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

Summer Dessert Recipes

This afternoon I went to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for desserts for a 4th of July cook out. I had a box of graham cracker crumbs in my basket and midway down the dairy aisle a lady stopped me because she had a recipe that used graham crackers, and was what I had the same thing as what she needed? I was a little surprised when she started digging into her wallet and pulled out a folded up recipe - for Chocolate Eclair Cake. Oh! My enthusiasm for it must have been evident, as soon we were walking the aisles together to find what she would need to make it.

This seems like one of those recipes that belongs so firmly back home, but here it was, and I guess that in the age of the Internet, there is no recipe that will not travel.

Do I dare say I enjoy talking with other people at the grocery store? Please don't take me for a loon, but the one place in this world where I can shoot the breeze is waiting in the checkout line. Don't ask me why; I am at ease there in a way I will never be at a party. Maybe because we all know we'll be out of there in five or ten minutes. Maybe because food is interesting and that's the topic at hand at the grocery store.

So, what am I up cooking tonight? A Junior Mints Cheesecake. They had the recipe on the box years ago, and it is a winner. You will like it for sure. Here's the recipe.

Junior Mints Cheesecake

6 oz. Junior Mints (4 - 1.6 oz. boxes)

3 pkgs (8 oz. ea.) cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup sugar

3 eggs

Graham cracker or chocolate crumb crust for a 9" springform pan*

1. Place Junior Mints in freezer

2. Preheat oven to 350F. With electric mixer or in food processor, combine cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Pour into crust.

3. Chop cold Junior Mints and sprinkle onto cheesecake.

4. Bake 40 to 45 min. or until just set. Cool on wire rack, then chill several hours or overnight. Makes about 8 servings.

*NOTE: for crust, combine 2 cups crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar, and six tablespoons melted butter or margarine. Press into bottom and - if there is enough - up sides of pan.

Delicious. Tonight, just for fun, I also scooped out the guts of a vanilla bean and threw them in with the vanilla extract. Somehow I don't think I did wrong. It smells pretty good in the oven. Of course, I'm baking this at 1:30 a.m. because even with an air conditioner, who wants to bake during the day in the summer?

Well. I should run - I've got dishes to do and a lesson to finish prepping for church tomorrow. Would you like a song? The National has fallen off the front page again, so here is something from them.

The National - The Geese of Beverly Road

It's made me cry

Today's song is the shortest little thing but it digs very deep. I love the pounding old upright-sounding piano and the drumming on something solid instead of a normal drum.

I could never do chords on the piano. Too much to keep in mind at one time. I did one piece that was one page of crazy chords. It was so frustrating to me until my piano teacher pointed out that if the chords were all strung out in arpeggios like the music I preferred to play, it would be several pages long.

I am sad today because one of my good friends is moving away. It seems like moving is what people do. The bright side is being able to meet lots of good people as they come and go - the hard part is wanting to extend the time allotted to the friendship and knowing that change is inevitable. I know that I am not one with the right to complain, as I have certainly been the one who has had to move and leave close friends behind in the past - but that bit of reason doesn't really give much comfort as someone else's car pulls away.

Magnolia Electric Co - It's Made Me Cry

These things mean summer to me:

Some things on this list are memories and may never happen again. Others are ongoing. A few are new with the intention of carrying forward...

