Three hours

 “Will he go for three hours, do you think?”

“Yeah, I wonder that too. I mean he’s almost 75. I’d be off that stage in 90 minutes but we’ll see.” 

That was my husband and me at dinner on September 7, just before our fourth Springsteen concert together. We saw him in 2009, 2012, and 2016; and he bought the tickets for this tour in mid-2023. Health issues forced Bruce Springsteen to reschedule his late 2023 shows, and we held on to the tickets. 

It was a perfect clear Saturday night at Nats Park, after a cloudy afternoon with little bursts of half-hearted rain. We took the Metro Red Line from Glenmont to Fort Totten and then switched to a Green LIne train to Navy Yard. 45 minutes from door to door, and that included driving to the Metro station, parking, buying a new fare card because I left my fare card in my wallet which I didn’t have with me because I was trying to carry as little as possible in my tiny tiny tiny Nats Park-compliant bag, waiting for the train, changing trains, and waiting for the second train. When Metro is good, it’s very very good. We strolled along First Street with all of the other happy concert-goers, feeling sorry for all the people in their cars, driving around the neighborhood looking for parking. 

When we arrived for the show, very early, an older (than us) couple were in the seats directly behind us. Very lovely people but extremely gregarious. Very talkative. Outgoing to a degree that I just cannot understand or cope with for extended periods of time. We chatted with them, meaning that we listened and nodded and threw in a few appropriate remarks at appropriate opportunities, for about an hour. And then just when I thought that I couldn’t handle any more interaction with these preternaturally friendly humans, the stadium lights went down and the stage lights went up, and the crowd began to roar. It was 7:40 PM, exactly 10 minutes past the scheduled 7:30 PM start. 

Our seats were on the club level. The section itself was a normal section, not a corporate box, but it felt fancy walking through the glass doors from the cement concourse to the carpeted club section. It was much more pleasant buying drinks in the indoor lounge area than from a concession stand. And the bathrooms in that section are SO MUCH NICER. 10/10 would recommend. 

*****

My first Bruce Springsteen concert was in 1984, during the Born in the USA tour. Even if you never attended a Born in the USA tour show, even if you weren’t alive in 1984, you probably know what Bruce wore on stage that night - faded blue jeans, a white t-shirt, a bandanna. People throw around the word “iconic” to describe all manner of garments and outfits, but this look was truly iconic according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines “icon” in several ways, including this: “a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol.” The blue jeans and t-shirt and bandanna were truly a representative symbol of American rock and roll. So was Bruce himself.  

He was in his 30s then, and incredibly energetic, constantly in motion, a live wire. I don’t remember very much about that show (except that my ticket cost $19 and my t-shirt cost $10) other than a story about Bruce’s father, an old-fashioned conservative who was relieved rather than disappointed when the Army rejected his son, keeping him out of Vietnam. I’m sure he told that story at every show. Stories are part of the performance. But it was still moving. 

*****

40 years later (almost 40 years to the day - I looked it up and the Philadelphia shows were in mid-September, just as I had remembered), Bruce is still very energetic, but more restrained, more dignified. He still wears jeans, now paired with a button-down shirt, a vest (also fully buttoned) and a tie. His hair is very short. His clothes are perfectly tailored. He looks very GQ now, very natty. He also still looks very rock and roll, but elder statesman rock and roll. There’s nothing edgy about his persona now; nothing rebellious or punk about his look or demeanor. His appearance and comportment on stage make clear that he knows exactly how important and legendary he is, and that he has neither the need nor the desire to come across as young or of the moment. He has nothing to prove. 

But even though he has nothing to prove, he was still on stage for three hours, playing mostly his own standards, everything from “Badlands” to “Tenth Avenue Freezeout” to “Promised Land.” The mostly but by no means exclusively older crowd sang along, roaring approval as each familiar intro played. I’d already planned to pretend that I couldn’t hear them if our very gregarious new friends in the row behind us insisted on chatting with us during the show, but thankfully they stopped talking and sang along with the music. 

When we arrived at 6:15 or so, the friendly couple were among the very few other people in our section. The field had already begun to fill up, though - there’s no assigned standing position and latecomers with field tickets end up way in the back, far from the stage. The man tapped me on the shoulder (this man touched me at least 5 times, and managed still not to creep me out). Pointing to the standing room area on the field, he asked “Do they stand the whole time?” 

“The whole time,” I said. “Better them than us, right?” Laughing, we all agreed that people our age (50s) and people their age (early 70s) have no business in a mosh pit. People in the stands didn’t really stand and dance, so they wouldn’t block the view of seated people behind them, and Nats Park security didn’t allow dancing in the aisles. The only place where you could dance all night was in the standing room area on the field. 

Until the encore, that is. At a Springsteen show, the encore is actually like a second show. When the stage lights went down, I expected a five-minute break, so I ran to go to the restroom, and ended up missing most of “Born to Run,” because the encore started almost immediately. I could still hear, though, and I’ve heard “Born to Run” probably 200 times at least, so it’s OK that I missed it. 

During that encore, which went about 30 minutes, all of Nats Park was a mosh pit. Everyone was on their feet, dancing and singing along to “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” and “Rosalita.” Bruce sang “Well tell him this is his last chance…” and the crowd finished for him. It was Rosalita’s dad’s last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance, because the record company had just given her suitor a big advance. There are few songs more fun to sing along to in public than “Rosalita.” The famous band introductions happened in the lead-in to “Tenth Avenue,” which featured huge photo and video backdrops of the late Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici. The band left the stage a second time, and then Bruce returned on his own and performed “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” and then the show was over at just about 10:40 PM. 

Our friends had already gone home - they missed most of the encore because they drove to Nats Park from Springfield, VA and wanted to get ahead of the traffic. I’m sure they hated to miss the last few songs, but they probably did the right thing because by the time we got out of the stadium, the streets were already gridlocked with cars filled with people trying to get back to Maryland and Virginia. The Metro station was also very crowded, but the crowds were orderly and calm, and everyone got on their trains. 

Bruce Springsteen will be 75 very soon, so it’s not unreasonable to wonder how much longer he can do this. I mean, I’m not quite 60 and I’m wondering if I should be out here dancing at concerts and buying $50 t-shirts. Between Metro and t-shirts and drinks and dinner and the tickets, we probably spent $800 on this concert. Middle class people like us can spend $800 on a night out or we can put two kids through college. We probably can’t do both, at least not often. But a Bruce Springsteen concert is a special-enough occasion that it’s worth the money. If it does turn out to be his last tour, I’m glad we were there. 

Sinead and Edna

It’s a rainy Friday, a WFH day for me, and I’m still in my pajama pants, though I am wearing a respectable business casual sweater and could pass muster as a working professional from the neck up, if an unplanned teleconference forces me to show myself. I was going to change out of the pajama pants but it’s almost three o’clock now and I have no plans to leave the house unless it’s on fire so I think I’m dressed (or half-dressed) for the day. 

