Off to my European adventure!

Tomorrow I fly to Paris for 5 nights, then train to Lyon for 3 and then rent a car and drive around the middle and south of France.  By Myself.  Yikes!

For some reason, perhaps my advance age, I am a little nervous about this trip. I cannot put my finger on why, I have been to France many times and am comfortable there, even with no command of the language. Yes, there are street riots in Paris right now but I can avoid those. Yes, it is more dangerous to travel now than ever before but that doesn't worry me. Maybe it's just that my mind seems less focused lately and I fear I will do something stupid, like leave my luggage somewhere and walk away or lose my passport (been there, done that) or simply act like an old lady.  (Which I am quickly becoming.)

But maybe the opposite will happen: everything will go smoothly and I will have an amazing vacation!  That is certainly a possibility. Maybe it's just the getting ready to leave that is making me anxious, packing, prepaying bills, cleaning up the house, all that crap.

I am fairly certain that when I get to the airport tomorrow all the pre-vacation jitters will be gone. By then there is nothing to do but get on the plane and let the anxiety go, have a cocktail, read and fall asleep and wake up in a foreign land.  That's my plan, anyway.

I will attempt to continue this blog using a borrowed iPad, trying to connect it to foreign websites and we will see how that goes. (I have little confidence in my skills regarding using new devices, of which the iPad is to me.) If you hear from me, then great!  It worked!  If not, then boo, I am too lame to figure it out. 

Au revoir to you all for a few days but tune in on Thursday or Friday and see if I have anything to say.

SF Symphony: Beethoven's Ninth, Ode To Joy

Of all the performances I have seen over the past 20 years or so, Beethoven's Ninth, which I saw on Friday, was perhaps my favorite of all. It is a one act of 66 minutes (but who's counting, right?) of astounding orchestral music and a chorus that probably numbered at least 100 voices. We all know the melody of the Ode to Joy and that last movement is so filled with emotion that it was all I could do to keep from cheering out loud half way through the build up to final shout-out to Beethoven's Joy.

Tom and I, in the past, went to the symphony often. But then the recession of the 2008-2009 years were tough on all of us and the money for tickets was necessary for car payments and rent. But this year, being the excellent friend that he is, Tom bought tickets to see Michael Tilson Thomas direct the symphony in this masterpiece. And a masterpiece it was! 

Our seats were in the loge area, which means we had roomy seats just a step above the entire orchestra.  You can see every instrument and follow the flow of the music not just by listening but by watching the musicians and their grasp of the music. The loge seats are the best in the house (and thus their price reflects that) and the scope of the orchestra gives you a physical sense of the music as well as perfect acoustics.

There is no way to describe the journey this symphony of Beethoven has. It is, as the program described it, a journey from darkness to light. Crashing chords, sadness, pathos and then a slow, gradual climb from depths to middle ground and peace, then the ascent, higher and higher to the platform of joy and wonder and love. What a musical triumph this is!

Here is a short video of a totally different Ode to Joy experience from the SF Symphony but the joy and the emotion are so evident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87qT5BOl2XU

And another more classical look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooe16ILaPo

I say do yourself a favor, find a good recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, take an hour and sit and listen to it. The first movement is familiar, the second less so. The third is so well-known for many reasons and then we get to the fourth movement, the one we wait for, the Ode to Joy with the chorus and every instrument in the orchestra jumping for joy.  It will be an hour well spent.

Thank you, Tom, for the early Christmas gift!

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My love affair with Joan Baez, tonight

It is past my bedtime but I just returned from seeing Joan Baez in Oakland this evening. Left my house early this morning to get to work, left work at 5:20 and got to Oakland just in time to miss the first two songs, but it was worth every wrong turn. What a voice and what a person!

On stage Joan Baez is as natural as a bouquet of wildflowers, there is nothing tricky about her or pretentious or famous. She sips tea, chews on lozenges (and apologies for doing so.) She applauds her guitarist and her son, Gabriel Harris who plays the drums and a young singer who shared the stage with her for a few songs. But when she starts singing and playing the guitar, she is a force. It's not just her voice, it's her entire musical and political persona that resonates on the stage. She admits her voice doesn't have the range it once had but there were times when she hit the high notes and the audience gasped at the purity of that sound.

Yes, this all sounds so fan-like, and so be it. I have been a fan of Joan Baez for more than 50 years and will be a fan forever. How I even considered not driving to Oakland this evening (where I ALWAYS get lost, always, coming and going) is beyond me. I walked in, had a very nice aisle seat and as I sat she began talking about her mother and then she sang "Honest Lullaby" and I began to cry.  (Silently, of course.) It's a story about her growing up in the 1950's (lyrics below) and then experiencing motherhood, that you don't get through either of those lifetimes without some true and honest guidance. It's a song I have always liked, hearing her sing it brought the house down for me.  But then she sang more, some Bob Dylan, some Tom Waits, so many songs she wrote, many traditional tunes and she read a poem to California about the fires and smoke and ash and our duty as people to stand up and help and fight, the world needs us and our participation.  

