Vampire Easter

Last night I dreamed that I was a big time vampire hunter. You know -- I was all Buffy-esque.

My friend Kevin C., (who, in real life, I’ve not seen in an age and 3/4) and I were a team. He and I were after the big kahuna, the CEO of the undead, who just happened to own a block long steel and glass office complex along a non-existent industrial stretch of Massachusetts Avenue -- between Porter Square Cambridge and the Arlington town line.

Our mission was to slip into Vampire HQ, somehow find our way to the monster’s inner sanctum and stake him down to ashes and dust.

As I left my house on Big Mission Morning, I looked down at my feet and realized that I’d donned my brandy new, shiny, black patent leather ballet flats, with the cutest little grosgrain bows on the toes.

They’d surely be ruined during this nasty assignment. I sighed and kept moving. Nice shoes are confidence boosters and I needed all I could carry. Another pair could be bought.

Kevin and I got to the bland yet imposing office building and walked in. Yup, we could just stroll right in without setting off claxons, bright flashing lights or attracting a crack team of ninja Blackheart demon guards.

Weird, maybe this assignment wouldn’t mess up my adorable little slippers after all.

The first floor was a gallery of sorts. Contained within glass display cases and oh so artfully lit, were life size, yet delicate, porcelain sculptural renditions, complete with sweet Victorian-ish floral accents of the body parts taken from our evil undead adversary's favorite victims. There was a muscular leg from Van Helsing, a vibrant flock of dreads from Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist and Buffy Summers' left ear.

I was starting to get all nervous and fearful. The shoes were gonna be toast -- I could just feel it down to my metatarsals.

All the cats got catnip treat sprinkled breakfasts. It's Easter!

And then Coco, fierce mouse warrior, landed on my sternum with her morning announcement, ‘wake up already! I need breakfast and Rocco and Gaston are outside wanting food now too! Oh and then we have to play fetch.’ (a game where I toss her ball or fuzzy mouse, she stares at it intently, and then I fetch the toy and try throwing it again).

Why am I dreaming about Vampire Kings? Shouldn’t today be all about zombies? After all -- it’s Easter!

Yes, I just finished Jenny Lawson’s book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, and I think she raises a salient point.

Known for her sardonic wit and her hysterically skewed outlook on life, award-winning blogger and columnist Jenny Lawson has made millions of people question their own sanity as they found themselves admitting that they, too, often wondered why Jesus wasn’t classified as a zombie or laughed to the point of bladder failure when she accidentally forgot that she mailed herself a cobra.

Think about it -- seriously now!

Oh and Happy Easter.

I've got nothing to say but it's OK

Somebody needs to know the time, glad that I'm here
Watching the skirts you start to flirt now you're in gear
Go to a show you hope she goes
I've got nothing to say, but it's OK
Good morning, good morning...


Lennon/McCartney

Fab Friday

It's Good Friday and isn’t that redundant? I mean, seriously, how many Bad Fridays can you think of? Even a boring snoozer, rainy cold Friday is still good because, duh geez, it’s FRIDAY!

While Easter was always my absolute favoritest of holidays, I really did hate the interminable lead up.

I went to Catholic elementary schools where we had to go to Mass on every damned important saint’s day and aren’t they all just fabulously special?

Then, THEN we got to the the long ass haul to Easter.

Lent and what should I, as a good, observant little Catholic girl, give up? Chocolate of course -- that way my Easter bunny would be especially tasty. Anticipation is the best spice.

Palm Sunday meant we were closing in on the bunny. Plus, I loved going to Mass and getting greenery to take home and present to my stuffed animals.

Next were the dreaded Stations of the Cross.

The Stations of the Cross originated in pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

As Catholicism spread around the world like wildfire, Dengue fever and swarms of killer bees all put together, doing the Jerusalem pilgrimage proved to be just too damned onerous.
AND:

The Stations originated in medieval Europe when wars prevented Christian pilgrims from visiting the Holy Land. European artists created works depicting scenes of Christ's journey to Calvary. The faithful installed these sculptures or paintings at intervals along a procession route, inside the parish church or outdoors. Performing the devotion meant walking the entire route, stopping to pray at each "station."

Why did I hate going through this? The priest droned on endlessly, always in a monotone—he recited with all the interest and excitement of someone tasked with reading the Bronx phone book. Us kiddles were shepherded from spot to spot, not allowed to get close enough to see the paintings or carvings and nothing was explained in a way that we could wrap our minds around.

For Bast’s sake, how fun or inspiring could this possibly be for an eight year old?

But then came Easter Midnight Mass! I loved this for so many reasons. The church lit only by candlelight, the fancy, bright colored vestments the priests were voguing, the smell of incense coming from the swinging thurible (Thurible—sounds like a cool punk rock band name, eh?) as the fancy man paraded down the main aisle. There was all that pomp and pageantry AND I was allowed to stay up late (!!!) like a big person!

