Fortifications

The snow has come again.

We were warned, everyone of us. Fourteen to eighteen inches of the “white stuff”.

That honks me off. I assume people smart enough to discuss the weather on the air know it’s called “snow” and we can take it. We live in New England - some of us by choice - we can handle it.

Don’t call it “white stuff”.  Please.  Don't.

Still, schools were cancelled the night before, manic shopping was taking place in grocery stores.

So it was a perverse pleasure to wake up and see no curtains of flakes masking the houses of Doctor’s Row. In fact, no snow fell until well after 8 a.m.

Then the roof fell.

I took the bus to the Orchard. I’d rather have a big tires under me .

The Mall was deserted for most of the day. Our rule of thumb is that any people crazy enough to show up in circumstances like this are crazy enough to want to buy something.

It makes for very entertaining interaction with people who are both interested and interesting.

More so than the average visitor - and our average is pretty entertaining as well.

With folks on later shifts stranded at home I was asked to stick around, which I did. The bus ride home was quite direct - the snow had given way to sleet, pattering against its big windows like handfuls of BB’s thrown by angry Seventh graders. The bus would slip on hilly corners.

With meetings and baby sitting cancelled I found my way into Geno’s Bar, the jive dive classic rock bar across Bosnia from my front door.

There I found owner J.R. and Mike the bouncer engaged in a fierce game of Scrabble on the bar top - to the sound Tom Waits singing “The Eyeball Kid”.

It seemed like the perfect way to end such a day. A snifter of brandy - a little smoother than my usual single-malt and just as prohibitively expensive - to celebrate overcoming the demands of the weather and work.

The beauty of it all was having a warm, productive place to come home to. The fairy lights on Chief Soctoma were visible from the back door steps of Geno’s, calling out to me - and making navigation after a solid brandy much more secure.

With the new computer and software writing music has become much easier - I’ve written a new tango in just one day, from concept to posting. Perhaps I am slowly starving - well, it seems it, comparing last year’s paychecks to this year’s - but my soul seems to be well fed and there is room to “see” - really see - the connections around me.

I don’t know where it will lead. Today it led through intense weather and people.

Tomorrow? I can’t wait.

Watching for the Rozzers

No one ever said that living in Portland, Maine, would be dull.

I'm at the  NorthStar, waiting for the evening's tango events to eventualize, munching on a piece of cheese I found in my pocket.

Actually, it's from a larger slice that I bought at my favorite cheesemonger - K. Horton's, in the Market House.

Getting Mrs. Beadle out of the garage - it's just a little too cold to walk - I noticed that there were police cars flying all over downtown, heading East, toward Munjoy Hill (at whose foot the NorthStar is situated).  

Lot's of cop cars.  Lot's and lot's of cop cars.

I have a lot of respect for the police - both as a band and as a profession.  Just out of high school I got a job as a Special Deputy Sheriff in Tulsa County, working out of the offices of Dave Carpenter, Sr., whose son, (Dave Carpenter, Jr.) was my drum major during my first year in marching band at Central High School).

It was fun - when I wasn't having dogs (and we have BIG ass dogs in Oklahoma) turned out on me, or getting guns pulled by angry husbands ("Hey it wasn't ME that beat the crap out of your wife in a drunken fit...").

So I'm sympathetic to the police, even when knowing I was driving with an expired license (I'm legal now!  I'm legal!!) and I'm waving just to keep them from looking at my expired inspection sticker.

It's not their idea to come up with stupid laws - it's just their job to enforce them.

So it's kind of neat to see them on the run toward downtown and flying into Monument Square.

Apparently someone went to the bakery stand in the Market House and grabbed cash out of the till (this is what my favorite cheesemonger tells me - I love that word "Cheesemonger".  Somehow "fishmonger" isn't so romantic - but I don't know any tall, ice-blue-eyed fishmongers with long, long red hair - but I digress ...).

Bad idea, to grab cash and dash so close to the main downtown cop shop.  The rozzers were rolling from all over the peninsula and they seemed to have caught the guy.

How cool is that?

When the Orchard opened we had a chat about "loss prevention" and the attitude is that by being proactive - by giving good customer service, basically - we give people a chance to make a good decision about taking stuff that they don't intend to pay for.  I like that logic.

So there we go again.  The good guys win and maybe someone will have a chance to make better decisions.

Or not.

Chocolate Ice Cream in a Bowl of Tears

I love theatre and don't get out to watch as much as I should.

Which made a Facebook invite from the Artistic Director of the Children's Theatre especially interesting.  She was involved with the Mad Horse Theatre Company's production of "The Clean House", by Sarah Ruhl.

I have a lot of respect for AD's skill in building character and stage action, skills she brings out in all of the kids she works with.  So I went to this with a lot of expectation.

It was not disappointing.  In fact, it was great.

Cleaning house is a tender point with me.  My mom was a housekeeper for one of the Old Oil Money families in Tulsa.  She singlehandedly kept a huge Italianate mansion clean in the Old Oil Money section of town.  She wore a white "Hazel"-style dress, a white cap and squeaky white crepe-soled shoes.

