Thankful Thursday–Christmas and year-end round up

You know what the Advent Calender window had behind it on Christmas Eve? Annie insisted that Paul be the one to open it, so I speculated that it would be a picture of Tweedy. But not really. Perhaps a picture of a bottle of Polar Seltzer, black cherry flavor. No. Maybe a fully-decorated Christmas tree. So wrong. It was an ICE DRAGON in the tiny double window. I love my kids!

Got my first iPod nano from Hubby for Xmas. It is tiny, so tiny. I feel dangerous when I have it on. Am I the only one and will this feeling pass? Are there any iPod virgins left? I look forward to loading hundreds of songs onto it. I am figuring it out, but as intuitive as Apple products are reputed to be, I find it klunky and somewhat unfriendly. I also couldn’t figure out how the little fucker clips on to my clothes. Hubby had to show me. Why, Santy Apple Claus, why, do you insist on making me feel dumber than I really am?

Christmas was good. This is the first year since we moved to Western Mass in which I didn’t feel financially stressed more often than not. Eleven years of living in the bliss/hell of self-employment in a New England state, so different than when we lived in Ohio. I am so grateful that our income was more predictable this year. It’s amazing what that does to my ease my mind.

Best present given this year? Behold the perfect gag gift for the consummate lover of Polar Seltzer in our house:

Be afraid, be very afraid!

I am grateful for this blog, for the technology which allows it, for my readers, for the kindness of those who leave comments.

I am grateful that I started writing poetry again and not only that, grateful to be reading it again

Grateful that I was able to take an improv class this year.

Glad that I celebrated 20 years of marriage. Glad that we get to go away to amazing places within a few hours’ drive, stay overnight, eat, shop, walk, swim, hike, visit friends, hear cool musicians, see amazing art.

Grateful that I found out about and saw Gogol Bordello.

Grateful that I got to go to my 30-year HS reunion, see lots of old pals (including my biggest high school crush, which was a hoot), stroll about Kent, Ohio, home of myself, land of the birth of my adulthood*, have that nude photo shoot in a garden in the heat and flower of summer.

Grateful for all the cool music I’ve discovered this year, in part because of the technology and youtube, but more because I do stick to my Music Monday posts. Especially my new-found love for all things Wilco and Tweedy.

Grateful that Willow was in our life.

Annie’s shrine to Willow (detail, not the whole thing), which includes a nail-polish painted (I kid you not, my kids are goofy) white bathroom tile

That is an origami Willow with a little paper bird (crane) in its mouth. Annie must have made a thousand paper cranes on her own this year and went on a bit of an origami adventure. SO GREAT!

My latest fad of photographing bathrooms from our travels. This is from the newly opened Atlantic Pizza Company in Rockport, MA. One of the prettier public restrooms in New England (this photo does not do the bathroom justice)

And this, the environmentally-friendly Euro-loo at The Wired Puppy, Provincetown, Mass

Grateful for any way that a reader might find my blog. Truly, the most abundant search term seems to be some manifestation of “ass tattoo.” That’s not even the most ass of the ass tattoo searches. Ready? I’ve had to live with this and I think if you’ve made it a year here, you will be able to live with it, too: asshole tattoo. You can imagine that I don’t want to know more about asshole tattoos. I do not think someone was thinking, hmm, how many assholes (meaning people who are jerks, idiots, morons) have tattoos? No, I take it as a literal search for tattoos on people’s assholes. First of all, OUCH and second, DUMB and third, if you want a tattoo on your asshole, you’ve come to the wrong place–begone with ye!

Thanks for coming along for the ride this year. Who knows, I may post again before we see the dawn of 2012, but ciao for now and thank you.

With tres mucho love, twinkly

this one is from the uber-tacky, red-and-white tiled bathroom at Five Guys Burger and Fries on Cape Ann

*for some reason, this seems like I’m talking about my maidenhead: why, Santy Claus, why?

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Music Monday–How slow can you go? Mazzy Star “Into Dust”

Nothing major to play today, I am uninspired. No post-Christmas blues, no Boxing Day celebrations.

Somehow, I missed Mazzy Star when they were around. I don’t know much about them (in spite of wiki), nor do I really care. This song has all the makings of a song I’d normally hate, the self-conscious, almost-droning vocals, the slow tempo which could turn disastrous in the hands of less careful singer. I tend to have a visceral reaction to voices that are pushed down and self-conscious; too many layers of effort. This can also manifest itself in over-reaching and over-modulating, so common in a lot of popular singing nowadays.

Somehow, Hope Sandoval manages to squeak in under the tendency to over-emotionalize her voice: she almost doesn’t enunciate, but she does enunciate. She is breathy, but just short of what would be pretentiously breathy.

