll just say the overarching sense was of ugliness--ripping something apart and then putting it back together haphazardly.

So I'm not gonna write much about Jesus Christ Superstar tonight...

2010-03-12T20:56:00.003-05:00

...even though over the past three days I have listened to, but not yet talked about, Russia 1992, 1974's Moog Superstar (by Terry Wallace and His Interstellar Moog Sounds, natch) and Dutch 2005.
I'm just gonna let you contemplate that lineup until I write again.

The man behind it all: Greg Matzker (Part II)

2010-03-11T21:18:00.003-05:00

This is the second part of an email interview with the one responsible for finding forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar for me to contemplate this Lent. (Part I was yesterday.)

What are the qualities you personally look for in your "ideal" Judas, Jesus, Herod, Pilate, Mary Magdalene?

My ideal Judas--anger. When the show starts he is already not in a good place. I think of this character as Sweeney Todd. The madness is already there but let's not go too over the top too soon; we have to wait for the right moment in the show or soon you just don't care.
Jesus is interesting. Its not his story--not really, anyway. Its Judas's story. Most of the times I have seen the show they try to bring this character to the front and he shouldn't be. In almost every scene he is the secondary character. He needs to have this sense of loss, that he really doesn't know what his next move should be. But when he gets (lets say excited) the notes he sings should be done with conviction but almost never NEVER yelled.
Herod--camp all the way, only because it is the comic relief in the show that very much needs to happen at that point. The audience needs that break. I have seen it played gay, as a lounge singer (why not a gay lounge singer?) and I have even seen it done straight forward [which] honestly made me lose interest in the rest of the show; it made it seem like the show was going on WAY TOO LONG.
Pilate--what a mixed bag this is. In too many productions I have seen this almost as a throw away part becasue he is not on stage all that much. You need an actor here. This person needs to run the gamut when it comes to emotions, a lot of times all within the same song. This man is way too scared to do the wrong thing.
Mary Magdalene--someday I will find a recording of Janis Joplin singing ANYTHING from this part. This part really is the mother hen. Let's face it: it is the only real female part in the show. Whoever does this part needs to be able to hold her own, make her presence known each and every moment she is on stage even when she is not singing or part of the scene. Think of mothers. They are controlling but forgiving, loving but knowing when it is time to let you be you.

Are you ever going to cast me as Pontius Pilate?

After listening to the recordings I have this to say: you will have to fight me for it. BRING IT ON. I would love to do the part and give you front row seats. I think I am ready, old enough and think I would do you so very proud.

The man behind it all: Greg Matzker (Part I)

2010-03-10T20:53:00.002-05:00

...Artistic Director of Marble Stage Theatre and the fella who has kept me supplied with recordings of Jesus Christ Superstar this Lent. Here are the fruits of an email interview I did with him about this project.

How did you first come up with the idea of sending me forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar?

The sad truth on this is ...you asked for it. I remember last Easter, sitting there watching the movie, and I brought up how many cast recordings of Godspell I had. (Before you ask, I already checked--there aren't anywhere near 40 recordings out there.) And you said, "You know what would be fun?" At first I thought, "Yeah, that would be fun." Then the challenge began.
(Angela's note: let the record show I have no memory of this conversation...I had assumed that this was originally Greg's idea.)

How long did it take you to find all the different versions? Were you looking for any in particular, and if so, were any challenging to find?

First I had to even find out if there were 40 recordings out there. I went to the internet and got scared right away. I could find ONLY 40 official recordings out there, many out of print. I thought, "This is going to be a bust." Some of these recordings where so rare that there were blogs of people trying to find them. But I figured, hey, I have a year. If it doesnt happen I am sure Angela would forgive me. So I started sending out requests to friends ....then friends of friends.....then plain ol' strangers. To be honest I didn't have all 40 when I sent you the first recordings....Luckily, though, over the last year I found out there are much much more our there than just the original 40 that I found. I knew my mission could be completed. As far as finding any particular one: Yes and no. I knew a couple out there would be nice to have. But to be honest and fair I was just trying to find 40 recordings.

What was your opinion of the rock opera before this experiment began? What do you think of it now?

...I say that I have come to look forward to when we watch it together and having our talks about the show, movie, and yes, even the religious parts. However, now as I listen to each one I can't help but think to myself, "Man I would like to direct this show and use elements of some of these productions." It really is a show you can have fun with. It gives directors a chance to think outside of the box. I hate when people have no vision and just put on a show the same way it has been done 10,000 times. With these recordings, it is clear that theatres have stretched their artist minds and creativity [in good and bad ways].

The Jesus Christ Superstar That Shall Not Be Named

2010-03-09T21:18:00.002-05:00

For the first time this Lent, I listened to a JCS I thoroughly disliked. There were some good performances in it, I will grant you--some fine work by Mary Magdalene and Judas--but I felt the guy who played Jesus spent more time conveying "Listen to me hit high notes" than he did conveying any emotional depth. "Is he even paying attention to what he's singing?" I thought more than once. I ended up putting on the Japanese JCS again as a palate-cleanser.
I'm not gonna even say what version of JCS this was. We're just gonna delete it from the record.
Tomorrow we visit Russia. Now that's something I eagerly anticipate...

Kingsway Youth Opera Company, 1971

2010-03-08T17:28:00.002-05:00

Today--for the first time during this experiment--I caught myself thinking, "Gosh, I've listened to Jesus Christ Superstar a lot."
I guess it's taken three weeks for the novelty to wear off. Now it's taking on more of the flavor of a Lenten discipline.
"This one I think you are going to find very interesting," Greg said of today's installment, and if you know Greg, you will understand why I got nervous. "Interesting" can be taken any number of ways. But it was true--maybe he just knows my tastes. I like this one because it has a lot of rock'n'roll to it; in fact, something about the orchestration (horn-heavy) reminded me of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Or perhaps the Moody Blues, a band that's been on my mind because the weather has gotten lovely. The loveliness of the weather, by the by, is another reason I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of spending time sitting and listening to a recording instead of going to bask in the sunshine. Could I have done both at once? Basked and Superstarred? No, I don't own one of those newfangled electronic devices by which one can bring one's music along.
But back to the Moody Blues. (Does anyone else have bands they associate with particular times of the year?) The grandiose orchestral arrangements with rock swagger, coupled with the British accents of the cast--yeah, even the fact this was a vinyl recording with the wobbliness that comes to vinyl with age--all conjured the Moodies in my mind. And then I found out that this LP was released by Deram Records--the same label that released Days of Future Passed and the next five Moody Blues albums. The interconnectivity of all things.
I never was conscious of it before, but now that I think about it the albums playing in my house while I was growing up often had orchestration married to rock sensibilities--JCS, the Moodies' early work, ELO--not to mention the classical pieces I heard tended to have more raucous energy--pieces by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov.
It all makes sense now! (Or should I say, "My mind is clearer now"?)

Jesucristo Superestrella, 2001

2010-03-06T20:42:00.005-05:00

So the Jesus Christ Superstar du jour is another Mexican cast recording, this one from 2001. This one came with a libretto, so I could, employing my scanty Spanish knowledge and handy-dandy Google Translate, see some of the translation choices--in Judas' first song, for instance, it is Eden, not heaven, that is on their minds. And "What's the buzz/tell me what's happening?" is rendered "¿Dime que significa esta rumor?" or (roughly) "Tell me, what is this rumor?"
(Ooh! I should use Google Translate on the other phrases I was curious about. Let's see..."Allting är okej nu" is indeed Swedish for "Everything is okay now," and the same song title in Czech turns into "Everything is as it should be" when it's re-Englished. While "Proc ten shon?," the Czech title for "What's the Buzz?" becomes "Why the rush?" Huh.)
Today's experiment in JCS-suitable activities was studying for an exam. It worked out well, I think. In fact I was at first planning to just kinda sit around doing nothin' while listening, and something made me decide to get online and look up practice tests, so it was quite the positive motivator. Time to draft the research paper: "JCS and Behavior Modification."
(And how was this version? Good. No complaints, but no surprises either. Greg promises the really far-out versions are coming in the second half of Lent. Speaking of, happy day before Laetare Sunday, everyone.)
[Update: Oops, I counted wrong. We don't reach the halfway point of Lent until next week!]

The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar, 1972

2010-03-05T21:07:00.003-05:00

Okay, I gotta share the Amazon link for this one. This is just what it sounds like it would be: JCS as soul music, all funkified. It was a big change today--even though I've been listening to renditions in Swedish, French, Spanish and Japanese, essentially the songs have remained the same. Sure, there are minor variations. Sometimes Caiaphas and Annas are buffoons and sometimes they are genuinely frightening characters. Sometimes Pilate comes across as vicious throughout and sometimes he has more depth. But essentially everyone has been working from the same template.
The template gets chopped into itty bitty bits on The Soul of Jesus Christ Superstar. We start out with an overture which has little to do with the original overture, is mostly gospel piano, and which includes the Soultown Singers testifying "Jesus Christ is a superstar!"--in case we wonder where these performers are going to be coming from theologically.
We follow this up with "Superstar," because running order is one of those elements that is nonessential to JCS's soul. Also not important: the full complement of lyrics for a given song. Take "The Last Supper"--the only part that's included is the part the steadily-getting-drunker apostles sing. Oh, and "Gethsemane"? Jesus' big number? Sammy Turner, Soul's Jesus, sings up to:
Let them hit me hurt me nail me to their tree
...before retreating back to the lines
Then I was inspired, now I'm sad and tired
After all, I've tried for three years, seems like thirty
Could you ask as much from any other man?
...which is where the song ends.
Why? Are they trying to tell a different story than the one JCS tells? Is it because they want to keep things in a particular groove, and there are too many musical shifts in the middle of songs in the original version?
I have to give them credit for taking the source material and bringing it into new territory. I almost feel though that I'm getting the day off from Lent; have I really listened to JCS today?

Is Allting Allright (Ja!) or Okej?

2010-03-04T22:25:00.003-05:00

Tonight's pressing question: does Jesus Christ Superstar make good house-cleaning music? More precisely, does Jesus Christ Superstar, the 2009 Swedish cast, make good house-cleaning music? It's worth noting that I have found a Romanian CD, Epoca de Aur, does the best job at keeping me on task when it comes to the performance of domestic duties. It has just the right mix of upbeat material and incomprehensible lyrics. I thought the Swedes could do right by me at least in terms of incomprehensibility, but of course I'm way too familiar with these songs to not know what's going on at any given time, and if I know what's going on, I start thinking about what's going on instead of paying attention to my labors. Also, I find myself slowing down during the slower numbers. On the other hand, one is less likely to whine about how hard it is to clean house when one is listening to Jesus confronting the prospect of being hated, hit, hurt and nailed to a tree.
And how does this version compare to last night's? Good news--sometime between 1972 and 2009, the Swedes fired the saxophonist. Also, I had the sense last night that the cast was putting in a lot of effort, and that's a bad thing--a rock opera should never sound like work. Maybe the singers have a bit more training in this version or something--I don't get that sense of constant struggle, of wrestling with the (admittedly) demanding score, and that makes for a much more pleasant listening experience. I have to mention in particular the great falsetto employed by the 2009 Jesus, something he seems to be able to just launch up there at will.
This cast employs a different translation, I think, because instead of "Everything's Alright" being rendered "Allting är allright" as it was yesterday, it's "Allting är okej nu." Help me out, linguists: does that mean "All things are okay now"? If so, what are the theological implications of things being "okay," not "alright"? It's not quite "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well," is it?

How Jesus Christ Superstar is affecting my life.

2010-03-03T22:39:00.002-05:00

As we are now two weeks from Ash Wednesday, this is a good time for some reflection on what Lent has been like so far. In fact I just has someone ask, "Are you tired of Jesus Christ Superstar yet?" No, not quite; in fact, when I couldn't get to sleep last night, I got out the Prague recording and listened to it while I was falling asleep. So yes, in one evening I ended up hearing "Vse Je Tak, Jak Ma Byt" four times.
Is it putting a crimp in my social life? A little; I did beg off hanging out late with friends tonight in order to finish listening to the 1972 Swedish cast recording. (What I enjoyed most about the Swedish contribution: the oh-so-close-to-English song titles: "Allting är allright," "Dömd för alltid." What I enjoyed least: the curious over-reliance on the saxophone. I mean, seriously, it just shows up in the middle of a scene with a part that is only vaguely related to what all the other instruments are doing. The net result is that you're envisioning the Last Supper, and there's Jesus and Judas arguing, but then whoops, in walks a wandering saxophonist. He's oblivious.)
How's Greg doing, since he's listening to all of these recordings too? In a recent email he confessed, "These songs officially will not get out of my head at this point. I think I actually had a dream I met a Galilean."

Czech JCS--Original Prague Cast

2010-03-02T20:14:00.003-05:00

Oh, my gosh. This one's so wonderful. I've listened to "Vse Je Tak, Jak Ma Byt" ("Everything's All Right") three times now, that's how wonderful this is. And I nearly started crying during "Gethsemane"--which is all the more impressive when this is the tenth--or maybe eleventh, or twelfth--time I've heard this song in the last two weeks.
Maybe one of the reasons I like this recording so much is because my family on my mom's side is (mostly) Bohemian, so I feel a cultural affinity here. I'm certainly glad that my Czech repertoire of phrases might be expanded by this experience. Before this recording, I only knew "Bez práce nejsou koláce", which means "No work, no tasty fruit- or cream-cheese-filled pastries." I'm almost tempted now to travel to Prague and ask of random passersby, "Proc ten shon?" I say "almost" because I'm worried that I really would be saying the Czech equivalent of "What's the buzz?"--that is, the most dated bit of 70s slang imaginable.
Maybe it's because it seems to take three times as many syllables to deliver these lines in Czech, or maybe it's, again, the subtext of hard rock being sung in a communist milieu. Whatever it is, I get the strangest sense, listening to these songs that I think I know so well, that far more is being said than I've ever heard before.