I could go on and on.

For some reason, for many reasons, my emotions these days are not just on my sleeve but are covering my entire body, usually manifested in tears. I can't read a headline without tearing up nor can I think about the fires and the shootings and our corrupt political world without tearing up in anger and in fear. Things just seem out of balance, I just seem out of balance, waiting for that boulder to tumble into my path or onto my car or for the tree to fall on my house or to be pushed off the brink or ...... something.
Seeing Joan Baez tonight made that unease and latent anxiety go away for two  hours. It somehow made the future seem possible for that time.

I parked about ten minutes from the Fox Theater in a loading zone with some other cars who were taking the risk of being towed. Sketchy neighborhood would be kind, but that's probably just my white woman stereotypical fear. But walking back to my car after the concert a guy was walking the same way, same age as me more or less and we talked for a few seconds about Joan Baez.  He said "I cried through about half of it" and I replied "Oh, me too! I cannot believe I considered not making the drive tonight."  He shook his head slightly and said, softly "We won't forget this, will we?"  

Nope.  We won't.

Early early in the game 
I taught myself to sing and play 
And use a little trickery 
On kids who never favored me 
Those were years of crinoline slips 
And cotton skirts and swinging hips 
And dangerously painted lips 
And stars of stage and screen 
Pedal pushers, ankle socks 
Padded bras and campus jocks 
Who hid their vernal equinox 
In pairs of faded jeans 
And slept at home resentfully 
Coveting their dreams 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived 
I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby 

Yellow, brown, and black and white 
Our Father bless us all tonight 
I bowed my head at the football games 
And closed the prayer in Jesus' name 
Lusting after football heroes 
tough Pachuco, little Neroes 
Forfeiting my A's for zeroes 
Futures unforeseen 
Spending all my energy 
In keeping my virginity 
And living in a fantasy 
In love with Jimmy Dean 
If you will be my king, Jimmy, Jimmy, 
I will be your queen 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived

I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby

 
I travelled all around the world 
And knew more than the other girls 
Of foreign languages and schools 
Paris, Rome and Istanbul 
But those things never worked for me 
The town was much too small you see 
And people have a way of being 
Even smaller yet 
But all the same though life is hard 
And no one promised me a garden 
Of roses, so I did okay 
I took what I could get 
And did the things that I might do 
For those less fortunate 

And often have I wondered 
How the years and I survived 
I had a mother who sang to me 
An honest lullaby

 
Now look at you, you must be growing 
A quarter of an inch a day 
You've already lived near half the years 
You'll be when you go away 
With your teddy bears and alligators 
Enterprise communicators 
All the tiny aviators head into the sky 
And while the others play with you 
I hope to find a way with you 
And sometimes spend a day with you 
I'll catch you as you fly 
Or if I'm worth a mother's salt 
I'll wave as you go by 
And if you should ever wonder 
How the years and you'll survive 
Honey, you've got a mother who sings to you 
Dances on the strings for you 
Opens her heart and brings to you 
An honest lullaby

Songwriters: Joan C. Baez

And the ETA on the Zombies is when?

Seriously, I just came back from walking Cooper around the block and it is a ghost town out there, like Zombie-land. No one is on the roads, I could have prostrated myself on Mendocino Avenue and read my Bible (if I was carrying it) for five minutes before a car even came into view. The only time I have seen the road this quiet was Christmas morning, and this is Friday night!

Same thing last night, no one on the roads. The smoke was annoying last evening but today it was awful.  The smoke index (aka Air Quality Index but come on, it's all about the smoke) starts at zero for good and 500 for bad. Today in Santa Rosa it was around 320. It was around 410 in Guerneville, home of Autocamp, my place of employment. It is supposed to be the same tomorrow, Saturday.  Another reason to be joyful about going to work!

Walking Cooper around 4:30 this afternoon for a short jaunt, the sun was a hellish red-orange combo, as if someone poured blood into orange juice and stirred it up. It was as defined as a canonball in the sky, clear and hot and creepy. A young guy was standing outside my neighborhood tattoo parlor as Cooper and I walked by and I pointed to the sun and said "fucking freaky, right?" and he replied "I don't want this, we had this last year, I am done with this."  My feelings exactly.

Shootings and fires in Los Angeles. More fires 100 miles from us right now. It feels like death and destruction are leaching out from Washington, D.C., a crawling plague of evil, leaving nothing whole or safe in its path.  Yes, I am making that up but come on.... you know you can feel it too.

Be safe out there. Evil does abide. 

November, and I have been such a slacker

Where does the time go?  I actually created an account at work yesterday and labeled it "October shop account" because in my mind it was still October.  Yes, that's a very sad sign about the state of my mind, but true nonetheless. 

November: one of my favorite months, along with all the months after summer. (Well, actually, I am not usually a fan of March for some reason. Go figure.) Leaves on trees change colors as do all the vineyards I pass driving through the Russian River valley. From my front desk post at work I can see dozens of trees and sometimes a breeze comes up and thousands of leaves get blown from their branches and float down, like a snowfall of color. It's mesmerizing.  This week the days are overly warm but the nights are very cold. It's rather odd, you start the day with layers and by mid-day you are down to a t-shirt and by 4:00 the layers are back on and by 9:30, when you take the dog out to pee, there are even more layers! Crazy!

