I am a hypocrite, but I have reasons for that.

JC Penney was playing Morrissey the other night - Every Day is Like Sunday - and I want it on record that I don't approve of my youth becoming the new cool vintage for kids to appropriate much the same way I appropriated peace signs and other trappings of the '60s to be cool when I was a teenager...

There is a bigger thing going on, though.  Morrissey isn't just some musician - he is a voice of disillusionment, of angst, of despair - of trying so hard and finding you still do not belong.  He is not the voice of insatiable retail hunger.  He is not the voice of the suburban American dream.  He is not the voice of a hamburger and a Coke, or of a McFlurry, for that matter.  Next they will play Bengali in Platforms, all about how no matter what you buy, your otherness and desperation to fit in will ultimately sink you.  And they won't see the disconnect - they will just think they're pushing tall shoes.

The Smiths - Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

Life is bigger than I am.

... and I find myself seeking escape in just about any way I can.  Books.  Sleep.  Music.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Netflix.  Books.  Sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.

Lauren Hoffman - Out of the Sky, Into the Sea

Story for a Full Moon

I love Italo Calvino's stories. Tonight I ran across news that an album of music inspired by If on a winter's night a traveler... will be released this week, and the samples sound lovely. I'll write more once I get my hands on the whole thing. I hadn't heard the following story before, but I thought this little film was just beautiful.

The distance from the moon - Italo Calvino

Mountain Vistas

So yesterday I was flying over the Rocky Mountains. They are so beautiful. I was flying home after visiting family for Christmas. Of course, once I got off my diet of work-related stress, my body relaxed so much I spent much of my time away feeling sick, but I also did a lot of hard playing with my nephew and niece. They are two fun kids. My nephew is sweet as can be, and my niece is a spunkcat! We spent a lot of time laughing and coloring and having fun. Yesterday before I flew out we played "camping," which I hope is what we will be doing the next time I go home.

Also on this trip out, my sister-in-law treated me to a pedicure, which is something I've never managed to do before. Very nice and enjoyable. We've decided that it needs to be an annual girls'-day-out activity - hopefully next winter my sister and our to-be sister-in-law will be there too.

And we managed to see the new Muppet Movie. It earned my laughter and my tears and my stamp of approval - finally something with the Muppet name has been created with Muppet spirit. Which may be the biggest compliment I could pay for that one.

So it's winter, and I find myself less talkative. At least today. Maybe tomorrow I'll be more loquacious. Anyway, the vacation was all-too-short, and yesterday I found myself flying over the mountains. Which leads us to today's song. Make yourself happy and blow up the video - whoever put this one together did a beautiful job. And the view at 1:34 reminds me of home. Not in winter.

Midlake - Core of Nature

I tried rutabagas.

The secret is that Garrison Keillor made me do it.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Writer's Almanac. I find the information fascinating and I love to read the poems again afterward, but I am not the president of the Garrison Keillor fan club. I just disagree with his way of reading most of the time. Too slow. Too many pauses for breath. Tone of befuddlement, especially in situations where befuddlement doesn't work. And yet, I have to listen. I like most of the stories, and the poetry! It's all about the poetry. And yet... there is this one other issue. Of course, a few years ago I wrote a poem about it:

*****

Why I really regret having picked up the habit of listening to Writer's Almanac every morning

When, standing in the bookstore aisle, I open up somewhere in the middle of a new book of poetry to peruse and test its waters;

When, settling in with a new collection, repetition and flow wash over me (O that this poet's words were mine!);

When, pencil in hand, I dot the final line of my own feeble attempts, scanning back over my own lines with some satisfaction;

Elation! Joy! Soaring! But too soon,

that crazy Writer's Almanac theme music

(zippy from the end of the show, not slow and plodding from the introduction)

rips through my mind announcing

the end of the poem.

Garrison has finished his reading for the day.