Kiwi JCS

2010-03-01T21:31:00.002-05:00

...Yes, the 1994 New Zealand cast recording. I don't recognize any names in the cast. Overall impression? They sound so young. Strong voices and some unique elements to the arrangements--I particularly liked the extended a cappella outro in "The Last Supper," when the apostles are well and truly in their cups.
But no, this version doesn't measure up to the Japanese.
Ooh! But Judas goes intriguingly off script! In his big showstopping "Superstar" number (here only followed by the instrumental "John 19:41" because this is a highlights recording and I guess "The Crucifixion" isn't a highlight), when the angelic soul-girl choir is singing
"Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,
Who are you, what have you sacrificed?"
and
"Jesus Christ Superstar,
Do you think you're what they say you are?"
At the very, very end, when Judas usually just ad-libs on the theme of "I only want to know," there's a musical break, and Judas' last words are:
"I am a sinner who's lost his way
Down on my knees, I am here and praying.
Jesus...I think I know..."

Jézus Krisztus Szupersztár, Hungary I and II

2010-02-27T18:45:00.003-05:00

Wikipedia's a wonderful thing. It is there that I learned that
"Jesus Christ Superstar was performed in 1971 in Hungary. The performance was based on the original studio version, and the band and orchestra parts were transcribed to a five piece rockband. The group, Korong, whose author Tibor Miklós wrote the Hungarian lyrics, had a few enormously successful performances in Budapest's university clubs; however, it was banned afterwards from performing it."
Wikipedia did not specify who banned the performance--the Communist government? Religious authorities? Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber? It did mention that the KGB went after performers of the first JCS done in Europe, a 1971 Lithuanian production.
The first of the two Hungarian performances in my Lentathon was from 1986. In 1989 Hungary put the "first tear in the Iron Curtain" (again, as Wikipedia puts it) by taking down the barbed wire between it and Austria. So did JCS bring down Communism? You be the judge.
To my ears the Communist-era JCS rocks harder than the post-Communist one (from the year 2000). Maybe the memory of the banned 1971 performances was still fresh; maybe there was still an element of danger in recording these songs. Remember that deep Eastern European voices and those consonant-heavy languages are ideally suited for hard rock. Everything comes together to give this performance a vitality that the 2000 recording lacks--sadly, once again the later version slips into bombast. (This performance has a lot of the same poor choices that the London revival did, though the Hungarians have a much better ending for "Everything's All Right"--it just stops cold, a refreshing shock.)

"One thing I'll say for him--Jesus is cool."

2010-02-26T23:08:00.003-05:00

"Did your friend Greg really find forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar?" I was asked.
"I'll answer that by telling a story," I said. "Today I'm listening to a Hungarian version. And it's the first of two."
That's right--today I heard a cast recording from 1986. And tomorrow I'm to listen to Jézus Krisztus Szupersztár from 2000. "I thought it would be fun to compare," Greg said.
...But I'm not going to talk about that yet, because in addition to listening to my first-of-two Hungarian versions, I listened to the Japanese recording again, this time with a young'un who is not quite so familiar with all things JCS. (Let the record show she'd specifically requested hearing the Japanese version, once she learned such a thing exists. I think it's because she's a Miyazaki fan.) I'd previously played "the brown album" for her, so she had some familiarity with the music and some interesting lyric interpretations. "What's a 'cheated mandarin'?" (And, during "Gethsemane," "Did he just say, 'I want to know Micah?'")
This evening I kept singing the English version over the Japanese to help her keep track of the plot, and I'm sure this was what prompted her to ask, "Just how many times have you listened to Jesus Christ Superstar, anyway?"
When I wasn't providing a play-by-play, we discussed the concept of non-violent resistance and why it is powerful; Peter's threefold denial of Christ and then the post-resurrection threefold question from Jesus: "Simon, do you love Me?"; and what's wrong with the lyric
If you'd come today, you would have reached a whole nation.
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication.
"I mean, really!" I said. "Are they implying Jesus' ministry would have been more effective if He'd been on American Idol?"

JCS London Revival, 1996

2010-02-25T20:35:00.003-05:00

Sorry, Sir Andrew...this under-your-personal-supervision revival just isn't as good as the Japanese version. (That may be my rating system from now on--"Is it above or below the Japanese standard?")
Steve Balsamo does well; you can take a look/listen yourself--here he is singing with his band The Storys. (H/T to Derek.) Now, don't you think he'd make a good Jesus? He hits some fantastic high notes in "Gethsamene," which was something the Japanese Jesus barely attempted and the BBC Jesus completely skipped. And I dug the refreshing take on "King Herod's Song," which cut out some of the mince while retaining all the vaudeville. "This Herod's really good," I thought.
Then I found out it was Alice Cooper.
Cool!
Now to the problems: bombast, bombast, bombast and bombast. Why oh why end "Everything's All Right" with a big ol' choral give-'em-all-you-got? They did this on the Beeb, too, and it bugged the heck out of me because I was liking that number until then. Not everything has to be pyrotechnic, kids.
Caiaphas and Co. come across here as moustache-twirling melodrama villains, and I think that's also a mistake. I think they'd be more menacing if they were played a bit more straight. Caiaphas has a genuine concern for his country's welfare. He just also has a really low voice.
Some lyrics have been changed for this production--not "a jaded mandarin," sad to say--that still made the cut! Most interesting to me: instead of
But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
Pilate here sings
But what is truth? Not easy to define.
We both have truths. Are yours the same as mine?
...which doesn't have the same zing. I don't get why ol' Tim would want to change it.
I should also note that I listened to this one out of order. I was supposed to listen to this one first, not the BBC version. My partner in JCSdom worked quite hard on a Lenten running order, so my apologies to him for getting off sequence.

Yes, they really do sing "Sayonara, Judas"...

2010-02-24T21:43:00.003-05:00

...in the Japanese version of Jesus Christ Superstar.
If you know me at all, you're probably not surprised to learn I like this quite a lot. Okay, sure, I did wonder at the beginning why they decided to jack up the speed (maybe it's just the recording?). And unfortunately this Judas seems to equate "showing strong emotion" with "screaming." But I think the trouble is that he has a weak falsetto. I get the sense all these singers are well-trained, perhaps even representatives of Opera World. If that's the case, it would explain why Judas makes a poor showing--the dynamics of his role are way too rock'n'roll for a classically trained singer.
Jesus, on the other hand...oh my gosh. Love him. Exceptional delivery--I don't care that I don't know the language, he lets me know what he's feeling.
Pilate in this is a bass, or perhaps bass-baritone. Whatever he is, he's got this rich timbre to his voice that gives his part a lot of weight, a lot of authority.
Caiaphas & Co. are clearly playing their part for laughs--it comes through in the orchestration and also in their cartoonlike over-delivery of their lines.
I feel bad for whoever had to translate this--it sounds like "Crucify him!" takes about fifteen syllables to say in Japanese. Also apparently "Hey, JC, JC" needed to be "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ" in Japan.
"Judas" is pronounced "Yu-da" (so really I should have said "Sayanora Yu-da" in the title of this post, but that would have been too obscure), but everyone says the "J" in Jesus. Confusing.
Also--the thirty-nine lashes are counted in English. It's an abrupt, chilling shift--like Pilate has turned to look me in the eye.

JCS on BBC Radio 2, from 1996

2010-02-23T21:03:00.002-05:00

Four words: Roger Daltrey as Judas.
No, really.
And could be one of the best Judases ever. (What's plural for "Judas"? Judai?)
For the first time I was looking forward to hearing how they were going to do Judas' death. (That sounds wrong, but less wrong than my original formulation--"I was looking forward to hearing Judas die." There's a lot of heavy subtext in JCS, you know. Makes it hard for an audience to know how to acknowledge a good performance. "This Jesus must, Jesus must, Jesus must DIE," the Sanhedrin proclaim, and the audience goes )
Judas here is way better, more passionate, more believable, than Jesus (Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet!). I mean, if your dream casting of Jesus is someone whose voice drops into a sexy whisper like George Michael's on occasion, you'll get what you're looking for, but I just didn't quite buy it. No, this was Judas Superstar for me.
Speaking of dream casting, did anyone else ever try to put together the ideal fantasy cast? Mine of course features David Bowie as Pontius Pilate; after that, the field's wide open. Sinead O'Connor is a contender for Mary Magdalene, though as I've said earlier, her actual take on "I Don't Know How To Love Him" fell a little short of the mark. I want Bono to be either Judas or Jesus, but can't decide which.

On The Fifth Day of Lent: JCS 1975, Mexican Cast

2010-02-22T22:11:00.002-05:00

This version of Jesus Christ Superstar has a bit of a lo-fi feel. The orchestration seems to be missing an instrument or two; the singers don't necessarily hit all the notes. What they miss in accuracy, though, they more than make up for in heart. In fact this may well be the most sincere of the versions of JCS I've heard so far--or at least, I'm hearing it this way. The fact that I don't think any of these songs are being performed with a wink (with the exception of "King Herod's Song," er, "La cancion del Rey Herodes," which would be hard to perform any other way) is perhaps just a product of my preconceived notions of Mexican culture. I have this sense that this is 10% rock opera, 90% passion play.
If it's a passion play, then what comes to mind are the barebones dramas of Palm Sunday and Good Friday in the liturgy. Every year the congregation at the Palm Sunday Mass and the Good Friday service (there's no Mass on Good Friday) gets to play roles when the Gospel is read. Mostly they play the crowds, and if you're playing the crowd when the Passion is proclaimed, you're shouting "Crucify him!" a lot. Elsewhere I've written about the horror of listening to a three-year-old yelling these words along with the rest of us. There's something of that mad enthusiasm in the off-key singing here.
Unfortunately my Spanish isn't so great, but I have this weird feeling this production added the "Woman, behold your son/Behold your mother" bit to "La Crucifixion." (Other productions have "Who is my mother? Where is my mother?" instead. Would this have really gone over in the home of La Virgen de Guadelupe?)

Jesus Christ Superstar: A 21st Century Tribute to the Brown Album, Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra

2010-02-20T22:58:00.004-05:00

"This I think you will enjoy," Greg said to me. "Or you'll never wanna listen to it again. I figure a 50/50 shot here."
It's not bad. Not at all what I expected; nothing particularly 21st century about it--Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra stays quite faithful to the original for the most part. A chick sings Simon Zealotes' part, but heck, I've got a version where one of the Indigo Girls plays Jesus, so there. But altogether it's cool. Very fun version of "King's Herod's Song" with some girl group doo-wop thrown into the background. Different read on Mary Magdalene--during "Everything's All Right" she doesn't get swallowed up by the rising shouts of "EVERYTHING'S ALL RIGHT, YES!" that belie that line--instead she commands the chorus, so for the first time she "wins" in that song. She doesn't seem all that tortured for "I Don't Know How To Love Him," either. It's making me think of how my friend Ali reacted when she heard Sinead O'Connor sing her version of that torch classic--"I don't believe her. I think she does know."
And, in case you were wondering, yes, now that we are on day 4 of full immersion JCS Lentarama, the songs are on constant repeat in my head all day now. They are crazy catchy.

Jesus Christ Superstar, Version originale Française

2010-02-19T12:04:00.002-05:00

Today I can follow my Lenten observance and practice my French; such a deal! Greg sent the first French production--from 1972. Can't help but wonder how JCS sounded to citizens of a country notoriously conflicted about its Christian past. What part of the story resonated most? It's bringing to mind stories my friend Anca told about growing up in Romania at the height of its Communist culture. We've been chatting about the books that could come in to the country in those days, like Polish author Zenon Kosidowski's Povestiri biblice (Biblical Stories), where anything supernatural is taken out of the accounts. How is one's view of Jesus affected if you only hear about the human side of his personality?
My understanding is that the Jesus of Jesus Christ Superstar was intended to be fully human, not at all divine. I don't know if the writers succeeded in portraying Him this way, because I listen to these songs coming from a different place theologically. I know some folks found JCS sacrilegious when it came out, and some still do. I don't share this viewpoint (or I wouldn't be spending my Lent listening to it). Preachers preached against Handel's Messiah when it came out, so, you know, "sacrilegious" is in the eye of the beholder.
Besides. If the very name of Jesus has power, as is claimed in the songs I sing most Sundays, couldn't other intentions get subverted once that name is invoked? Was it a smart move on the part of the Romanians to let in Biblical stories, de-miracled or no?

Day 2 of Lenterific Jesus Christ Superstar: Broadway!

2010-02-18T20:41:00.002-05:00

Today was Broadway Day, as in the original cast recording--Ben Vereen as Judas (um, not my favorite), Jeff Fenholt as Jesus (oh my gosh Jesus is the toughest role ever, so mad props to anyone who takes it on). Yvonne Elliman and Barry Dennen back for an encore.
You know, Greg's not gonna be happy to read this, but I am not a Broadway person. But I'll wager that a cast recording is not the optimal way to appreciate a Broadway performance, and I'll admit that I have never seen a performance on Broadway, so any criticism I could offer has precious little weight. Knowing that, I won't waste any time telling you what I didn't go for here.
Instead, let me tell you what blindsided me. Minding my own business, not thinking I would have much to write about...and then "Trial Before Pilate." It was fierce. It's a fierce number to begin with, right? Pilate, the face of the Empire, confronting a prisoner whose motives he cannot understand. Here, there's no subtlety--Pilate is screaming at Jesus, but instead of it being over-the-top, it's genuinely frightening. You can hear an awful malice as the crowd reacts to the thirty-nine lashes.
Extraordinary.

