"Friday Night Frolic" — Pretty Little Lamb(chop)

Look, with an album named Mr. M, cryptic lyrics hidden therein, boys slinking about their own island, scratching and whispering, mocking emotion, well, it seems this evening calls for the proper attire—though, the Suburban Soliloquist is having difficulty locating her black Ray-Bans. (Maybe that's because she doesn't own black Ray-Bans.)

But she's got the T-shirt and she's guessing the geeky Kurt Wagner wouldn't mind her slipping it on. Not at all. Especially if she were pouring him a glass of white. Which she is. He will arrive, Wagner, yes, this very night (tell her traveling hubby and she will deny it), but she can't tell you when or how, or else...

And because the Suburban Soliloquist is in the midst of packing (of which she can't, or won't?, again elaborate), and feels at this moment that she can say it no better, she will permit the Village Voice—which does not hide, scratch or whisper—to speak for her. But first, she'll tell you this: Lambchop is a band. True. Lambchop is  also a...

...vanishingly rare band allowed to exist over several geologic eras of pop-culture time, pursuing a singular, demented muse. Lambchop is an island, removed from the squalor of everyday world, so terrifically inscrutable that you even start looking for significance in their name: not pork chop, but lamb chop. Surely that must mean something. 

Mr. M is, at once, one of the band’s most open-hearted and acidic records. It opens with a flourish of strings that invoke memories of Frank Sinatra’s great, gloomy indigo-jazz records with string arranger Nelson Riddle. The clothes are old ones, slightly threadbare, and they are ones Lambchop have a winking relationship with, dating back at least to 2001′sNixon. You can smell the used-record-sleeve on them. And so, apparently, can Wagner, something he’s quick to draw your attention to. When he enters the song, he appears to be both commenting ironically on its motion and somehow directing its action: “Grandpa’s coughing in the kitchen/ But the strings sound good/ Maybe add some flutes/ And how do get the cups out from over there?”

  Lambchop - If Not I'll Just Die by MergeRecords

*   *   * 

And now, she's pouring him that glass of white...

  Lambchop - Gone Tomorrow by City Slang

The wine tasted like sunshine in the basement.  (For some peculiar reason, this little nugget nudges the Suburban Soliloquist to reach for her 1960s flashcards.)

What were they doing in the basement? Hmm...

Wagner, and his pretty, pretty Lambchop. How they do it they'll never tell.


Listen to more Lambchop here. Lambchop visits Jimmy Fallon, late night, tonight.

(To be honest, er, um, the Suburban Soliloquist has no secret information, she's not even sure who wrote this post.)

(But, the wine did taste like sunshine in the basement.)

Friday Night Frolic — Enumerating Story

[Source]

1.  To begin: Flaws. One of my many, is that I've never been able to calculate. Calculus, trigonometry, even algebra, simple logarithmic functions, escape me. In high school, Geometry was the only category of mathematics that I was somewhat able to grasp. That's because it included doodling. (Well, didn't it?) I've often wondered if this failing was solely because I could not understand mathematical relations or if I simply refused to try, refused to to understand. Or. Refused to accept that anything could be answered with such certainty. One plus one, yes, two. But even that simple equation never seemed so simple to me. And this suspicion was confirmed after my second child was born, when in the haze of endless nights punctuated by frightening infant caterwauls and toddler walkabouts it became clear that the idea of one plus one equalling two was nothing more than an algorithmic farce.

I wonder if my inability to calculate bears any connection to a cognitive deficit known as dyscalculia, which Wiki describes as an "innate difficulty in learning or comprehending arithmetic." The reason, though, is more likely disinterest. In any event, I've no compulsion to further explore what I've accepted as a lifelong inadequacy and limitation. I surrender all calculations to the accountants. After all, not everyone can be a mathematician.

