Say yes to Michigan!

There is a surprisingly extensive list of songs about Michigan. Where, one wonders, are the songs about Connecticut? Of course, this is the only state where residents can hold up the palms of their right hands and point to where they're from. Now I can say yes to that!

A few for your listening pleasure:

see all of Greetings from Michigan by Sufjan Stevens

Half Acre, by Hem (you'll know it from the Pay it Forward-esque insurance commercial, which, mercifully, is only one minute long and thus far less painful than the movie. You may decide how you feel about a company reminding you to do what your mama and papa taught you--not to mention anthropomorphizing itself as a paragon of responsibility. You know, in the great sellout debate, what I find most disturbing is not always the artist's willingness to sell their music to the Man, but the fact that the music I love also appears to be the Man's favorite too. While Andrew Bird's whistle really shouldn't fetch any price, I am glad he can make enough to keep himself in glockenspiels. It's just unnerving to hear his melodies trickling from the television. Or maybe it's the editorial hack job meted out on his music.)

Michigan, by the Red House Painters (I keep trying this band but they never take. They're one of those bands where the first 45 seconds of a song writhes with promise but by minute two you've memorized their three power chords and pasty lyrics and the incessantly nasal drone of the lead vocalist. In fact, your time would probably be better spent waiting for the seventeen-year cicadas to emerge. They'll be here, in Michigan, in 2021.)

one writer's beginnings

During the years 1999 through 2001, I had the following pieces published in a certain secondary school's literary magazine:

1999
a. a poem about a family returning from the beach (narrator: middle aged man)
b. a poem about the eating habits, or lack thereof, of girls from the West and girls from impoverished countries (and on her plates/are the remains of food she hates/sandwich crusts, broccoli stems)
c. a poem about 43-year-old man's nostalgia for childhood
d. a short story about an incarcerated woman giving birth*

2000
a. a poem about domestic abuse
b. a short story about a mentally unstable woman miscarrying her child and subsequently drowning herself**

2001
a. a poem about a poor mother trying to make a life for her son
b. a poem about a bi-racial relationship

I wonder that my family did not worry over me, but clearly they were not too concerned, as I never appeared to have a curfew and was mostly spared from what one of my siblings refers to as "Monologues with My Father."*** In fact, I may have been entirely too wholesome--I even cried over the only C I've ever received.**** Ultimately, I say that the mildly amusing list is evidence of the mind's potential for empathy and imagination (however maudlin)***** rather than that of a disturbed teenager.

*Rather than a product of my imagination, this one was inspired by a photograph.
**This one is the most painful one to reread. Did I actually write this? I'd like to blame it on reading bad fiction from The New Yorker but my mother refused to buy it during the Tina Brown days.
***If you know our father, you'll know who did the talking.
****Algebra, and in my defense it was not due to an inability to comprehend algebra, but a habit of wavering attention...sometimes due to writing the pieces listed above.
*****A final comment: while a rereading of the above pieces may find one turning certain shades of pink and/or crowing with laughter, my use of figurative language and experimentation does show a spark for the craft***** (although I promise to never ever again refer to the embrace of a bi-racial couple as like an Oreo cookie).
*****Two selections:

The handcuffs and shackles lie there in metal crumples like serpents...

and, in a variation on the serpentine theme:

Coming back from the beach
My wife and daughters burnt red,
Faces like shining Buddhas.
A week later
Their bodies emerging, snakes
From decaying skin.

so gallantly streaming

It is the last game at the old minor league baseball stadium (it will be torn down for a local university's expansion). Dear, dear L- agrees play tripod girl and accompany me to the last game--although we soon learn there is actually a make up game on Monday night (more about that later). We waltz across the field in search of Bobby W-, owner of the Turks and, coincidentally, my camera's first quarry. Unwittingly, he drives away in the golf cart; we make chase, as do the eyes of the baseball team.

