Still Spinning

“You sound like a broken record.”  It’s been awhile since that made any literal sense to me, but this morning, I heard Bob Dylan sing, “No direc-, no direc-, no direc-, no direc-.”  I’ve had my new turntable for a week and I can’t stop playing records.  Cleared a shelf for them.  Bought speaker wire.  It’s gotten serious.

I’ll say right away: I didn’t do it for the superior sound quality of vinyl.  Far from hi-fi, mine is just equipment that fits.  Someday, a sharper stylus, better boom, but for now, I simply want to play the records that I’ve been keeping for years in boxes that Hester keeps shredding. 

So a week ago on Record Store Day, I went to all three shops in my neighborhood and at the last one, found a cheap enough deck.  Walked it home, hooked it up and started sorting and spinning, getting reacquainted with my collection.  Outkast on vinyl?  Ice-cold! Kings of Leon, see-through 10”, beautiful.  “Sticky Fingers” –one of those albums you must play straight through.  It started to rain and the sound through the open window blended with the static of old jazz records, which sound the best so far, perhaps because they’ve always sounded that way.  I laid the needle down on Judy Garland’s “I Get the Blues When It Rains”.

Dragging a box of records around makes the impracticality of the media clear.  They’re heavy and they’re dirty.  I’d gotten the dust fits at the record stores and I found that most of my own discs needed cleaning.  Some are really too scratched to enjoy; every few seconds, and quickening with the needle’s trip, you hear a sound like electric Velcro.  I’m afraid that’s the case for Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough”, but I can’t throw it away, not when I look into those piercing blue eyes on the album cover (set off by her large, chestnut hair).  Plus, the colorful Decca label on the album itself screams craft project.

In the week since I’ve had the turntable, I’ve spent fewer of my free hours in front of a screen and more handling records.  Surely part of the format’s appeal is that all five senses are involved in the listening experience, starting with the tactile.  You can’t run your fingertip gently across the grooves of an mp3.  (Granted, you can hold a CD, but I just rip mine to the hard drive, then wait for a minor scratch to render them unplayable.  Rumor has it that major labels may soon abandon the format altogether.)  What does a cassette tape smell like?  Records smell like cardboard and must, sometimes smoke, sometimes truly wax.  Taste, well that’s a stretch, but when you sit and listen to records as an activity, you get a hankerin’ for a cold one.  All these classic rock albums have put me in the mood for some of that old-fashioned swill – maybe a High Life. [1]

This heady blend of aesthetic appeal and nostalgia has now-apparent economic implications.  While CD sales have tanked, vinyl sales continue to rise annually; according to the BBC, they’re at a six-year high.  Yet, I can’t transfer my habits as a digital consumer to the record store.  I have around 11,000 songs in my digital collection, and I’m listening for more every day.  How much would those weigh in vinyl?  How much would it cost to duplicate the digital collection, considering I get most digital albums at a fraction of the cost I used to pay for a bullshit CD.  John Cheese, in a column on Cracked.com, claims that “creating the idea that entertainment has no monetary value” is one of “5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation”.  He argues that piracy in the digital age, even as backlash against big-label greed, ultimately devalued music and other arts/entertainment, making it harder for the little guy to make any money.  Clearly, new technology economically devalued the industry’s dominant format.  But Cheese (think that’s his real name?) ignores the fact that the same technology enabled world-wide access to artists and their works, and that translates into economic value, too.  Profit is simply distributed beyond corporate confines and into local markets.  It’s narrow to discuss music in solely economic terms; still, it seems like the social values held dear by those who kept their local record stores open through 30 (40?) years of new-tech are being (re)commodified.  Billboard calls this year’s Record Store Day sales “explosive”.

I’ve been playing records all week and I’m running out.  I’ve been back to Joe’s with a wishlist, looking for albums that I can’t find because they’re too rare by now, or they were never put on wax, or I can get it digitally for so much less (so I already have it).  I’d love to have all the White Stripes’ albums brand new on vinyl, but I’m not some kind of millionaire.  The big grab is on again, and that’s okay, but when new albums cost $30, the full aesthetic experience that keeps us listening to records becomes exclusive.  I don’t want to pay a dear $30 for a record; to me, other values are compromised by that transaction. 