Forty Versions of Jesus Christ Superstar

2010-02-17T06:45:00.007-05:00

We played the LPs of Jesus Christ Superstar in my house every year around Holy Week--or at least that's the way I remember it. Whether or not it was such a consistent phenomenon back then, these days if it's getting close to Easter and I haven't listened to JCS, I develop a twitch.
That's the first thing you need to know to understand what's gonna happen here.
Next you gotta know that my friend Greg and I have a tradition of watching the '73 movie version, that he and I have a fondness for discussions of Lenten practices, and that he is an authority on matters pertaining to musicals and obscurity (that is, the tougher it is to find, the more likely Greg is to find it).
I bet you can see where I'm going with this.
...That's right. For Lent this year, Greg is sending me forty different versions of Jesus Christ Superstar. I will listen to a different version every day.
"As penance?" some of my other friends want to know.
Ha ha.
...Getting into the "why" of anything done for Lent can be complex, actually. Maybe I'm into the challenge and the danger--will a rock opera I love slowly become something I despise? (Hope not!) Maybe it's also...no, let's just leave it at that for now. The experience itself might reveal other meanings as we go.
So now I'm listening to the original recording, the one we listened to in my house year after year. I see Wikipedia calls it "the brown album." JCS didn't start as a staged musical--this here is a "concept recording," where the songs can bleed into each other a bit without anyone having to worry about where the scene/costume changes are going to go.
If you're only going to listen to one JCS (though "why stop at one?" is my motto), this is the one you need to hear. Coming back to it after years of listening to the movie soundtrack is a shock to my system; I'd forgotten how good it was. We've got Ian Gillan from Deep Purple as Jesus, Murray Head (older brother of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head!) as Judas. These are tough parts to sing a) because there are a ton of high notes, b) they've got to express a wide range of highly complex emotions in every song, and c) c'mon. One character's the Son of God, the other is His betrayer. What part of that's gonna be easy? But man, they nail it.
Those who play Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) and Pontius Pilate (Barry Dennen) will go on to do the same on Broadway and in the '73 movie. I like Dennen better in the movie, particularly in the "Trial Before Pilate"; here he's sticking a little too close to just hitting all his notes in his delivery. But I like Elliman better here--more sauce in "Everything's All Right" and more tough-chick bravura in "I Don't Know How to Love Him" (which means it's a less vulnerable-sounding song, but I'm okay with that).
I never wanted to listen to "The Crucifixion" growing up, and I understand a bit more now why. It is excruciating, it's weird, it's a horrific soundscape. But now I'm glad it's in here. And the suddenness of the cutoff at the end is not something you can get in any staged version.
So--welcome to Lent. Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

How my name became unpronounceable.

2010-01-05T21:38:00.003-05:00

This week I asked Hive Mind to assist me in my teaching. It will not be the last time. Honestly, I don't know what teachers did before the Internet. Stuck for ideas, how did they face the challenge of designing a spelling activity for second graders in the days when one couldn't just do a Google search on "spelling activities for second graders"?
I feel like the woman in that old commercial who pats flour on herself to fool dinner guests into thinking she slaved over the making of baked goods. My painstaking spelling-activities quest, all three minutes of it, took me to a site that creates word searches. First step: come up with a title for your puzzle. This part of the process was the hardest for me, I think; I finally opted for "Spelling!" I then typed in all twenty of this week's spelling words and noted with amusement (and gratitude) that the puzzle generator promised to use a randomly-created-offensive-word filter as it merrily sprinkled letters around. And here was a nice touch: I could put in a hidden message that would be revealed as the spelling words were found. I chose the propaganda route and hid the phrase "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pancella."
I gave the students the word search today. When I passed out the papers, I explained about the hidden message, showing them how there were dashes at the bottom of the page--"_ ___ __ _____ ________ ____ ____ ________"--for the phrase they were looking for.
The next fifteen minutes were a bit of a free-for-all. Some second graders seem to have something of a word search instinct; others need more prodding. There was much collaborating at tables and some wandering around the room. I didn't mind how they worked on the puzzle so long as they were looking closely at what letters made up the words. The point wasn't to complete a puzzle; the point was to get more familiar with the topography of English.
I did take note of who first found all of the words. I went over to walk him through the finding of the hidden message, since "Use, in order, the letters that are not circled" is an abstract concept. He got pretty far before I was called away to help another student. When I got back, I discovered he was doing fine before he skipped a row; he had written "I love to learn spelling with Miss Pfhrzlbc."

In case the origin of the word "nylon" comes up when you're on Jeopardy

2009-12-08T21:43:00.001-05:00

"How is it," one of my classmates has been asking this week, "that we're taking four classes, but we have five exams?"
That's what you get with an accelerated Master's program--New Math. But sweet, sweet freedom shall soon be ours. As of this writing, I have one take-home exam and one in-class exam to go, and then I'll be on Christmas break from my elementary education classes. I'll still be in the second grade classroom, however, watching the excitement level of seven-year-olds increase exponentially as the calendar marches toward the 25th. (Just the other day I heard one little girl--not in my class; this was in a different setting--ecstatically singing, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way/Santa Claus is coming to a HAP-PY NEW YEAR...")
But--sugarplum visions be darned--the learning must go on. I've been put in charge of teaching spelling. Every week we work on new words in a list of 20 provided by our spelling textbook. Last week we had words with the long "i" sound--"try" and "cry" and "hide" and "bike" and "housefly"--like that. Now, my charges didn't do too well on the spelling test previous to this. If you know me at all you will have correctly guessed I took this personally. "SPELLING! Come ON! No kid is leaving Miss Pancella's class not knowing how to SPELL!" etc. etc. So I was quick to drum into those little brains the pattern: when they heard the long "i" sound at the end of a word, it was always spelled with a "y": "cry," "try," "pry." When they heard the long "i" sound in the middle of the word, it was spelled with an "i," then a consonant, and then a silent "e" at the end: "hide," "bike."
But--the last spelling word on the list? "Nylon."
On Tuesday of that week I cut squares of fabric out of a pair of pantyhose and brought them into class. I passed one out to each table and asked, "Does anyone have a guess about what this is?"
"A thong?" one little voice piped up.
Okay! I thought. No more guesses! "It's a fabric called 'nylon," I said. "This word is not going to follow our spelling pattern, but there's a good reason for that. See, 'nylon' is a made-up material. You can't find it in nature. It was created in a laboratory out of chemicals."
One little girl dropped her fabric square abruptly at this point.
"It was created to be very stretchy," I continued. "So stretchy that the inventors said it could stretch from...New York...to London." I wrote "NY" and "LON" on the board.
A chorus of voices: "Ohhhh!" And once again, as I am so often, I was grateful I'd become a fan of The Nylons--the only reason I'd learned that particular bit of trivia.
And by the way--the class all did very well on the spelling test at the end of the week, and almost everyone spelled "nylon" right.

How the president is, and is not, like a soccer coach

2009-11-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

Here's a li'l story about my recent adventures in a second grade classroom...
Someone from my accelerated Master's program came to observe me giving a social studies lesson. The lesson had to have something about reading or writing integrated into it, so I decided to craft the lesson around an issue of TIME For Kids magazine. The cover story on the issue I chose was on our new Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. (I like a challenge.)
I had a little time earlier in the day, before my observer came, so I asked students if they'd ever heard of the Supreme Court. A few could tell me a little bit about court and lawyers, including the tidbit that lawyers cost money. I also asked if they knew what "supreme" meant. I said they'd probably heard it in reference to pizza, and asked them to please not think of the Supreme Court as the Pizza Court.
As I was gathering this background info, one boy raised his hand and asked, "Do they have a president on the other side of the world?" I said this was an excellent question. We talked a bit about different names for heads of government: presidents, kings, queens, prime ministers. They wanted to put "mayor" on that list, and one student asked me if there was a king in Rome. (Not to hear Caesar tell it!)
When lesson time came, I decided before we even read the magazine that we should figure something out about the three branches of government in the hopes of pinning an abstract concept like "Supreme Court" onto something concrete. From prior conversations with these second graders, I knew what interested them most (besides SpongeBob). "Who in here likes sports?" I asked. Everyone in the class raised his or her hand. "Who is on a sports team?" Not every hand this time, but a substantial number. I asked one girl what her grandfather did for her soccer team (again, I knew the answer in advance because of a prior conversation).
"He's our coach," she said.
We went into what a coach does, and then I wrote "Coach" on the board.
"And what do we call the person who decides what happens if the soccer ball goes out of play?"
When the class gave me the answer, I wrote "Referee" on the board.
"And then there must be some group of people who came up with the rules of soccer and who can decide, say, if there should be 20 people out on the field instead of 18." Not knowing the name of this shadowy organization, I put "People who make up rules" on the board.
Then I explained that these were like the branches of our government. The president is like the coach, except less likely to take you personally out for pizza; the referee is like the Supreme Court, and the people who make rules, Congress.
I think they got it, but even if they didn't, at least it was an introduction to the concept, which is what an awful lot of second grade is about.

School notes, mid-October edition

2009-10-19T06:08:00.002-05:00

I woke up early this morning. I try to be up early when I can--I like to go out for a morning walk--but this morning when I checked the forecast, I elected to go curl up in front of the space heater instead.
This last week of school, in terms of the courses I'm taking, has been the sort of experience that makes you understand how one can get addicted to stimulants. (Don't worry; this is not a confession. I never resorted to anything harder than Mountain Dew.) I am not someone who has developed, how shall we call them, "good" study habits. You know the ones--like doing a little bit of work every day instead of waiting for the last moment. And last week a couple of my classes came to the end of their eight-week span, so I had something like six assignments to complete and turn in. (And that may be lower than the actual number, because I got tired just trying to remember them all and stopped at six.)
Now, part of the reason my work had piled up was that during this term I took trips out of town two weekends in a row. The first was to a family reunion for my father's side of the family. No way was I going to miss a gathering of 125 happy Italians and hangers-on. The next was the first-ever academic conference on U2, which just so happened to take place on the same weekend just down the road from a U2 concert, can you imagine that? Next to Italian relatives, U2 fans are my favorite group of people to be around, so no way was I missing this, either. But all of this gallivanting did lead to my assignments stacking up such that they were taking turns joyfully jumping off the high dive, so to speak. The good news is that everything due last week has been turned in and my next round of classes do not begin until, oh, Tuesday.
As for my adventures in observation at the grade school--it's been the educational home of the walking wounded. You may have heard that there's some nasty sickness floating around. Grade schools being disease factories to begin with, it may not surprise you to learn that on days last week up to eight kids (in a class of twenty-one) were absent. (One of my fellow intern teachers had ten kids out of a class of twenty one day.) Interestingly, a different set of kids was gone each day; this did make it easier to help the previously-absent set catch up with their work, but it also meant there was little point moving on with lessons to cover new material.
And now I must dash to get to school to begin the new week, but I will leave you with this anecdote--the seven-year-olds had an assignment in handwriting to write a sentence about the continent they live on. One little fella decided he was going to be clever and wrote, "I like North America so much, I don't know where to begin."

Ninety-seven, coal car, boxcar, caboose!

2009-09-19T11:20:00.004-05:00

I'm working with a small group of second graders doing reading work for a half-hour. This week was my first week.
I have six second-graders in my group, two boys, four girls. One boy shows definite signs of wanting to be the small group clown. On Wednesday, I tried channeling his energy into more positive areas; I had him lead the group in some exercises in reading expressively. We also talked a bit about enunciation and pacing (one girl tends to rush). With all that in mind, I decided to bring in something special on Thursday.
I'd hinted about doing something cool, so when everybody saw the sheets of paper I passed out, they said, "Is that the fun thing?" But I instructed them to keep the pages turned to the back until we finished other activities.
Our small group clown dallied. I let everyone else who had finished turn the pages over while he continued to work. "If we don't get to the fun stuff because of you, the group's gonna be mad at you!" I warned. He picked up the pace.
At last he was done. I explained to the group that when I was just a little older than they are, I had discovered this poem and committed it to memory. I told them to pay attention to what happened as I recited it. They all had copies; I didn't, but our small group clown still thought I was cheating and looking at a page until I looked him dead in the eye as I rattled off my lines.
The poem was Crossing, by Philip Booth, and it goes like this:
"Stop Look Listen/as gate stripes swing down/count the cars hauling distance/upgrade through town:/warning whistle, bellclang,/engine eating steam/engineer waving/a fast freight dream:/B&M boxcar/boxcar again,/Frisco gondola/eight-nine-ten/Erie and Wabash,/Seabord, U.P.,/Pennsy tankcar,/twenty-two,three,/Phoebe Snow, B&O,/thirty-four,five,/Santa Fe cattle/ shipped alive/red cars yellow cars,/orange cars, black,/Youngstown steel/down to Mobile/on Rock Island track,/fifty-nine,sixty,/hoppers of coke,/Anaconda copper,/hotbox smoke,/eighty-eight,/red-ball freight,/Rio Grande,/Nickel Plate,/Hiawatha,/Lackawanna,/rolling fast/and loose,/ninety-seven,/coal car,/boxcar,/caboose!"
What happened, of course, was the poem sped up as the train sped up. "Do that again!" they said. This time I suggested they try reading along with me as I recited it. I asked them to guess how many cars were on the train; what was the last number and how many cars came after that?
They all took their copies with them. One little girl said, her eyes shining, "I'm going to take it home and memorize it this weekend and then I'll say it to you on Monday!"

My impressions of U2 in Chicago.