2.  Some of us have to write.

3.  Some of us have to tell stories.

4.  And some of us, well, all of us, should listen...

5.  To this...

A short short film that I came across the other day while visiting one of my favorite magical depositories on the internet, Brain Pickings. Brain Pickings is, in the words its remarkable curator, Maria Popova, "a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are." 

Ken Burns, on story:



Stories as acceptable and sincere manipulation. Waking the dead. Building emotional truth. Keeping wolves from the door. Continuing ourselves. Reminding us that it's just Ok.

At about 4:20 Burns illustrates the how and why in which he conveys story. It's a powerful and vulnerable moment that offers us insight into to his success. Moreover, he shares my suspicion that one plus one does not always equal two.

6.  (Now, there's something called story algorithm, but I don't want to go there just yet.)

7. As a sort of book club experiment, I've been reading Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes along with Lu who is currently reading the book for her English class. Other than Zen in the Art of Writing, it had been a long time since I'd read Bradbury, since I'd read Something Wicked, and as I flip the pages of his book, I'm reminded of why I adored his stories as a young girl. The grand collector of metaphors set out to have a helluva lot of fun. He stuffed his head with anything he could from every imaginable field. He went to carnivals and cinemas and read comic books and nearly everything else he could collect from the library—short stories, essays and poetry. Only the greats, nothing modern. He likes to say that he practically lived in the library.

The world in which Bradbury lived as a child is very much alive in his works, and it's hard for me to believe that a man who extols the virtues of writing only for the pure joy and fun of writing ever had a moment in which he feared he'd waste time writing something that might not be very good. Even so, by the age of thirty he had his first novel published. And what followed was awfully good.

At the library, from Something Wicked:

Out in the world not much happened. But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. Up front was the desk where the nice old lady, Miss Watriss, purple-stamped your books, but down off away were Tibet and Antarctica, the Congo. There went Miss Wills, the other librarian, through Outer Mangolia, calmly toting fragments of Peiping and Yokohama and the Celebes. Way down the third book corridor, and oldish man whispered his broom along in the dark, mounding the fallen spices...

Something Wicked has instantly transported me back to the world of Will and Jim, and Mr. Dark and the salesman toting the curious lightening rod—back to the eclipse of morning's first hours when a flashlight under the bed covers lit fantastical words ablaze. It's been difficult to fight the temptation to read ahead of Lu and her class, but I'm holding back, filling my time with other stories, considering what and how I will write, collecting ideas, piecing words together in such a way, reminding myself that it's just Ok. These are the kinds of calculations I can do in my head. And it's a helluva lot a fun.

*  *  *
8.

Dead Combo is the ten year old band of friends Tó Trips and Pedro Gonçalves, of Portugal. They began their partnership after they recorded together, for the first time, a contribution to the tribute album to the late Portuguese guitarist, Carlos Paredes.

Together, Trips and Gonçalves have created their own story as well as their own incarnate personae whom they describe as "characters that could have come from a dark comic book: a caretaker and a gangster." They have recorded together, as well as with the Royal Orquestra das Caveiras (Royal Skulls Orchestra), with whom they released a live DVD in 2010. 

Story can be told many ways. You can find more of Dead Combo's story music here.

Friday Night Frolic – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Shaving

We've reached a milestone here. And isn't he a sport to have permitted his mother to capture the whole ceremonious first slice of silver across the creamy, pale skin of his face? She won't, however, post the video.

This Friday's Frolic is going to be highly abridged as the Suburban Soliloquist has been strapped to her chair all week, working on a feature article (what is that anyway?) which she may or may not post on this blog, depending upon how it all unravels. (At the moment, it is way too long for a blog post.) For some reason, as apolitical as she is, she's been inexplicably drawn to a major controversy that has cast national attention on the city in which she grew up. And it's not the fact that the city is near bankrupt.

In any event, she hasn't been on the internet much, other than for research reasons, but hopes to return early next week for a proper posting and jaunt around the blogging community.

In the meantime, a little video sent by friend-of-the-shut-in:

For more information on the talented harpist Frédéric Yonnet visit his website, or listen to his interview over at NPR.