Time to put the poem down. I am off to

Be well, I set my hands to

Do good work, and I try to figure out with whom I would like to

Keep in touch.

Oh, wait. I had more poetry to live.

Lost, I search vainly to figure out where I was.

*****

So last Tuesday, Garrison read a poem about rutabagas. And I was so taken in by the description of them as having a

"...dug-up texture,

the hint of dirt

that couldn't be baked away,"

that I went out that afternoon and bought two rutabagas.

When I started peeling them, I was shocked at the thick layer of paraffin coating them. I cut them into large cubes and roasted them with cubed pork loin and with other vegetables: sweet potatoes, baby red potatoes, carrots, garlic, and mushrooms.

The rutabagas were a delight. They tasted just like the poem said they would. Point Keillor.

Here is a song from a Christmas album I downloaded this afternoon. I may post more from it while the holiday season is on. I liked the Christmas albums so much I went back and downloaded everything Amazon had by them. I think this is a band I will enjoy getting to know better. Anyway. Enjoy the surprise halfway through this one.

Future of Forestry - Joy To The World

Leaves

So it's fall and the trees have been very busy dumping their leaves. Thanksgiving is always a reference point for me. It seems like my first few years living here, there were still lots of leaves left on the trees as we rolled into the last part of November. This year, definitely not. We have had some early cold, and most of the leaves are down.

I write about this because my new classroom has me parking on the back lot of the school now rather than the front, and in the back lot, there is a tree with different leaves. In the front it's all maple and other super-broad-leaved trees; in the back there is a tree with smaller, skinnier leaves. (Sorry, I do not know which trees are which, so you'll have to believe this rudimentary description.) They are rounded at the base, about three inches long and 1/2 inch across, and they form a slight point at the end. Go figure. Anyway, this tree must have dropped millions and millions of these little leaves. They are all over the back of the lot, and when it rains, they coat your car like fur.

But what struck me was walking out to my car in the rain the other day - the sound of the rain drops hitting the leaves was so staccato, like a million rattlesnakes rattling, just beautiful - and so different from the normal sounds of rain hitting pavement or (more silently) grass. It reminded me of rain in the forest - it reminded me of the green expanse beyond the city that houses most of my life. I felt wonderful and alive.

The next day when I got in my car after school, more leaf madness. As I drove along the street, one of these leaves flew up from the vent area below the the windshield wipers and behind the hood, and started to dance across my windshield. Because it was damp, the ends stuck to the glass, but the middle rippled and waved and forced slow movement upward toward the top of the car. When I came to a stop, it fell, and it blew away.

Hooray for leaves. I will be glad in the spring when they come back again. I'll have to take a closer look at that tree so I can figure out what kind it is.

Bing Crosby - Autumn Leaves

An Introduction

Tonight I met a new poet and I am reduced to runny-nosed tears reading her beautiful, beautiful work. If you haven't already, please meet Wislawa Szymborska. I won't clog up this meeting chatting away - here she is:

Under a Certain Little Star

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.

I apologize to necessity just in case I'm mistaken.

Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.

Let the dead not remember they scarcely smolder in my memory.

I apologize to time for the muchness of the world overlooked per second.

I apologize to old love for regarding the new as the first.

Forgive me, far-off wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize to those who cry out of the depths for the minuet-record.

I apologize to people at railway stations for sleeping in at five in the morning.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.

Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing up with a spoonful of water.

And you, O falcon, the same these many years, in that same cage,

forever staring motionless at that selfsame spot,

absolve me, even though you are but a stuffed bird.

I apologize to the cut-down tree for the table's four legs.

I apologize to big questions for small answers.

O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.

O Solemnity, be magnanimous unto me.

Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your train.

Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.

I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.

I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.

I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,

because I myself am an obstacle to myself.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,

and later try hard to make them seem light.