The thing is that I’m tired because I was out until after midnight last night, a rare occurrence for me on a Thursday night. The AFI Silver is hosting an Irish film festival and last night’s feature was “Nothing Compares,” the Sinead O’Connor documentary. I suppose I could have rented it but an Irish film festival seemed a better venue than my couch. An opportunity to see it with my people, so to speak.

The evening did not disappoint, although full disclosure, I did fall asleep for a bit in the rather long interval between our dinner at the Limerick Pub in Wheaton and the 9:45 movie time. We arrived at the AFI at 9 o’clock, to an almost empty lobby. The box office person told us that the early screening was running late and that our show wouldn’t start until 10, leaving us with an hour to sit and wait. An hour at 9 PM, which is when I always hit the wall, especially after a hamburger and 1.5 Smithwicks. And we were sitting there in the nearly deserted lobby, on a pair of comfortably cushioned movie theater chairs, and there was nothing stopping me from closing my eyes for a few minutes, and so I did. My husband sat next to me, scrolling through his news feed. He might have napped for a few minutes, too. I don’t know because I was fast asleep, sitting right in the middle of a movie theater lobby in downtown Silver Spring. 

And then another movie let out and all of a sudden the lobby was a whirlwind of Irish film festival energy, and the ushers and concession stand employees were strolling amid the crowds handing out pints of Guinness in plastic cups. 

My husband, who is not a documentary film fan nor a particular admirer of Sinead, was very impressed with the free Guinness, although “free” is a pretty loose term considering that the movie tickets cost $22 each. I thought for a moment, as I held my free plastic pint cup of Guinness, which I don’t especially like, that maybe as lower middle-income parents of college students, we might have been wiser to just stream the movie at home. But sometimes you need to get out. 

I’m a very very very introverted person but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love people. I love being out among people. I have to plan ahead and muster my energy and maybe take a nap in public just before the people descend upon me but with enough preparation, I can really enjoy a crowd. I was wide awake as soon as the people filled the lobby, the people leaving the early showing and the people arriving all at once for the later showing, all of them excited to be out on a Thursday, dressed in jeans and sweaters and skirts and t-shirts, some in Irish sweaters. It was cold, so there were lots of interesting jackets. Women outnumbered men by 2 to 1 or so (not every man is as good a sport as my husband) and so there were also lots of interesting handbags. People were laughing and talking and hoisting their “free” pints of Guinness. There was lots of energy. It was something of a scene. 

The movie was excellent. I read Rememberings last year, and most of the events depicted in the movie were covered in the book (including the now-infamous SNL performance, though why infamous I don’t know because what did they think that Sinead O’Connor was going to do, just stand and look pretty and sing her little song and go home?), although not the reverse. The movie didn’t get into Sinead’s difficult professional relationship with Prince, except for an ending credit explaining that Prince’s estate refused to allow the filmmakers to use the song for which the movie was named. But that’s not my favorite Sinead song anyway, and there were lots of clips of performances during her early stardom, when her extraordinary voice was at its best. She really is one of the greatest female singers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Definitely worth leaving the house on a cold Thursday night in March. 

*****

And Sinead is not the only rebellious Irishwoman on my radar this week. I’m reading Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls trilogy and although I can see its literary merit and can understand why it has become a modern Irish classic, I also cannot wait to be done with it and will not miss Caithleen and Baba, not one bit. Or rather, I won’t miss the mid-20th century Irish misogyny that shaped these two hot messes in female human form. 

Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Brigid (Baba) Brennan, although they both live well outside the very restrictive circa 1955 Irish Catholic social norms, do not enjoy their rebellion. Kate, in fact, is not rebellious at all; she’s just a book-smart and street-stupid girl with no emotional self-control who falls for the wrong man and proceeds to make her life miserable over him, and his as well (spoiler alert - he deserves it). Kate’s lifelong friend Baba is the spoiled daughter of a prosperous Irish country veterinarian. Baba is hilariously funny, as mean as a snake, and completely without morals of any kind. She is almost nihilistic in her lack of normal human sympathy and her boredom with everything and everyone. Baba is also married to a terrible man with whom she lives a miserable loveless existence. 

The trilogy was apparently extremely controversial in Ireland when it was published, and it’s still shocking in places. But the most shocking thing about it is that it’s not just a whole novel, it’s three whole novels, about two characters who are so unlikable that they can’t even stand themselves. I kept reading until the end because I generally do that, and because the trilogy has enough page-turning need-to-know-what-happens-next appeal that I wanted to keep going. But I will not miss these books or these characters at all, and I can’t wait to not read another Edna O’Brien book, pretty much ever again. 

I didn’t plan for this to publish on International Women’s Day but here it is, a serendipitous coincidence in which I finish a post on the perfect day to publish it. St. Patrick’s Day might be just as appropriate but if you have seen “Nothing Compares,” or if you’ve read The Country Girls and its sequels, you won’t feel much like celebrating Irish culture, especially if you don’t have a Y chromosome. 

Does anybody really know what time it is?

It's raining, raining, raining. A Sunday afternoon, late December, the last few days of Christmas vacation soaked and gray, but peaceful.

We're in the car, halfway to Philadelphia to visit my family. We used to come five or six times a year, but we haven't been since June, for my nephew's graduation party, and we won't likely be back until the summer. People are busy.

I submitted my last time sheet of 2019. I thought that maybe I'd wait until Tuesday, that maybe I'd work for a while tomorrow or Tuesday, but I abandoned that idea almost as soon as I thought about it. I'm going to stay on vacation until Thursday.

We're driving past country houses near Bel Air, Maryland, Christmas lights twinkling in the middle of the afternoon. We change the radio station every few minutes as reception fades and returns. Traffic is steady, and the trees are either completely bare or evergreen, Christmas trees in the wild. We'll stop at Wawa for some coffee and then we'll be at my sister's house in about 90 minutes, just in time for the cousins to trash talk each other through the 4 PM football games.

*****
It's Monday now, and still raining. I saw a Christmas tree in the trash this morning, while I was out walking my sister's goofy dog. He sniffed happily at the wet scraggly fragrant evergreen, and then we kept walking.

My sons and their cousins watched football last night, lounging in front of the TV, wearing flannels and hoodies and inexplicably, ski hats. It's not that cold. Surrounded by plates of cookies and bowls of chips, hurling cheerful insults about their respective terrible (Redskins) and mediocre (Eagles) teams, they were the very picture of Christmas vacation contentment.