Luckily, there’s no end to the backlog of supply.  Record stores are back in business.  There’s the stash in your parents’ basement.  You’re in the corner of an antique shop flipping through a stack, looking for nothing in particular and suddenly – Neil Diamond.  His shirt is open; his earnest gaze pleads, “Play Me”.  You laugh out loud, thinking, “Someone bought this once and enjoyed it,” and that snicker alone is worth 50 cents, you suppose; now that person is you.  What a small step it is from irony to sentimentalism, sucker!

But you’ll remember the how and the when.  Where were you when you bought your last 5,000 mp3s?

I was once in Quebec City in early June when the days were long and the sunset, rosy gold.  Loose on chambourcin, I picked up a couple of records someone had thrown out with the trash, and I stuffed them into the trunk of my car.  One of them was the Judy Garland album I played last week when it rained.

My nephew gave me The Black Keys “Attack and Release” for Christmas in Boston, and we spent the holiday listening to his albums on a portable record player from the 50s, the kind you might have found in a public school’s AV closet.

I was really of the cassette-tape generation, but we always had a turntable in the house, so naturally a few of my parents’ and siblings’ albums made their way into my collection.  When my grandparents died and my uncle Paul came to live with us, his extensive collection came too.  You may be thinking, “Mary, are you saying you stole from a disabled man?”  Listen, Uncle Paul and I are tight.  He’d understand that if anyone should have Bonnie Tyler’s “Faster than the Speed of Night” on vinyl, it should be someone who can appreciate the Wagnerian excesses of a Jim Steinman song,  someone such as myself, his beloved niece. 

My first favorite song was Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” which my sister and brother had on 45, orange label.  I was a toddler and I marveled at the idea that someone might actually play funky music until they died.  Luckily, the song ends well with the protagonist “funking out in every way.” 

Then, when I was 7, I went insane for “Stray Cat Strut”.  My sister was in high school and by that time, I knew she’d be leaving home soon.  Her friend came by to pick her up and that friend gave me the Stray Cats’ “Built for Speed”.  It was my first, very-own album.  It’s got some crackle and warp these days, but I think it still cooks.

Records will never match the ease and diversity of my digital collection; nor will that ever be the point of collecting them, listening to them, Side A and Side B.   Records become memories.  They’re imprints of time, place and identity.  Last week, I bought a cheap turntable in Silver Spring, MD.  I brought it home and out came so much great music that I hadn’t heard in years, if ever before.  But I was also thinking about work, and I was reading about Paris, and I was wondering whether I should fix a drink.  It started to rain.  We’d been needing the rain.  I put on that Judy Garland song, and it was perfect.

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[1] Vertical Integration Idea for Dogfish Head Brewing Company:  Buy the rights to Miles Davis and Robert Johnson albums; re-release them on vinyl as a “Dogfish Head Presents” series to be sold with (or separately from) Bitches Brew and Hellhound on My Ale.  Imagine the cover art.  And the t-shirt sales!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

Twelfth night is here, the traditional close to the Christmas season, and an appropriate time to reflect on the holidays. Most people probably got that done sometime around New Year’s, but I was tired and rather hungover and pretty focused on football that whole week, so I’m just now getting around to it. For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t travel; Laura’s family came to Silver Spring to attend her commencement and stayed on through Christmas morning. It was a big change for everyone, and as hostesses, Laura and I were feeling quite grown-up, if anxious. The occasion seemed to call for another first: our first Christmas tree.

It may seem like the whole world falls into a sentimental swoon the minute trussed-up pines appear in church lots, or are assembled in the back aisles of Target. Strap one to the mini-van, pull the color-coded branches from the box! But for some people, the tree as symbol is fraught with mixed emotions. It’s always so much more than a tree – it’s the past, hung from limbs, item by item: the painted plaster star from kindergarten, the Nutcracker commemorating the grammar-school play, the souvenir from your first trip to the city you’re now living in, the angel from the year you needed prayers, and a friend, and she sent you both. Not all memories are sugar plums. Say you grew up non-Christian and the young evangelicals with whom you spent your schooldays told you constantly that you were a super kid, but most certainly hellbound, their self-righteousness reaching fever-pitch around the holidays. Maybe picking a tree was not a magical day with dad and a saw in a snowy forest, but a drunken, violent fiasco, the crooked fir a perfect emblem of bitter resignation. (In defense of my family and Laura’s, I want to clarify that everything above is entirely hypothetical and not a reference to our own upbringings.) I’m just saying, there are reasons the rare American may not feel compelled to install a Christmas tree in his or her home, and Laura has had a few of her own over the years. Me, I just decorate the houseplants.