Translated from the Polish by Magnus Jan Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

Not Johnny Cash

Before I even get started, let me just say that I am running in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation these days. I don't know what that has to do with anything, it's just that I figure it must have a lot to do with everything. Go figure. So maybe I overreacted, but I don't think I did.

Well. Here we go then. So anyone who sort of keeps up with this blog has figured out that I really like music and that I try to keep up with some small fraction of music coming out of Italy. Usually this is an enjoyable endeavor - one that sends me hunting for downloads and gets me trying to sing along. And I have found so much wonderful music this way. Usually it is wonderful. Every once in a while it's disastrous.

Like today. Early this morning, I turned on Italian radio and one or two songs later, I heard a very familiar guitar riff - the opening to Solitary Man. Which is one of the great songs in the whole universe. Except then, it was being sung in an Italian translation that just completely failed at doing it justice. It was more a song of "please don't leave me" and "what would I do if you left me too" than a song of resignation to the singer's own solitude. I couldn't believe the gross distance by which this one missed the mark. A shame.

You know, I don't think that sleep deprivation is forcing me to over-exaggerate at all. It really was horrible. So let's just make a rule that when Johnny Cash does a song, no one really needs to come behind him and do it again. He was just too spare and poignant to need a redux.

Ok, and yes, I do know it was originally a Neil Diamond song. But let's be real. It's a Johnny Cash song down deep through and through. Sorry, Neil.

Johnny Cash - Solitary Man

What has been playing in my head for days

At work, I've been streaming a lot of Italian radio. This because I'm teaching fewer classes but experiencing a much higher workload, and music has always helped keep me concentrating when at the computer. Finally, though, I'm finding that locating and downloading Italian music is becoming much easier and much less expensive than it has been. So when I heard this song, I zoomed right over to Amazon and downloaded it. And now a couple of songs on this album are on a continual loop in my head. They're quite catchy.

A note, though: I was promoting listening to Italian radio with my college class the other night and during the break I turned it on, and of course some old 70's - early 80's song that sounded not-so-great was playing. I tried to pass it off saying that with the time differential, it was the middle of the night there---but let's be real. Quite off-putting.

Modà - Sono già solo

Medieval Weapon of Choice

I love catapults. This morning's Cul de Sac cartoon got me wishing (again) for a great big full-size catapult of my very own.

Why do I love catapults? Because I seriously rolled off the couch laughing the first time I saw this:

SNL - Yard-A-Pult

It's the dog that gets me. I talked about that one for years - I think it's the funniest thing SNL has ever done.

When I was in Torino years and years ago we visited a beautiful park (Parco del Valentino) by the Po that has a replica of a medieval village. There we found a weaponry shop and they had the most fantastic catapult - just big enough to have some torque, maybe a 15-inch arm - for sale. It wasn't just that it was a catapult - it was beautifully styled with rope and wooden wheels, etc, so it was captivating in a way your amazon.com balsa catapult-from-a-kit could never be. (They also had a little guillotine, which to me is much more scary but almost as cool.) Sadly, I was in no position to buy it, but the last time I was in Italy I did get an itty-bitty working catapult pencil sharpener at the Colosseum. Yes, I realize that catapults have nothing to do with the Colosseum, but that is the souvenir I bought there. It's about big enough to launch an M&M. Mostly it has been used to launch wads of paper at my webcam when Skyping with my nephew and niece.

Wow. I've got to get back to Torino.

Hooray for the catapult and its family of flinging weapons. I can't embed it, but here is a great video for the road - a British medieval weapons enthusiast with a great big trebuchet. Enjoy. Really.

And how about a song?

Elizabeth & the Catapult - Taller Children

Dear Elizabeth Warren,

please run for president. I'll pull for you 100%.