• reading late, late, late into the night
• star-soaked skies viewed far from civilization
• the Tetons: camping, walking, canoeing; buffalo, deer, marmots, bears; skipping rocks and reading in the hammock
• road trips
• the beach
• soaking thunderstorms on August afternoons
• sleeping (and freezing) on top of the water tower
• cold, yummy things on sticks: popsicles and ice cream bars
• books: Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury and Dreams of my Russian Summers by Andreï Makine
• five-week classes to take or teach
• smelling like a campfire
• walking my groceries home in the middle of the night
• hours and hours and hours to just listen to music
• season passes to Six Flags - meeting there after work for a few rollercoasters and some barbeque
• sunburns and mosquito bites (it can't all be good)
• riding in the tractor with grandpa or going with the uncles to move sprinkler pipe
• sparklers
• the smell of freshly cut grass
• housecleaning (yeah, I know that probably shouldn't be a seasonal activity...)
• 4-H projects
• Mom sewing new clothes for the next school year
• the garden: herbs, strawberries, squash, tomatos, peas, beans, rhubarb
• running through the sprinklers
• dancing salsa and merengue in the church parking lot
• Dad sneaking downstairs on the morning of the 4th of July to jolt us out of bed playing Stars and Stripes Forever as loud as the boom box would go
• Ferragosto and empty Italian cities
• Las Vegas, St. George, hiking up the Virgin River and floating back down again, the Painted Desert, Lake Powell, Flagstaff, the three mesas of the Hopi reservation, and of course the Grand Canyon - all within reach on a day off at Jacob Lake
• drawing - and maybe this year I'll go get a chunk of clay to play with on the patio.

Summer is good - so vital to have my blood pressure fall a few points for a part of the year, and it is beautiful to recharge and have time to follow a muse. What a lovely time of year.

Alphaville - Forever Young

And then it was over...

Yesterday was the last day of school for the kids. I should have everything wrapped up in the next couple of days. Liberty and Freedom. Hooray and Amen.

Dave Matthews Band - Cry Freedom

Oh Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam

I love westerns.

Not exclusively. But let Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood gallop around on a horse with a cowboy hat and a pistol hanging off his belt - let the good guys be good and the bad guys be ruthless - I'd hate it in real life, but I love it in the movies.

Wednesday afternoon I turned on the radio, which I usually listen to mainly in the mornings, and on NPR they were reviewing the new album by Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi, Rome. The inspiration? Ennio Morricone. Che bello! The samples they played were very nice - Jack White sings on the album (Yay!) as does Norah Jones (meh - Ok voice, but usually boring - I've never really warmed to her, but she really sounds all right on this album). So I've had westerns in my head for a few days. My only complaint now that the album is downloaded is that it's way too short (35 min). But if that's what they had, everything else seems pretty tight. Better 35 tight minutes than 50 minutes with 15 of filler.

This week I also got an email from a friend with some music to listen to. One of the songs got me poking around YouTube to hear more by the artist, Lykke Li. And one song, The Only, sounds so much like it belongs on the soundtrack of a western - maybe because I was already in that mindset because of the Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi album, or maybe I would have heard that in it anyway. Anyway. Downloaded that album too. I actually had to do some poking around to find The Only because it was a bonus track somewhere along the way, but I did find it.

So you know I can't listen to all this music and then not watch a western. This afternoon I watched High Noon. I haven't watched it since my freshman year in college. It was required for the civics class all freshmen had to take. I don't remember liking or disliking it then, but I was probably more concerned with passing notes with my two friends with whom I was taking the class, and besides, when you are one of 900 in a big auditorium watching a movie in class because it's supposed to teach you something about your civic duty, well - let's just say maybe that it is less of a good movie in freshman civics and an awesome movie for a Saturday afternoon when you get to care more about the story line, gape at how gorgeous Grace Kelley is, wonder if that bad guy is Jude Law's father (of course not, but hey), and figure out what makes the High Noon ballad so cool (the underlying beat is like a souped-up tick-tock as we roll ever forward to 12:00). It's a great movie.

Anyway. Hooray for westerns. I think I'll move The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly up to number one in my Netflix queue.

Here is my favorite western-themed song of all time.

Mirah - Cold, Cold Water

A Cover Hits It Right On

Here is something delightful I have come across.

Beck's Record Club - Mystify

Would you like to compare it to the original?

INXS - Mystify

One after the other, back and forth - both very nice. I must say that there is one on YouTube with INXS with the replacement lead singer, and it's just not worth listening to. The cover above is much better. I don't blame INXS for wanting to go on, but Michael Hutchence was one of a kind.