And why get a tree if you’re not going to be around to tend and enjoy it? The past two years, I’ve been in Boston, and either Michigan or Minnesota before that. A dry pine in an empty apartment? Downright dangerous. But this year, company was coming. We had to think of others and their expectations, as called for not just by the season but by hostessing decorum. Why, it seemed like it would be rude not to have a tree. What are we, heathens? (And were heathens not the original tree-keepers, anyway?) It’s just what’s done. You go into someone’s home in December, you compliment them on their tree. “It’s a beautiful tree,” you say, and then add a detail, like “So full!” or “Great color scheme!” or “It looks so real!” or “Disco-tree, huh? That’s different!”

So one Saturday morning, we exiled the houseplants to the bedroom to clear a space, and we put on our hats and gloves and set out on our great expedition to – to the farmer’s market, about a block away. We didn’t want one of Whole Foods’ uniform, bourgeois trees, and there’s a Boy Scouts lot, but I don’t want to give money to anyone who discriminates against gay kids. Laura didn’t take seriously my plan to drive to a State Forest, cut down what looked good and stash it under a tarp in the trunk. (Anchor vs. sails.) So we did the practical thing and went with some farmers from Pennsylvania who’d been driving down for the market since Thanksgiving. (Didn’t ask them about their politics.) We walked over thinking we’d get a small tree for our small living room, maybe 3’ tall. Then again, there was vertical space to spare, so maybe 5’ tall, I proposed, measuring myself against a demo. Nothing that size had yet been unloaded, so the farmer went deeper into the truck bed and pulled out a fine smallish spruce, just a touch over 6’ tall. Laura paid the $40 – I insisted that she pay so that it would never somehow become my “goddamned tree” – and we walked it home on our shoulders, stepping on our long shadows.

It fit perfectly in front of our window. Fixed in the stand, it began to open up. It had a wild look, untrimmed, not wholly symmetrical but balanced anyway. We figured out how many strands of lights we’d need and strung them around it, then got out the ornaments. I have a box of ornaments collected from childhood, but Laura doesn’t, so I gave her a few I’d bought in advance of this big day – some Stars of David, Maryland Terps balls and a shiny mug of beer. I hung the Michigan 1998 Rose Bowl ball prominently, the Maid o’ Milkin’, and one or two that I’d made with my mom when I was a kid. It wasn’t bad for first timers. No, it was lovely, quite natural looking, not too gaudy, just right. I thought, “You could pick that tree out of a lineup as our own.”

But my favorite thing about the tree was how clearly Hester admired it. She loves a project, so she supervised its set-up and then promptly settled beneath it, a contented loaf. Most people say cats are hell on trees, but she didn’t mess with it, just took up residence under its boughs where she’d gaze up at the lights with that Zen-like expression cats usually only get after a good meal. Day or night, we could find her under her tree. I liked getting up in the dark of morning, plugging in the lights, and sitting with my coffee just looking at the tree and at Hester looking at the tree, imagining she was tuned in to some ancient instinct and felt protected in its umbrage.

Yet, as Christmas grew nearer, the tree changed little by little, and I’d grown so acquainted with it that I could perceive its slight droop. More needles peppered the carpet. In its first days, it had drunk a quart daily; now it wasn’t taking up any water. I got depressed when I looked at it then, this beautiful being that had lived in the ground and the sun, dying right in front of me. Dying for my amusement, for the sake of tradition. (Don’t get me wrong – I love tradition, but not typically more than I love trees.) I felt guilty in the way you feel guilty when you’re conversing with cows and you remember your last hamburger. But the hamburger was already dead when you ordered it, as the tree was already cut.

Just before Laura’s family arrived, we arranged our gifts for them under the tree, shiny paper reflecting colored lights. They added to pile when they came over, and they said it was a very nice tree. “Thanks for getting the tree,” her dad said. Then we took her parents to Annapolis where we finally found the perfect tree topper, a Maryland Blue Crab in a tangle of Christmas lights. Across the room, we lit the menorah for Hannukah, too. And on Christmas morning, Laura and I donned Santa hats, reached under the boughs and handed gifts around the room.