I am familiar with only 3 of Mazzy Star’s songs–Into Dust, Halah, and the better-known Fade Into You, all of which I like very much. I like that this song is reminiscent of the VU–it’s retro, it’s trippy. It makes me want to turn the snowflakes on on my blog, but they’d be psychedelic swirling snowflakes, acid green and purple.

The lyrics are pure poetry as paired with the music, if you can stand the slow pace.

Sorry about the sappy visuals even though I kind of like the Man Ray-like eyelash with a tear suspended and the snowy lane. There’s a more tolerable live version, but I chose this for some reason.

Warning: this song not recommended for long winter road trips in the dark

Into Dust

Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Beside me today
A round broken in two
’til your eyes shed into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
’til my hand shook the way I fear

I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your face
Under…your face

It was you
breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers turning into dust
Turning into dust.

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Pretty Prague, December, 2008

I have been to Prague once, in December of 2008. Paul had a conference, not a mandatory thing, but we decided, due to decades of stories of Prague’s beauty, to seize the opportunity and go. The kids seemed old enough to leave for a week with my mother; it wasn’t Winter Break yet, the kids would be occupied, my mother would still have the middle of the day to herself.

Indeed, as much as me and jet lag don’t get along, the city proved to be worth dragging my ass a ways ’round the globe for.

Although Christmas Markets in Europe tend to be in Germanic countries, Prague, with its proximity and on-going trade with Germany, also has a one in its huge town square. I have mixed feelings about angels and for the most part find the concept to be overly saccharine and alternately creepy. But this one was truly enchanting. I use it as my Facebook photo sometimes around the holidays:

I went to a Christmas Market in Germany once, a small one, near where my cousins and aunt live in the Rhine Valley. It gave me the creeps. When I think of the Glühwein and the pretty decorations, the lights, singing, and trees, I think of my drunken grandfather, of rape, and of the Nazis. Friends sing the praises of the German advent season, but I want to scream. I am not trying for this, but growing up with a German mother who herself grew up in Nazi Germany, and having had an aunt who was a survivor of Auschwitz, I come by it honestly.

Prague, however, was different. Because I was not in the country or culture of my mother’s birth, I was able to “take what I liked and leave the rest.”

Certainly, our favorite thing was trdlo or trdelnik (from the treadle onto which they were traditionally rolled). We spent every next 3 or 4 bucks on one every time we got more money. They are ridiculously delicious, piping hot and smoky, rolled in ground nuts, cinnamon, and sugar:

Not all of the booths had live coals; some of the trdlo (we affectionately referred to them as “turd-lo,” because who puts t-r-d in a row without a vowel? Damn Slavic languages!) were cooked over electric coils. They were all the same damn delectable though.

Here are some more photos from our visit to Prague in 2008. If you have a chance to go, do. Everywhere you look is beauty.

There are 4 quarters in Prague, if memory serves. The following photos are from the Castle Quarter and the Old Quarter:

details, baby, details:

who doesn’t succumb to the temptation of a little golden serpent once in a while?

wealth:

wealth, in detail:

Crazy Euro-Christmas shit, in case you think Americans are the only ones with a tacky sense of the season. This was outside the huge castle on the big hill overlooking the whole of Prague, an entire straw nativity scene. Dig Mary’s crazy straw boobs:

No no no, my pets, the beauty doesn’t end there:

The penitent are all over Prague. I never saw a woman doing this, but plenty of men, real ones, not the cast-in-bronze kind:

A blind accordion player on the Charles Bridge

Crazy medieval Death, right on the wall of a church, where Death should be:

Prague is not averse to modern cool. Dig Frank Gehry’s Ginger and Fred:

And the last beauty of Prague? Yours truly, complete with ugly green down coat, on one of the bridges spanning the Vltava (again with the Slavic consonants!):

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Thankful Thursday–wool installation, wool, silk long johns, new cat, and advent calender photo update

Above is a photo of some of the sheep at my daughter’s school. You can’t really tell, but behind them (and all around their enclosure) is wool embedded into the chicken wire fence. It is an installation by a local artist, Nancy Milliken, called Walling In. All the while it was going up onto the fence I thought, “hmmm…..now isn’t that interesting and not altogether attractive?” But I will tell you: I drive from the south side of Bay Rd (the road that used to take folks from points west to the Bay, in Boston) and as the road bends, the fence is fully visible as it spills down the hill. It’s beautiful. I love it.

You’ll find a better photo of the whole fence on Nancy Milliken’s website. You’ll also find a photo of a rooster from the school. This rooster. Isn’t he pretty?