Somebody yells at Bobby to stop. He flips the cart around and, taking our hands, asks which one of us is going out with him after the game. I smile sweetly and ask him to submit for the camera--considerate subject that he is, he whisks us off to the outfield and answers my questions against the backdrop of the stadium and the familiar tinging of baseballs and bats. (He played on this field in high school; later in the evening he gently grasps his son's neck as they prepare to bid farewell to the turf).

Back to the stadium go we, where we meet an older, even saltier gent whose name I can't recall, but who Bobby informs me is loaded--loaded, I tell you! They are astounded to learn I do not have a boyfriend, and equally aghast when they hear that L- is a married woman. Indeed, there is nothing quite like discussing one's love life with old men while at work. But in between compliments and flirtations, they give me some good tips for shooting the game, and I mainly laugh when they tell me later that I'm a young 26, although I remind them I'm but five and twenty.

L- waits patiently in the stands while I capture b-roll and interviews; it is my first time at the ball field and I am sad that it is going--there will be another ball field, but how can you reproduce the stains and dirt and scents of over sixty years of baseball games? I dread the sterility of the new diamond, the erased echoes of girls and boys flirting in the stands in the golden light of a dying summer day, the undamaged scoreboard. What words have smashed against these walls? asks Maya Angelou. For is it not comforting, endearing, hopeful to think of visiting a dear, dusty place and adding one more evening to the strata of memory?

But it seems there will one more memory to bring to the sod and discarded peanut shells: L- and I had an offer we could not refuse, an offer that involves warbling the national anthem at the final final make up game. I fear she will win the harmony argument, leaving me to that eyebrow-raising high A--or is it a C? Unpatriotic as I may appear, on Monday night, Veterans Stadium will indeed be the home of the brave.

where numbers fly like pigeons

the arithmetic of life as a quasi-unemployed graduate student (don't try this at home, kids):

interview a man about a historic museum. discuss annie dillard. forget to look at the KKK outfit--brother-in-law wants to know who made their outfits. their wives? or did they emasculate themselves with a needle and thread for such nefarious activity?

invite self over for dinner at friend's parents'. mother of friend's sister-in-law has made dinner--her family is indian, and they probably know my grandparents. dress in sister-in-law's saris (she is too tired and hot from cooking all day to do so herself). pray that won't drop briyani on glorious blue silk.

have pictures taken for anonymous software company. script includes line about unsuccessful pizza tossing: try to position head under flying pizza dough while maintaining correct angle for camera. learn a few tips about tossing a pizza (two fists!), share a few laughs with the Hispanic bakers at the Italian restaurant, leave with flour in eyebrows and hairline.

change niece's diapers (3 times in 20 minutes); act like a general fool (stick out tongue, make clicking noises, sing, dance, finally make baby laugh), visit baby aisles at Target (there were at least 5), fold diapers (too many to count).

lug camera and tripod around town, looking for elusive college students. why they aren't out getting drunk at 9 on a friday is beyond one journalist's imagination. the best college bar in town has a suspended liquor license. tell every acquaintance the news (in approximately 17 minutes, this totals 7 people, plus someone's new wife).

house sit for friends who go on real vacations. 2 cats, 1 dog, 2 messy houses; 18 hours hasta que vengan.

trollope: 1 down; edward abbey: 2 more chapters; nabokov (first name, for the record, almost rhymes with redeemer; last: hold the middle syllable on the tip of an arrow [bow] and then break into the edge of the final hard k): lolita, lolita, lolita.

He must marry money

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony."-Anthony Trollope

Fortunately (I believe) we are no longer shackled to the demands of blood and money in marital matches, as Trollope's Frank Gresham is repeatedly reminded by his family. (I warn you that Trollope's wit is done a great disservice by such a dry synopsis, the sad fate of many a synopses, so dear reader, listen to Lavar Burton and read the book.) Of course, we have not cast of the bonds completely; our greedy tendencies have merely settled in deeper, darker spots: I ain't sayin she a gold digger but if she starts demanding a push present, you may have more to argue about than who changes the 4 a.m. diaper. (Coincidentally, I did write a piece on this topic before the NYTimes. There was just that niggling issue of publication.)