I look around the same room now, symbols, symbols everywhere –what’s a photograph worth? Why do I keep a small jar of shells from a beach on Platte Lake twenty years ago? What’s the value of a teacup, a thumb-worn book? We come into adulthood with our values externally imposed; we are made of our experiences and coerced by our society. But the older I get, the more I feel liberated by the responsibility of making my own meaning out of the mix, choosing what to keep, discard and create. A Christmas tree is Pagan, Christian, European, American; it’s the past; it comes too early; it’s commodity; it’s the beautiful human need to see life in the dead of winter; it’s ironically killed to serve that need; it smells good and makes the cat happy. I’m an adult now – hell, I’ve hosted Christmas – I get to decide what my Christmas tree means among all possible and fixed meanings.

A winter weekend with my love. A farmer’s care, but not too much of it. Light when light is sparse. Thinking of someone else for a change. Family—the one you were born with and the one you’ve put together. When I look back on 2011, as every year, the times that matter most are those I spent with family, including that wider family comprised of good friends. I’m not saying that the Christmas tree is the perfect pathetic fallacy for all that love spread over all that land – just that I choose to see it as another reminder that we all live and we all die, as another opportunity to think about what we do, why we do it, and who we do it for.

I couldn’t bear to just throw it on the curb. I wanted to take it to a State Forest or something, and light it ablaze with great ceremony. Laura felt this was impractical, if not illegal. I say that if you can’t burn your own Christmas tree, then freedom is nothing but a gas station somewhere in the upper Midwest. So we compromised and drove it to Rock Creek Park around sunset, cut it up and stuffed in in one of their stone fireplaces. We lit its boughs, fanned the orange flames until its thick smoke slowed evening traffic, and raised a couple of mugs of Mad Fox Festivus beer to what a good tree it had been.

So let the drummers drum, then. Let the new year begin to unfurl. It’s still winter, but never for long. Time to work so that I can play; time to miss the ones I love who are far away so that I can anticipate the sweetness of reunion; time to remember the ones who have gone, and to go on living in my turn, with them a part of me. (Made my grandpa’s gingerbread on Christmas morning. My mom, on the phone, said, “Thank you for eating my dad’s bread!”) We might get a tree next year, and we might not. But we’ve got all these ornaments now. I’m thinking a potted tree, one to last through spring so we can plant it later, maybe in some State Forest, a fair deal bought from earnest farmers with good politics… Laura says we’ll just have to wait and see.

Cabin Fever Develops Into Kitchen Mania: A Recipe Post

It’s been a snowy winter in Maryland, and more snow is on its way –in a big way. A couple of feet will soon cripple the city. Metro will close its above-ground stations and the streets will stay buried all weekend.

As much as I like the excitement of snow days (these are relatively benign disasters, after all), I miss color; I miss smells. The winter world is black and white. Snow is bright, dissembling, soft, while roads become slick, black two-tracks. The bare, black arms of trees are laden with pretty fluff, but the long-view is obscured. And when it melts, the sun only shines on dirt. I become insular, dulled senses driving me inward, and inward, I find that I want to sweat in light clothes again, to catch a ribbon of barbecue threading a hot wind, to suck in the scent of honey locust and mimosa trees in bloom, even though they make my whole face ache. But it’s winter. What can one do?

As for sweating in light clothes, a return to yoga took care of that yearning, and I’m still sore. But color and smell require some concocting. My cabin fever has developed into kitchen mania. I’ve had an insatiable sweet-tooth all winter long, and I’ve indulged it. Wildflower honey stirred into hot milk before bed. Quince paste and camembert on mini-toasts. A key lime pie in a home-baked graham cracker crust (this, courtesy of Laura) doesn’t last 24 hours in this joint. And the chocolate! One wonderful bar after another, dark, darker, blended with sea salt and turbinado sugar, melted into hot cocoa – my love knows no limits.

But it’s bigger culinary projects that have turned my kitchen tropical with pots aboil on the range, or Phoenix-hot from constant oven use. Of course, the best thing about cooking isn’t the flurry of color on the cutting board, or the clouds of flavor you can smell down the hall – it’s diving face-first into the results. While the inches pile up, I’ll have ribs in the slow-cooker, collards on the range, and I’ll be conjuring up some sweet finish. Meanwhile, let me share with you the recipes for a few of my more successful kitchen adventures: jerk-pork and goat cheese wrap, chicken and wild rice soup, and cherry-pecan bread pudding. Enjoy:

Jerk Pork and Goat Cheese Wrap
(I prepared the jerk pork in the slow-cooker. Low and slow oven would do.)