2009-09-13T17:40:00.002-05:00

(Spoiler alert: this post mentions songs U2 are performing on their 360 Tour. If you are trying to avoid hearing about the setlist, you might want to skip the last few paragraphs.)
I had made plans months back to see this show, the opening night of the North American leg of U2's 360 Tour, but sold my ticket once I started thinking about all of my travel obligations this fall (which include going to see U2 in Raleigh, so it's not like I would miss them entirely). Then about a week before the show, I heard the ticket was up for grabs again. I thought, well, if it's going to go to all of that trouble to find its way back to me, who am I to stand in the way of Destiny? So I made some hotel reservations, talked to a Chicago-based friend about meeting her for dinner, and trundled up the highway.
Once I arrived--my first driving experience in Chicago, by the way, though it hardly counts because I basically exited Lake Shore Drive into a parking lot--I could see the top of the Claw, U2's massive stage set, peeking out over the stands of Soldier Field. I could also see the folks in the general admission line starting to go in. One friend had gotten there early that morning and reported 500 people in line at 6:15 am. (U2 hit the stage about fifteen hours after that.)
My Chicago friend and I had dinner at Valencia. We'd been searching for a place to eat and took the recommendation of a passing Chicagoan--she did not steer us wrong. We had gazpacho, I had sea bass with crabmeat and saffron butter, she had mussels drizzled with yumminess. Valencia also served pomegranate martinis, but I figured it wouldn't be smart to indulge in one of those. All in all, a lovely way to celebrate making it to Chicago.
We said our goodbyes, I joined the throng streaming into the stadium, and then I was in. I had a general admission ticket, but my first look at the Claw in all its glory was from up in the stands. I've heard folks say that you have to see it in person to appreciate the scale of this setup, and it's true. I'd seen lots of pictures but I was still well and truly gobsmacked. The legs stretched from one of the field to the other--a football field!
I'm gonna go off on a tangent here for a sec but stay with me. I've got a recording of a fake folk song, a parody of the genre, about the custom of hunting the wren. In the course of it one singer asks why anyone would hunt such a small bird: "It won't need much stuffing/I don't see the sense."
"Of course it's not big though," the other singer responds. "It's one of the salient features of wrens."
I bring this up because this week the Washington Post had a piece about this tour which basically criticized U2 for being ambitious. Reading it I found myself singing, "It's one of the salient features..." I mean, come on. Has the Post been paying any attention over the last 33 years?
One thing I will say for the article, however--the writer did manage to capture the Claw's unique presence: "When the band performs beneath this hulking piece of technology, it appears as if planet Earth has decided to sacrifice its highest-grossing Irish rock troupe to our new alien overlords."
As for the concert itself--I was near the "back" of the field (with a setup like this, it's hard to talk seriously about back or front) both because I wasn't on the field until opening act Snow Patrol were gone and because I wasn't interested in being in the crush of bodies at the "front."
When U2 took the stage and the screen high above us flickered to life, I was disoriented in a way I haven't heard anyone comment on as yet. Remember--I was in a football stadium, a filled football stadium, three-quarters of the way down the field or more, several thousand people in front of me, sky overhead. But the sound was crisp and clear and perfect, like I was in Sheldon Concert Hall, except way way louder.
I had known on an intellectual level that the whole point of designing the Claw was to get the speakers out of the way of everyone's sightlines. Now I took a good look at them. I counted eighteen speakers in a column, six columns across, two arrays like that (one on each side) between each leg. And the screen in the middle. The very convincing illusion provided by this mustered woofing and tweeting power is that it's the 50 foot tall Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry making all the noise, not their tiny counterparts far beneath. This messed with my head.
There's a very high percentage of songs performed from the three most recent albums. Once I realized this, I also realized that none of them have been played in a US stadium before--or indeed in a show specifically designed as a stadium show. And speaking of hearing things in a new way--I also realized I hadn't seen U2 live since moving to Cincinnati. My life is so, so different now; the connections I'm making to the songs are different. Not better or worse, just different. It was not something I consciously realized until I had put the "U2 concert" marker down on this part of my life.
It was an enthusiastic crowd--hey, it's Chicago, one of the top two places in the US to see U2, in my opinion--but it was still fun to watch the waves of "Huh?" roll through it when the band launched into a dance remix of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight." People were dancing by the end, though.
During "Ultraviolet," I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned, expecting maybe one of the folks I knew who were attending the show. No--it was a guy I didn't know. "I love this song!" he said. I have him a thumbs up. There are worse encounters one can have with a random drunk guy.
There is much more I can talk about, but there is also being home, and sleep.

My first report card, as it were.

2009-09-07T18:01:00.002-05:00

I have a Dr Pepper within reach, I've gotten my assignments completed for tomorrow and the day after, and in a little while I should begin my reading assignments for the rest of the week. It's the best possible time to catch you up on what the last couple of weeks have been like.

Our story so far: at the beginning of summer I enrolled in the College of Mount St. Joseph's Accelerated Master's Degree program for Inclusive Early Childhood, which will certify me to teach young'uns from 3 years old to 3rd grade, with an option to tack on an endorsement at the end to teach 4th and 5th grade as well. Two weeks ago, local public grade schools went into session. Part of our program is a period of observation in grade school classrooms, so my classmates and I fanned out across Cincinnati to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade...

I haven't been in a grade school classroom since St. Thomas of Aquin closed its doors after my eighth grade graduation. Happily, I was paired with a mentor teacher with thirty years' experience (she taught one of the people teaching at her school now when she was in second grade!), and she has made me feel right at home. I'm in a second grade classroom with twenty-one children, with books and dry erase boards and math manipulatives and reward stickers and much, much more. At the start of the day one student is in charge of changing the calendar date to the correct one, and another gives us a weather report. We say the Pledge of Allegiance and try to follow proper protocol when we line up to go from one room to the next.

The first day was really, really tough--long and disorienting, and it didn't help that I knew I'd have my own graduate-level class to attend at the end of it. (I'm in the grade school from 7:30 in the morning until 2:45 in the afternoon, then I have class from 4 to 6:30. That's my Monday to Thursday schedule; on Fridays I have one 5 1/2 hour class and no observation time in the second grade room.) On my way to my own class I impulsively pulled in to a nature preserve and took about a half-hour walk through the woods; that helped. Also, my professor that night talked about how teachers should be in the "ministry of presence" business; "You're adults," he told us, "so you can act like you want to be there even if you're having the kind of day when you don't feel like it! Just get across to your children, 'I am here for you.'" It was a timely message.

One more thing. There is an incredible range of proficiencies in the classroom I'm observing--both in terms of academics and behavior/social skills. If it hadn't been for this program, I wouldn't have had the chance to see how a dedicated teacher can work with each child, meeting each child where he or she is, and coaxing him or her to take many more steps forward. Just in the short time I have been in the classroom, I've come to a new appreciation of the patience, the perseverance, the commitment it takes for teachers to do what they do all day. It has been a tremendous privilege.

St. Joe's at St. E's

2009-06-26T14:51:00.003-05:00

When I step out of my house and look up the street, I see stone towers with filigree-work windows; I see a green copper dome; I see all of this topped with crosses. (Well, mostly topped with crosses. One cross is missing one-half of its crossbar, so one tower is topped with a sideways T. But this is what happens sometimes with old churches.)
St. Elizabeth's church is a heavy presence to have in the neighborhood, dominating the skyline, drawing people in. I think people here love her the way sailors may love a ship--I know I do. She's the reason I'm here, in a way. I would not have moved to Cincinnati had I not heard of the intentional Christian community that had restored St. E's to a worship space after the old Catholic parish had merged with two others. The Vineyard Central community had situated themselves in the parish buildings--the church, the rectory, the convent. I thought if I moved in, I could help explain the symbology that was their most immediate environment--the statues, the stained glass, the sign by the bell-ringing mechanism that said "Angelus."
In truth, there wasn't much about Catholicism my new neighbors and friends didn't already know--my faith has as heavy a presence on the cultural landscape as St. E's has on the geographical one. I ended up learning lots more about the Protestant world. Many Sundays I'd start at St. E's singing worship songs at my friends' service before ducking out to drive to Mass. I called it my "Jesus progressive dinner."
The Catholic church I attend is St. Joseph's. I sing in the choir of the 11 am Mass, where the liturgy is solidly in the Black Catholic tradition. We in the choir lead gospel songs, and sway, and every few weeks or so someone is so overcome with joy she shouts and testifies to the greatness of God. I found it all a bit startling at first, as I grew up in a church that was decidedly nondemonstrative. But that church of my childhood was later the home of Vietnamese liturgies which I also attended. I've gotten used to Mass being something outside my normal cultural sphere.
My joy would be complete if my Vineyard Central friends and neighbors and my St. Joseph church family were all connected. It's tough to belong to two congregations at the same time (even if, technically, I never joined VC--I spend way too much time with folks who are VC or loosely-VC-affiliated for this to be anything more than a technicality). Some ties already bind--a VC house church has gone to Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Joe's for the last few years, for example, and I've taken choir friends for a tour of St. E's. Still, I'm always hoping for something more, so you can imagine how excited I am about this Sunday night, when the St. Joe's choir will come sing in gorgeous St. Elizabeth's, up the street from my house.
Let me say that again: St. Joe's choir is singing at St. Elizabeth's this Sunday night. A full-on gospel choir, whose director happens to have once been the rehearsal pianist for La Scala, who reveals, when he smiles, that he is actually one of the cherubim, is coming to blow the copper dome off the church up the street.
I don't know what we'll be singing. Wylie, our choir director, never tells us in advance. The decision is left to the Spirit, who's never failed us yet.
I hope my VC and loosely-VC-affiliated friends, as well as friends from other parts and curious bystanders, will sing along. I think they will.

Giant's Causeway

2009-05-03T01:50:00.004-05:00

I am visiting my friends Cat (whom I know from high school) and Christy (her husband) at their home not far from Belfast. Generally I'm an easygoing traveller, happy to go along with other people's plans, but there was one sight I insisted on seeing on this trip: the Giant's Causeway on the Antrim Coast. I'd been to Northern Ireland once before--ten years ago this year!--on a backpacking trip, and had planned to visit this peculiar rock formation then, but I'd gotten ill and scotched the idea. There'd be none of that this time!
Cat, Christy and I set out on a whole-day expedition--not just to the Causeway but to Dunluce Castle (a majestic ruin on the cliffs which my friend Desiree had recommended I see) and the beach at Ballycastle (where Christy had gone many a summer whilst growing up). I was completely dumbstruck by Dunluce, it was just so gorgeous and wild. Mighty waves crashing against rocks below sheer cliffs, a roofless manor house and loggia and battlements, a sign describing an outer wall that had slid into the sea.
Fortified with salt and vinegar crisps, we headed next to the Giant's Causeway. Christy asked if I'd heard the legend of its formation. I had, but I'd forgotten key details.
"There's this Irish giant and this Scottish giant who decide to get together to fight," he began. Apparently they'd never met before--perhaps they'd just shouted insults back and forth, as Scotland and this bit of Northern Ireland are only, what, 37 km removed at this point. "So they start building a causeway so they can meet in the middle to battle it out." But then the Irish giant catches a glimpse of the Scottish giant--Christy used a colorful colloquialism to describe the terror the Irish giant felt at this point-and he hurriedly retreats. "Back home, the Irish giant dresses up in baby clothes and gets in a baby carriage sized to fit him. The Scottish giant meanwhile is angry he didn't get to scrap, and he comes looking for the Irish giant--" and finds instead what he takes to be the Irish giant's not-so-wee bairn. "He thinks, 'if that's his baby...!' and he runs back home, destroying the causeway as he goes."
All this Cat and Christy and I talked about on the long slanting road down to the Causeway. Christy also said that, though he himself thought the legend was a sufficient explanation for the stones, "naysayers" had formed a theory about a volcanic eruption some 60 million years back when basalt had rapidly cooled in the water. The expansion and contraction of rock made it take hexagonal shapes for reasons I've read about on the Wiki page but don't quite understand. "But the evidence in favor of the legend is that there are similar formations on the Scottish side," Christy pointed out.
Once we actually reached the Led Zeppelin album cover, I again felt overcome by how extraordinary it was. It's always fun to go stepping from stone to stone on a shoreline--multiply that by the surreality of the stones being hexagonal, and at all different heights, and some of them loose. "D'you have good health insurance?" Christy wanted to know. I laughed but started stepping more carefully, though I still found myself drawn to go as far out toward the sea as I could. Most people were scrambling up a ledge flanked by long columns of these rocks, but this was closer to the shore. There was a wide shelf of black rock (the inner rocks were brown) that was lonelier. I headed that way. My path would be blocked by small pools of water or boulders, but I found ways through. I didn't see where Cat and Christy went.
I found what seemed to be a good outpost--not too close to the crashing waves, not too close to the shoreline--and sat on a rock. I wasn't content there long, though. I soon noticed that, since the hexagons were all different heights, a natural high-backed chair was right beside me. I slid into it gratefully. It was even tilted back a little--a natural Barcalounger. Perfect. Mysterious stones and great green cliffs and wheeling seagulls and the roar of the sea. Happiness.
I watched the waves as they smashed into the rocks and broke into spouts of spray. I felt like I could have watched this for hours and hours. Just a few minutes in, though, I heard a deeper roar and saw a bigger wave approach. Wow, I thought. I wonder how far in it will get?
...as it flung itself in and drenched my corduroys and socks and shoes.
I stood up, squealed "AAA!" or something like that and looked around. I started squelching back to the brown rocks. (I was beginning to vaguely grasp what the difference in color might have meant.) I wanted to find Cat and Christy, but I was also hoping they hadn't seen this.
As I looked around I heard a whistle. "Don't worry," Christy said from the ledge where he and Cat were sitting. "Nobody saw that. Not many people, anyway."
For the rest of the day, when Cat broke into giggles, I knew the mental picture that prompted them. But I didn't mind. They were gracious enough to provide me a place to stay on this trip--the least I could do for Cat and Christy was to provide them some entertainment.