I made a coffee run this morning, to the Wawa around the corner from my sister's house. I tuned the radio, looking for something other than Monday morning sports talk. I landed on an oldies station because Philadelphia radio does not acknowledge the passage of time beyond 1983 or so. Chicago was asking the musical question "Does anyone really know what time it is?" and I found that I couldn't answer. In full vacation mode, I had lost track of time. But a rainy Monday morning in the winter feels like Monday no matter what, so I knew what day it was.

*****
New Year's Eve, 1 PM. We're on the road now, after a short visit with my grandmother at her tiny, reeking of smoke row house in Philadelphia. She has lived in that house for 60 years. She has a chair lift because she can no longer manage the stairs.

"She should really quit smoking," my 18-year-old son says.

"Yeah, it must be really bad for someone her age," my 15 year old says.

"She just turned 96," I tell them. "She's not interested in any health advice."

96 is very old. My grandmother is frail. Her eyesight is very poor and her hearing isn't so good either. My mother says that she hears what she wants to hear. Maybe that's true. If so, I don't blame her. But I don't think it's a choice. I think that she has moments of auditory clarity, when she can hear exactly what you say, the first time. Most of the time, though, you have to shout at her, or repeat yourself several times.

Physical limitations aside, she's still sharp. Her memory is excellent and her reasoning and judgment are sound. Well, she likes Donald Trump, but her reasoning and judgment are otherwise sound. We don't talk about politics. I'm not going to argue with a 96-year-old woman.

My sons are uncharacteristically quiet now. They visit my grandmother only occasionally, since we don't live nearby. I think she scares them a little and they're not sure why. I understand why. Old age is terrible, and terrifying.

*****
New Year’s Day, the first day of 2020. I turned the Christmas tree lights on this morning. The tree still looks pretty but it’s ragged around the edges. It’s droopy and tired. The tree knows that the holidays are at an end. It knows that the gig is up.

It’s sunny again, and almost cold. It’s been a lovely vacation. I’m back at work tomorrow, and my poor 15-year-old has 5 AM swim practice on his first day back at school. But it’s fine. I don’t mind going back to work, and I don’t think he’ll mind going back to school, though I’m sure that he will mind the 4:30 wake-up call. But a person can't sleep in every day. A week of not planning and not setting alarms and not keeping track of time is a nice way to end a year but it's enough, I suppose. 2020 begins in earnest tomorrow.

Spectator

It's Friday night and I'm in Section 108 at Nationals Park, watching the Nats facing the Atlanta Braves. The Braves are running away with the National League East, but the Nats are playing really well, too. It should be a good game.

We're in almost the same section where we sat last time but it's 20 degrees cooler. In fact it's 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, too. I'm wearing long sleeves and I'm still a little cold. September. Go figure.

*****
It's the top of the third inning now, with no score. The Braves are a patient team. They know how to work a count. They're in no rush.

Baseball games are much more bright and colorful than they were when I was young. The Jumbotrons and scoreboards and advertisements are a visual riot, and the sensory overload doesn’t end there. Counting walk-up songs (Juan Soto’s are the best) and between-inning music and the national anthem, I've heard at least 30 different songs tonight. That doesn't include the organ music, which used to be the only music a person would hear at a baseball game. I like it. It's louder and more fun than it used to be.

There are ten different design elements on that scoreboard,
and that doesn't count the actual box score display, which is tracking more data than a NASA mission control center. 

It’s Saturday morning now, and the Braves beat the Nats 5-0. But the music was good, and after a cloudy day, the sky turned clear and inky dark blue with just a few clouds floating past the yellow-white harvest moon. And Teddy won the Presidents’ Race. He cheated, of course. Teddy only wins when he cheats. It was Friday the 13th, so Jason Voorhees joined the race, hockey mask and all, and dispatched George, Tom, and Abe, leaving Teddy the only contender. Teddy is my favorite. After the game, we walked along the Anacostia Riverwalk to our car, about ¾ of a mile from the ballpark. It was a good evening.

*****
I don’t spend many Saturday nights at the opera, but that’s what I did last night. With free tickets from a musician friend, I got to see the Maryland Lyric Opera perform Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusticana, two very different one-act Italian operas with a common ending--the husbands kill the men who slept with their wives.

The operas were performed concert-style, with the singers in recital dress rather than costumes, and no stage sets or props other than music stands (and very amusingly, a jacket used as a shroud--you had to be there).

Both of the operas are tragedies, but Il Tabarro has comedic elements and characters, including Tinca and Talpa the stevedores and Talpa’s wife, Frugola. Cavalleria Rusticana is more dramatic and intense; but Il Tabarro is ultimately sadder, because we know that Giorgetta’s infidelity is driven by grief at the loss of her baby. When her husband kills her lover, poor Giorgetta is left with nothing. A mother also loses her child in Cavelleria; in this case, he’s an adult child, murdered by his lover’s husband.

Super fun, right? But it really was. The English supertitles played on a screen high above the stage, so we could follow the story while listening to the glorious music; and the performances were amazing, both musically and dramatically. All of the singers were wonderful. Susan Bullock as Cavalleria’s Santuzza was heartbroken and desperate and when the beautiful Joowon Chae sang Lola’s first notes, it was all I could do not to shout “Whore! This is all your fault!” And when Il Tabarro’s Frugola, played by the amazing Allegra De Vita, sings that it’s better to be the boss in  a hovel than a servant in a castle, it sounds like a happily defiant rallying cry.

*****

It’s Monday now, 8:30 PM. I worked a longer-than-usual day, then attended a meeting at Rockville High School, and then came home, five minutes ago. I wish sometimes that I was the kind of person who could walk in after a long day and just stop working, but I’m not that kind of person. So here I am.

And hockey starts tonight! Yes, it’s 90 degrees outside again after Friday’s short preview of fall, and I wish I was still swimming; and yes, it’s only pre-season, but it’s HOCKEY! And I’m not watching it. My husband and younger son are toggling between Nats baseball, about which I care to some extent; and NFL football, about which I care not one tiny little bit. Fortunately, I’m here to help them re-adjust their priorities. In five minutes or so, we’ll be swinging to the sweet sounds of Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin.

*****
Tuesday, 9:05 PM. I’m watching “To Sir With Love,” a movie that I first saw when I was 14 or so. I read the book, too. It’s astonishingly old-fashioned now, but I still love it. I love the scene when the class shows up at their classmate’s mother’s funeral, as the camera pans back on the coal-stained East End brick rowhouses and the pale gray sky. Now I’m going to watch to the end so I can watch Sidney Poitier dance with Judy Geeson, and hear Lulu sing the title song. And that is a wrap on a few days of fandom. I think it’s time to read a book.

Ruby Tuesday

I'm happy to be back in America and especially happy to be in Section 416, Row L, Seat 10 at Capital One Center. It's game time minus 14 minutes and I'm waiting for the puck to drop at one of the last regular season games of the year. Capitals vs. Hurricanes. Don't get me started on the ridiculousness of a hockey team from North Carolina.