Look at the chicken wire up close:

You know I don’t love wool. I used to not be able to wear it at all–the itching and coarseness. When we moved to the Pioneer Valley, it was almost sacrilege not to wear wool, let alone to not like it. Try taking that a step further from the bubble of the Pioneer Valley into the even smaller community that is our local Waldorf school. Wool in our Waldorf school is to clothing like manna is to food. It’s practically heaven-sent and good for anything that ails you. In fact, it is probably edible in some form or another, just ask the Handwork-slash-Ag Arts teacher. I used to hate wool. I sort of still do. Slowly, over the last 11 years, my body seems to have adjusted to it a little: I can wear some wool-blend socks, as long as the percent of wool isn’t too high. I can wear my wool coat because it has a thick polar-fleece lining. I cannot wear a wool scarf directly next to my skin, even the Smartwool kind. I do have a lovely pink and black polka-dot hat that is merino wool and I can wear that.

Maybe it doesn’t matter so much, all of this wool. It’s the Solstice, December 22, and it’s raining in New England. I am sure up in the hill towns and in the mountains there is some snow. Rain in December. What happened to our climate? You probably don’t need wool in New England until January nowadays.

Silk is the other natural fiber one must acquaint oneself with in New England. My initial reaction when told I must wear silks in the winters here was to turn my nose up. The nerve! Me, who was somewhat “tactile defensive” as a child (they just told you to behave or slapped you when I was a kid, no such thing as tactile defensive). I remember a particular episode when I had to wear tights and how I screamed my head off in protest. I did eventually learn to wear silk long underwear and I fell in love with the warmth and softness and the not-overwhelming level of heat that they keep in (unlike a lot of synthetics which can make me too warm unless I’m outside and not moving).

I love new kitty SO MUCH:

Here is the latest photo of the advent calender:

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Music Monday–Christmas with Tim Minchin

One of my favorite Tim Minchin songs (you can read my earlier Tim Minchin Music Monday post, too):

I don’t have much to add. The Advent calender is coming along beautifully, I haven’t figured out much about Christmas presents, and we don’t have our tree yet.

Oh, and Tim Minchin’s daughter’s name is Violet–he gets bonus points for that, as if I didn’t like him enough already.

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I don’t cotton to this, but I do cotton to that and the other thing

Since I used the phrase don’t cotton to in a poem the other day, I thought I should give credit where credit is due and see if I could find something about its history on teh interwebs.

Here is what I found on wiki answers (probably not the greatest authority on such matters, but I did find my copy, without actually trying, by way of cleaning off a shelf, of Charles Earle Funk’s Hog on Ice the other day. Said book was referenced by our dear Uncle Doug in a comment on yet another recent blog post in which I wrote a bit about other idiomatic and/or folksy sayings). But Monsieur Funk had not a word to say about don’t cotton to, so take it away wiki:

This phrase dates from somewhere in the 16th Century. Originally, it was a textile term – to “cotton” or “cotton well” referred to the success of the fibers melding together to form cotton cloth. Around the 16th Century, the phrase began to be used to mean “to be successful,” or “to prosper” in reference to people and things. About the 19th Century, the phrase “to cotton to” began to see use, and meant “to be drawn to” or “to get along with.”

If you do not “cotton to” something, then you don’t care for it. This phrase is particularly common in the South, where the cotton industry formed the basis for the economy for many years.

Howdy, folks! It’s me again (so you know this isn’t still wiki). Any thought that this phrase has to do with African American slaves and cotton is not to be found…such association would likely be based on one’s tendency to connect the wrong dots with the right instincts. Or is that the right dots with the wrong instincts? Help. This could keep me awake all night or some portion thereof. Maybe I am obsessive. Or compulsive. Or chronic.

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Thankful Thursday–colored chalks, Marblehead, Chris Smither, new cat (!!!)

I woke up this morning with all good will. Let’s start with that….

The use of color at a Waldorf school. Witness the chalks that the teacher uses to create….well, just that, to create:

My first visit to Marblehead, Massachusetts (yet another wealthy New England town that made its fortune on shipping, ie, trade in spices, cloth, rum, tobacco, sugar cane, and slaves (as if humans are the same as the rest of the things on this list, but that would be another post entirely, wouldn’t it?)

Chris Smither, who we saw in Marblehead on Friday night, at the Me and Thee Coffeehouse

old enough kids (old enough for me not to be in the thick of motherhood, but young enough for me to still be in the thick of motherhood)

8,000 blog hits which I reached TODAY in spite of having a blog which features a. poems (who reads poetry any more? and most of them weren’t even about sex) and b. gratitude, o, cynics, and c. not photos of naked women, or naked women with large breasts, real or silicone-d, or naked women with small breasts, or posts about Justin Bieber, Radiohead, &c.