1-2 lb. pork loin
Rub with a blend of the following spices to-taste:
1 tbs sea salt
Red chili pepper or cayenne
Black pepper
Thyme
Cinnamon
Clove
White pepper (scant)
Fresh ground nutmeg (scant)

Put it in the slow cooker with this mixture, and cook 4-5 hours:
2tbs cider vinegar
¼ cup molasses
¼ cup brown sugar
1 minced onion
2 minced garlic cloves

Take pork out of the cooker and pull it apart with forks. Strain juices to remove pulp, and reduce. Use this reduction to baste meat.

Sauté red bell pepper strips and onion strips.

Smear your wrap with goat cheese; the creaminess and tang complement the acidity and sweetness of the jerk pork. Add the pork, peppers and onions, and some fresh baby spinach. Wrap and enjoy!


Chicken Wild Rice Soup

Step 1: Start with a gallon of chicken stock. I make my stock a day in advance. I buy a small chicken, and I cut off and reserve the breast meat. I boil down the rest of the chicken all day, with carrots, celery hearts and onions in the stock, too. I salt the stock so that the finished product is just a bit less salty than I want the soup to be in the end.

Step 2: make a roux with ½ cup of melted butter and 1 cup of flour, careful not to brown the butter or roux.

Step 3: prepare wild rice, 3 cups cooked.

Step 4: chop the following:
1 cup celery
1cup carrots
1 cup onion
2 cups sliced white mushrooms

4b. Brown the first three ingredients in schmaltz (chicken fat from the stock). Toward the end of browning, add the mushrooms, which will brown up quicker than the others.

Step 5: cube and brown white chicken meat

Step 6. Stir roux into stock and simmer until thickened.
Stir in vegetables and rice, along with: Salt to-taste, and ¼ tsp each of black pepper, white pepper, ground nutmeg and cayenne pepper.
Stir in 1 cup heavy whipping cream. Simmer until all flavors marry, and serve!

You may top your soup with toasted, slivered almonds, or a tablespoon of cream sherry.

Cherry Pecan Bread Pudding
4-5 cups white bread, left out overnight to dry out.

Mix 1 cup of granulated sugar with 2 cups of whole milk, five eggs and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. (You might add cinnamon as well.) Pour this mixture over the chopped up, dry bread and let it soak in for ten minutes. All this goes into a greased pan. I used a square one. I sprinkled in 1/2 - 1 cup of dried cherries, and pushed them into the bread-custard just a bit. (They sink some while baking.)

Separately, combine 1/2 stick of soft butter with 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar and 1 cup chopped pecans. Sprinkle over the puddin'. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes

PS: I had I promised I'd blog about football weekend in Ann Arbor. While the events which unfolded there have been well-documented, I decided that they were inappropriate for public forum. Ask me privately. (The Big Green Bottle strikes again.)

So Long, October!

Some people were born to run marathons. I think I was born to drink beer and walk the streets. Just after noon on Devil’s Night, I hopped off the bus in Soho with my pendulous pack on and hoofed my way over to McSorley’s Old Ale House for some fortification.

I’d done my research the previous night, knowing I’d have a day to myself in the Big Apple. I’ve already been to the major museums, Lady Liberty, even the top of the World Trade Center back in the day, so tourist staples were out in favor of more low-key personal pursuits. Weaving up Broadway, I was re-amazed by how many people there are in that city, people of every nationality, physiognomy and smell.

Green barrels out front announced the pub. Inside, it could have been 1859, were it not for the modern-clad lunch crowd –some of whom were dressed for Halloween early—and for gals like me. McSorley’s is famous not just for being one of New York’s oldest bars, but for being forced to open its doors to women for the first time in 1970. All the wood, black-dark; the walls all covered in yellowed photographs of long-dead patrons; sawdust on the floor, ceramic steins lining the back of the bar. I took a table deep in and beside an unlit hearth. The choices were light and dark ale; I ordered a dark and a clam chowder. The ale is served double, two small heady mugs of it, and the chowder comes with a veritable serving spoon. I put my feet up and alternated beer and broth, bitter and creamy, and it set me up well for the rest of Manhattan.