2009-03-15T14:47:00.003-05:00

Really? My last post was in Advent? Huh. Well, it's Lent, so I guess it's time I post again...
Friday I was not well. I was the sort of "not well" that wakes one up at 3 am and lets one know that despite all previous plans, one is not going to go to work, one is not going to the awesome Hartzell United Methodist All You Can Eat Fish Fry and one is not going to the CD release party for the spectacular new release by the amazing Pomegranates, Everybody Come Outside!
Twelve hours after this realization, I decided to risk a walk around the neighborhood in the interest of a change of scenery. I was feeling a bit better, so I stepped out of the apartment with my long black leather jacket over a red ribbed sweater and my favorite gray pants and started out on the forty-minute circuit I like to walk.
I was almost finished--I'd turned my third corner--when a cop car pulled up and two cops came out of it and they said, "Put your hands behind your back! We have a warrant!"
Um?
I put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. All I could think was, "I hope wherever you plan to take me has a bathroom."
"What are you doing out here?" they asked.
"I'm on a walk," I said. "I have a forty-minute circuit I like to walk."
"Have you been arguing with anybody?"
"No."
"Do you have any identification on you?"
"No. But if you take me back to my house, we can get it."
"We had a call on a domestic dispute involving a woman with a red sweater and a black leather jacket."
As the cop was saying this, I could see "maybe this isn't the right chick" cross his face and the face of his partner. One kept looking up the street, muttering things like, "She should be coming round the corner any second."
They asked for my name, social security number and birthdate. I gave all of this information, and one got on his walkie-talkie and relayed it. They both sighed in exasperation as the woman on the other end got the numbers wrong, they repeated them, and then we waited. While we waited, one cop decided I didn't pose enough of a security risk to warrant the metal, so he released me from the handcuffs. I put my hands in my pockets and then remembered policemen want to see your hands at all times, so I took them back out again.
We waited, the one cop continuing to look up the street. I stared off into the middle distance.
The cop who kept looking up the street looked at the red lion emblazoned on my necklace and said, alluding to the birth date I'd given him, "I wondered if that necklace meant you were a Leo."
"No, it's actually from Chronicles of Narnia," I said.
Trying to find me in their system was taking too long for their tastes, so finally they said, "Let's just go. Sorry, ma'am." And they got back in their cop car and drove off.
The whole thing probably took no more than ten minutes. I've been having some interesting "Yeah, I've been handcuffed by the police" conversations with random folks because of it.

Advent, Active Waiting, Love of God and Love of Neighbor

2008-12-02T22:02:00.002-05:00

At some point I read a story which illustrated the concept of "active waiting." It seems there was a woman who desperately wanted to have a baby. She decided that there were some things she could do to become a better mother, if and when the time came, and she didn't have to wait until she was pregnant to get started on them. So she quit smoking, she got more exercise, she read parenting books, she sought to improve her relationship with her husband. By the time she did have a baby, the baby was incorporated into a well-integrated life--it was not the be-all and end-all of her life; it wasn't an idol, as it might have been had she not done all that preparation.
I like the idea of "active waiting," particularly in Advent. One of the practices I have taken from the idea is the practice of asking more advice, soliciting more opinions, about whatever it is I am actively waiting for.
This Advent I have decided to actively wait for wholeness. From what I understand of Christian teaching, the two commands we are to follow are to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Wholeness would spring from these. So because I like to solicit opinions as I actively wait, I've been asking around: "What does 'love God/love neighbor' look like to you?"
Some of the responses I've gotten so far:
--One person remembered how it used to be common for people to bow their heads or tip their hats when they'd pass a church. Now this person bows--just a quick li'l head bob, nothing fancy, but it's always packed with personal meaning--upon meeting anyone for the first time.
--One person said "love your neighbor" meant something quite concrete: "love the people living right by your house."
--Still another said that the "love God" part of the command could be fulfilled by doing the "love your neighbor" part. And that the secret to the latter command was in actions like cooperation, apologizing when wrong, matching talents to needs.
So I'm throwing the question out there. What does "love God/love your neighbor" look like in your own life? Do you have any specific practices that flow from these commands that you can recommend to someone who wants to get better at them?

U2: A Diary: The Matt McGee Interview

2008-10-04T08:30:00.005-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Matt McGee, founder of @U2 and author of U2: A Diary, answering five questions about his new book.

1. Once you committed to making U2: A Diary happen, what sort of adjustments took place in your daily schedule? (In other words, where did writing a book "fit" into your life?)

I remember chatting with my wife (and the kids to a lesser degree) before committing to do the book, and saying, "If I'm gonna do this right, I'll be at my computer every waking moment of every day." We generally share the parenting duties -- we both cook, clean, help with homework, etc. So I had to ask her to handle all that stuff whenever she could, so that I had time to write and research. I also had to explain to the kids that Dad may not be spending as much fun time with them until the book was done. God bless Cari -- she basically ran the house just so I could fit the book into my life. And God bless the kids for letting me be an almost absentee Dad for a while.

And I should mention, too, that I basically stepped away from @U2, too. The staff ran the show so I could focus on the book, and they did a better job running things than I do when I'm around. That's both cool and scary. Cool that I'm not needed ... and scary that I'm not needed. :-)

2. What were some of the reactions you got when you told people you know--fan and non-fan--"Hey, not only am I running this U2 fan website, but I'm writing a book about the band, too"?

"You must REALLY like U2!" was a common reaction. And then I also heard a lot of, "I tried writing a book once" or "My best friend/cousin/brother/sister is writing a book, too." It's amazing how many people are either writing a book or know someone very close to them who's writing a book. Those were probably the most common reactions from non-fans. The U2 fans just about always reacted with things like "Awesome!" and "Let me know how I can help," which was really awesome. Everyone was really supportive that way.

3. One of the aims of this book, as I understand it, is to provide a corrective for some of the lazier reporting out there about U2. Is there any particular U2 myth you would hope would be mythbusted by this book, and if so, which one?

I don't know if myth is the right word, but I'm really proud of how the narrative of the early Christianity/Shalom/band disruption era turned out. For years, there was very little written about that time period, and the band seemed to avoid it or play it down when the subject came up. Then, within the last 4-5 years, they've talked about it more in various magazine interviews, books, and so forth. But the stories didn't always fit with what we'd heard before. So it was really tough to get the story right, to get the timing right, and I wanted to make sure the wording was right, too. Thankfully, I had great help from friends like you, Scott [Editor's note: Scott is organizing an academic conference on U2--check it out], and Beth [co-editor of Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog], and I think the book will have the most accurate version of those events possible.

4. If there was more than one version of events which changed up the timeline, how did you decide which one to go with, or did you provide all the "alternate histories"?

On some occasions, you'll see words in the narrative like "reportedly" ... "possibly" ... "believed to be" ... "other reports" ... and things like that. Without going through the band's personal diaries (if they even have such things), it's impossible to tie some things down definitively. So when necessary, I try to offer the alternate histories, as you say.

In other situations, it's just a matter of deciding what source to trust. For example, Paul McGuinness was recently talking about the death of Greg Carroll, and he said the whole band was in a bar in Dublin when it happened. But back in 1987, Bono gave a quote to a New Zealand magazine about how he had just landed in Texas when he heard the news that Greg Carroll had died. Bono was due to appear the next day at Farm Aid II, but had to get on a plane and go right back to Dublin. In the book, I decided to believe Bono's version of events given one year later over Paul McGuinness's version of events given 20 years later.

5. Was there any particular time period which was harder to research, and if so, for what reason?

Anything pre-1980 was very tough, because you can't find many online news archives that go back that far, and many of the people who were involved back then are impossible to track down. I was lucky enough to have a quick email exchange with Meiert Avis, who was part of the Windmill Lane crew in the late '70s and 1980 when U2 was there, as well as Chas de Whalley, who produced U2's first studio sessions and recordings. Chas, in particular, gave me a great interview. He also helped me track down some other people on the scene who helped flesh out some of what was going on then. That helped a lot with the early days.

Brandon Dawson

2008-09-03T15:23:00.003-05:00

New interview with Brandon Dawson for Thunderstruck can be found here.
"When it comes to music of all genres, Dawson is contagious enthusiasm personified. With the dominant music-geek stereotype that of the elitist snob, it’s refreshing to spend time with someone so filled with curiosity and joy. Which is why it’s surprising, as we talk about his debut album Becoming Human, to hear him discuss the tough process of renouncing fear."

For Don

2008-08-14T06:12:00.004-05:00

My friend Jim's dad died this week.
Don was a quiet guy. I used to go to Jim's house all the time, but I can't say I can remember many conversations with his dad. The impression I have was that he was kind of shy, maybe didn't really know how to make small talk with one of his son's friends. But in his quiet way he was kind. He could make me feel at home.
He called me "Angie," which is not something a lot of people do. Jim doesn't even call me "Angie," so I'm not sure how he got into the habit. I tend to reserve that nickname to people who've known me a very long time, but with some people, it just sounds right when they say it. I can hear Don now: "How are you, Angie?" I guess because he had this hesitant manner otherwise with me, the use of the more private nickname was especially...right. As though just because he was shy didn't mean he liked people any less.
...It's strange. I started out thinking that I didn't really remember that much about Don, but all evening memories have been surfacing. I was thinking of something else a few moments ago when suddenly I thought of Jim's cousins calling Don "Uncle Duckie," in honor of his spot-on Donald Duck impression.
And earlier I was remembering wanting to watch one of my favorite movies with Jim, but he nixed Lawrence of Arabia as soon as I suggested it. It seems it was one of Don's favorite movies too, which meant it was on in the house so often, Jim developed an allergic reaction to even the thought of watching it again.
Don could be so surprising. Like at Jim's mom's funeral a few years ago, at the end, when people got up to share their memories...Don got up and gave the most beautiful, the most gentle, poignant and heartfelt testimony about his wife, at a time when it would be most painful to do such a thing, at a time I could hardly imagine I could have even formed a coherent sentence, were I in his shoes. He just quietly talked about his wife and how much he would miss her and all the fun they had together.
There's a picture Jim has of his parents where they are playfully trying to wring each others' necks. This is the picture Jim has framed, on display. The cutest couple.
I hadn't really seen Don much since Jim's mom's funeral, but there are still sweet things I remember. Like how Jim's boyfriend Greg crocheted him an American flag afghan (Don was a Marine). Or how I'd hear Jim talk to him on the phone and end the conversation with "I love you, Dad."
I think these things stood out for me because I adopt fathers where I can, having lost mine when I was 13. And for all the complexity of their relationship (I'm sure all father/son relationships are complicated, but Don and Jim had a few extra twists and turns in theirs), there was such love, and they could even use the word "love" with each other--it was a privilege to be a witness to that, as it's now a privilege to write about it.
One of the last times I saw Jim's dad was when he came to a show Jim's boyfriend Greg was in. (In, or directing, or both? I can't remember now. And maybe Jim was stage-managing it too.) I was sitting in one of the back rows and in walked this man I didn't recognize, partly because the lights had already gone down and partly because it had been years since I'd seen him. But he looked over at me, and then he came over to me and whispered, "How are you doing, Angie?"

Pomegranates

2008-05-19T14:17:00.005-05:00

An article I wrote about the Cincinnati band Pomegranates is now available on Thunderstruck.

Speaking of Faith

2008-05-06T14:38:00.003-05:00

The radio program Speaking of Faith solicited comments about Catholicism. I submitted my comments, and now they are on this page.

Where the Streets Have No Name

2008-03-19T11:44:00.001-05:00

I seem to only be updating this when U2 is involved...!
Here's an essay I wrote for @U2.

U2 3D

2008-01-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

Isn't it clever? They came up with a movie name that matched their whole "one letter, one number" pattern in reverse. Maybe the technology was developed solely so that one day U2 might utilize it...
I attended the Cincinnati premiere of U2 3D with Bocce Bill last night (not to be confused with Pente Bill, though Bocce Bill plays Pente with Pente Bill). At first it was somewhat frustrating--there was what appeared to be a crack running down the frame. When the lighting was just right you could see it was actually a bit of film strip. Wha? Various members of the crowd made noises, and Bocce Bill went out to talk to someone in charge. At first the only result was that one could see a hand wiping at the obstruction, which was of course even more annoying and not the least bit effective, though the hand made its attempt several times. Finally, about halfway through the second song, the film was stopped, someone came out to inform us that a piece of film was stuck to the lens, and that they were taking care of it. They turned the movie back on (not starting from the beginning, as we requested) with the volume up higher (as we requested).
Then we could all relax and enjoy ourselves.
And how enjoyable it was. Things I particularly enjoyed:
* The song selection. One reviewer had a minor gripe (and so far all the gripes have been minor; the lavish critical praise has been something to behold) that it's mostly a collection of greatest hits. Yes, well, it's rather hard for it not to be, at this point in U2's history. And it would be one thing if it was just a collection of nostalgic hits; quite another for it to be their hits of 1983, 1987, 1991, 2000 etc.
* The sound. Unbelievable separation of the instruments. I was hearing things in these songs I'd never heard before, and given how many times I've heard these songs...! Also, props to whoever did the sound mixing, given that the audio (and visuals) was taken from several different shows. I could tell the difference when they'd cut to the sound from a stadium show, but it was done in such a smooth way, it seemed more a part of the narrative than anything else (the narrative being "Here's where we're sharing something intimate, and here is where we are opening up this intimacy to 100,000 people.")
* Adam.
* Edge. The worshipful tone of Variety's review (sample: "The Edge is a still presence, a cornerstone, a man who quietly revels while a wild celebration unfolds around him.") makes a lot of sense when you watch this. I'm on the record as saying I don't think Edge is very interesting to watch live--what he does is all interior, he's not playing to the crowd at all--but this was different.
* Larry, particularly during "Love and Peace or Else," when Bono starts stalking him.
Which leads us to:
* Bono. Everything you need to know about how to give a great performance can be learned by watching this movie. That's all I'm saying.
* My free movie ticket. Because of the technical difficulties at the beginning, we all got free tix at the end. Yay!