My mother made quite the fuss on the day of. We all got big baskets filled with a huge, solid chocolate bunny, tiny foiled wrapped candy eggs, peeps and a treasure map (drawn by Mommy though she always told me it was the bunny's art). The map led us to more eggs (chocolate and brightly colored hard boiled ones), a brandy new stuffed animal and, ultimately, our special Easter dresses.

Later we’d sit down for a meal of baked ham and potatoes with large, butter slathered pieces of my mother’s freshly baked and braided, hot Easter bread for dessert.

Flash forward—Donna’s living in Boston, doesn’t have the dough to fly home and is SO missing that basket with chocolates, peeps and even the nasty ass cellophane grass. I wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny, giving "him" my new address—allowing that I’d moved and was concerned he wouldn’t know where I was. Then I mailed it to mia madre.

The basket arrived at my Kenmore Square hovel on Good Friday.

Oh yes that was a good Friday indeed!

Paranoia, the Destroyer

I live on Hough’s Neck -- a section of Quincy, Massachusetts. I’ve likely mentioned this a bazillion and one half times already.

When we moved here from Cambridge (East Cambridge and that’s Massachusetts, not England. duh.) we had a wee bit of culture shock. We were just one town south of the city but it felt as though we were light years and eons away.

Whyzat? Is it because we now had to drive to work versus walk? Our needing to get in the car to do a big grocery shop, pick up our meds at the pharmacy, indulge our book store addictions? No one down here dresses in all black all the damned time (‘cept me. *cough*)?

Well yeah, those bits certainly added to the we-live-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-now-but-it-sure-is-a-beautiful-nowhere-isn’t-it feeling but there’s more.

Everyone, all our neighbors, ones we know and ones we’ve not yet met, are friendly as hell (and, as you all know, Hell is quite the party. Convivial plus!). As soon as we drive onto the Neck, folks doing yard work, sitting on their front porch and/or unloading bags from their cars, stop and wave as we motor past.

For reals. It's way awesome!

The place is mega safe too.

On a couple of summer mornings I came downstairs to a jarring surprise --  one or two of the front window screens were torn, as though a burglar had punched through in a break in attempt. Nothing was missing but The Amazing Bob and I panicked all the same and got the cops here. Jen and Oni put up fliers around the neighborhood, telling others what happened and that windows should be shut and locked at night until the bandit was caught.

The third time this happened, I caught our thief in the act. Rocky the Raccoon. He’d just stopped in to snag some of Coco’s dinner -- guess the porch visiting cat beasties hadn’t left anything for him from their evening meals.

Heh. Oops. We were clearly still strong with the city living paranoia.

On a trike ride just last week I came upon a joint whose dwellers are even stronger with the delusions of danger.

At right. You know, I totally get why some of the big new fancy shmancy houses around here have alarm systems. While the Neck is all cozy,  snugly under the wing-like, some of these fresh up mansion-ettes, sitting amongst the rest of us in our bantam, Lilliputian cottages, may seem like targets.

To whom though? Taller raccoons?

In any case, this house is even smaller than ours, not right on the water and modest appearing by nearly anyone’s lights. So why the Fort Knox treatment? My first thought was, naturally, drug den/warehouse. My second thought was ‘whoa dudes, way to make yourselves a target!’ With all this fortification it just seems obvious that there’s something worth nicking in there.

Or the owners have a nasty ass case of Paranoid Personality Disorder.

Poor dears.

Destroyer -- Kinks

The Sounds of Lightning

Chuck and Lucy took me to see The Sound of Music when it came out in 1965 (for those of you in the home audience, I was seven. You’re welcome). The movie sent lightning bolts through my little brain—ones echoing within me still.

Lightning Bolt Nummer Eins

I wanted to make music too and began clarinet lessons. Hated it. Wicked hated it. And then some. I wanted to play trumpet (not that I recall any of the actors playing trumpet in The Sound of Music but, then, I don’t believe there were any clarinet players either).
Mia madre ixnayed the trumpet because that was ‘for boys.’ My older sister was already playing the flute, (which struck me as pale—wan even—next to the piercing beauty of the trumpet), so that left me with the, clearly girlish, clarinet.

Why not violin or piano? Saint Bernard’s wasn’t offering stringed instrument lessons within their small music program and pianos couldn’t be easily toted hither and yon across the country with every move we made.

After my sister became bored with her flute and gave it up, I switched over. This meant the parental units didn't have to buy or rent another instrument. I even went on to major in music in college until the fine arts department, painting and clay, stole me away.