I like getting here early, seeing the stands fill up, watching the zambonis, listening to pre-game commentary from John Walton and Mike Vogel. We have different seats this time. My son, who is much more observant than I, noticed that the Capitals logo is right side up from this side of the ice. It's a hopeful sign.

First intermission : Capitals 1, Hurricanes 0.  I usually walk the concourse during the intermission but I don't feel like it right now.

The seats filled up very quickly tonight. The 400 level at Capital One Center makes coach class on any airline seem wide open and downright roomy, but 400 level fans are a hardy lot. We look askance at the one percenters in the suites and the 100 level. But if we're being honest (and we're always being honest because we're the gosh darn salt of the fucking earth) then we have to admit that we'd ditch the 400 level in a New York minute, if we only had a chance.

Tonight's Twitter song poll choices:

“LA Woman,” The Doors. Why? What do The Doors or LA women have to do with the price of tea in China at a hockey game between Washington and North Carolina?

“Cool Jerk,” The Capitols. This makes much more sense. It's the Capitols, and tonight is bobblehead night for Evgeny Kuznetsov, famously labeled a “jerk” by noted hockey curmudgeon Don Cherry. Whatever, Don. Kuzy is the coolest of the cool jerks. He is, in fact, the king of the cool jerks. 

“Ruby Tuesday,” The Rolling Stones. So it's Tuesday, obvs, and ruby=red, so this is a clearly relevant selection, and the best song of the three. I'm an Instagram girl, so I won't actually cast a Twitter vote, but l’d vote for “Ruby Tuesday.” “Cool Jerk” will win, though.

For some odd reason, Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars” was playing during the song campaign, adding to the confusion. I'm going to go full suburban white lady and declare my love for Coldplay, especially “Sky Full of Stars.” I like Coldplay and I cannot lie. As Kuzy would say, “Let's fuck this shit.”

“Cool Jerk” was the winning song and the Washington Capitals were the winning team, with a 4-1 final score that clinched a playoff spot. With three assists, our second favorite Russian was the player of the game. I'm in the car (not driving) and it's much more fun to listen to the post-game radio show after a win than after a loss. We're in first place now. Let's go Caps.

Transatlantic

Friday, March 22. It's 2:17 PM Dublin time and who knows what time wherever I am 40,000 or so feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I'm very happy to be going home.

I should be writing this on my Chromebook, but the space bar isn't working. Because the WiFi isn't working either, I can't find a fix for the space bar. So I'm using Keep Notes to write. Necessity is the mother of invention.

I just finished a white wine mixed with Diet Coke, which is a surprisingly good combination. During drink service, the very nice young flight attendant asked me if I wanted one or two white wines and I foolishly and hastily said "just one." Poor decision making on my part. It's slightly turbulent and another wine or two would not be a bad idea. But it's all good. It's all good.

What is wrong with my space bar, anyway?

*****

I started to feel fluish on Tuesday or Wednesday and I ignored it, for two reasons. Reason one: I ignore all health issues less serious than bleeding from the eye sockets. Reason two: I didn't want to ruin the trip for everyone. But now the trip is pretty much over, so I can stop moving for a bit and just rest. 

Except that I'm 40,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.

We arrived at Terminal 2 of Dublin Airport just a little less than 3 hours before our flight, and we needed every minute of those hours. I can't express in words the relief of finally shedding all of the extra bags, then passing through both security checkpoints and just waiting at the gate.

Because my travel companion is temporarily disabled by a broken arm, we were granted the privilege of early boarding. In the future, anyone who wishes to travel with me will need to have some sort of injury or disability because it's quite an advantage to have the cabin almost to yourself. We were comfortably settled, with all of our belongings stowed and arranged, before anyone else was even allowed near the plane. And then we got to watch as our fellow travelers (in the literal sense) settled themselves and their belongings, with less time and a lot less room to move.

According to the in-flight map (which wasn't available on the flight over), we are somewhere south of Greenland. I'm listening to music now. I made a playlist, which includes some of the usual suspects (Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga); and a few outliers (The Ting Tings, Betty Who, Michael Jackson, Aaron Neville, Bill Withers). It's a good mix. I can't worry about anything when Aaron Neville is singing "People Get Ready."

*****

I never understand people who complain about airplane food. It's not that the food is so good, it's just that we're on an airplane over the ocean and it's a bit of a miracle that any hot food at all is available. I remembered that it was Friday so I asked for a vegetarian meal and a moment later, I was a bit character on a Seinfeld episode. Call me Vegetable Lasagna.

We're halfway through the flight now. Still south of Greenland, pointing toward Newfoundland. We still have a way to go but we're closer to the United States than Europe now.

We passed over Newfoundland a little while ago and we're approaching either Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island. The path on the map keeps shifting a bit so I'm not sure. Or maybe I just like the names of the Maritime Provinces. I was an Anne of Green Gables girl. Two more hours or so.

We passed right between them, actually, and now we're heading toward the East Coast of the United States, in a path that will take us right between Boston and Montreal. It's nice to be back in a place where people care about hockey.

*****

Saturday, March 23. The preceding was what you get when I'm stuck in a tiny chair with nothing to do except watch silly movies ("Crazy Rich Asians"--ridiculous) and good TV shows ("Derry Girls"--awesome), listen to music, read, and monitor the flight path. I didn't sleep, but I did get up and go to the bathroom 57 times. People probably think I'm a drug addict. I'm still sick, and I'm too tired to write anything more. It's nice to be home. 

SIng with me

Friday: Last night, my sons and I were driving home from dinner and I found myself singing along with Aerosmith's "Dream On." This is a song that was already old when I was a teenager, and my snotty 18-year-old self would not have been caught dead singing along with it or any song like it, even if dead people could sing.

In fact, I am so completely not a fan of 70s classic rock that I wasn't even sure if "Dream On" was an Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin song, though I was pretty sure that it was one of the two. So I looked it up, and found that this question is a pretty common one. Go ahead and Google "Dream On Aerosmith." The suggested auto-fill options will include "Dream On Aerosmith or Led Zeppelin."

I sang along with my sons, wondering if the song is actually good, and I just never realized it before; or if I'm just developing a new appreciation for the things of my youth. I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

*****
Saturday: Did you know that Charles Mound, elevation approximately 1,200 feet, is the highest point in Illinois? The mountain range closest to Chicago is the Great Smoky range, over 500 miles distant. Have you ever looked this up? If so, was it because you were watching "Christmas Vacation," and you wondered how far the Chicago-based Griswolds would have had to drive to cut down a tree in the mountains?

No? Just me?