NaNoWriMo

2007-12-15T18:22:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write about my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) experience since its conclusion, but seeing as it's the middle of December now, I guess you already know one key fact about it: it has not upped my literary output.
NaNoWriMo is a simple idea: try to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days, specifically November 1st to the 30th. I've tried in previous years but never got very far. (The first year, in fact, was when I got diagnosed with Crohn's; nothing like getting a colonoscopy in the middle of the month to render one less excited about producing a novel.) This year was the first one in which I actually signed up as an official participant at the NaNo website. It wasn't to give my attempt more credibility and thus to motivate myself to stick with it, although that proved to be a side benefit. No; I signed up because Neil Gaiman had agreed to be among the writers who would send out pep talk emails over the course of the month, and the thought of getting an email from, you know, NEIL GAIMAN was irresistible.
I started the month full of enthusiasm (I think; I can't really remember back that far). I bought a couple of new notebooks and a couple Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball pens--my favorite. The notebooks were the toughest to pick out. I like the Mead Fat Lil' Notebook (known in Spanish as "Cuaderno Fat Lil'," according to the back) because they fit well in my purse, they've got lots of pages, and they're spiral-bound, but they are kind of bland, with solid-color covers in conservative shades. I was sorely tempted to buy a notebook whose cover featured a big-eyed Siamese with an elongated neck and the caption "Yes, I am that fabulous." But the Fat Lil' won out in the end because the Siamese was kind of disturbing.
I wrote in the mornings before work; I wrote faithfully, purt near every day, but had a tough time reaching the target daily word count. This may have been because I was writing and not typing, but I compose better that way. I think my thoughts arrive at writing speed, not typing speed. Later in the day I would enter my work into the computer to get a word count. This was a distressing exercise because usually, when I am working on a story, I use the typing stage to create a second draft--I'm altering as I go. (This entry is a case in point--its original draft was written in the Fat Lil' and is ever-so-slightly different.) But I wouldn't let myself do this for my NaNo project lest I lose precious words in the editing process. I had to just grit my teeth and type whatever I'd written, regardless of my low opinion of its quality.
And the quality was very poor indeed. I'd begun the project with one plot in mind--a second attempt at a story I'd thought up for last year's NaNo, plus a twist I was really jazzed about, an idea that had fallen from the sky in late October. I could hardly wait to begin. But in the actual process of writing the idea lost its savor. To keep myself going I started importing more and more from my own life, changing friends' names and barely fictionalizing details. The last 10,000 words, my desperate race against time, were a dream sequence only vaguely related to the rest of the plot.
Oh, those last 10,000 words...I had been plugging away, as I said, every day, falling further and further behind where I needed to be to keep pace. I wasn't being very faithful at typing up my work, however, so for a long stretch I didn't know my word count. On Thanksgiving I had a marathon typing session and discovered I was at 20,000 words--more than I'd ever managed in previous years, but far behind where I needed to be. So over the holiday weekend I abandoned the notebook and typed. And typed. And typed. Over three days I got out 15,000 or so more words--again, not quality stuff by any means, just quantity. Sheer verbosity, with the occasional glimmer of something interesting (but not enough to make me want to go back and read any of it).
Now I'd done 15k in a weekend. Could I do an additional 15k over the course of five weekdays--when I was at work during the day and had class and other obligations at night? When I was already feeling some ill effects from sitting in front of a computer screen most of the weekend?
I managed 5000 more words Monday through Thursday. No problem, though, right? I had until midnight on the 30th. At peak over the weekend I found I could churn out a thousand words an hour if I really, really pushed myself. I got off work at 4:30...at some point I'd have to eat...I figured I had seven uninterrupted hours in which to write. Maybe I could do it. I was too close to give up now, anyway. I had to give it a shot.
That's why the last 10,000 or so words were a dream sequence, really several of my own dreams strung together with some other elements--the Corpus Christi Carol, for one--thrown in. I'm sure it would make a fascinating psychological study if I could ever stand to let someone read it.
At 11:59 and 30 seconds I dumped the whole thing into the NaNo website's word counter and...
49,681.
Five more minutes and I coulda made it. That's all right--I got lots of sympathy from my fellow NaNoers at that weekend's Thank God It's Over party. They felt my pain.
That's another great aspect of the experience (and yes, I think it was a great experience, my griping about so-close-and-yet-so-far notwithstanding)--the chance to meet other Cincinnati writers. Throughout the month we had "write-ins," announced in the website forum, where folk could come together and work. There's nothing like a whole bunch of people all feverishly typing to keep you on task for a couple of hours.
Interestingly, the first write-in was held at the Speckled Bird, the neighborhood cafe, so of course I went. And there of course as I was sitting with this group of writers I did not know, I kept seeing people I did know--friends in the neighborhood. So every few minutes I'd look up and wave to Chris, or Bill, or Des--and after a while I wondered how this looked to my new writer friends. Did they think I was like Norm from Cheers?
I'd also mentioned to one of the writers that I lived down the street--and pointed in the direction of my house. But when I was leaving--at the same time that she was--I didn't go in that direction. I went over to the JFCCCH to walk Cori. Luckily she didn't ask me about this. I would have had to say, "No, I don't live there. I just occasionally go in their house and walk their dog."

Eulogy

2007-11-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

A buddy of mine died today. He was the guy I felt closest to at Our Daily Bread--we had a good rapport. He was our porter, which meant mostly he sat by our receptionist's desk and did little odd jobs for her. He helped her stuff envelopes, or would bring the mail to those of us in the office, shuffling across the floor. When I'd come in at the start of the day I'd smile and say hi to him. And he'd turn around like he was trying to figure out who I was talking to. And if I was walking through the place I'd hear him sing out "Ann--gela!" But of course if I looked over at him he'd be looking behind him again. (He played this game with his nephews too. Several times a day I'd hear him give that same kind of teasing call to one of them. It was one of the ways I knew all was well with the world.)
I remember probably my first week of working there, or close to it, I sat next to him at the front door in an effort to get acclimated to the soup kitchen environment. He greeted everyone who came in, usually with a nickname. "What's up, Grumpy?" "How's your kid doing?"
"How many of the people here do you know?" I asked him.
"I don't know any of 'em," he said seriously. Then he went back to greeting everybody.
Two things he was known for in particular. One was his Li'l Rascals face. He didn't have any teeth, so he had no problem getting his lower lip all the way up to his nose, pouting it out as he did it so his lower face was all frowny lip. Then he'd turn his baseball cap to the side, squeeze his eyes shut and slump down so his stomach stuck out. He adopted this pose if anyone tried to take his picture, and often he did it just because.
The other thing he did was set off the loon call in the office. Our volunteer coordinator had bought a stuffed animal loon who would give its weird call--ooOOOooo--if you pressed down on its back. This my buddy enjoyed doing. He never grew tired of hearing it. We got treated to a lot of loon calls when he was around. Not too long ago he started doing something new--slowly tipping his head back and opening his mouth wide as it'd go when he set off the loon call, so it seemed like the noise was coming out of his own throat. Then it became an in-joke greeting between us--I would mime his loon call move, he would mime it back to me. This was especially great in the middle of a crazy day (it's always a crazy day in a soup kitchen). My desk is so positioned that I could look out the office door and see him sitting by the front door, clear across the lower dining room. On a tough day I'd catch his eye, tip my head back, open my mouth as wide as it would go--ooOOOooo. He'd do it back. We'd giggle and I would get back to work.
Sometimes I'd look up from my computer and see him standing expressionless in the doorway of his office--no telling how long he'd been standing there. I'd roll my eyes and he'd crack up. Or he'd be behind the door and would slooooowly come peeking out, only to duck right back. (This was another sign he spent a lot of time entertaining his nephews.) I would mimic him then too, playing hide and seek behind my computer, until we'd both crack up. "If I can make you laugh, I know I've done something right," he'd say. He seemed really proud of himself when he said it, too, and I knew this laugh during a tough day was his gift to me, and he was glad to be able to give it.
He had a lot of tough days--he was sick a long time--and there wasn't much I could do to lighten them for him. "I'm not feeling too good, Angie" was something he said often. And sometimes when he'd be walking out of the office after bringing us the mail (holding it out and then snatching it out of reach a few times before relinquishing it), he'd stop and close his eyes and wobble a little before continuing on.
A couple of weeks ago he gave me a little white teddy bear that's sitting now on my desk. "What are you gonna name it?" he asked me later that day.
"I don't know. I don't think I ever really had a teddy bear as a kid. My favorite stuffed animal back then was a rabbit named Bunny Baby."
"Then name it Bunny."
So I have Bunny to remember him by.
He gave our volunteer coordinator a musical snowglobe that he won at one of our weekly bingos. It "snows" iridescent sparkles on a pair of giraffes, and it plays "Everything is Beatiful." When he came in for a visit to the office, often or she would wind it up, and he would dance. So she has that, and the song will make all of us think of him when we hear it.
Everything is beautiful in its own way.

On the absolute last day I can get away with posting this

2007-10-31T14:14:00.001-05:00

A poem by Dylan Thomas.

Especially When the October Wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

---
Why do I love this poem so much? For one thing, it sounds so good recited. The line about the "wordy shapes of women"--you start smiling as you say it and the smile comes through in your voice. Try to count how many times a letter ends one word and begins the next: "sea's side," "and drains," "Shut, too"--these combinations force you to slow down, to linger over each word as you speak. And all the alliterations make music as well.
It took me a long time to notice the rhyme scheme, since it's full of near-rhymes. It also took me a while to figure out that each line is ten syllables long.
This site goes into this poem into a bit more detail.

Actual In-Print Writing

2007-10-24T15:34:00.000-05:00

A review I wrote of Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby is now up at CityBeat.
I had to shorten it to get the word count to something reasonable. One cut broke my heart--I very much wanted to quote Inigo Montoya in the section describing how Catanzarite cites Yeats' "The Second Coming": "I do no' think it means what you think it means."

Peculiar Hypotheses I Tend To Credit

2007-09-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

When I was a wee lass my mom and dad took me on a trip to New York because my dad was going to a special training there in the summer. I think this took place in the summer between kindergarten and first grade, which would have made me five, but I don't remember exactly. I do remember that before the trip I had befriended a neighborhood cat, an orange tabby I called Tiger. I was heartsick about leaving St. Louis without saying goodbye to Tiger, and I was sure he wouldn't understand my absence. Sure enough, I never saw Tiger again. When we returned from New York in the fall, my sister told me that Tiger had come by looking for me several times, and then finally gave up.
For many years after that, no neighborhood cat would give me the time of day. I'd try to coax them to me, but they would just run off. I was convinced it was because they had all heard how I'd misused poor Tiger.
I tell this story because there's a cat named Thomas who hangs around my new place. He would always dash into the shrubbery or under the parked cars when he'd see me coming. This went on for weeks until I decided to put some effort into making friends with Thomas. Now that I'm a grownup, I know the way to a cat's heart is through his stomach, so I bought some cat treats. It still took a while, but he's gone from total disapproval of me to wary friendliness to being outright demanding.
And since becoming friends with Thomas, I have noticed something curious. All the strays I've encountered lately have been exceptionally cordial. As soon as I stoop down and do the "here kitty" routine, they come right up to me to be petted--and I'm not carrying around any cat treats, either. I'm beginning to wonder if my childhood theory is right, and cats do spread the word about the trustworthiness of particular humans.

Lectionary Stuff

2007-09-18T07:43:00.000-05:00

Here is what we read Sunday at Mass. Some things struck me on this go-round that I hadn't noticed before:
1. Isn't it interesting how there's a molten calf in the first reading and a fattened calf in the Gospel?
2. That numerical progression in the Gospel is great: one out of a hundred sheep, one out of ten coins, one out of two sons. I can imagine the original hearers going, "I wouldn't leave ninety-nine sheep to chase one!" but having no such trouble with the coin story, and then by the time the story of the sons comes around they're totally sucked in.
3. Before we got to the readings Father mentioned how God and Moses sound like parents when a kid has gotten in trouble: "Let me tell you what your son did today...!" First God complains to Moses about "your people," and Moses answers by giving them back to God by calling them "your own people." Same motif in the Gospels, but the situation is reversed if we equate the prodigal son's father with God: this time, the elder son calls his brother "your son" when he's talking with their dad but the dad turns around and calls him "your brother."
By the way, the woman who did the first reading at our Mass did a marvelous job. When she got to God's line where he's quoting the Israelites worshipping the calf--"This is your God, O Israel,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
--she gave it such a mocking tone, like one kid on the playground repeating another kid's words in singsong, that she got a giggle out of the congregation.

Continuing Adventures Of This Week

2007-09-06T15:08:00.000-05:00

Lured by the promise of an ArtsyFartsyJesusFreak Woodstock, I went camping this weekend to an event known as "GratisFest." It featured bands like Jake Speed and the Freddies and The Pomegranates and The Psalters; primary-color-themed art projects; and a half-pipe for young skater dudes and chicks. I haven't been on a camping trip since I was, oh, one. But I had a supremely easy time of it--all I had to do was buy a sleeping bag and a cooler and borrow D.'s flashlight. My friends G. and T. let me sleep in their tent and eat their food; I didn't even have to drive, I just bummed rides to and from rural Indiana.
The first evening I helped serve ale in the makeshift pub (Price: "a penance a pint"). I stepped outside when the dusk was all gone and only night was left. There were STARS. There was even a MILKY WAY. Jake Speed and the Freddies paid tribute to the sight with a lovely rendition of the Woody Guthrie/Wilco classic "California Stars." I had brought along an H.A. Rey starbook borrowed from the library (growing up I had a copy of his Know Your Stars); I used it to make exceptionally futile attempts at identifying constellations. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to find Scorpio--that was all I gained in constellation knowledge.
The first night, Friday to Saturday, I did not sleep well, so my Saturday passed as follows:
Got up
Sat in a chair
Ate tasty food (eggs and cheese in a bagel)
Napped in the tent
Sat in a chair some more
Ate tasty food (pasta salad with tomatoes and green olives)
Napped some more
...You get the idea. I also went for a couple of walks in the fantastically picturesque woods, trying to identify elm and black walnut trees.
Saturday night The Pomegranates staged a triumph. They made me miss Pants terribly though, because she was the one that introduced the band to me, plus there was a redheaded girl dancing in front of the stage and for a fleeting moment I thought Pants had come to town to surprise us all. Alas, it was not so. But The Poms were simply incredible, particularly considering the audience was probably 75% musicians, so it would have been rather an intimidating show to play, I'd think. I expect great things from this band.
Walking back to the campsite (which by the way consisted of most of my friends and neighbors) after the concert I happened to look up as I wandered through the corn fields and saw some shooting stars. I thought--not for the first time--that I've been given a great life.