Thanks,

Melissa

So Much for September

Well, it must be September and the start of school because this blog has not been updated for a while. So here are some of the happenings and the ideas kicking around my head for the last little bit:

• I watched the Emmy Awards last Sunday and realized that I was actually more interested in them than I was in the Academy Awards last spring. Read: TV is more interesting than movies. Sad to say it, but let's face it: Modern Family and The Daily Show are the BOMB. Both shows are so smart and funny, with real things to say about the world we live in. Now, I have certainly not sworn off movies altogether, but movie theater movies? In 2011 I have gone out to see Harry Potter 7.2, Thor, and The Help. So I have been trying to figure out why I have arrived at a point where a sitcom is more engaging than a film. There are a couple of possible reasons: a TV show obviously offers more time for character play - (not necessarily character development) - and I really like to laugh, but I find most comic movies sophomoric. Let's face it - smart movies aren't usually funny, but smart TV can be.

• [Side note: Not that movies are bad. The Help was so very awesome. I cried through at least six napkins and walked away with purpose. Loved it.]

• Jon Stewart, I love you. Still.

• I am teaching some great students this year, both at the high school and at the university. Switching to teaching was the best career move I could have possibly ever made. Once upon a time in college, I wanted to study Italian teaching, but they refused to let me do it because it wasn't one of six approved teaching languages. Well, phooey on you, university where I did my undergrad, I got what I wanted in spite of you. :P

• One of the students in my university class gave me props this week for knowing how to spell Megadeth.

• I had to switch classrooms this year and even though Back to School Night has come and gone, I still don't have my classroom put together the way I would like. Why on earth not, you ask? Because that will require borrowing a tall ladder from the custodians and taking a big old chunk of time to take many, many trips up and down it to hang up my flags and posters. And that has not happened yet. It may not happen this year. I did finish getting fresh paper up on most of the bulletin boards on Wednesday, and I saw one spot of the top of my desk yesterday.

• I switched rooms because I am now helping to coordinate one of the programs at my school, and I needed to be next to the program offices. My new responsibilities have been quite overwhelming, and I don't feel that my feet will ever hit the ground again. I am one of those crazy cartoon characters suspended in midair with my feet churning in circles. Don't get me wrong - I am loving so much about this: the organizational aspects of my new responsibilities, the people I'm with whom I'm working more closely now, and the sense that I will really be able to help make the school work - I've just got a nice big learning curve stretching forward as far as I can see.

• This has been a week of my sister and me calling each other to say "You've got to hear [insert crazy wonderful radio show] on NPR!" Fresh Air had an interview with Maurice Sendak (author/illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are). It left me in tears in the parking deck and almost made me late for class - but I could not turn the car off. I don't always like Terry Gross (she can insert way too much of her politics into her interviews, and she is too left-wing even for me) but this was a beautiful, thoughtful, and artful interview that really explored aging and loneliness while still celebrating life and Mr. Sendak's work and genius. Amilynne had me listen to this commentary from Marketplace on the "class warfare" currently underway. Also, Writer's Almanac had two beautiful poems: Unveiling, which immediately invoked images of the little yellow circular "kid's table" in the basement of my grandparents' house, and The Love Nest, which has one of the most delicious metaphors I've ever heard to make you gasp at the very end. Seriously. If you don't gasp just a little, you're probably dead. I ♥ NPR.

• Speaking of NPR. One of their regular reporters is a former high school classmate. Pretty nutty to be getting ready to go to high school in the morning and hear the voice of someone you knew a million years ago in high school reporting or interviewing someone really important. Yeah.

I think that's about it for the moment. Blitzen Trapper has a new album out. Would you like a song?

Blitzen Trapper - Girl in a Coat

Tonight I hated heading home

but there's work in the morning, you know?

The Smiths - There is a Light that Never Goes Out

Hope is a Rare Bird

and it was showing off its lovely plumage this evening. The NY Times reports that Gabrielle Giffords arrived at the Capitol to vote for the debt ceiling bill that finally appears to be receiving enough bipartisan support that we may avert the crisis of a default. I am so happy for her and for her loved ones.