But if you do happen to find yourself blissfully ensconced in matrimony, regardless of money or blood, there remains at least one battleground: the in-laws--one I never really feared because my own relations were and are a source of joy and delight (and yes, the occasional annoyance). But I have found recently found myself, albeit in-law-less myself, dispensing two pieces of advice for the wedded:

• Write it all down. I'm not sure of Trollope's matrimonial relations, but such character sketches and plot lines come free of charge. (I must give credit to an anonymous acquaintance for this observation.)
• Read, and if needed, write to my guilty pleasure. All advice comes with a good serving of snark, which really is something our dear Abby could use.
  

sittin' on G at Marino's

My friend J– discovered Marino's a few months back, and I finally managed to slip down to Staunton for a visit. If you happen to find yourself in this corner of the world, you should aim to roll in on a Tuesday, about 8 p.m., if you'd like to find a seat. Last call is at 11, and if you have nice eyes someone might buy you a two-dollar beer. Keep drinking them, and you'll be feeling right and rosy—it may be the PBR, or it may be the twanging solo of a banjo in harmony with an upright bass and jagged voices that echo in from the Virginia hollers.

Marino's holds a bluegrass jam every week; you may wonder jealously why you spent all those years being a blandly predictable student, going to class, when you could have been learning to play the mandolin, or at least better rhythm on the guitar, because the woman in the corner of the room sounds like she maybe spent some time cavorting with the devil down in Georgia, and at this point you can't remember the content of those lectures, just the lines of that heartbreaking song, the boisterous man in the red suspenders, and the burning ache of cigarette smoke in your throat.

Overheard, above the guitar and harmonica:

a. Who was that Russian composer, who died 'bout forty years ago? Shostachovich.

b. They're sittin' on G a lot tonight.

c. (After a camera flash captures the side of one man's head) Damn! That's my deformed ear.

Only at Marino's. Walk past the lunch counter, settle yourself in a corner with a beer, and listen.

take me home

if the fireflies and Shenandoah Mountains aren't enough, the Green Valley Book Fair is always there to tip the balance in favor of a certain state south of the Mason-Dixie.

I submit as evidence this list:

No Other Book, Randall Jarrell (read at whim! read at whim!)
The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris
The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn
Murder In Amsterdam, Ian Buruma
and a Spanish English Dictionary.

Grand total: $23.35

oh country roads take me home (when the book fair is in session)

please forgive me

There certainly is something unnerving about posting photographs of newborn babies on the internet, but I'm a twitterpated aunt and she's too pretty not to. Of course, it's pictures like those below that she may have issues with. She's quite the raucous baby Baucchus.

border collies for Barack

A dapper and friendly Barack Obama was in my dream last night. We attended some church affair, the details of which I can only recall included large salami and men in wheelchairs. While I'd like to overlook the potentially Freudian twist, I must say: now that's campaigning.

Relatedly, my sister and brother-in-laws's dog (a somewhat expensive but exceptional wedding present) ran away last week after taking one sniff of their new baby. Many little Bo Peeps went looking, but the dog didn't show up until one of my brother-in-law's relatives ran into someone who'd seen a loose border collie--at a Democratic Party meeting (the someone, not the border collie). She (the border collie) is now back at home, eyeing the baby warily, and we are grateful. We are considering a donation to the Obama campaign--or, at the very least a new committee: Border Collies for Barack.

my favorite plant so far

we'll see what survives: one upside down tomato has already fallen prey to gravity. but the zucchini is looking lovely, and the pepper plants love to droop during the day and are back to their perky, hopeful selves by nighttime. the lettuce would make peter rabbit drool; thankfully he wouldn't dare wrassle with the likes of the puppies two.