I hit up Pete’s Tavern, established 1864, to drink a Brooklyn Pumpkin Ale where O. Henry once drank; paid homage to a Bust of Washington Irving, thinking delectably frightening thoughts of headless horsemen flinging flaming jack-o-lanterns. I even stepped into Strand Books to admire the shelf of leather-bound classics, and the people who still love books milling through, touching covers. Everywhere I went, there were skeletons, spiderwebs, pumpkins and freaks. I was having the best Friday!

By the time I got to West 81st, my legs were burning and my neck going numb from the backpack. I was looking forward to lounging around Central park for an hour or so. But the color of the trees and the blanket of fallen leaves mesmerized me. I was soon happily lost on The Ramble.

Wooded paths wound around granite outcroppings and away from the carriages and cabs. I stopped to watch lovers rowing boats on the lake in the angled, afternoon sun, with the San Remo towers rising beyond the trees. The light through orange and yellow leaves made everything seem gilded, like the place and the moment were good as gold for me. Slowly now, I rambled under the stone arch and further into the park, leaves dropping all around like memories through my mind.

I feel at home in the world, I realized. I feel at home alike in the wilderness and the metropolis. I remembered when I first visited New York, and perhaps I was even experientially young for my age (although perhaps the age just seems so much younger from here), but that first trip was tough-going. Oh, I loved the sights and history with my natural enthusiasm, but I was put-off by the city’s closeness and speed, baffled by the subway, the neighborhoods, the Boroughs. I thought it was cold, expensive and dirty. (How young was I when I first visited NYC? Young enough to think wearing camo pants was cool.)

Who would have guessed that ten years out, I’d be back in Central Park grabbing a hot dog, settling down for a snooze on a grassy hill while a bagpiper busked for dollars in the distance.

A few weeks back, I was ruing my seemingly permanent academic penury – the old “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” routine. And I acknowledged that my oft-empty coffers are no result of circumstance, but a consequence of my choices. Well on the flipside, anyone could ask me (and some have, in their way), “If you’re so poor, how the hell can you be so happy?” What can I say? I feel lucky. And I am enormously, joyously proud of how my choices have changed me.

The trip was a fitting climax to a terrific month that began back when maples were just tinged with color, and we camped with Chris at what’s become our northern local park – Raccoon Creek State Park west of Pittsburgh (our southern local park being Shenandoah). Then we’d gotten in the Halloween spirit with a nighttime stroll through Holy Rood Cemetery in DC, and a visit to Poe’s house and gravestone in Baltimore. We’d toasted to Laura’s 34th birthday at the coolest old bar in Fells Point. And in New York, the Halloweekend wasn’t over yet. Laura finished her conference obligations in Jersey City and I met her at 6th Avenue and 42nd Street, the orange –lit Empire State Building reflected in one glass tower and the Chrysler Building reflected in another. Friday night still lay open before us. “I could use a drink,” she said, and I pulled my Michigan flask from that big old backpack. Such are the rewards of experience.

We finished the weekend in the company of great friends and the revelry of the Village’s Halloween Parade. Sunday morning, it was So long New York, and So long October. We caught glimpses of the New Yprk City Marathoners running in herds across Manhattan’s bridges as our bus rolled toward the Hudson. Some people were born for that. As for me, the broader streets of DC and the season of winter ales are calling.

Next up: Michigan vs. OSU at The Big House

"I Didn't Write a Book This Summer" and Other Potential Themes for my Back-to-School Pity Party

Those heady days of early May when I had all the time in the world on my hands: gone. Azalea days, blank-slate days, days begun with big plans to kick out a draft of an autobiographical novel by summer’s end: gone. It’s not that I wasted it all; no, I conceptualized, noted, even wrote some. I recovered from a hellaciously busy academic year. And so often, when life came calling, offering road trips or street walkin’, I put the notebook down and chose action over craft and reflection. Time passed like the miles on the odometer. So where did it go?

A lot of it went into my mouth. I had some of the best meals of my life this summer, starting with our mid-May trip through Tennessee and back. On our first day in Nashville, Laura and I checked out a Travel Channel suggestion for down-home country cooking: the Loveless Cafe on the northern terminus of the Natchez Trace. http://www.lovelesscafe.com/ . The place was no secret. Mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, we still faced a 1.5 hour wait, which allowed us to browse the gift shop and write postcards. Yes, the gift shop. I grew concerned that we had fallen into a tourist trap, but when our buzzer went off and we were ushered through the wainscoted dining room, its gingham-covered tables laden with plates of biscuits, country breakfasts, chicken and ribs, I knew every body in the joint was there for the real deal. We got a corner table, comfortably seated between tall paintings of Johnny Cash and Jesus. The biscuits – the specialty so heavily promoted on TV shows by their baker, Carol Fay – came hot and fast, and were high-risen, moist, butterlicious. I’d like to sleep on a bed of those biscuits.