When The Stars Fall From The Sky And The Moon Has Turned Red

2007-09-05T07:46:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting to post until I have time to write a full account, but it doesn't seem like I have the luxury of time, so I'll just have to do this in snippets.
Last week I watched the moon cease to exist. The lunar eclipse was very odd, here in Ohio. Unsettling. My friend K and I wandered through Norwood, camping out on one neighbor's porch after another, trying to keep it in sight as it sunk in the sky. When I left the house at 4:50 am, there was already a tiny bite out of the top, like out of a glowing chocolate chip cookie; the bite grew larger and larger as we watched but not very quickly (the earth it moves fast, but not all that fast) so mostly we paid it little attention, we just chatted amongst ourselves. But when there was only a tiny sliver of light left at the bottom, we kept our eyes trained on the moon, even as we had to keep finding higher ground since it was sinking fast into the trees. Then it was red, like a coal after a fire--streaked with red like that. We watched and waited for the sliver of light to return at the top but the earth it is very very large. The sky meanwhile grew lighter, the moon sank lower, and it grew more non-descript. Think of seeing the moon out in daytime, and then imagine the light cast on it by the sun is gone, and you'll get a sense of how not-bright it was. There came a point where we weren't sure we were looking at the moon at all, and so we went home without seeing it return. We wondered if it would ever come back.

Stormchasing

2007-08-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

It continues to be--to use the technical term--darn hot in Cincinnati.
My friend Charlie has been trying to convince me for some time to listen to Mr. Rhythm Man's show on WNKU, which goes from 6-9 on Saturday nights. I can't get 89.7 in my house, so I decided to go out driving and tune in on the car radio. There were dark clouds off in--well, I don't quite know my directions here yet, let's call it "the southwest." They were clearly rainclouds, and there was clearly rain in them, and they were clearly passing my neighborhood by. So I decided, having no particular place to go, to follow the storm--with the hopes of feeling even just the most incremental bit cooler.
I learned a few things. One, Charlie was right, Mr. Rhythm Man does him a mean show. It made an excellent stormchasing soundtrack. Two, Cincinnati is not the sort of city where you can say "I think I'll drive southwest tonight" and have your desire reach fruition. One road I followed for a while terminated in a park. Another steadfastly refused to permit me a left-hand turn. There seem to be a great many parts of the city that are only accessible from one street, and if you don't happen to know exactly where that street is, well, too darn bad.
So it was an informative as well as an entertaining evening. Never did catch up to the storm, but I got to watch the steam rising off the asphalt in thick clouds.

Phone Conversation

2007-08-18T13:52:00.000-05:00

Me: So what's your brother teaching?
Other Person: Arthurian Legends.
Me: What?
Other Person: Arthurian Legends.
Me: Oh! The phone reception was bad; I thought you said "Art Theory and Weapons"...but that's the same thing actually, isn't it?

Confidential to S.B.: Welcome back to the States, Sotha!

Easily the winner in the "Most Inappropriate Comment To Make To A Child" contest

2007-08-16T15:43:00.000-05:00

I was sitting in a cafe the other day when a mother with two young sons came in. The younger, who was maybe 1 1/2 or 2, was at that stage where running around and making random loud sounds is what a good time is all about. His mother tried shushing him once or twice, but not in any way that proved effective. Then he went over to her and presumably tried to get something out of her pocket (I didn't see exactly what happened), because she said to him, "Stay out of my pants, unless you have dollar bills."
...
I just...I can't even count the number of levels where that's so wrong.

The Nylons make me happy.

2007-08-09T10:39:00.000-05:00

Lookee what I just found: The Nylons' guest appearance on the short-lived record company sitcom Throb.
Go. Watch it and come back and agree with me that this is great.
After finding this, I went on a spree, looking up other Nylons songs on YouTube. Couldn't find much actually by them, but heard plenty of a cappella groups, collegiate and otherwise, singing songs in Nylon arrangements--"Up the Ladder to the Roof," "Me And the Boys"...That last one's a curious case, because it was a song written by The Nylons (or just Paul Cooper I think) about being Nylons. So it's bizarre to hear another group cover it, especially when they get to the lines "Where we're coming from/We're born to run/We run, we run like NYLONS!"
But hey. Anything to keep the Nylon spirit going.

Not quite a month between posts, so that's good.

2007-08-04T18:02:00.000-05:00

Got word of the passage of another good dog--Robbie, a sweet and sincere floppy-haired fella who lived for two things: to be loved and to torment his big sister. In my prayers I am entrusting him to the intercession of St. Puppy-Pants.
I also tried to be extra kind to both Cori and Chili the night of Robbie's passing, in his honor. I took them both out for walks. Normally I only walk Cori, and Chili gives me the look of utter devastation only boxers can give as we leave. But this time I came back for Chili and hooked him on the leash. (I had to walk them sequentially--there's just one leash.) I was naive in thinking I could make both dogs happy this way, however. As soon as Cori saw we were leaving without her, she started snapping and growling at Chili something awful. Never mind she had just returned from a walk some .5 seconds ago; another dog was getting a privilege she wasn't! They crack me up.
Did I ever tell you about Maay-BEHH's nun friends who wanted a biblical name for their dog? They named him Moreover. (Just pretend "dogs" is singular in that citation.)

Another Plug

2007-07-05T15:22:00.000-05:00

For the Fourth I went to my landlady's mom's house. We travelled together--me, my landlady and my landlord (Mr. and Mrs. Landpeople)--to Cincinnati's West Side. Now, understand that throughout my childhood, the Fourth of July meant one thing and one thing only--a backyard picnic at the Roeger's house. The Roegers and my mom and dad and a few other folks were part of a post-high school circle of friends called the Discussion Club; though over the years as the members had children and then grandchildren they wouldn't get together for their regular meetings anymore, they still convened once a year at the Roeger's, that family being the one with the biggest yard. (And with all the children of Discussion Club members, and then the children getting married, and then grandchildren, a big yard was essential). We'd pile in the van and drive out to this ranch house and play badminton and eat barbecue and go get sodas out of the coolers in the garage, and then it'd get dark and we'd chase fireflies. I especially remember the kid's room filled with Sesame Street toys, and playing Robin Hood with one of the few girls about my age who came--we made bows and arrows with twigs and rubber bands. Sometimes a teepee would be set up, and then we played Indians. For some reason (influenced I guess by the packaging on another kind of TP) I thought "White Cloud" would make a good Indian name for me.
Anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Landpeople and I went out to the West Side--the Best Side--and I got to meet Mrs. Landpeople's kith and kin. But where did we go but a ranch house with a kids room filled with toys (including the same Fisher Price airplane I used to have), and with a big backyard complete with shuttlecocks strewn all over? Coolers by the garage, the works.
Mrs. Landlady could hardly have known that by inviting me, she would teleport me back to a childhood memory. But nostalgia trip aside, it meant a lot to me to be invited to a family Fourth of July gathering.
So now that you know what a great person my landlady is, here's her website in case you're ever looking for someone to do some photography for ya.

Ice Cream Truck.

2007-06-29T08:15:00.000-05:00

Hot day, walking up to the store.
Little boy up the street, maybe 9 or 10. He's standing by the trash can at the curb wearing that little boy expression that says, "Mom asked me to do something a minute ago, but I can't remember what it is, and...oh, look! There's a bug!"
As I approach, we both hear chimes in the distance. Tinny music, bells, whistles. His expression changes--he is the wanderer in the desert catching sight of an oasis. He looks at me, but he whispers the secret to himself, as though he can barely believe it.
"Ice cream truck," he whispers.
"Ice cream truck," I confirm.
He tears up the steps to his front door. You never know when the tinny music will fade. "ICE CREAM TRUCK!"

Plug

2007-06-25T15:24:00.000-05:00

'K, I was thinking of just writing Kevin a thank-you note for how he took care of my car for me this week, but thought--no, I'll write him a li'l testimonial instead.
I took a trip this week. Every time I get ready to go on a trip, my car starts acting funny. This time, I think it's because it knew I was renting a car for the trip and it was jealous. Whatever the reason, it was making an obnoxious squealing noise. No problem, though, right? For a week I was going to be a two-car household of one person. What better time to take a car in to get checked out? Except of course that I was going to be, yes, away on a trip. So I asked Our Glorious Leader (remember? He knows about cars) to help me. He works on cars, but his specialty is the outside, not the inside. So get this: he took it for me to a place--Auto Foreign--that does work on car innards, and then when the work was done, he picked it up and brought it home for me too. Isn't that so cool?
A guy like that deserves to have a plug for his business on this blog, so:

Visit Center City Collision!

The car's fine, by the way. Apparently the car has an early-warning system to let you know when the brakes are going out--they start squealing. "If you hadn't taken it in," the guy at Auto Foreign told me, "it would have started grinding."

St. Puppy-Pants

2007-06-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

We had a loss in the family this past week. Go to Bean's Blog (the June 10th entry) to read all about it.

Overheard

2007-06-01T09:49:00.000-05:00

As I walked to the Speckled Bird last night, two little boys were walking in front of me.
Boy #1: Man, I can't wait until I get my next corn snake.
Boy #2: (no reaction; has heard it all before)
Boy #1: I think I'm gonna name him Sly.

Today

2007-05-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

A conversation I had at work today with a fella in the dining room:
Him: Can I ask you a question?
Me: Sure.
Him: If Jesus were to ask you to marry Him, would you say yes?
Me: How about if I cross that bridge when I come to it?

Dogs

2007-05-25T14:52:00.000-05:00

I'm officially in my new place. I moved Ascension Thursday, which is an auspicious date for a move, I think. (I was shooting for Brian Eno's birthday, but didn't make it out in time.) For anyone reading this in the neighborhood--I'm planning the Bring Your Own Chair Party for Saturday, June 2nd.
Two dogs live upstairs, which is one less than I'm used to. When I go back to the JFCCCHouse, Cori, the littler black dog, gets all excited; she knows she can guilt-trip me into taking her for a WALK. That's not quite true--when I hook the leash to her collar, she reaches back and grabs it in her teeth, so technically she takes me for a walk. Another fun Cori fact: it takes 5 YipYaps--breath mints for dogs--to eradicate her dog breath. For an hour or so, anyhow.
This weekend I'm watching my motorcycling friend's dog. I'll take her to work with me on Monday because she's small and likes to ride around in a pouch. The guys at the 'Bread are gonna go nuts when they see that.

Ice Cream and Swords

2007-05-02T14:30:00.000-05:00

The Ice Cream Social last week went very well. We had a good team of volunteers in to help us; a couple of them mentioned having handyman skills as well as ice-cream-scooping skills, so we put them to work hanging a plaque in Cooie's honor. Overheard while they were thus engaged in that task: "Don't get it out of whack now. We want to keep it in whack if at all possible."
The miracle of the loaves and fishes got transmogrified into the miracle of the ice cream and bananas. Not only did we serve 259 bowls of banana splits and sundaes, but when everyone was absolutely done with as many helpings as they wished, we had maybe two cups left in the bottom of one tub of the donated Graeter's, so it was a perfect amount. Plus, I had gotten some emergency backup Kroger brand (with money donated by the volunteer team's company), so we have enough for another Ice Cream Social next week, if we so choose. I don't think we'll choose that, but at least we'll have a good snack option on the next hot day.
The office staff served the volunteers ice cream at the end of their shift, and so also served many second and third helpings for guests returning to the line. It was my first time working the serving line, I'm embarrassed to admit. If I'd known I was gonna be putting some time in there, I wouldn't have worn heels. A Val quote about the experience at the end of the day: "I think I have ice cream on the bottom of my shoe."
In other news, I'm moving out of the artsy-fartsy JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCultHouse. I'm just moving down the street though, so I'm not actually moving out of the artsy-fartsy JesusFreakCrazyCommuneCult. My new home is the first floor of a two-family flat. It's a shotgun house, and my bedroom will also be the front room. I was up late last night talking to Pants about it. I knew she could relate to any moving anxiety--we're both moving out at the same time. "I'm a little worried because I don't have a dresser yet," I told her, "And I don't want to start out at my new apartment just flinging all my clothes everywhere, like I do now."
"Well, here," she said, "You want to use this dresser? It belongs to the folks whose house you're moving into, anyway."
"That's perfect! It's tall, so I can use it as part of my 'bedroom wall.' I want to separate my bed off from the rest of the front room, and first I thought I'd use screens, but since I haven't been able to find any I was just gonna use bookcases and dressers."
"You want a screen?" She pulled a set of three wooden screens complete with louvres that she had hidden away in her closet.
It was like Princess Bride, you know? "Ah--if only we had a Holocaust Cloak!"
Speaking of swashbuckling--the last couple of weeks I've been introducing Izaac, one of the young'uns in the JFCCCHouse, to all my favorite old movies--Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad (with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.), The Prisoner of Zenda (with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.). I love Robin Hood for its lesson that you can do good things without being a goody-goody, and Izaac seemed to agree.
"Watching Robin Hood makes me wanna be Robin Hood!" he said at one point.
"Except without the swordfights," Zoe (his sister) interjected.
"No! The swordfights are the whole point!" Izaac and I said together.
And I introduced him to Zenda to teach him the lesson that, if you're gonna be a bad guy, at least be a charming bad guy. He seems to have learned that, too. He's been going around shouting "Au revoir, play-actor!" at every opportunity.

Of Bananas and Balloons

2007-04-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

For the Ice Cream Social (next Wednesday from 1-3 pm, if you're in the area of Our Daily Bread) we asked for, and got, a case of bananas donated. This means my first successful grant request at this job was paid out in bananas. (Those of you who know what I was paid the first time I was ever paid for a story will especially appreciate this. Those who don't know--it would take far too long to explain.) One case=40 pounds of bananas, enough for one hundred people. That's a lot of banana splits. We've also gotten free ice cream and money to buy syrups, nuts, whipped cream, maraschino cherries, etc. etc.
I love my job.
On Easter Monday my existentialist mentor gave the 'Bread sandwiches left over from her parish's post-Easter Vigil feast and some balloons that had decorated the tables. They were the standard helium balloons, the kind that deflate in a day, but after a week they were still holding up. All but one--one dropped to the floor.
There's this little boy who comes in the office every once in a while looking for Mary Beth, or, as he puts it, "maay BEHHH" (he's like three years old). Actually he calls all of us "maay BEHHH" but it's clear that it's the original maay BEHHH he's looking for. He came in one day last week. It took me a while to realize he was in the office because I could just barely see the top of his head bobbing along on the far side of my desk.
"maay BEHHH?"
"No," I told him. "She's not in right now. Shall we go look for her?"
"K."
So we wandered out into the main dining room.
"maay BEHHH?"
"I don't see her...oh, but look, want a balloon?"
I pulled out the one that had fallen and gave it to him. Then we played a quick game where I would kick it out of his hands and he'd chase after it. This made him squeal with glee. It was the first time I'd heard him really happy.
A couple of days after that we let one of our guests take the whole bunch of remaining balloons--which, yes, were still inflated. You couldn't see his face as he left, just all these pastel teardrop shapes bobbing their way out the door.