But her care of the house - and its four occupants - was impeccable.  Other Old Oil Money Mansion owners were constantly trying to hire her away.  No dice.  She stayed put for all of her life.

She did take me along with her on her cleaning expeditions to other houses owned by the Family.  I learned how to turn a bed, run a vacuum, clean a window - just never quite got the hang of getting it done by having someone else do it (I didn't read "Tom Sawyer" until almost out of undergrad school).

But "The Clean House" isn't really about cleaning, except as a metaphor representing how messy life can be - and that some of the cleanest, most pure souls the on inside have the dirtiest, messiest lives on the outside.

Something like that.

I empathize with the sentiment because of losing Mary Flagg a few weeks ago, my own mother more than a decade ago (some things we never get over, just learn to live with and grow from) and my own insecurities about the direction my life has taken.

Which the play expressed beautifully and I recommend it to you.

Hence the chocolate ice-cream.  It ties into the play (and occupies a great moment) and, even for a diabetic, taken in moderation, can be a soul-feeder.

I just need to make sure that my soul doesn't get so full that it gets fat and selfish - I have to take responsibility for keeping it exercised and involved.

Des pas sur la neige

Winter nights call me to brave the cold, go out, look,

and see.

I follow a path between the buildings,

deceptively smooth, crooked;

blazed over mounds of snow covered snow,

a trail to lead home from a glass of good cheer,

as direct a line as good cheer can manage.

And yet ...

My curiosity demands I follow, just for the purpose of finding the end, lit by the streetlight, 

watched by the curious stars, who are indifferent but easily entertained

by a wanderer under their borrowed, icy glow.

The doors of wonder are slightly ajar

on winter nights under curious stars.

and paths lead to places that I do not know;

call me to follow the steps in the snow.

" ... Every Valley Shall Be Exalted".

What a magnificent whirlwind, both political and spiritual.

It was quite a scene at the Asylum yesterday.  A huge room full of like-minded people, liberals all (as far as I could tell) with high-def monitors on all the walls and full bar service.

I mean, is there any other way to be a witness to history?

Well, yes, I suppose there is.  Sometimes just walking around, helping a child learn, baking cookies for colleagues, being reminded by a homeless man's smile to look up at the new sunshine even on the coldest days - we are all witnesses to history all the time.

I was hoping to sneak down to DC for the Inauguration but as with so many things in my life the logistics defeated me - that and an invitation to work in the Orchard the day before it happened.  Such is my delight in - and loyalty to -  my job that it convinced me to stay.  I'm glad it did.

Unlike other elections I've been at the Empire for all of the major events - nominations, acceptances, debates, elections - the whole smash.  That's been very different.  It's not the same as being directly involved in making calls, knocking on doors, arguing ideas - and ideals.  Perhaps I'll start to rethink that.

As has been noted earlier I tend to cry very easily when rocked by strong emotions - and since most of my emotions are that way I need to carry Kleenex with me a lot - or wash my sleeves.  The implications of all these events had me sniffing all day.  

I love to see the good guys win, such moments have a deep resonance for me.   I've not always experienced myself as a "good guy", much less a "winner".  Perhaps I have a simplistic experience of myself - I'm certain I do.  Getting past this has been a major motivation in a lot of what has happened in the last year or so.

Seeing Obama be inaugurated was powerful.  I had seen him from the very beginning, followed the fight, the setbacks, mistakes and irrational hatred arising from his candidacy.  Even in my fifties I'm surprised that I can watch a man five years my junior succeed and think "That's what I want to be like.  That's the kind of person I can be and should be, more often."

It's a surprise - to acknowledge that one has the possibility of realizing one's potential, even if it's moving to a lesser degree of foolishness.

People of color - no matter the conditions that nurtured (or didn't) them have a bit more to get through.  Sometimes greater, sometimes less, sometimes external or internal, enobling or enabling.

But be that as it may I think, at this moment, we have moved into a place different from any we have been in in most of human history.  To quote a soldier from a black Union Army regiment during the Second Peninsular Campaign of the Civil War:  "Bottom rail on top, now".  It may not be a total change but it is the beginning of full change.

That, of course, will only come when change comes to all the hears of the county, freely and with unquenchable grace.

But change has come.

12:53

Bush is boarding Marine One.

Oh - it's not Marine One anymore - it's Marine One only when the Pres. is in it.

So, is it "Moron One"?

Oh - Executive One.

I think it's wonderful that they are going through so much trouble to show us Bush leaving.

This, I think, is the classic definition of the Greek theatrical term "catharsis".

Wolf Blitzer - Anderson Cooper - don't get cocky.  This moment happened in spite of you.

OK - I'm going to get out and take a look around - maybe get some food that's not based on Cheetos.

Things go on - the President is off to sign more papers - later on the parade.

12:40

It's over.  Guests are being introduced.  

We sang the SSB.  Incredible moment.  

The party is breaking up.  More accurately it's moving to other venues.  

There is a lot of conversation.  People are excited, the voices are bright.

I suppose that's the word that best sums up this moment.  

There are a lot of thoughts about the implications of the emotions and ideals this moment implies.  If Obama pulls this off - if he gets people as involved - as committed to the hard stuff to come - as he apparently seems to want then it will transform the American psyche for generations to come.