*****
It's December 1, so we're watching "Christmas Vacation." It's not my favorite Christmas movie, but my teenage sons love it so much that it's entered my top ten. I sing along to "Mele Kalikimaka," while my younger son whistles. He is an exceptionally good whistler, and I can carry a tune, so we sound pretty good. It's cozy here, and I have to say that we're the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

*****
Diane Ladd played Chevy Chase's mother in "Christmas Vacation." They are eight years apart in age.

*****

Monday: Diane Ladd had to fake old ladyhood in "Christmas Vacation," but my Nana is the real thing. Nana looks very much like Aunt Bethany; though unlike poor Aunt Bethany, my grandmother is still as sharp as the proverbial tack. She might wrap up a cat and give it as a gift, but she'd do it on purpose. And you can trust me that if someone asked my Nana to say grace, she wouldn't confuse it with the Pledge of Allegiance, or with anything else.

She'd be quick about it, too. Like most Catholics of her generation, my grandmother is devout, but she doesn't waste time on long, flowery prayers. And she doesn't waste a lot of time on the phone, either; partly because she doesn't hear too well anymore, and because she doesn't like long phone calls. This is a sentiment that I share. I just spoke to Nana, to wish her a happy 95th birthday. It was a five-minute call.

*****
When you're 95, you watch as your spouse and siblings and friends and contemporaries die, one by one. My grandmother is lucky; she hasn't outlived her children, and her health is as good as a 95-year-old can expect. She had to give up driving about 10 years ago (and about five years after she should have); and she can't read any but the largest print anymore. And now she's outliving all of the greatest figures of her generation.

George H.W. Bush was born a few months after my grandmother. They lived very different lives, but they shared the experience of having been very young, but very grown-up, during a time of war. Like Barbara Bush, my grandmother married very young (18) and then waited for her husband to return from the war. Unlike the Bushes, my grandparents were ordinary, working-class people. Neither George H.W. Bush nor my cranky, Trump-supporter (yes) Nana led perfect lives, but they did the best they could and that's all anyone can ask. They are among the last of a generation that lived during a time when their country was almost totally united.

I wasn't a Bush supporter. I didn't vote for 41 or 43. But today was still a sad and solemn day. Maybe it's just nostalgia. Maybe President Bush is like an old Aerosmith song, and I like him now because he's a thing of my youth.

No, it's more than that. Politics aside, there's no hypocrisy in recognizing George H.W. Bush's greatness, as a public servant and as a human. Politics aside, there's no way that a reasonable, feeling person could fail to be moved at the sight of 95-year-old Bob Dole assisted from his wheelchair to give a standing salute to his friend. An era has ended. The past is gone.

American Tune

I was born in Connecticut, in a small town near New Haven, and I lived there until I was six. We lived in an apartment; in the converted second floor of an old house, not in an apartment building. My parents didn't like the landlord. In fact, it wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized that "landlord" wasn't an insult.

*****
My memories of that place are of course very vague, but I do remember a few things. The house had a big yard, with trees and a stone wall that was covered with ivy and moss or something. We played out there every day. My sister and I liked the fuzzy caterpillars that hung out on the stone wall.

I got pneumonia the winter that I was in kindergarten, and I remember spending all day, for several days, in my mother's bed. Like most parents at that time, my parents didn't allow the children to play in their bedroom, so I remember feeling very privileged to be allowed in there, especially in the giant bed.

My mom had a radio in the bedroom, and I remember hearing "Sounds of Silence" over and over again as I slept and woke. "Sounds of Silence" was released in 1965, so I don't know why the radio station was playing it so frequently in 1970. Maybe it was about Vietnam. I don't remember that I understood anything about Vietnam when I was five; I just remember that I knew that Vietnam was something that grownups talked about. Or maybe I only heard the song once and remember hearing it over and over. I was five.

My parents' marriage was troubled, and they divorced. I barely remember my father. He left and I never saw or heard from him again. We moved to Philadelphia, my mother's hometown, when I was six. My mother used to take us there to visit her family; we took the train from New Haven, because my parents had only one car. On one of these trips, my mother had the three of us children and herself in two seats. My brother, a baby at the time, was on her lap; and my sister and I, who were probably five and four, shared a seat. The train was full of mostly young people. I remember the train ride.

Apparently (this part I don't really remember), I asked my mother if the young people across the aisle from us were hippies. And apparently, the hippies heard me, and thought I was hilarious, and they entertained my sister and me for the rest of the trip. One of the boys had a guitar--that part, I do remember. I don't remember what songs he played, but I think of the train ride every time I hear "Scarborough Fair (Canticle)," so maybe he played that. Or maybe that song is just another hard-wired memory of my early childhood during the Vietnam War, riding trains to the city that would become my home.

Our first few months in Philadelphia were confusing. We lived with my grandparents, whose tiny three-bedroom rowhouse barely accommodated them, my youngest aunt (who was 8 at the time), and their German schnauzer, Toby. I slept on a cot in my aunt's bedroom. My mother, sister, and brother slept in the spare bedroom, which had a trundle bed. My mother worked during the day and was unhappy when she was home, and my grandmother was overwhelmed, having quadrupled the number of young children in her house.

*****
I'm watching old episodes of "The Office" as I'm writing this. Two separate Chewy.com commercials feature two different white women of about my age. Both women have shoulder-length wavy blondish hair and they both wear stretch jeans and long open cardigans. It's like they screen-tested two different actresses and then just decided, "what the hell, we like both of them."

*****
Soon enough, my mother found us a place to live--another rowhouse less than a mile from my grandparents' house. She got a car, and I started school at St. John the Baptist, where she had also gone to school, and we settled in to life in Philadelphia, and I grew up there.

Before the days of Apple Music and Pandora, kids listened to the radio. Kids still listen to the radio, because there's nothing like the random serendipity of just hearing your favorite song while you're driving along. It's even better when you're in a car full of people who love the same song, and you can all sing along together. In 1973, "Kodachrome" was one of those songs, and not just because we got a bad word pass on the word "crap" when we sang along with Paul Simon. I loved "Loves Me Like a Rock" even more than "Kodachrome," but "Kodachrome" is the song that recalls my childhood, like a photograph, like my mother's Instamatic, like the Fotomats that occupied every other street corner in Philadelphia.

I didn't think much about Paul Simon after 1973 or so, until 1979, when we sang "Sounds of Silence" at my first high school choir concert. I remembered it, and I dug out my mother's old Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel records, and then I was a fan all over again.

A few years later, I was out of college (not finished, but out) and working as a proofreader for an old-fashioned offset printing company. I was 21, with the wrong job and the wrong man and the wrong apartment in a very wrong neighborhood. Not gonna lie, as they say on the Internet: My life was a bit of a mess.