Cooie

2007-04-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

Here's how my day went yesterday.
Just after 8 in the morning I hopped in my car to go to a workshop on grantwriting I'd registered for last week. When I sent in the payment for the workshop, I'd torn out the whole page in the brochure with the registration form. What I tore out included the "Save the Date" info with the directions to the workshop, but I didn't worry about this. I just figured the workshop would be held at the headquarters of the organization that sent out the brochure. So I went from Norwood, where I live, out 71 to 275 (on a rainy day, this trip took about 25 minutes). I got there a little late, thought it was odd there were no cars in the parking lot, went in to the office and apologized for being late for the workshop.
"But that workshop isn't being held here--it's in Norwood."
"!...I just came from Norwood!"
So back in the car I went. Luckily not much had happened before I got in the conference room at the real location; they hadn't even started the PowerPoint slides yet.
During the workshop one of my co-workers at my old job left a message on my phone. When the presentation was over at 11:30 I listened to the message.
(Background: last week I'd tried to arrange a lunch for sometime this week with my old boss and our regular lunch crew. We'd originally planned for Tuesday, but it was silly for me to plan for Tuesday because I had also planned for my friend Beth, who was in from out of town, to come in to work with me that day. So I'd emailed my old boss back to ask if another day of the week would be better.)
My co-worker's phone message said that my boss had gotten my email, had decided Wednesday would be the day we'd go to lunch, had sent invites to the whole crew--but had forgotten to tell me. By the time I'd listened to the message and called my old co-worker back, they were all at the restaurant already. Luckily the real location of the workshop was fairly close to the restaurant, so I placed my order through my co-worker's cell phone and got there in time to see her starting in on my crab rangoon.
After that I got in to work. We're planning an Ice Cream Social at Our Daily Bread as part of the continuing festivities surrounding Cookie's retirement. It's going to be during the time our regular guests are around; we're inviting donors and friends from all over, so it should be an interesting mix of people. Yesterday we were on the "design a postcard to send out" stage. The Wednesday Craft Lady had recommended the Chiller font because it looks cool in both senses of the word, so I used that to write:
Join us for an
Ice Cream Social!
Wednesday, May 2nd, 1-3 pm
Come help us celebrate and thank
Our Cookie V.!
Then I copied it and pasted it four times so we could cut up the cardstock we were using to postcard size. I used a clip art image of a sundae (I love clip art), enlarged it, brightened it and took away a lot of its contrast so it could hide behind the words and become sort of a subliminal sundae. Deeply pleased with myself, I ran off the master copy, stuck it in our mondo copier in the back room and printed 200 postcards. Then I ran the cardsstock through a second time to print the return address on the back.
First problem: I hadn't waited long enough for the ink to dry. My pretty Chiller script got all streaky. Oh, well, I thought--maybe it'd help people to feel sorry for us if our mailings are a bit imperfect.
Next problem: As I cut the sheets down to postcard size, I saw that the return address didn't line up very well. Sometimes it was right at the corner, sometimes it was a quarter of the way down the card. My postcards were starting to look pretty sad.
And then: I happened to notice as I was cutting that I must have deleted something by accident after I had done the copying and pasting of the invite. One-quarter of the cards now said
Join us for an
Ice Cream Social!
Wednesday, May 2nd, 1-3 pm
Come help us celebrate and thank
Our Cooie V.!
I left these on Cooie's desk. I hope she notices.

Nicknames

2007-03-28T23:53:00.000-05:00

One day a couple of my J.F.C.C.C. housemates and I started discussing (I no longer remember why) group dynamics in terms of the personalities of the members of U2. This led to a search online for a "Which member of U2 are you?" quiz. One of the questions on the quiz we found was "Do people refer to you by your nickname more often than by your real name?" I ended up being a Larry, but we decided what tipped me over the edge (so to speak) was that I answered the nickname question in the negative.
In the days after we took that quiz I noticed M. wasn't calling me Angela anymore. I finally asked her, "Are you trying to tip the nickname scale for me?" Yes, she admitted; that was exactly what she was doing.
All this to explain how I've acquired the name "Angie-Pants," or "Pants" for short.
She, in turn--and because she is moving to Japan soon to teach--has acquired a new nickname of her own. You can find it in my blogroll.

The Joshua Tree

2007-03-15T17:58:00.000-05:00

The Joshua Tree album just turned 20 this past week. I've been celebrating by playing my tape of it (actually my brother's tape--I stole it from him back in '91) in my car. I've been listening the way I used to listen to albums--over and over and over, letting the auto-flip take me from Side A to Side B to Side A.
I never noticed before how Lenten this album is, and wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't found out it was released this time of year (as Pop was (ten years later, less one week).
I mean, sure, it's got lots of desert imagery, but it's got a lot of wind and rain too. But that's what my Lenten experience is usually like--these forty days are storm season. "In the howling wind/Comes a stinging rain," indeed. And geez, try to count how many references to crosses there are in these songs! I wonder how they'll sound during Holy Week? (Especially "With Or Without You." Imagine that as one of the Seven Words from the Cross.)
I'd forgotten how much I love "Red Hill Mining Town." It's such a pure listening experience--there's no overlaying of memories of hearing it in concert or on the radio; I have no personal connection to the lyrics; I know nothing about the miners' strike that inspired it. But of course I also love listening to the songs that have layers and layers of meaning added to them, like "Where the Streets Have No Name." I can hear something different in that one every time. In Lent, I hear more longing in it than fulfillment. "The city's a flood"--a forty-day flood, by any chance?
Things have been busy at the 'Bread--grant season. Sent out a request for bananas today. We're having an ice cream social in early May; thought banana splits might be nice.

Cookie-ism

2007-03-08T08:02:00.000-05:00

The office went out for lunch yesterday to Gold Star Chili. Mary Beth got a to-go box for her Coney dog--white and styrofoam like an ordinary carryout container, but oblong instead of square, like a carryout container got cut in half or thirds. Cookie took one look at it and said, "That looks like a Barbie coffin."

England and Ireland and India (and, er, Mexico) Night

2007-03-07T21:06:00.000-05:00

By the way, those of you trying to follow a narrative (ha!) in this blog might be wondering, "Didn't Jeremiah's Aunt say she was gonna go on a trip this past weekend? Is she ever going to tell us about it?"
The answer is yes, I did go on a trip, and yes, I will tell you about it right now--I had a lovely time. We did not talk about U2 exclusively for four hours, but I think we could have talked about U2 far longer than we did. This is what happens when uberfans get together. I've missed having those kind of conversations. The trip was a pause that refreshed, as the saying goes.
Then on Sunday night J. and M. and I were sitting around at the J.F.C.C.C.House. I don't recall how the subject came up, but we all started reminisicing about England. (We've all been to England, all at different times and all before we knew each other.) Actually it was part reminiscence, part one-upsmanship. "I've been to Stratford-upon-Avon," J. would say. "So have I," I would say. "I've been to the reconstructed Globe Theatre," J. would say. "So have I," I would say. "I performed in a show on stage at the Globe," J. would say. "I wrote a new play in blank verse which had its debut at the Globe," I would say.
All right, it wasn't quite that bad. But you get the idea. And the end result is that it had us pining for all things English.
Next thing you know we were calling shotgun for a trip down to Jungle Jim's in the J.-mobile. Jungle Jim's is this foodie paradise, just the most astonishing array of food imaginable. It's huge--we went through what felt like acres and acres to get to the stuff we were looking for. We started off in the cheese section where we picked up some Wensleydale--not that we knew anything about Wensleydale, we had just heard about it through Wallace and Gromit, and in fact they package Wensleydale now with a pic of Wallace and Gromit on it; somebody give that marketing guy a raise--and Blue Stilton--again, not what we knew anything about it, it just said "The King of Cheeses" on the label, and who were we to argue with a cheese?
Then we trekked the half-mile or so to the International section. M. stuck to the India aisle where she sought to reclaim the tastes she remembered from her two years there (in India, I mean. She didn't spend two years in the India aisle). J. and I stayed in the British aisle (hee!) with its Wheetabix and Marmite and Marmart. This last was Marmite--yeast extract--you could draw pictures with.
We brought home for our spur-of-the-moment English party scone-with-blackcurrants mix, clotted cream, salt-and-vinegar crisps, chocolate digestive biscuits, Hob Nobs, the cheeses, crackers and apples. I looked in vain for Orangina; I went to the Mexican section instead and picked out a pineapple soda. We picked up "Waking Ned Devine" from the video store and stayed up way past my bedtime watching the Isle of Man play stunt double for Ireland.

The Language of Stamps

2007-03-07T09:58:00.000-05:00

I love commemorative stamps.
I've set up a whole system for the letters I send out.
"Love" stamps go to foundations and other people we ask for money.
Superhero stamps go on thank you letters. For instance, I went to a class on using a grant resource library yesterday and I sent the teacher a thank you with a Superman stamp on it. Cookie had a li'l writeup in the paper; I sent a thank you to the columnist responsible, gave him a Flash stamp.
I've got the motorcycle commemoratives set aside for telling people about the motorcycle ride we're planning for September or October.
For bills, there's always the fruits and vegetables stamps--preferably squash.

The Original All You Can Eat Fish Fry

2007-03-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

Today's a beautiful day, as last night was a beautiful night. This morning the snow fell in a combination of dance and fury. Last night the moon lit the top of a low bank of cloud. I hope everyone who was looking for a silver lining saw it.
I went out last night with the J.F.C.C.C.'ers. B. wanted to go out to eat; I wanted to go someplace out of the ordinary and someplace where I'd know they'd use our money for good. Then I remembered it was Friday, and I couldn't eat meat. Fish fry!
B.'s husband (who is also a B; B2 we'll call him) suggested Hartzell United Methodist. I wasn't so sure at first--a Methodist fish fry? It didn't seem quite right--but then he said it was all you can eat. Allrighty then.
Mr. and Mrs. Glorious Leader were out of town, as was another of our housemates, but everyone else from the J.F.C.C.C. House joined the party--M. and her friend T. who was visiting, J. and B. (erm, I guess for this story he's B3). The two B.s would meet us there; the five of us from the 'House piled in the M.-mobile amid merry cries of "shotgun!" and elaborate arguments over shotgun rules. (Does everyone have to be out the door before shotgun is called? Some said yes, some said no. Can you call shotgun for the way back on the ride out? No. Does the driver have veto power? No--the driver has the vehicle; that's enough power.)
On the way we discovered this would be The Very First Fish Fry for many of us, a concept that frankly I have a hard time wrapping my head around. But that meant a Methodist fish fry was a good choice--gotta ease'em in slowly. Plus did I mention it was all you can eat?
We arrived just as B squared did. The parking lot looked like a country church picnic's (I wonder how many of my fellow J.F.C.C.C.'ers have been to a country church picnic?) and the line was out the door. But the line moved fast. As we drew near the money-takers we were getting closer to the actual church part of the building. We could hear piano music and see people sitting in pews. "Where's the fish?" we cried in dismay. Would we have to profess Christ (admittedly not a problem in this group) before we'd be admitted to the dinner? Or was the whole thing a setup--were they just wafting the smell of frying Icelandic cod through the place to lure people to their service? No, B2 explained, they were just letting us sit in the pews until our numbers were called as a more pleasant alternative to standing in line. As he said this, the woman on the piano broke into "It's All For the Best" from Godspell. And the selection after that was from Grease.
We paid our money, got numbered tickets, and sat in a pew. We leafed through the Methodist hymnal and listened to the guy up front call numbers like this was bingo or somethin' (he was really letting us know when we could go get our fish). Bingo Guy was named Harold--of course he was--and he was wearing a shirt that said on the back "The Original All You Can Eat Fish Fry--Hartzell United Methodist Church" with a Bible citation at the end. We asked him to turn around so we could get the verse number. He obliged, shaking his tailfeather to the music as he did so. It was Matthew 15:29-38. The pews were equipped with Bibles, so we looked it up--it was the feeding of four thousand with loaves and fishes.
When our numbers were called, we went into the Fellowship Hall. The smell of fishy goodness was making us hungrier and hungrier, but the end was in sight. We dropped the main portion of our tickets in a basket ("Save the little part for the dessert table!" a church lady admonished) and picked up a plate of cod, mac'n'cheese, cole slaw and bread. The girl pouring iced tea and lemonade knocked over a glass of ice as I approached. "Oh, snap!" she said, to the delight of the My Name Is Earl freaks among us.
I was beginning to lose my faith in the promise of all you can eat fish; we'd already gone through the line and given up our tickets, so how could we get more? Then we got to our table. There was a bright orange laminated fish in the middle of it. On it was another Bible verse about a miraculous feeding--the "and fishes" part of "loaves and fishes" was italicized and underlined--and the words "Want more fish? Wave me!" That explained the people I'd seen at other tables holding brightly colored laminated fish over their heads. No one was waving them, though M. made hers "swim" as she held it up.
The meal was excellent, as was the company, and we all ate a lot of fish. We thought going bowling would be a nice way to round out the evening, but the local alleys all had tournaments and private parties, so we went to Starbucks instead (with a side trip to DQ for some of us) where M. and I explained the -Pants Rule to those who hadn't heard it.
It was a fine evening, and we plan on doing it again next week. So if you're in the area and want some great all you can eat fish next Friday, drop me a line (rimshot).