$25 of Good for FREE

Usually I am not one to boast about bargains on my blog, but I just joined Kiva and made a $25 loan for free! You can too. Here's the link: http://kiva.org/invitedby/melissa5486. As of now, there are about 3,700 free $25 loans available. I have a feeling that they will be long gone by the August 13 deadline.

I am excited, too, because the loan I picked was for a weaver in the Philippines. My dad has some beautiful woven runners and place mats that he brought back from there before I was born. Eye-dazzling.

I'm not going to be wordy so I can publish and get the word out. Have a great time finding someone to help.

Now is that kind of time.

Happiness and joy to you. Much is afoot. Now is the preparing time, the waiting time. Let's just say that the past weeks have not been blog-friendly. Yes, I am sleeping again. Yes, there is too much to do to fit into a day. On days like this, I search my music program for "baroque," hit shuffle, and play.

So let's try it on YouTube.

Trevor Pinnock - Ramcau, La Villageoise

Lost

Only three hours of sleep last night.

Mannaggia la miseria.

The Dandy Warhols - Sleep

I-N-S-O-M-N-I-A

I have had the worst insomnia for the last two weeks - basically since the start of the summer class I am teaching. It seems that the only time my body wants to sleep is from 6-11 a.m. - precisely when I need to be moving on teaching days. Apart from about two nights in the last two weeks when I think exhaustion drove me to sleep earlier, I can fall into a light sleep from about 3-6, but real restful sleep seems only available in the mornings. Hooray, then, that today is Saturday and I slept in until eleven. I feel more alert than I've felt in days.

Yes, I am a nightowl, but this is rediculous.

So I haven't been ignoring the blog, I just haven't been able to concentrate enough to put anything coherent together.

This summer, I was supposed to be reading Paradise Lost with Amilynne. She waited for two months to read it with me. Summer finally started and I gave her the go - and I got to page 2. She texted me the other day that she has finished it. I just told her that it wasn't happening for me. So last night I looked around the book shelves with free eyes - for the first time in 2 1/2 years, I am letting myself choose a book I really want to read, not something related to work (although I have read some fabulous books for work in the last couple of years). I decided on Il barone rampante by Italo Calvino - a book I have tried to start about four or five times and failed - and last night it was like the story reached out and took me in. The description of a sister who cooks every strange animal of the forest into really sadistic presentations for her family, and of the two little brothers who desperately plot to set a barrel of snails free had me - I was retching at the descriptions of her past presentations of snails.

The book has been translated into English as The Baron in the Trees and is available on Amazon. If you order it and start reading it right away, don't tell me the ending - I'm not the fastest reader in Italian, but I'm getting much better.

Italo Calvino is one of my favorite writers - If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is one of my all-time favorite books. His books take the normal to a point of absurtidy - the whole time you're reading, you're thinking "Is this really what's happening?" and it really is.

Here's a song that sounds like insomnia to me.

DM Stith - Easy to be Around (Diane Cluck cover)

Endorphins.

I'm feeling them from my walk this evening. I feel kind of "yay" and that is good.

In general, summer is "yay"-making, and right now that is definitely how I feel.

Tonight's walk took my most awesome take-a-walk-motivating friend and me around an island in the middle of the river. And it was the perfect time of evening: the sun was about the right height in the sky to still be daytime but it had lost the worst heat of the day, the water was blue, the swimmers were out on the rocks. Looking at it for a while, I thought how I would like to take a sketchbook there and do some drawing; maybe I will sometime.

Time to schedule another beach trip.

Summer is the best.

Janis Joplin - Summertime

3 am Bonus Track

OH! I just found the most wonderful, lovely, lovely, lovely thing. Oi. Who would have ever thought this song would make you want to jump up and dance your feet off? And yet it SO works.

Mumford & Sons - England (cover of song by The National)

Tags: Mumford and Sons Unplugged, Mumford and Sons, Music Videos, Live Performances