Lightning Bolt Nummer Zwei
30 years after seeing the flick, I visited Vienna. The desire to learn more about Austria and one day voyage there, began in 1965, within a dark theater. Julie Andrews blew me away as she came up over that rise, in the very first scene. Those mountains, that vista were powerfully motivating.

As it turns out, when I finally got there, I never got out of Vienna. Never went to those mountains. Nope, Krakow was calling to me a bit louder. One day I’ll get to those mountains by Salzburg—I’m sure of that.

Lightning Bolt Nummer Drei

 Marionettes! Yup, that Lonely Goatherd scene did me in. I just HAD to have one. More than one! I wanted a herd of goat puppets! I wanted to become a puppet master.

The folks caved and bought me one for Christmas. A goat? No. Cinderella. More feminine than a goat puppet, I suppose.

I loved it madly all the same. A few years ago, Lucy was clearing out the attic and found her. She sent Cindy to me without advance warning or a note. When I opened the box, I was auto-transported back to that, decades ago, happy Christmas.

I'd forgotten all about her, about my dream of putting on clever puppet shows around the world.

Years later, while at a brill craic in, of all places, The American Bar on the Aran Island of Inishmnore I met a crew of festival puppeteers on holiday. They worked the giants at street fairs around Europe. One man performed inside the figure of a giant ogre with a caged prisoner on his back. The puppeteer was the man inside that cell —the creature's controls were all inside the cage with him. Wild stuff!

Lightning Bolt Nummer Vier
OK, this particular fascination died a relatively early death after a tremendously spotty, intermittent existence. I wanted to become a nun—do the convent joining thing.

No, really. Stop laughing already! I think this particular bolt was more about wanting to hide away from the confusing and frightening world and, most likely, wanting to wear black all the time.

I gave up on the idea completely after becoming an art major. I could wear black all the damned time and hide out from the big bad scary world while painting in my studio. The dreary ass nun stuff, like vespers and shit, could now be avoided.

You know, I was all 'Win/Win!'

Haiku Tuesday

Spring departs.
Birds cry
Fishes' eyes are filled with tears 

How wild the sea is, 
and over Sado Island, 
the River of Heaven

Spring air --
Woven moon
And plum scent.

Frog pond --
A leaf falls in
Without a sound

blue seas
breaking waves smell of rice wine
tonight's moon

A wild sea-
In the distance over Sado
The Milky Way.

Haikus by Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉) pics by me

Television

Saying "I don't watch TV" makes you sound like an elitist asshole.
--Sherman Alexie

You know, I can see that BUT there really are some people who just don’t. They’re not trying to sound all better than the rest of us -- they simply don’t watch television.

Me? I only watch videos. Why? I find all those damned commercials unbearable. There’s def some good shows on (currently have Lost in rotation) but I have no problem waiting until they show up on Netflix or in the radically discounted bins of the local Best Buy.

Now, on Jet Blue, the airline Jen and I took for our visit to Daddy, there are little screens at each seat. Cool, I thought! I can see what all is current -- I am, generally, so five to ten years behind.

What did I find? Fox (AKA Faux) News on three different channels and commercials, commercials commercials.

Targeting little girls were Saige All American Girl and Bratzillas.

Saige All American Girl

Saige Copeland™ loves the arts and her horses. But when both of her passions are threatened, she turns to her creative side. With imaginative solutions, she proves that one girl can make a difference.

There are three Saige books. I wonder, which came first -- the books or the dolls? I’m guessing the doll came first and the books are a way to rope the parents in. See, not just a toy, a dolly. There are BOOKS. It’s educational!

Phfft.

And...American Girl of the Year? The fuck? There is NO quintessential, ultimate American girl. We are a nation of many colors, religions and ways of being. To say that some white skinned, upper middle class, horse owning and riding, happy homed little girl is the American female ideal is just so many tons of equine excrement.

I looked at the American Girl doll site. They do actually have a few brown skinned dolls but only in the historical toy section. All the American Girl of the Year dolls are white.

Jesus. Read Kiese Laymon’s Gawker post Our Kind of Ridiculous: Yous, Me and Blackness as Probable Cause, just for, you know, contrast and shit.

Bratzillaz Fashion Dolls/Where Glam Gets Wicked

From Wikipedia:

Bratzillaz is an American line of fashion dolls released by MGA Entertainment in 2012. The dolls, a spin-off of the company's popular franchise Bratz, were designed to compete against Mattel's Monster High range of dolls. Bratzillaz are witches with special powers that make each character unique.[1] The Bratzillaz girls are cousins of the Bratz and each main character has a similar name to a Bratz character

There are little Youtube animated shorts with the Bratzillaz adventures. So now, instead of having movies and cartoons spawning merchandise, toys for your kiddles to totally NEED, the merchandise now births the movies/cartoons.

