ramblin’ ’round

New Year’s is coming. I tried to write about being curled in the dark at the Solstice, but I left the post hanging in my draft file.

It’s raining, pouring. Now it rains in December, November, October. No doubt it will rain in January. There are lots of nights when the temps drop into the teens and single digits; and yes, there are snowstorms and cancellations and hazardous driving conditions. I’m curled in my cold house, layers of clothing as if I lived in a stone castle. When did I start to dress like an old person?

This should all be snow. I hate this rain every year now. We all know it’s wrong, at least those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s and remember a snowy winter and never saw rain from October ’til April.

Some of the curling inward this year is because I am still struggling with injury—sprains, strains, arthritis; an unknown and un-diagnosible protrusion on my L clavicle. I can’t move as well as I’d like so I curl up. I am not depressed though. I am cheerful and well-rested for the most part.

I’ve thought of writing a post chronicling all the cool things I was privileged to do this year and maybe I still will. The music, the dances, the museums. I am surrounded by art and culture and I get to go to the ocean a fair bit.

I am also thinking I will do a post about resolutions.

Here’s a Calder from the Cleveland Museum of Art which we visited on a rare Thanksgiving jaunt to Ohio.

Once when we were in New York, the kids were still very young, we saw a Calder in one of the rooms at whichever museum (MOMA? MMA?) and we blew on it. You are not allowed to make the Calder move by blowing on it and we were chided by the museum attendant. It was the definition of irony.

Such whimsy and fun:

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on the soles of their traveling shoes

Do you know how far away China is?

I sure don’t because I flunked my geography test last week. Not only that, but my GPS doesn’t tell me the names of the streets.

Hey, the littlest birds just saved you from a post entitled: ugh! wordpress, why are you so dumb?

and that wouldn’t have been very fair because, let’s face it, I love my blog. But I also love irony.

on another note (or is it all the same note?), I am still sad about our dear cat and I am eager to do a real Montreal travel post since it got kinda fucked up along the way

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the spirit’s binding seam

the road through the middle of several farm fields in Hadley on which there is a road sign stating Drifting Snow in black letters on a yellow background with 2 squiggly black lines: in a normal winter, yes. This winter? ironic

the sign at the car wash on Rte 9 heading west just after the I-91 S entrance: ouchless Car Wash. They’ve put back the letter T, but they didn’t really need to, did they?

I see red tails all the time on the telephone lines next to Bay Rd, the hawks surveying the ground for mice and voles, anything, nothing

This clip is not ironic, but it is brilliant, one of my favorites from one of my favorites. That Wes Anderson knows his shit.

This is brilliant, too

I like to think that I’m not as big a fan of The Who as any male could be. I certainly listened to my share of The Who in high school and college. I even saw them at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1980, after the Cincinnati trampling tragedy. My parents were understandably freaked out, but I still went. It was only half of the Silverdome, seating 40,000 instead of 80,000. When I write this, I don’t believe any of it. Not the year, not the numbers, not that I was there, not that I shirked off my parents’ concerns with a teenage disrespect I now understand from the other side.

The Who=Cock Rock

I had tickets to see Led Zeppelin when I was in high school and then Jon Bonham OD’d. Man was I pissed.

Led Zeppelin, although also Cock Rock, still works for me more than The Who.

How can I predict what music I’ll still like in a year? In thirty?

I can say with some assurance that I will never tire of Led Zeppelin’s In My Time of Dying and I think it might be their greatest recording and also one of the finest recorded examples of that particular gospel tune. Robert Plant’s pleading is the heart of the heart of gospel. I love when the drums kick back in to rejoin his a capella solo.

I did look up Blind Willie Johnson’s version, but I am more familiar with him singing “John the Revelator” from the Harry Smith recordings. Amazing.

I notice the slowing of my mental sharpness. I can’t remember lines with any facility like I could in high school. Ironically, I didn’t do any acting from then to about 10 years ago and now I can’t remember lines without a shitload of rehearsing.

Will I eventually be like my mother? How can she last to 97 years like her own mother? That’s 20 more years. I don’t see it. I don’t like it.

Originally, I was going to title this post “oh, the irony” or “small ironies” or “bitter irony” but I couldn’t come up with enough ironic things

And am I born to die? To lay this body down/ And must my trembling spirit fly, into a world unknown?

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Music Monday–Michael Jackson; and just because you have one….

(I hope you didn’t have to suffer through 5 seconds of a Ron Paul campaign ad before the video. Oh the irony!)

Much could be said about this song and video, but I’m not gonna go on about that. I do find it interesting that the amazing drum troupe, Olodum, featured in the song, champions of race and human rights, seem not to have any females in their group. Perhaps they are “allowed” to dance, but I don’t see any females drumming. Please educate me and tell me I’m wrong, or tell me the whys and wherefores. I can’t learn everything of importance on wiki….

Look, it’s not that I’m against all-male drum troupes or all-female drum troupes. But based on Olodum’s mission, as I understand it, it does bother me and strikes me as ironic that there are no chicks drumming. Again, help me. Tell me I’m wrong and why. All bloggers, including moi, are simply dying to have their ignorance exposed.

I’m not a fan of Michael Jackson, but I do recognize that he was a soul brother in spite of his creepiness. Was he a child molester? Was he smart (methinks, NO)? Was he mentally ill? Was he abused as a child? Was it just the drugs? One is still responsible for one’s actions and Michael Jackson was CREEPY and STRANGE and NOT RIGHT. Still, I’m glad he shared his talents with the world in spite of it.

I am sorry he’s still crotch-grabbing in the video. It’s unseemly, stupid, immature, and unnecessary. Do you think he insisted? Habit hard to break?

Anyway, here’s the whole slogan:

Just because you have one, doesn’t mean you have to act like one

But you knew that, right?

I’ve seen those words on a bumper sticker and I’ve thought, do I approve? do I agree? do I find this offensive?

I’ve never come to any final conclusion about the phrase except I think about it on occasion.

After taking my car for a repair on Saturday and after my ordeal with Dr. Old School Offensive Insensitive Reprehensible, I am a Male God Ruler of the Vagina and Uterus in the ER 2 weeks ago, it will not be too soon if a man is never a dick to me again in my life. I’m 48 and I’ve been treated unacceptably by men [for being female] on more occasions than you can count on ten fingers and ten toes and than anyone can count anywhere, anyways, and in any case (I’m guessing most of the women you would poll would come up with similar numbers). The worst offenders are certainly men who work in car repair, then male OB/GYNS, and finally, perhaps, home repairmen.

So fellas, can you please get your shit together?

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