I was at a party one night, and the TV was on, tuned to "Saturday Night Live." Paul Simon was the musical guest (and maybe he was the host, too).  I went out and bought "Graceland" the next day, just so I could listen to "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" a  hundred more times. There are lots of albums that I really love, but "Graceland" is the one that I know best. I could sing every single word of that album. That's not a threat, just a statement of fact.

*****
In another of my favorite songs, "The Cool Cool River," from the 1991 "Rhythm of the Saints," Paul Simon sings "Sometimes, even music cannot substitute for tears."

But sometimes, it can. Music has substituted for tears for me more times than I can count, and no one's music more than Paul Simon's, which I have listened to for literally as long as I can remember and even longer. I probably heard it "Wednesday Morning 3 AM" in the womb.

Tonight is the last date on the "Homeward Bound" farewell tour. Who knows what "farewell" really means--lots of artists and athletes "retire" only to return a month or a year later. And last Friday night, when I finally got to see him live for the very first time, he sounded great. So maybe he'll perform live again--maybe he'll even tour again. But I'm glad I was there, last tour or not. I'm glad I got to share over 50 years of music with 40,000 or so of my closest friends, many of whom weren't even alive when even "Graceland" or "The Rhythm of the Saints" were first released, let alone "The Sounds of Silence" or "There Goes Rhymin' Simon." I bought a t-shirt, and then I bought another one. I can still hear the music, a week later. I've been hearing it for my entire life.

On the daily

Monday: Dreary, for the third straight day. Gray, wet, bedraggled, and droopy; that's how everything looks right now and that's how I felt when I came home from work. Dreary.

A walk almost always helps, especially a walk with music. It was still raining, but only a little bit, so I started rice for dinner, changed my clothes, put my iPod on shuffle, and went. I skipped a few songs, and then landed on Erasure's "Heart of Stone," which never fails to cheer me up.  How could it not:

I cry for your heart of stone

I´m gonna wait until you come home
Oh why am I all alone?
I´m as good as dead yet

I know. But it's upbeat, as songs about despair go. And it's not real despair, anyway. It's pop music heartbreak despair. Not the same thing at all. 

Last week, I wrote that I had finally tackled the back-to-school pile of paper, and I did, but I didn't finish, so I'm trying to do that now. I have to set up an account on a new website, because of course there's a new website. There's always a new website. More tomorrow. 

Tuesday: See yesterday if you're looking for the weather report, because today was nearly identical to yesterday, and we have days more of this to come. Considering what's bearing down on North Carolina right now, I shouldn't complain.

I was planning to write a newsletter article today, but I didn't quite get to the writing part. I thought about it, and made mental notes, and then planned to set aside time to actually write it. It's a multi-step process. I should have a newsletter article ready to go by December or so. Give or take.

Wednesday: We live in the Old Testament now.

Thursday: Eighth grade back-to-school night. My sister-in-law, now mother of a kindergartner, texted me from her first back-to-school night:

Back-to-school night is BRUTAL.

She's not exaggerating. Kindergarten BTS night is when you learn the hard way that Montgomery County Public Schools owns your sorry ass for the next 13 years. If you've never considered homeschooling, then one MCPS back-to-school night might drive you right off the grid.

Friday: We're pretty far from Florence's path, but we're also on day 7 of gloom, with no end in sight. I won't complain, though. I have been selfishly monitoring Florence's route landward, because we have tickets to Paul Simon tonight and I didn't want to miss the show. And now, it's not even going to rain tonight.

Saturday: I finally turned in my newsletter article. Paul Simon will require an entirely separate post, which I'll write next week. The sun might come out on Wednesday. 

Burn baby burn

Monday: It's a beautiful day. And almost 20 years to the day after this happened, I was walking across Twinbrook Parkway in Rockville, returning from the badging office in one Federal government building to the Federal government building where I work, when a man drove past me and shouted something too obscene for me to repeat here. Three construction workers, walking away from a food truck where they'd just picked up their lunch, all turned their heads, as shocked as I was.

There was nothing I could do, of course. It was 11:45 on a Monday morning, and he was driving, fast. Later, when I told my husband about it, I couldn't even remember what the car looked like.

One of my government bosses has nicknamed me "Liam Neeson." He says that I'm like Neeson's character in "Taken," because I have a special set of skills, honed over a lifetime. Unfortunately, they're not the kind of skills that make me immune to public harassment and humiliation. But that's fine. I'll just use this little episode to fuel my rage. I'll need it someday.

*****
Speaking of bosses, can we talk about how many I have now? Four. I have four bosses. Fortunately, I like all of them.

But still. Four bosses is a lot.

*****

I didn't think about what happened for the rest of the afternoon. Then I went for a walk after work, with the iPod cranked up to 11. I skipped around, looking for a song that was angry enough to sing along to, and settled on Erasure's "Hallowed Ground," which doesn't really sound like an angry song, at least in terms of melody and instrumentation. But what's angrier than "Who will be the next victim of the criminal dawn?" I sang along, like I do. I can be loud on the street, too. I also sang along to the Pretenders "Talk of the Town:" "Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. Maybe tomorrow, maybe someday. You'll change..." And maybe I will. Maybe someday, I'll change into a person who can have an upsetting experience, and then just let it go, like it was nothing; like the proverbial water off the back of the proverbial duck. Maybe.

*****
Saturday: It was a bad week, and not just because of the stupid man and his stupid verbal assault. But it got better.  My son had a baseball game today, during which my husband was nearly chucked by the umpire. He never argues with sports officials or coaches. But he did today. Too long a story to make short, but five years from now, we'll refer to the whole episode as the infield fly rule incident, a day that will live in infamy. But that's another story, for another day.

After the game, I was running errands and listening to the radio. It's almost never so bad that singing along with "Disco Inferno" can't make it better. The Capitals just won Game 5 against Pittsburgh, and April is over, finally. Burn that mother down.

Ghosts appear and fade away

Sunday:  This morning was a legitimately cold December morning; cold by anyone's standards, which means bloody well freezing for me. But I couldn't sleep past 6:30, so I went for a walk anyway.

With enough clothing, the temperature was just bearable, and even I had to admit that it was a really beautiful, sparkling morning. There was still a coating of snow on the grass, leftover from the tiny bit of snow that fell on Friday, and it was sunny and clear, but just a tiny bit misty. Beautiful.

I walked past the pool, which was frozen over, with a dusting of snow on the deck. Later, I heard that one of the neighborhood boys had posted Instagram video of himself and his dog, walking on the frozen water. Teenage boys are idiots; this is something that I have personal experience with. No more so than the rest of us, of course, but idiots in their own particular way. I myself did more stupid things this week alone than I'm prepared to write about on this blog, but you can trust me that walking out onto the surface of a frozen swimming pool was not among them. Idiots.