That was totally destined to happen.

Also, I only mention it but Bratzilla? ‘Scuse me but the dolls all look like Madison Ave/Rodeo Drive shopping princesses with just a hint more imagination than your average Barbie. They do not, in any respect, look like Godzilla, The Bride of Frankenstein (OK, maybe just a little bit) or my vampire favs -- Spikes babe, Drusilla on Buffy or Harmony, the fanged, faux fashionista receptionist on Angel.

Christ almighty.

I guess the best part of this viewing travesty was that there was no Closed Captioning AND I could turn the screen off.

Yes, yes, yez. Bitch, kvetch, piss, moan.
Call Me Mister Lee -- Television

Mint M&Ms, Bunny Fur and the TSA

If Jen were deprived of all senses besides hearing, how would she know that we were in transit -- specifically, that we were flying somewhere together? Easy. My constant requests (demands?) ‘Can you hold this?,’  ‘Hold this please?,’  ‘Can you give me a hand with this?,’ are a dead give-away.

Remember, I pack light. If I could get away with carrying just my relatively small purse, I would. My wee rucksack is packed tighter than a Chinese puzzle box. A Chinese puzzle box put together by programmers thoroughly gone on the kind of world class weed that gets them code writing, non-stop, for days on end. Yeah, the bag is focused.

Given my bag's tweaked, compacted state, I’m constantly needing to deconstruct, excavate, to find important travel stuff. Like my wallet. My passport. Eyedrops. And that snack baggie full of mint and coconut M&Ms that I brought for us to nosh on in flight. Naturally, the most important bits, the M&Ms, are at the very bottom.

Spaz that I am.

Jen -- AKA Most Patient Woman In The Entire Universe EVAH!

Daddy and Me. SEE, don't I look harmless?!

Here’s the other way that Jen can tell that we’re at the airport. I’m always the one to get frisked. ALWAYS! Hell and damnation, I’m this cute, pudgy, middle aged deaf broad. I’m so harmless appearing that I practically squeak with goodness. I’m one Maine barn coat away from being a Bean From Egypt, Maine for dog’s sake!

AND, I make sure I tell the nice, overworked TSA folks that ‘I’m deaf but if you speak slowly, I’ll probably be able to lipread you.’

See, aren’t I helpful?

Inevitably I’m the one who gets to play a bit of the old slap and tickle with the nice airport folk. This last time I had a real first -- something new and just awfully entertaining. Instead of a full body frisk, they just rifled through....wait for it....MY HAIR! Now, this is especially amusing since I don’t actually have much of that good stuff. No luxurious flowing mane here. I’ll never be popped for shampoo model gigs.

My buddy Kevin (RIP) back in college, used to say that I had bunny fur not hair. *sigh* That’s a sadly, accurate assessment.

Why am I always the one chosen for pat down fun? Dunno. I must be bloody irresistible.

Emails From The Cat Front

 While Jen and I are visiting Daddy in Western Pennsylvania, Oni's been in Western New York state visiting his brother.

Ya'll know what this means doncha?

Yup. Bob's had to tend the occasionally testy and recalcitrant herds. Ours -- Coco, Rocco, Gaston and Greta. Theirs -- Rosie, Thelma and Skitter.

Below are missives from the morning struggles.

From: The Amazing Bob
To: Me
Sent: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 7:00 am
Subject: Re: where are you!

How you put up with these yowling beasts is beyond me. Woke up  0630 to a serenade -- Rocco & Gaston doing an operatic aria at top volume on the porch.  So I stumbled downstairs, threw some food on the porch and told them,

'shut up, please, the regular servant is out of town, your highnesses of lownesses.' 

Also fed Coco, who was a silent witness to this aural assault.

 I would sympathize with you on your travel headaches but you are blessedly innocent of the tragic scenario here at home.  Hope your visit with Pop goes well.  Now I go feed the three orphans next door (note the sly guilt trip on our TAB's part. possibly he was a cat in his last life. either that or Catholic.).   And watch them politely elbow each other aside for first to be fed.   LYM (love you madly)

From: TAB
To: Me
Sent: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 8:41 am
Subject: nutzo katzo

So I get Rocco and Gaston fed, Coco patted and fed, go upstairs to listen to radio music and relax.  Sure enough, about 10 minutes later the chorus starts up again. This time it's Gaston and Greta but the same old song. So I drop a bowl for Gaston and then put a dish for Greta at bottom of stairs.  Gaston's still yowling so I put a dish of food under his noisy nose and pat him and he quiets down.