I had a mediocre lunch today but with the best company, my Stacey, but it made me not hungry for dinner. But one must eat something, right? I cubed up a chunk of butternut squash that was languishing in the fridge, salt and pepper, and a chopped piece of bacon, and baked it until the squash was tender and caramelized and the bacon was crisp. Delicious, and I am pretty sure that since it was lean bacon and the fat sort of cooked off and the squash didn't absorb ALL the fat that it was almost fat-free!  Who cares, it was really good, the soft, sweet squash against a little crunch of crisp, salty bacon.  So autumn.

Two weeks and a few days until Thanksgiving. The highlight of autumn, of course. One can walk down any street in any neighborhood and smell turkey roasting and pies baking and hear the elastic chatter of groups of people and kids gathering. It's a good day.

I will try to be back here more.  Yeah, I know, promises, promises.  But there you have it.

And here is a photo of main room of the clubhouse at Autocamp. You can see a few Airstreams and the little Redwood Suite (the ADA unit.) That's the view from the front desk where I see leaves pouring down. (The front desk would be farther to the right.) Not a bad thing to look at all day. Redwood trees on the left. 

"Jack Whitehall: Travels with my Father" on Netflix

I am not sure I would have stumbled upon this short series (11 episodes in all) had my friend Tom not recommended it to me. But it is totally worth checking out. Jack Whitehall is a 30 year old British comedian who looks like a kid who never grew up. He decides to take his 78 year old Dad on a trip around parts of Southeast Asia in order to bond and pretend to beef up their relationship. Jack's Dad, Michael, counters that Southeast Asian trip with one of his own to Romania, Moldova, Kiev and Istanbul.

To characterize their relationship as "dysfunctional" is to pretend that Kentucky Fried Chicken is wholesome food. Jack rolls his eyes at Michael while Michael simply walks away from Jack and checks them in to a 5 star hotel instead of the youth hostel Jack has chosen for them.  Jack tries to buck up and be stalwart but his father has him folding at every turn.

This series is both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, sarcastic and sweet all at the same time. In the end it is simply about how family members can love each other while at the same time considering stabbing each other in the eye with a fork. (Not literally.)  Check it out, roll with it and bet you get to the end wishing Jack and Michael had a few more journeys in mind.

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"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens. Book Review.

Sometimes books exceed their plot line. Sometimes the plot is conventional and predictable (boy meets girl, etc.) and sometimes we are happy with that because it meets our expectations and that's all we wanted.

But now and then there is a typical plot with atypical prose attached that makes the book so much more than its simple parts. This is one of those books.

Delia Owens has written a few non-fiction books about nature and wildlife. Her knowledge of biology and the unexplored world shows in this debut novel. (Disclaimer here: I am tired of debut novels because I find them to be trite and they writing tries too hard. This novel moved above that marker.)

The story is simple and at times very dire.  A young girl is slowly abandoned by her parents and her siblings, left to survive alone in the marshes of North Carolina. That a six year old could survive for ten years with no one and with almost nothing is a bit of a stretch but we buy into it because of the grit and determination of the young girl.  She grows into a lovely yet remote and scared young woman and attracts the attention of a couple of young men in the outskirts of her solitary world. Things get complicated, someone gets killed and thus the mystery begins. 

But Owens lets us into the world of Kya, the marsh girl and thus into the world of the marsh and the swamp and the ocean. She is at home in this world as she will never be in a civilized society, which suits her fine but also alienates her from everyone else.  "A great blue heron is the color of gray mist reflecting in blue water. And like mist, she can fade into the backdrop, all of her disappearing except the concentric circles of her lock-and-load eyes. She is a patient, solitary hunger, standing alone as long as it takes to snatch her prey. Or, eyeing her catch, she will stride forward one slow step at a time, like a predacious bridesmaid. And yet, on rare occasions she hunts on the wing, darting and diving sharply, swordlike beak in the lead."

Owens' writing is sometimes lyrical and sometimes plain, as the setting of the scenes dictate. "Here, instead of the estuaries and enormous sweeps of grass as in her marsh, clear water flowed as far as she could see through a bright and open cypress forest. Brilliant white herons and storks stood among water lilies and floating plants so green they seemed to glow. Hunched up on cypress knees as large as easy chairs, they ate pimento-cheese sandwiches and potato chips, grinning as geese glided just below their toes."  Or "At the chirp of a chipmunk she whirled around, listened keenly to the caws of crows - a language before words were, when communication was simple and clear - and wherever she went, mapped an escape route in her mind."

I really enjoyed this book and I readily forgave its few overwritten paragraphs. The portrait of a solitary girl/woman trying to survive on her own and her realization that the only power she has is within herself is moving and forceful. I am looking forward to Owens next novel.

Two thumbs up. Check it out.

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