*****

Sometimes I like to listen to NPR when I walk, but I usually like to listen to music. My husband and I share an iTunes library, and I usually just put the whole thing on shuffle and listen to whatever shows up (within reason), but this morning, I felt like selecting songs. I found a playlist with my name on it (literally; it was named "Claire") so I started the first song and was on my way.

It was a good playlist, beginning with my beloved Erasure's "Heart of Stone." Sometimes, I get tired of even my favorite songs, and I skip past them, but I can't remember ever skipping over "Heart of Stone."

It got even better, with Gladys Knight and the Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia." I'm always all aboard for "Midnight Train."

Three excellent songs in a row! The third was Men at Work's "Overkill" (the acoustic version). I've always liked the original recording of this song, but I really love the acoustic version, and the lyrics are my life on the radio:

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know will be all right
Perhaps it's just imagination

But day after day, it reappears
Night after night, my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away. 

Anyway, these songs were among my favorites when I made the playlist, probably sometime around 2012 or so. They held up. 

*****

One reason why I like to go out walking early on Sunday morning is that I like to sing, and there are only a handful of people out at 7:30 on Sunday morning. Running Lady, The World's Happiest Dog and his person, Bike Helmet Guy, and maybe a few others here or there, but mostly, I have the streets to myself. And I need the streets to myself. Alone on the streets, I'm free to really cry for your heart of stone. And when L.A. proves too much for the man, I can sing, loudly, about his decision to leave the life that he'd come to know. In fact, I usually sing "Midnight Train" twice: Once as Gladys, and once as a Pip. 

I know both parts equally well, and I slay them both. 

The low battery warning came just as I was turning back on to my street, about halfway through a performance of David Bowie's "Modern Love" that would have blown the roof off the joint, had I not been outside. It was a good walk, and a good morning.

It doesn't seem a year ago to this very day

I love movies, as anyone who has read this blog probably knows. I don't go to movie theaters that often, though; and when I do, it's usually weeks after the movie opens. In fact, I often don't even hear about movies until their theatrical runs are almost over. Who knows what movie lovers did before TV and Netflix.

Because I don't usually see movies when they're new in theaters, I also don't usually notice trailers. Occasionally, though, I see a trailer that makes me really really want to see the movie. In 2015, my kids made me stop what I was doing to watch each of the "Force Awakens" trailers as they were released. I didn't mind, because I love Star Wars. And for a long-time Star Wars fan, there was nothing better than seeing Harrison Ford smile and say, "Chewy. We're home." We saw "The Force Awakens" a week after it was released.

Now, I'm almost Star Wars-level excited about a new movie.  I can't believe that it has taken this long, but someone has finally made a movie about the epic 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The movie is, of course, titled "Battle of the Sexes," and the trailer soundtrack is Elton John's "Love Lies Bleeding," which is 1973 itself, set to music.

*****

This is, believe it or not, the swimming pool at Kendrick Recreation Center.
You can't see the tennis courts, but they're behind the pool and to the left.
My kids and their swim team friends don't believe my stories about swimming
in shifts because the pool was so crowded during hot Philadelphia summers. 

I was eight years old in 1973, and I really loved tennis. I wasn't good at it--I didn’t have the necessary speed or coordination. It didn’t matter, though, because I still loved to play. I loved hitting a ball against the brick wall down the street from my house. I loved playing on the summer team at the Kendrick Recreation Center and in the juniors tournaments in Fairmount Park (during which I was usually eliminated in the first round). I loved my Wilson Chris Evert racket (wood!) that I’d gotten as a Christmas present. And I LOVED the women’s tennis tour.

I was kind of a girly girl. Not a cheerleader or a pageant aspirant type, but not what anyone would, at that time, have called a “tomboy.” (I hate that word.) I liked clothes, I worried about my hair, and I wanted my ears pierced, which my mother would not allow until I was in high school. I admired stylish, beautiful Chris Evert, with her shining blond ponytail and diamond bracelets sparkling on tanned arms. But Billie Jean King was my favorite. She was different from the other women on the tennis tour. She wasn’t elegant or fashionable or regal. But she was radiant and fierce, and I thought (and still think) that she was beautiful.

*****

I grew up in a rowhouse in a blue-collar Philadelphia neighborhood, and attended a parish school with all of the other children of secretaries and sheet metal workers. I’m not sure that I or any of my friends would even have noticed tennis had it not been for Billie Jean and Arthur Ashe, who tried to bring tennis out of the country club and into the public parks. But as much as Billie Jean did to democratize tennis, she did even more for women's equality. She pioneered the then-radical notion that female athletes should make the same money as male athletes. How obvious does it seem today that the men’s and women’s champions at Wimbledon or the US Open should earn the same prize money? It wasn’t even remotely obvious in 1973. It was near-revolutionary.

The Battle of the Sexes was silly and show-businessy, but it was still a landmark event for women’s sports, and Billie Jean was a heroine. At that time (even more than now), women who spoke out for simple fairness and equality for women were often mocked and derided as "women's libbers" or worse. Lots of women were afraid of that kind of mockery--in fact, lots of women still are. They'd rather endure sexual harassment and inequality than have men dismiss them shrill or unattractive. But Billie Jean was fearless. Because she stood up for women's rights, she faced relentless scorn, and not just from Riggs. Like most eight-year-olds, I believed that life should be fair, and I was perpetually outraged by sexism in general, and by the over-the-top chauvinism of Riggs in particular. My parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and siblings were all heartily sick of me and Billie Jean and Bobby Riggs by the time the whole thing ended in a decisive victory for Billie Jean.

*****

1973 was a pretty big news year. I paid attention to current events more than most eight-year-olds did, so I knew about the oil embargo, and Vietnam, which was still raging; and the growing Watergate scandal. War and scandal and economic crises meant nothing, though, compared to Billie Jean King shutting Bobby Riggs up, even for five minutes. It felt like a victory not just for women, but for little inner-city working class school girls, too. Billie Jean, who also came from a working-class family, showed girls like me that things were possible, even likely, no matter where you lived, or who your parents were, or whether or not you had the right hair or clothes. My friends and I couldn’t really aspire to Chris Evert’s cool elegance and beauty, but we could all aspire to be like Billie Jean. She looked like our older sisters and cousins, and if we worked hard, we could be like her. We could be fearless, and strong, and really good at something. We could kick ass and take names and still look cute in a tennis dress.

*****

As an eight-year-old girl who liked a good old-fashioned to-the-death blood feud between good and evil, I would have been appalled to know that Billie Jean King actually liked Riggs, who was pure evil as far as I was concerned. Now, of course, I love Billie Jean even more for her friendship with crazy, loud-mouthed, flamboyant Bobby Riggs, who probably wasn't as much of a chauvinist as he pretended to be for the cameras. Even today, I can think of lots of worse sexists than Bobby Riggs. Not mentioning any names, of course.