Have a beautiful weekend. Maybe the sun will come out tomorrow?

(Is that really her baby?)

Art by Max

Friday Night Frolic — What's Happening?

Snails Space with Vari-Lites, by David Hockney

OR: What Happens When the Suburban Soliloquist Searches for a Moment of Peace and Quiet.

Every December when asked what he wanted for Christmas, her father would, without fail, respond: Peace and quiet! He'd say it so fast and severely that she thought it was one word. Peacenquiet. In the colonial house in which they lived, on a street perpendicular to the fire station, within two blocks from the elementary school, in a city of fifty thousand, quiet was found only in the thick, Black Japan lacquer of night when the next day's clothing folded gracefully over wood chest at bed's foot, school books heaped in their rubber straps, the French horn and piano intermissionized, batted and clawed Teen Beat magazines softened, Hummel-murdering footballs idled in the toy box, and six children, boys in one room, girls in the other, slept soundly while parents exhaled conciliatory snores.

Peacenquiet is the night's oasis. 

On a mid-April morning, half-way through an active week-long vacation, in a cold, wet Washington, D.C., the Suburban Soliloquist, roaming the halls of an enormous Greek Revival building set back from the rumpus of stretched streets, and stocked with American art, thirsted for peace and quiet (why she expected it there still baffles her). Hours earlier she had enthusiastically entered the Museum, children in tow, and set forth purposefully through its wide halls, vaulted galleries and curved stairways. Her rambunctious young teens, not to be slowed by portraits or sculptures or old mousetraps or mothers, quickly set out on their own path. But in the chamber that housed the Annie Leibovitz exhibition, and at de Kooning's frenzied pastel sketch of JFK, and by John Quidor's Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, and near Albert Bierstadt's fantastical paintings of the nation's frontiers, the children conspired to descend upon their mother, robbing her of peace and quiet.

Go see The Art of Video Games! she finally suggested (or demanded?). Third floor. Text me when you're done. And they were off without a question, the hall and stairwell echoing the notes of their laughter and heavy feet. She was certain to not be disturbed for a long while.

Later, she made her way back to the third floor, where she stumbled upon the black box of David Hockney's Snails Space. Inside: a long leather bench on which to sit, silence and aloneness, not one other museum goer in the box. She sat. She stared at, and listened to, the illuminated, multicolored canvases of a world within a world—a moving, breathing model of streams and mountains, valleys and woodland which changed as the light by which it was illuminated altered; a shy bleating of activity emitting from the landscape. It made her think of a pop-out book. For several moments she sat alone. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Alone. Could it be? It was beautiful. An oasis. Peaceful. Quiet. Snails. Space. The world within the world. Just as Hockney had intended.*

And what happens when the Suburban Soliloquist finds a moment of peace and quiet? 

Two young teens tend to find her. (Often, when she is trying to digitally capture worlds within worlds.) And decide to sit and stay. Look and listen. They speak in whispers. (And ratcheted-up whispers.)

Max: What's happening?

Lulu: Are the snails moving?

SS: Living.

Max (surprised): Wh-what?

(Pause. Room darkens and lightens.)

Lulu: The snails are moving!

Max: Where are the snails?

(Pause)

Max: Really, where are the snails?

(Pause. Bleating heard.)

Max: Where's the sound coming from?

(Pause. Room darkens.)

Lu: What happened?

SS (into Lu's ear): Hold on, it's not done yet.

Max: I seriously don't get it.

(Pause.)

Lu (annoyed): Mom, what's going on?

(Inaudible whispers.)

(Kids, mildly agitated, exit. Camera out. Suburban Soliloquist: stands and exits.)

She made her way out of the black box, following the children toward the neon lights of Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway, wishing she could have lingered longer in the blackness of the box. But she would not leave Hockney and the snails entirely behind. She was to carry the bleat and tinct of them with her throughout their Capitol excursion, and far beyond.