If I could find somebody who likes to sleep to cats yowling, I could sell them both, making me and the buyer happy.  The cats?  As long as they get to stretch their lungs and hammer their vocal cords, they won't give a shit.  TTFN (ta ta for now)

Friday Cat Blogging

 

Jen and I are stuck in the most vile rush hour traffic in Pittsburgh. We'd be MUCH better off if we had a cat or two and a cup of Joe. Both are sure fire calmness inducers. At left is our visitor cat Tugboat. He's a neighbor's extremely well cared for, chubby, blithe boy. He comes by to say hello and get pats and chin scritches, not meals. Clearly his human mother opens cans with just as much style and élan as me. Hmmph.

And the other cat pics? Coco, Princess of All but Specifically TAB and Myself.

Happy Friday! 

Deaf Jam*

I'm traveling later today -- not to a foreign land, mind. OK not wildly foreign. Jen and I are off to the small western Pennsylvania town where my father lives. 

That's Daddy, in 1955, doing his best to impress and entice mia madre. It worked.

Traveling while deaf is always stressful -- for this babe anyway. I'm seeing so many folks whose lips I'm unaccustomed to reading. It's exhausting to say the very least (HAH, looky there -- I did NOT overstate or engage in Olympic gold medal winning levels of hyperbole! Waddya know. It CAN happen!).

Jen's going with me, thank Bast! She can fill in, with ASL, what I can't otherwise pick up.

Above right are the Chinese characters for deaf and deafness. At Sinosplice you can find the fingerspelling alphabets for Chinese, Japanese, British English, American English and Russian. Fascinating stuff!

Below is the word deaf in a bunch of cool languages. I couldn't find the Pittsburghese translation -- guess I'll have to wing it.

Croatian -- gluv
Czech -- hluchý
Danish -- døv
Dutch --  doof
English - Deaf
Estonian -- kurt
Finnish -- kuuro
French -- sourd
Frisian -- dôf
German -- taub NOT Traube (grapes) and not Taube (pigeon) either, as I discovered while fumbling through an exchange with a nice, very patient shopkeeper, in Berlin while visiting my cousin Della.
Greek -- κουφός
Hungarian -- süket
Ilongo (more formally -- Hiligaynon, a language spoken in  by more than 7,000,000 people in the Philipines) -- bungol
Indonesian -- Tuli
Italian --sordo
Polish -- głuchy
Portuguese -- surdo
Romanian -- surd
Russian --  глухой
Sanskrit -- akarNa
Serbian -- глув
Slovak -hluchý
Slovenian -- gluh
Swahili -- kiziwi
Swedish -- döv
Tagalog -- bingi
Turkish -- saDir
Urdu -- behra
Vietnamese -- diec

* Deaf Jam is a documentary about sign language poetry. I SO have to see this!

Aneta Brodski, a deaf teen living in New York City, discovers the power of American Sign Language poetry. As she prepares to be one of the first deaf poets to compete in a spoken-word slam, her journey leads to an unexpected collaboration.

April, Come She Will

But not soon enough...dammit.

Today is the first morning of Spring. It comes after a nasty icebox day of snow, sleet, slush and cold, biting rain. The weather, here in New England yesterday, was truly vile. Depraved even.

Rocco, understandably worn out after yesterday’s Siberian storm front impression, demanded tuna and catnip for brekkie. Seriously. I brought him his Fancy Feast Seafood Feast in Gravy and he just gave me that ‘you’re joking, right?’ look and walked back into his cat cave.

I understood and fetched the good stuff.

Today is also the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. I clearly remember that decade ago day. It was warm and sunny. I met a friend in Central Square, Cambridge. Tom and I had intended to visit a couple of galleries and do some book shopping at Rodney’s. Instead, we sat on the City Hall lawn drinking our 1369 Coffee House brews speechless in our shock and fear.

While surfing the net this morning I found, at Crooks and Liars, a link to a letter, written by dying Iraq War vet Tomas Young to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

Go read the whole thing -- it’s not long and it's worth it.
a snippet:

I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

I’ve got nothing to add.

Paul Simon -- April Come She Will

Abusing The Curtain'd Sleep*

Ever have anxiety dreams about your job? Not nightmares necessarily but, all the same, you wake stressed to the max and exhausted. Me, I wake up angry from these. That may be my default setting though.

Over this past week I’ve risen in the middle of the night, no fewer than four times, from the specters of one particular pressroom past. In the dream, I’m desperately struggling to mend, make sense of, fix, organize the rabidly dysfunctional print shop where I worked throughout my 30s.

That’s right meine Freunde, I’ve not worked there in more than ten years, I’ve held four different positions and jobs since then but for some crazy ass, fucked up reason, I’m back in the basement of 815 Boylston attempting to mend the unmendable.

Warum and WTF?