*****
The summer of 2017 will probably feel a lot like the summer of 1973. My kids are much older than I was in 1973, but they're still young enough to believe that life should always be fair and that the good guys should always win. Twenty-five, or maybe 35 years from now, movies will be made about the cultural and political earthquakes of their youth, and they'll tell their children what they remember, and what it all meant to them.  And they'll see a trailer, and hear a song, and they'll say "OH MY GOD! THEY FINALLY MADE A MOVIE!" I hope so, at least. 

Boys of summer

I have a bunch of half-finished drafts about nothing in particular; whatever I happened to be thinking at the moment  ended up in writing, only to be abandoned in draft limbo.  Eventually, I'll finish and publish some of those half-finished posts, but the rest of them will languish, never to see the light of day.  Those that I actually publish will mystify my reading public, because by the time I get around to finishing them, they'll no longer be relevant.

Anyway, it's been several weeks since I've posted anything, and I just felt like writing something other than my novel, which I'm still working on.  Since I can only work on it for a few minutes a day, it's going very slowly, but I haven't lost interest yet, so I suppose that's a sign that I should continue.  I have another fiction idea, but it will have to wait, likely for a long time.  I can read two books at once, but I can only write one at a time.

This was one of the weirdest springs ever, with March-like weather right through the third week of May.  And then, just like that, it was summer.  Saturday of Memorial Day weekend showed up bright and sunny and hot, and the pool opened, and everyone emerged from hibernation all at once.  It's really summer now, and it feels like it's always been summer and it always will be.

*****
When I run out of things to write about, I can always write about these two boys:

What up, ladies? 

Some backtracking is necessary.  A few days ago, my husband impulsively bought the car that's partially pictured here.  It's a 1980 Mercedes 450 SL convertible.  Apparently, money does grow on trees, and the mid-life crisis-driven purchase of red convertibles is a common real-world occurrence, and not just  a sitcom plot.  It could be worse, I suppose.  And I have to admit that the car is beautiful, even though I'm afraid to drive it.

But back to the boys.  They are my 11-year-old son, in the driver's seat, and his best friend.  They have been friends since they were four, and they never tire of each other, even during the summer, when most days they meet at 8:30 AM for swim practice, and then spend the entire day together, until well into the evening, and then  pick up where they left off at the next morning's swim practice.  When they're not driving without a license, they're making a commercial for a product they invented ("But it's a scam, Mom.  Because our product is terrible.") or making goalie pads out of foam rubber and cardboard, or waterskiing on land (boy on rollerblades attached via bungee cord to boy driving motorized electric scooter) or debating the relative merits of the Beastie Boys' discography.  I have little to offer that is as entertaining as a conversation between these two.  And listening to them makes me feel like it's always been summer, and it always will be.

I hear her voice in the morning hour she calls me

We went to the KORUS festival last Saturday.  We're a hybrid family (Korean-American husband, Caucasian wife, mixed children) so we fit right in.  This particular festival, though, was far more US than KOR, and more weird than either.

The top-level parking deck at Tyson's Corner Center is first of all a less-than-festive venue for a festival, particularly on a hot day.  Almost all of the tents belonged to corporate or political sponsors; small-time electioneering ahead of the mid-terms was in full swing, and my sons collected stickers, pens, and shopping bags from council, register-of-wills, and judicial candidates.  We can't vote for any of them, of course; we live in Maryland.

The stage was occupied by a Korean girl rapper who was accompanied by a Black rapper and backing band.  I suppose that the Korean girl, who had a definite Iggy Azalea accent, would have been accused of appropriation had there been any other Black people or SJWs listening, but the audience was made up of 95% Koreans with a handful of Caucasians who were married to Koreans.  The rap was in English, and Christian-themed.  Both rappers claimed to be former thug lifers, almost lost to crack and the street, but now redeemed, having found the Lord.  I didn't fact-check them.  The audience regarded them with a mixture of puzzlement and curiosity.

We wandered around to see the other exhibitors, who were mostly food vendors.  My husband waited in line for bulgogi and kimchi, while I took my two-year-old nephew for frozen yogurt. He ignored the two halmonis who smiled and waved and made faces and tried their hardest to get a tiny smile or giggle from the Toddler of Nope.  He wasn't having any, and he ignored my advice to enjoy the female attention now when it's readily available.  He ate his yogurt and barely deigned to turn his head toward the ladies; when he did, he gave them no more than a baleful stare.

After an hour or so, we'd seen all of the exhibitors once and had just begun one last circuit to make sure that we hadn't missed anything.  Anyone in the audience who had thought that witnessing the rap performance had moved them into "Now I've Seen It All" territory had only to hang around for a few minutes, when they'd have heard a Korean version of  "Country Roads," made even better by a Korean dance team dressed in rhinestone-studded satin cowboy dresses.

My Korean husband, born in Seoul and raised in the close-in suburbs of Washington DC, has always claimed that he should have been a country boy. He's more urban than a subway pass, but that doesn't stop him from rhapsodizing about country living.  He'd bale his own hay, and he'd grow his own food, and he'd live off the grid, if only he were in the country.

"This is what I'm talking about," he said.  "See? My people know that I'm a country boy.  They're singing my song."  On a sun-beaten blacktop parking platform connecting one wing of a suburban mall to another, just off one of the most heavily traveled Capital Beltway exits, surrounded by high-density mixed-use development, which is surrounded by traditional suburban sprawl, an all-American Korean longs for the place where he belongs, which is apparently West Virginia.  Meanwhile, the heat reflecting off the blacktop beneath our feet and the relentless sun overhead were finally enough.  "Take me home," I said.

Illuminate the main streets and the cinema aisles

Isn't it so much easier and more pleasant to clean your kitchen when you have music to listen to?  I forget this sometimes, but I remembered it tonight, and the nightly dishes and counters routine was much more pleasant as a result.

I skipped around a bit on my husband's old iPod, landing first on The Brothers Johnson's "Strawberry Letter 23", followed by Al Stewart's "Time Passages". Then I found Cornershop's "Brimful of Asha", and listened to it three times.

So many reasons to love "Brimful of Asha". I'm an Indio-Anglophile, if such a thing exists.  Years of working with Indian scientists and software engineers left me with great affection for Indians, who seem to combine razor-sharp wit with kindness like few other cultures can.  Even better than Indian Americans are Indian Brits (or British Indians?)  Because they're BRITISH AND INDIAN.

I like to think that "Brimful of Asha" probably gave at least one record company executive heartburn when he first heard it.  It's a longer-than-five-minutes song about a Bollywood star, and Indian sociopolitics, and life in late-20th-century England, with vaguely Indian melody and instrumentation.  Who would have expected it to be a huge hit? I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it in 1996, and it's held up beautifully.

I'm listening now to Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Nanci".  If only I could bend my words like Uri Geller's spoons.