The space of a snail is the day's oasis.

Peacenquiet.

* “The installation unfolds as a kind of silent performance that evokes Hockney's experience of designing sets and costumes for operas even as he lost his hearing. In the absence of sound, pure visual experience compensates and suggests a different narrative to every viewer. The title offers a pun and a suggestion from the artist. To sit in this installation through the entire cycle of light shifts is to take time for what Hockney called "the pleasure of looking" that leads us to understand "how beautiful the world is.” - From Snails Space with Vari-Lites, "Painting as Performance" at the American Art Museum.

*  *  *

NOW, for more sensory experiences, and the pleasure of looking and listening:

From the website of Providence's Veteran's Memorial Auditorium, where Bobby McFerrin will be performing on May 10, 2012:

With a four-octave range and vast array of vocal techniques, McFerrin is not a mere singer; he is music’s last true Renaissance man, a vocal explorer who combines jazz, folk and a multitude of world music influences. As one of the foremost guardians of music’s rich heritage, he remains at the vanguard with his natural, beautiful and timeless music that transcends all borders and embraces all cultures.

McFerrin takes his audience through demonstrations that continually illustrate how music interacts with brain and emotion, such as the video above from the World Science Fesitival, 2009 (more on the topic of sound perception can be found at PBS's The Music Instinct—Science and Song). He charms, delights, unites—with a common chorus—and even transforms his admirers by creating his own oasis, engaging others in his improvisational forays. 

From his website:

Listening to Bobby McFerrin sing may be hazardous to your preconceptions. Side effects may include unparalleled joy, a new perspective on creativity, rejection of the predictable, and a sudden, irreversible urge to lead a more spontaneous existence.  

Here, the emotional spectrum of crying until you laugh and laughing until you cry:

This is what's happening: the pleasure and wonder of looking and listening, new perspectives, spontaneity, a common chorus. How beautiful the world is. 

Friday Night Frolic — Seeing the Day

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. 

                                                                                        ~ Albert Einstein

Keep moving. It's been that kind of week. In Boston's Chinatown this past Wednesday everything seemed to be moving. Holding balance. People crossed busy streets when traffic walk signals told them to do so. Pedestrians hummed over street vendors' bins of fresh vegetables and fruits. Chinese willows shook themselves out in the breeze. In Mary Soo Hoo Park, locals huddled and swayed around small groups of men playing Chinese chess with brightly inscribed wooden pieces. Sirens flashed and swung in the air, in transit, to and fro Tufts Medical Center. 

And then there was the muted sound and movement of a pretty bicycle secured to a pole at the corner of Kneeland and Tyler, which stopped me in my hurried tracks. The gentle downward slope of the top bar of the dark frame, the woven basket, the leather saddle, and bowed fenders caught my eye. A city bike. A woman's city bike. I wondered if she, the rider, had ridden the bike to work, or if she had met a friend for dim sum, or if she was simply taking her Miniature Schnauzer, whom she had carefully tucked in her basket, for a stroll through the park. Had I seen her poking through the glossy Chinese eggplant? Was she wearing a knee-length wool skirt, cable-knit sweater and long linen scarf? Maybe she was a resident at Tufts and had come from her apartment in Fenway. In the hospital she was dressed in scrubs and listened carefully to patients.

I stayed a while by the bike, and took several photographs, feeling as if I were in a state of inertia in the center of a mob of exertion. I didn't want to leave. Yet I did want to leave. On the bike. I wanted to ride it around the whole damn city, like I'd done all those years ago on my raised-seat touring bike, racing around Beantown, through its emerald parks, or to the office downtown. On a mission. But this particular bike, the city bike, was not meant for mission. It was meant for hanging back, for diddling, for loitering, for which, I realized—simultaneously with those leisurely thoughts—I had no time.

At the Craniofacial Pain Center, Dr. Correa asked me how I slept. 

Not well.

Next time, we'll talk about sleep, he smiled. 