This is a place that I worked for ten years. Ten! Jen, The Amazing Bob, Oni and I labored there together. For most of that time, I was the Production Manager. You’d think, given that lofty, powerful sounding title, that I wielded bucket loads of power. Yes and, most assuredly, NO.

I went through no less than four managers in that decade. Of them, only one was worth a damn.

Lisle came on board late in my first year in the place. He’d come from the sales department which, if you didn’t know his background, made the appointment seem radically and insanely stupid. The sales team was notorious for promising the seriously impossible, being utterly dismissive of us lowly blue collar types and playing wickedly jejune power games.

If/when we had to say, for instance, ‘no, I’m sorry. We really, truly can’t print, bind and deliver 5,000 of your customer’s 40 page, full color with flood varnish, saddle stitch books by 9 AM tomorrow. It’s not physically possible,’ the typical response was for them to call the CEO, complaining to him that we said no **gasp!** and it was, assuredly, because we just wanted to split early in order to hit The Pour House on the way home to watch the Sox/Yankees game.

Lisle was different though. He’d worked in pressrooms before and had even gotten a degree in print tech from Rochester Institute of Technology. He knew what was possible and what wasn’t. On top of this, he was organized, smart and calm.

Why didn’t he stay? He and his wife started a family -- they decided that it made the best sense for him to stay home and care for their twin boys. It made loads of sense -- for him, for his wife and most especially, for his boys.

Not so much for us though.

The managers who followed were all seat-of-the-pants management style nimrods. Just so’s you know ‘seat-of-the-pants management style’ translates specifically to ‘I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m just going to stand here, wear a tie and yell a lot.’

I was trying to manage the production process using the Deming Cycle -- you know with  solid identification of our current and desired states, fact gathering, data analysis and planning. I created teams of press dudes and dudettes who were psyched to be a part of making the place better, more successful.

How did our Nimrodian Management Overlords respond? With the wearing of ties, going all shouty face and then heading out for their lunch time ‘meetings,’ from which they usually returned reeking of Altoids and Listerine.

Hmmmm. Gee, wonder what they’re trying to mask.

So why am I stress dreaming about this now? Beats me all to hell and back. TAB occasionally has these nocturnal anxiety rides too.

*‘Now o’er the one half-world/Nature seems dead and wicked dreams abuse/The curtain’d sleep’
MacBeth -- Act II, Scene I

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

When I first moved to Boston in late November of 1980 (yes kiddies, back then there were triceratops lanes versus bike lanes) there were two alternative newspapers, published weekly. The Real Paper and The Phoenix.

I preferred The Real Paper, an offshoot of The Phoenix. an employee-run collective. To my small town 22 year old mind, it seemed the more nobly pure of the two rags. I read it religiously. The reason for my preference is far more likely rooted in the fact that I could pick it up for nothing when visiting my buds on the MIT campus. The paper put out a free version, the same as the one I could plunk down dough for at my corner bodega. It was called The Free Paper and was distributed to all the local colleges.

 In any case, I was wickedly bummed when The Real Paper went under in June ’81 and switched over to reading The Phoenix. One of the bonuses, beyond the brill political pieces, the fab movie and arts reviews, the club listings -- who’s playing where/when -- was the personals section. This was well before Match.com, Plenty of Fish and lavalife were invented. Sure. sure, there were serious singles looking for serious dates, life partners and all that. Is that why I read the personals? Fuck no! I read them for the titillating, skeevy strange (to my inexperienced brain), wildly undomesticated ones -- the folks looking for interesting hook ups.

These were funny, fun AND educational!

Later, during my years as the Production Manager at a Back Bay print shop, I got to know the Phoenix on another level -- as a regular customer. The Phoenix was a training ground for budding graphic designers. They took kids fresh out of Mass Art, the only publicly funded art school in the US,  and had them doing lay out and design.

The nuts and bolts of design -- what you can and can’t do, how to lay out your art such that, when printed, it looks as you’d envisioned -- is learned within the working world, not so much in the classroom.  What this meant, for me, is that I spent an enormous amount of phone time, sorting out layout board problems, with these cocky, I’m-so-damned-hip-I-glow, brandy new designers. I doubt that anyone I worked with over there was over 25. After they got a few years under their respective belts they moved on to places which paid a living wage.