I just used &c instead of etc. I have never done that in my life. How cool is that?

So, I know that 8,000 is a relatively low number for blog hits and it’s sort of measly, but I like it. In fact, I love it!

I have been blogging for almost a year and I only wanted to throw in the towel once (about 2 weeks ago) for about 3 days and I love that, too

new cat

What’s that twinkly? Yes, you heard right. New cat, who remains as yet unnamed (we think Strider, but eldest daughter protesteth). Here she is, retrieved from the vet that was fostering her for Dakin. She’s a beauty, but was in pretty bad shape from her previous owner and probably from the stress of living in a shelter down in Springfield for 2 months…she had fleas, earmites, nausea. She’s scrawny and has lots of matted fur and a distended belly. She’s around 2 years old and gets up and eats every time I go in the room where she’s staying for now. We love her already

You know what happened by this evening, right? This is what I found out at about 4 pm…

While I’m glad that I called and emailed the White House (oh, yes, so grateful for that), I really want Obama and the entire Democratic party to grow a pair. So I guess I’m not thankful. But trying to stave off ranting by being grateful for all the other stuff.

I better stick to beauty…

and smart, talented men:

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Music Monday–X, The Knitters, Jimmy Driftwood: the list goes on

Y’all might not have heard of X. Y’all might not have heard of The Knitters. Y’all might not have heard of Jimmy Driftwood.

I was a newbie to X in the late ’80s, having missed them in their red-hot initial manifestation. It wasn’t until I hooked up with Hubby that I was introduced to them. I can’t say I ever took to them fully. Not that I don’t like a lot of their material, but I think the thing to do was to see them live in all their wild, Los Angeles-punk glory. I did not live in that world. I was still very attached to Classic Rock and British Invasion through college and beyond.

When X mixed themselves up a bit and released an album as The Knitters, I became immediately enamored of their blend of rock, country, punk, roots, rockabilly– it gets a little ridiculous to try to include all the different genres. You know this music, though; it became what’s known as the broadly-encompassing category alt country. It’s white; it’s post-punk; it’s played by a myriad of bands who had eschewed FM radio’s Classic Rock–dominated format and looked to earlier American roots music. Not quite the blues. Not quite the same roots that gave way to the British Invasion. It’s all so complex and interesting and far beyond my ken to write about, but I love the swirling of what came from Africa to the American South, mixed it up with white gospel, moved to Classic Country, bluegrass, Country and Western, the blues. And we shan’t talk about jazz, right? If I only know the tip of the iceberg on the history of alt rock, you don’t even want to know how far afield Jazz is for me (same goes for Classical music, yeesh!).

I love almost every Knitters’ song although they only put out 2 albums. There are a couple I might skip over and a few I don’t dig as much as others. But the ones I love, I love with a passion. Exene’s voice seems to have been made for country music. The rhythm, guitars, and bass are often modeled directly from bands like Johnny Cash’s circa “Folsom Prison Blues”  (think of a boom-chicka-boom, chicka-boom two-beat*).

Here’s an original song being performed by John Doe and Exene. Its first manifestation was as an X song. It’s red hot and a fine example of their high art as singer-songwriters (I should insert here that John Doe has a voice that melts me AND he’s a tall drink of water to boot, so elegant. I swoon…).

As far as the covers on both Knitters’ albums: I love them. I love their version of “Walkin’ Cane.” I love “Rank Stranger.” I love the murder ballad “Little Margaret” (also Matty Groves; Sweet William; the same song referenced in the novel “Cold Mountain” and sung on the soundtrack for the film). I love “Give Me the Flowers While I’m Living,” which practically warrants a post of its own for its origins and related songs. The list goes on.

I love their version of Jimmy Driftwood’s Long Chain On, but I’monna post Mr. Driftwood himself singing it. I had a fellow Alexander Technique teacher tell me a story about meeting Jimmy Driftwood once down in Arkansas. Don’t you love America?

You still should check out The Knitters’ version because the driving guitar and Exene’s harmony to John Doe’s lead vocals do the song a great justice. Jimmy would be proud.

*I stole that from the liner notes to Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison

Also, a late-breaking edit here: I recommend poking around to listen and watch other live versions of The Knitters performing. I thought Exene and John were sort of sweet in that video up there. It’s not that it’s my favorite or anything. Mostly, this post should encourage you to listen to them, period, if you weren’t aware of them before. Ciao, my pets, ♥ twinkly

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Thankful Thursday–the advent of advent and my amazing daughters (including a long history of my ethno-religious background)

Howdy, loyal friend. I’ve had a rather busy day and a bit of a sad day; this is in part why this post comes quite late. Not my favorite thing, such a late Thankful Thursday.