And then I was off with my thrice-adjusted mouth guards, racing to my car, maneuvering the slow-lanes/fast-lanes of 93 South, open throttle toward another city where I was to pick up the kids, all the while wishing I'd done what I ordinarily do: take the commuter train. 

It's a balancing act, life, though I don't feel like I ever truly keep balance. I lurch to the left, wobble to the right, and sometimes, on a lucky occasion, center myself amply enough to see a day as less than overwhelming. It's all right. I'm happy to see the day. See it right through.

*  *  *

And now, ballads and jingles that I like to call, well, loiter music.

About singer/songwriter/pianist Joe Purdy, from thesixtyone:  

Purdy, an independent singer/songwriter from Arkansas, put in his time working at a loading dock and as a counselor at a private high school before his song "Wash Away" became synonymous with the 2004 season of ABC's Lost. Purdy left Arkansas for California in 2001, where he learned how to play the piano and began writing songs. He went on to record several homemade albums, breaking into the L.A. music scene with 2003's StompinGrounds. It was around this time that Purdy was contacted by J.J. Abrams, the executive producer of Lost, who asked Purdy to write a song for the show. Purdy, who at the time was visiting an island on a river in upstate New York, wrote "Wash Away," which went on to chart in the Top 25 on the /iTunes country charts…

In addition to his music heard on Lost, his songs have also appeared on the soundtrack of the TV series Grey's Anatomy, and the motion picture Peaceful Warrior.

From Last Clock On The Wall:

  01 Let Me Sing to You by Suburban Soliloquist

And, one of my favorites from Paris In The Morning:

  03 Brand New Set of Wings by Suburban Soliloquist

In total, Purdy has self-released a total of twelve CDs, the latest being This American.

All of Purdy's music can be listened to for free, on his website, available on album playlists.

Friday Night Frolic - Cold, Cold Ground

Then came the ice birds, through the bleeding sky, over the undulating, aqua field.  The white forest, frozen in dream, did not hear their trumpeting, nor the crunching upon the crisp ocean as a gaggle landed on its crystal beads. 

One eye open and one eye shut, they rested uneasy, gulping the heaving field's abundant air—until impatient and hungry grew the gosling, who cried!

Mother goose took the lead, dew-tipped tails waddled behind, the bleached horizon in the distance pined. 

Where the red sky meets the blue plain, dusk and dawn are the very same. 

A poem, at times, must be scrutinized, to uncover certain clues—this is what the schoolmaster uttered, his tapered pointer a dancing muse.

Ice birds fixed on the cold, cold ground of the ivory shore as they shuffled in cedilla form 
(unlike their innate, accent circonflexe arrays in ruby heavens).

The silver gander considered the graze, and advanced along the inversion, his broad crown alert to what might fill the gizzard. 

Somewhere in the sea of brush: berries, sedge and root. (Had he expected fish?) Then came the ice birds, mandibles wide and serrated, pulled up all the grasses, swam along the scrub, filled their bellies with white forest and frozen dream.

* * *

TOM WAITS

                                                         

No one writes more imaginative story/songs/poems (especially the scruffy, down-and-out sort)  than Tom Waits. Loss, lies, love, lowlife, liquor, loners and lullabies, he covers a lot of ground with a mean growl. Only Bukowski (whose influence on Waits is palpable) growled more prolifically. But Waits is the master of pairing poetic story with melody. And his ballads are beautiful.

From Franks Wild Years (1987)

From his 2006 album, Orphans:

From Mule Variations (1999):

From Alice (2002):

Waits's most recent album, Bad As Me, was released in 2011after a seven year absence in the studio. On Bad As Me he's back like the geese, mandible wide and serrated. You can read (or listen—highly worth the 45 minutes) more about the release on this October, 2011, NPR Fresh Air interview with Waits. 

____________________________________

The geese, as they were this morning (minus inverted color), in the undulating field.