Charles P. Pierce, who now writes for Grantland and Esquire, was one of the Phoenix’s writers. His farewell memories, his eulogy, on Grantland for The Phoenix is tremendous. A must read. Get a cuppa joe, go to the link and read the whole thing. Here’s a snippet:

I mean, Jesus Mary, where do you start with the newspaper at which you grew so much, and learned so much, and came to respect the craft of journalism with a fervor that edged pretty damn close to the religious? What memories have pride of place now? The fact that T.A. Frail, now at Smithsonian, suggested you might just like Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy and it wound up changing your life? The day that Doug Simmons, now at Bloomberg News, snuck up behind you and stuck a pair of earphones on your head, cranked Black Flag’s “Six Pack” up to 11, and taught you that rock and roll had not calcified when you graduated from college? What’s the song that plays when you realize that you’re young when you thought you were growing old? What’s the prayer of thanksgiving for a hundred days of fellowship, drunk on words, all of us, as though there were nothing more beyond the next word, the next sentence, the next paragraph locked into place? Please say that the muse is something beyond the balance sheet, something beyond technology. Tell me that she’s alive the way she once was when you’d feel her on your shoulder as one word slammed into the other, and the story got itself told, and you came to the end and realized, with wonderment and awe, that the story existed out beyond you, and that it had chosen you, and you were its vehicle, and the grinning muse had the last laugh after all.

And another piece from former Phoenix employee, Camille Dodero, now at Gawker:

From 1973 until 2009, Clif (Garboden) wrote something called Hot Dots, a weekly column buried in the back of the arts section that ostensibly annotated television listings, but evolved into a far more extraordinary collection of one-liners, political and social commentary, and running jokes. Many weeks, the best writing in the paper was buried in tiny type. A few selected listings: 

4:00 (56) Harvey (movie). Nobody ever said anything small in a bar. 


8:00 (2) Nova: Why Planes Crash. Because nobody bothers to catch them.
 

11:00 (38) The House That Screamed (movie). Stayed on the market for three years.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road -- Elton John/Bernie Taupin

Unsprung Spring

This is what I miss about working in town, in Boston’s Back Bay.

Jen and I used to ride the T from here in Quincy, into Park Street and then walk through the Common, the Public Garden and up the Commonwealth Mall to Copley Square and our little print shop. While mid March is surely chilly and too early for these beauties, we’re getting close. The promise of Spring is on the air and poking up from the ground.

 Mind you, it’s none to shabby down here on the Neck.

I’m well overdue for my long intended day at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I can meander and wind through the gardens, the magnificently beautiful, publicly funded greenery (the city would be a much shabbier, sadder, homelier place without them), on my way to view Ms. Gardner's divine collection.

Today though, I’ll go for a long trike ride along Wollaston Beach and back.

Why Do We Create?

I can only answer for myself -- creativity is hardwired into my system. I don’t honestly think about the whys. I’m too busy focusing more on the how, when, where and MORE NOW please!

There are very few things in my life that I won't examine hyper closely, that I refrain from obsessing over and studying to death and back into zombie life again.

Why I paint/write/play in the clay might just be the one bit that I don’t meditate on mercilessly.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

To paraphrase Crash Davis in Bull Durham -- Don't think. You can only hurt the art. 

I’m curious about other people’s motivations and, for that matter, what do others even make of the question itself.

The cartoonist James Sturm answered in this 2009 article Why We Make Art at the website for The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.

The reasons are unimportant.

I like the question “Why Do You Make Art?” because it assumes what I do is art. A flattering assumption. The question also takes me back to my freshman year of college, where such questions like “What is nature?” and “Is reality a wave or a circle?” were earnestly debated (usually late at night and after smoking too much weed).

Twenty-five years later I’d like to think I am a little more clear-headed regarding this question. Perhaps the only insight I’ve gained is the knowledge that I have no idea and, secondly, the reasons are unimportant. Depending on my mood, on any given day, I could attribute making art to a high-minded impulse to connect with others or to understand the world or a narcissistic coping mechanism or a desire to be famous or therapy or as my religious discipline or to provide a sense of control or a desire to surrender control, etc., etc., etc.

Whatever the reason, an inner compulsion exists and I continue to honor this internal imperative. If I didn’t, I would feel really horrible. I would be a broken man. So whether attempting to make art is noble or selfish, the fact remains that I will do it nevertheless. Anything past this statement is speculation. I would be afraid that by proclaiming why I make art would be generating my own propaganda.

And, molto succinctly here’s what hip hop artist KRS-One had to say:

I was born this way, born to make art, to make hip hop.

I asked The Amazing Bob ‘why do you write poetry? why do you doodle on the piano?’

He gave me one of those you’re-a-very-strange-yet-oddly-charming-creature looks, followed by the it’s-not-even-7 AM-yet,-what-ARE-you-on-about-now gander. Then he shrugged and effortlessly pronounced 'PHFFFT!'

Yeah, what TAB said.

Friday Art Cat Blogging

This is Jen and Oni's girl Thelma, at left, doing her take on the Flemish painter, Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait. The cat's always been a big fan of Burgundian court virtuosos -- patrician, royalty fan-kitten that she is.