But, you know, I’ve come up with quite a lengthy post. Can I get a witness?

My youngest daughter made an advent calender for the family this week. It is amazing. She is amazing. I am amazed at her mind and hands. Her abilities to think through projects and to create things of sense and beauty. Both of my girls have amazing abilities. I think part of this comes from their Waldorf education. Maybe some of it can be attributed to them having inherited good brains. Maybe some of it has to do with good parenting. I’m not really sure, but I’ll take it. I think most children are exceptional, so it’s not that mine are necessarily more exceptional, but they are mine, so I notice and I rejoice.

I didn’t grow up with Christmas in a traditional way, mostly because my father was Jewish and my mother, who converted to Judaism but not really (that’s another matter altogether) would not have Christmas in our house out of respect for my father. She had grown up with Christmas as a young girl in Germany, but it was during the war and she had a childhood-from-hell (I kid you not and am not exaggerating in any way, but that’s another story and perhaps not mine to tell). To further boost the eschewing of Christmas, both of my parents were atheists. We did have Hannukah for a few years when I was young, but because my father didn’t give a flying !@#$% about it, it didn’t stick either. My father, in spite of growing up in an Orthodox household in Hungary (maybe it was Reform and I’ve got this wrong), was basically a hands-off religion guy. He just didn’t care about it. I now am so thankful for this, but it wasn’t always easy growing up as the only kid who didn’t have a religion per se. Now where I live, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting* someone who’s at least a quarter Jewish, let alone half-Jewish, let alone a goddamn atheist. So FINALLY, for the last 11 years of my life, I fit in!

We never had a Christmas tree at our house when I was growing up. We did, however, go to Germany when I was 4 and there we had a real German Christmas. I even remember live candles on the tree. And a fish in aspic which I thought was gross and scary.

We also celebrated Christmas at some friends’ in Canada after I was about 7. These became our life-long family friends who are more like cousins and aunts and uncles to me, especially since I came from a very small family and half of my relatives live in Germany. So, our family friends in Canada became family, period, and we did Christmas there for many years. Now isn’t that a kick in the nuts considering all I just said about Christmas?

Anyway, I have a long history of feelings about Christmas, but my children took to it with gusto. My youngest is still very enamored of it.

A few years ago, maybe 5 or 6, I guess we started to get the girls advent calenders. This was foreign territory to me and somewhat distasteful–too Christian or something, unlike certain parts of Christmas which I had been able to enjoy more easily and to separate from anything religious. There are certain things that are clearly pagan and so I could justify allowing and including and enjoying them even as a non-Christian, half-Jew. I think advent calenders aren’t really religious or pagan anyway, but something about them smacks of religion for me. Maybe the sparkly white kids and angels who are usually depicted all over them.

So, my Annie is away for the week at a class field trip to study geometry. She left the advent calender that she made for us so we could open a little tab and see a new picture each day. In spite of a troubled mind and a troubled world, in spite of death and sadness, I am especially happy that I have such amazing and beautiful daughters. And I LOVE the advent calender. SO MUCH.

Here it is. It is simply lovely (not too fancy) and organized, quietly beautiful and elegant, sort of like Annie herself:

I am most impressed by the way she had to measure it all out, line things up and use 2 pieces of paper in the planning and the way she drew a different secret tiny picture for each little window.

This is it, people, this is the satisfaction of being a parent. I feel blessed and filled.

See you soon I hope….g’night!

*An announcement from the management: Don’t tell anyone, but it’s Friday morning–so wrong since this is a Thankful Thursday post. But the management was up thinking about the phrase you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a (insert noun) for a good part of the time she should have been sleeping.

You know what I love? I LOVE folk expressions, not just idiomatic, but old-timey idiomatic phrases rarely heard any more. Heck, they are so rare that I only know about 3 of them. In any case, because I love cats and because I loathe the mistreatment of animals, that phrase is actually quite offensive. But it’s also rich and bewildering AND gets its point across like no other phrase I can think of. Can you help me? Is there another idiomatic turn of the language that accomplishes that meaning? And can you forgive me for using a string of words that is offensive? What if I do it again? Like this: you can’t swing a dead cat in the Pioneer Valley without hitting a massage therapist.  Not only am I half-Jewish, but I’m a massage therapist to boot! I now think I can retire that phrase. God is it offensive! What would the Dakin people think?

 

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