Friday Night Frolic — Un Française Folâtrer

Yes, a very French Frolic.

It's Mother's birthday today, so I'm going to keep this brief as the family is having a celebratory gathering this evening—an event for which Max and Lu are beyond ready now that semester exams have come to a close. (Good God, I'm glad that's over.)

Some of you may remember that last year, on this very day, I wrote a little love letter—here on SS—to Mother, to whom I referred as my Anti-Tiger Mom. Then I rolled up a hard copy and tied it with ribbon, as several Blogger friends suggested, and gave it to her as a present. She loved it. She's always loved anything her children would give her, excepting, perhaps, a hard time. But, even in the midst of hard times during those early years of parenthood her temperament was unwaveringly serene.

Above is a picture of the saintly birthday girl with five sixths of her brood. Young Thomas is missing, having not yet been a twinkle (if he was, in fact, ever a twinkle) at the time this picture was taken. Mary (who was maybe a twinkle) is in Mother's lap. Backwoods Betty and Tony are grin-smirking behind Mother, and Chris and I (sporting one of my father's custom bowl haircuts), well, ugh, we don't look particularly happy, do we? That may have been because we were involuntarily participating in an event for which we had to remain still.

Mother, it seems, is the only one who looks truly happy. (Don't let Betty and Tony fool you, they'd done something naughty just before the camera clicked, I'm sure.) This is also Mother's temperament.

An abridged story: yesterday, Mother brought the kids home from early dismissal at school and stayed to lunch with us. Lulu, as she likes to do, ate just about everything in sight and then hunted for more, topping the feast off with ice cream. Soon thereafter, buckled at the belly and groaning, Lu asked if we'd EVER get a cat. (Why this could possibly have been on her mind at that moment, I've no idea.) And I, who did not inherit Mother's facile temperament, immediately replied, No, we're NEVER getting a cat.

Why NOT? Lu moaned.

Because, I snarled, you'd EAT it!

Well, Mother twitched with delight and stirred memories. You see, she told us, only weeks after she and Dad (and the four that had twinkled) moved into their city colonial, neighbors Charlie and Doris implicated Mother in the case of their missing cat. Several days after the neighbors' cat failed to duteously return home (look, I'm a bit rushed, you don't mind if I split infinitives here, right?), Doris eyed Mother with this inquiry: Well, Charlie mentioned that the French do like CHAT, now don't they?

It should be noted that, at the time, the city's population consisted of nearly eighty percent French Canadians/Franco-Americans. Mother graciously informed Doris that chat was not considered to be a French gastronomique, unless perhaps, one was starving, which would be très malheureux, indeed. This put a quick end to Doris's inquisition. 

I think that Doris might have once heard that the French eat calf. All the same, perhaps we should continue to wait on the cat. Then again, Lu is only half French.

The French, you know, really are quite happy people. We'll be Frolicking with many of them tonight.

Joyeux Anniversaire, Maman.

* * *

While Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Aznavour, Jaques Brel, and to some degree, Josephine Baker, who was not French, but embraced France as her home, may be known worldwide as the most famous of French singers, there are beguiling voices of less known vocalists, such as the smooth, silky and emotive voice of chanteuse Lucienne Boyer, who deserve as much attention as the well known greats. In her native France, however, Boyer was known as a grande vedette, or superstar.

Like Mother, Boyer (according to Astrotheme) tended toward playful and witty, and seemed to be—to paraphrase—like a cat, always landing on her feet. 

You don't think Boyer....

climbed trees? 

Thank goodness she never got lost.

You can listen to many of her recordings, and find out more about Boyer here. 

A santé!

Friday Night Frolic — Running Lights and Bulls

Andy Warhol. Cow 1976.