Unpremeditated Cerebrations

First off -- an announcement from my pal David:

Today, 3.14, is Pi Day. Have a very happy one!

Even if you're dieting, you're allowed to celebrate by eating pie, or
drinking your favorite beverage from a circular glass. If you have a
dog, you can encourage it to chase its tail.

My bev in a circular glass? A bone dry Sapphire Martini, straight up with olives. Of course.

No dogs here at Casa Valhalla and the cats are too damned smart to chase their tails. Or perhaps it’s just that they’re laser focused on that mote of dust floating to earth through the milky sunshine?

The friend of a friend on Facebook commented that PI day was actually 3/14/1519.
If we’re gonna be all precise and shit, we won’t hit real Pi Day until 3/14/151965359 or so. Take that!

Next -- Rocco’s home after his epic 12 day adventure, his Grail-like quest, his search for meaning in a cruel universe. His 12 day shag-a-thon with the local Betty and Veronica? Perhaps he was accidentally shut in someone’s basement or garage after an ill timed mouse hunt?
Mebbe. Who knows. All The Amazing Bob and I care about is that he’s back and looks good if a tad svelte. Epic quests will do that to you. He actually came home on Monday but we’ve been holding our breath -- will he be back tomorrow? Will we see him for tea? Yes and yes.

TAB and I are tremendously relieved. We know he’s a molto feral beasty but he’s been stopping by, hitting us up for meals and the stray fin, regularly over the last ten years. We're breathing much easier . Did I mention that we're happy he's home? We know we’ve got to respect his Call of the Wild and shit. Being respectful is hard fucking work.

Third -- high tide around here is reaching amazing new heights. While pedaling by the marsh off Kilby Street yesterday, I caught the zenith of high tide -- below left. Below right is normal high tide.
Jen and Oni said that the tide’s are so high because we’re approaching a new moon. I’ve never, ever seen the tides at this level before. Seems to me, with the acceleration of  the sea level rise, Hough’s Neck will be an island within the next ten years. As it is -- Sea Street, the only road onto the Neck -- floods during significant storms, cutting us off from the rest of Quincy. The Mainland.

Core samples, tide gauge readings, and, most recently, satellite measurements tell us that over the past century, the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters). However, the annual rate of rise over the past 20 years has been 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year, roughly twice the average speed of the preceding 80 years.
.....................
How High Will It Go?
Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London and Los Angeles.

from The National Geographic’s article Sea Level Rise Ocean Levels Are Getting Higher—Can We Do Anything About It?

I think I may need to invest in water wings for TAB, our herd of cat and me.

Shaking the Tree

Today’s post is Catherine B. Cretu of Anaconda Press' (bio below. By the way, the website is molto brill -- go check it out!) tremendous response to RaveGrafix’s request for thoughts and advice after she’d been turned down for a press gig specifically, incredibly for being a woman.

Hi RaveGrafix,

Allow me to climb up on my political soap box!

Echoing Sally's sentiments, welcome to the real world. While women have made some progress toward equity in the work place, there is still work to be done.

Just last night Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg was interviewed on 60 Minutes about her new book, Lean In, which is a fresh call to women to take up the battle anew for workplace equity.

The program made me reflect on women in national leadership and reminded me how in 1991, during the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, there were no women on the Senate Judiciary Committee; 29 women in the House; two women in the Senate; and the median income for working women was roughly 70% of the median income for men. Fortunately, there was an electoral backlash following the hearings: two years later, there were 48 women in the House and seven in the Senate! Today there are 78 women in the House, 20 in the Senate and women's median income is 77% of men's.

While we can't prove cause and effect, certainly the visible public exercise of power by women in government  mirrors women's advancements in the workplace. Still, 18% & 20% of the House and Senate also suggests we've got a long way to go, when women make up 51% of our population.

By the way, the situation is only slightly better on average in the European Union, although Italy has nearly closed the gender gap.

Back to printing--I agree with those who advise you to wait for the employer who appreciates you. He or she is out there, will be happy to snap you up, and will be thumbing his or her nose at the fool who passed you by. Having been in the industry for 40 years, I have experienced my share of sex discrimination, even as the owner of my own company, and I want to acknowledge you for taking on one of the last male bastions of printing--large press operation. No surprise, that's where the highest hourly wages are in the press department. I know you will continue to be a leader throughout your career, and pave the way for others to follow in your footsteps.

And please, never miss an election, always exercise your right to vote.

Shaking the Tree -- Peter Gabriel
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Catherine B. Cretu is President and a founding partner of Anaconda Press, Inc.,  a small group of print artisans who specialize in fine art reproduction, high end micro-publishing, and very complex short-run digital and offset commercial print projects. Catherine has a B.A. in History from Barnard College the women's college of Columbia University.