Racing to an appointment in Boston yesterday, the Suburban Soliloquist jumped off the highway and on to a one-way secondary road where she drove beneath a traffic light just after it turned yellow,  attempting, admittedly, to thinly beat the red light get past the light before it turned red. Just beyond the light, she was pulled over by at state trooper. A state trooper. The bulky, thick-necked trooper lumbered over to her car, his wide-brimmed Smokey the Bear hat snug on his unusually large head, his big, brown leather boots clunking like an ungulate, and without a hello, demanded her license and registration as though through a bull horn: License and registration. She promptly handed him the requested items and said, meekly, "The light was yellow as I passed under it."

“Ma’m, the light was red,” he replied in a deep, monotone voice.

“Officer, it was yellow. I wouldn't have gone through a red light.”

“Ma’m, you don’t want to argue the point. I saw it. The light was red.”

The Suburban Soliloquist was clearly annoyed (as was the trooper). Why won't he listen to me? It's like talking to a cow. Or is it a bull? He looks like a bull. “I’m quite certain it was yellow,” she mooed. 

She glanced at her watch as the trooper stamped back to his vehicle—clomp, clomp—lights still whirring red. She was late for the appointment. She was udderly utterly frantic. There was virtually no traffic on the adjacent street (also a one-way)—where only a right turn could be made at the stoplight onto the one-way street where she was parked. She had made sure, before she crossed under the light,  that no car was turning right on to the road. She had never received a citation. Well, at least not in the past twenty years or so—that is sort of like never. She had received only warnings. Of which there had been several.

She is not a reckless driver. (She wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea.)

The state trooper sat in the front seat of the grey and maroon vehicle, removed his hat from his mammoth head, and fiddled with electronic gadgets at the dashboard. The Suburban Soliloquist surmised that  he was checking her records. It took a long time. I wonder if he’ll give me a warning, she thought. Window rolled down, she tapped her fingers on the car door's outer side. She was becoming aggravated. Hurry up, dammit. She looked at her watch again. Autos of various sizes and colors whizzed by. She thought some of them might have run the red light, whereas she had merely beaten the red light.

When the bullish trooper returned he did not issue her a warning, as she had anticipated hoped.  Instead he handed her a piece of white paper and said, “I’m giving you a citation for running the red light.”

Her eyes brightened, “I did not run the red light!”

"M’am, I know you ran the red light. I saw you run the red light. So you ran the red light,” said the bully trooper whose speech had become more pressured. He did not look pleased. He looked like he might write her an additional citation. She saw smokey vapor stream from his nostrils. She thought he might gore her.

So, the Suburban Soliloquist thought it best to nod her head and say, "Ok, I'm sorry about that, but it looked like it was still yellow to me."

The trooper snorted, tipped his ridiculous looking hat at her and walked away. She slipped her license back in to her wallet and gazed at the citation: One Hundred and Fifty Dollars for running beating passing through a red light. $150.00! Preposterous. That is highway robbery, she thought. Everything went red.  I'm going to fight this bull!

Then, she remembered she was months overdue for her vehicle safety inspection. Fortunately, the mad bull had not noticed this error. He wasn't that smart after all. 

She drove off to her appointment, for which she was very, very late.

Later, she discovered that some ungulates actually listen (and clearly see):

The New Hot 5 is a New Orleans style jazz band that's getting, of late, a lot of press. This September alone, they were featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno;  Today on NBC (as video of the week); and, Good Morning America, as well as other news outlets. Their Jazz for Cows video has gone viral. And it looks like their new website was launched as a quick response to all the attention and interest. 

But they're not shy when it comes to sharing their talent with species other than the bovinae.  



Dr. Steve Call is a professor at Brigham Young University and is the ensemble's tubist and leader. All of his band mates are former BYU students trained in traditional jazz. The instruments played are the tuba, clarinet, trumpet, tombone and banjo!

Man (maybe even state troopers?) and bovinae patiently await their inaugural CD.

Friday Night Frolic — Falling Waters: A Meditation

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.  Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.                                              ~John Muir

I know why Backwoods Betty left the city. Though this, I did not always know. Nor was I certain it was a good idea—Betty being a cityfied professional for nearly three decades, held captive by the city's assiduous urban hum, it's vibrant sheen, culture and diversity—I was worried, couldn't imagine how she'd negotiate the solitude of the mountains and northern boreal forests, the frigid and often dangerous winters, the slowed pace. As a second home, sure, but on a permanent basis?

But North of Franconia Notch is hardly an isolated, unfriendly or stagnant plateau. It is a series of verdant mezzanines, palisades of evergreens and brush, pillars of granite and peppery stones that line its natural corridors and wrap around its lush and coniferous woodlands. There, in the thick of this mountainous weald, it is to breathe crisp air and listen.

It is to be spoken to by a voice rooted deep in earth's core, an oracle.

It is to be in the company of good friends. Like the croaking bullfrogs at dusk.

Sunday morning we hiked Falling Waters. Here, along this rugged, root covered, stone lined trail, worn by the tread of many a trekking shoe, insulated from flurry and fuss, from what can sometimes feel like the madness of the world, we heard water falling: drips of clear liquid dropping from one green leaf to another, like Mother Nature's tears running down a stairway of foliage. Then, a trickle of water from behind slate and golden rocks, around fallen birch limbs, and quietly through the brook.

It is a conversation, accompanied by a lullaby.

Without television, radio or internet for the entire weekend, on Sunday we were still unaware of the events that had unfolded in Oslo, and Utoya. We climbed, quite blissfully, higher up the steep and sometimes muddy trail, and witnessed a different kind of unfolding: cool water plunging down granite steps. Pulling ourselves skyward, past sharp twists in the terrain, through shallow pools of water and up stone risers set by the AMC, the waterway widened and gushed from enormous slabs of stone into cascades of trilling aqua.

It is a melody.

We rested at the top of one of the largest falls, and absorbed the deep pigment of nature, whistling birds, barreling water, buzzing insects, pine and dirt and rock, the organic lyrics of the mossy forest.

It is a symphony.

Not knowing anything but the rich sounds of tall pines, clods of mud under foot, wild geese, bullfrogs, or fanning falls can be bliss. (It was Walt Whitman who said:  You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.)

But the north country is not about not knowing. The north country is about paying attention to knowing. It is a meditation on knowing the true identity of the world, and all its creatures, of self and of what brings oneself joy and peace.

It is a meditation on quality of life.

It is a libretto of life. And death. And renewal.

And it is a meditation on everything we don't know, may never know, may never understand.

We went up and down the trail unfettered by the knowledge of the chaos and killing in Norway. The whole weekend, unfettered. It's hard to believe. Some things we don't want to know. Some things we most certainly will never understand.

At the base of the trail, turning on the radio, it was a requiem.

Falling waters, slipping tears. Sounds that resonate.

I didn't want to leave.



Thomas Dybdahl is a Norwegian Grammy Award winning singer/songwriter. His music has all the serenity and lushness of a stream rippling through mountain gorges. His voice: undulating waves of light and sound. His lyrics: as colorful and emotional as the deep northern forest, flooded with the steamy warmth of southern everglades. The sound: rooted in pop, its branches having a multidirectional spread to folk, rock, country, jazz—it is as melodic, scenic and pristine as the glacial terrain and falling waters that seduce us, that speak to us.

His new album, Songs, was released this month in the U.S.



This week, Dybdahl has been touring the States, dedicating his shows to his Norwegian countrymen. Next week, he returns to Trondheim and the tears of Norway. There, he's sure to bring much comfort.


(In the background, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss speaks of quality of life by asking, roughly, how it may be defined and how it may remain high or become heightened? He reminds us that quality of life has nothing to do with what one has, but how one feels about oneself, what brings one joy. Næss is well known for his work on the principles of deep ecology. )

I worry no longer. Betty knows exactly what she's doing, and she's doing it well. There, in the backwoods of New Hampshire, is much joy and peace. I wish it were the same the world wide.

"In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks." 

~ John Muir