And the fried chicken touched my soul. Really, I’ve tried to describe it with the terminology of both religious epiphany and sexual ecstasy, but words fail. It was perfect, period, and any variation in its preparation might have compromised that perfection. How much care and experience must a cook bring to the fryer to get it so right? Further down the road, I had the best ribs of my life at A & R Barbecue, and some stunning sweet potato pancakes at The Arcade, both in Memphis. I washed it all down with some fine swill, too, like Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel and scuppernong wine from Asheville, North Carolina.

And there was song. Laura and I kicked off June with and unprecedented three-night run at the 9:30 Club, probably my favorite venue in D.C. Maybe the bands that play there are just big enough, or the ticket prices just high enough, so the crowd isn’t afraid to show a little enthusiasm. (I get regularly pissed-off about D.C.’s disaffected audiences.) Since I’m like a dwarf, “seeing” shows is relative. We arrived pretty late for the Doves concert, so I’m not really sure how many Doves there were up there, but not only was their sound studio-tight, the show featured a video-screen backdrop where captivating images of urban alienation and psychic apocalypse (and hand-bones) accompanied the trippy performance. Night two: The Hold Steady, the band that rocks my heart out. I put a flask down my sock and got up to the stage early for a great view of the keyboardist and bassist, of Craig Finn’s animated delivery and of all the sing-along kids with their fists in the air. The day after, I woke up late feeling spent and empty. The sun hurt. I couldn’t imagine going at it again. Laura and I walked the blocks around the club sipping a Rogue, not quite adjusted to night life, but adjusting. In the cool dark club, a quilted curtain hung behind the stage, a bright, warm, abstract backdrop for TV on the Radio, who opened with their haunting “Love Dog.” Never have I seen a more musically beautiful rock show.

Mind you, my summer wasn’t all eating and rocking out and hyperbole. I did work a few weeks at summer arts camp and even made a painting of my own, something I haven’t done in years. And I did wrestle some words onto the page, writing at campground picnic tables, in the heat of my high-rise apartment, at Mayorga Coffee, in the middle of Rock Creek. I like the solitary nature of writing, but when you’re writing constantly about the people and places you’ve loved, you stoke a deep social craving. So off we went to Michigan in early July, and to Minnesota in late July to reconnect with family and friends. In Ann Arbor, Chris Palmer hosted a little barbeque in his backyard. We spent a fun day getting giddy for the party, stringing his ’71 VW bus with party lights, laying blankets down beneath the heavy-fruited mulberry tree, chilling the Michigan craft-brews and checking email to see who all would show. Pete and Heather Lee came early. We hadn’t seen Heather for five years. Pete, however, kept things consistent by showing up with a bottle of Pucker. Some things have changed, and some things never change, but during those hours of reunion, the ache in my heart that has, to some degree, existed since we stopped sharing cities and sharing lives was temporarily soothed. And then Mike and Sue showed up with Aidan and a croquet set; Suzanne and Paul came, celebrating new jobs; Barb and Tim brought the kids who have grown into fine young citizens; Kyoko and Jason brought Sakura and we made camping promises; Ben and Dina brought their boy Benjy and a good supply of Stroh’s. We laughed and drank and danced too much, and yet, the night was too short. But so sweet. And it proved that my memories are not overly-romantic, and my pickiness when it comes to friends is not unjustified. I looked around myself in Chris’s backyard and saw some of the most fun, most interesting, best-hearted people in the world. And that’s what I meant to write about; I’m most disappointed that I didn’t record and arrange more memories (and fictionalize them just enough to protect our reputations).

As I wallowed in that disappointment (which is not as strong a motivator as one might think), contracts for academic year 09/10 arrived in the mail; I revised syllabi; I watched each day growing shorter with a low-grade sense of panic. I started a list of things to look forward to in the fall, things like football, paychecks, season 3 of Mad Men, Oktoberfest beer. But with time on my hands the final weekend before back-to-school, did I buckle down and kick out a few chapters? You bet I didn’t, because some newer friends invited Laura and I to camp in the Catskills, and we’d never camped in the Catskills before, and we were eager to build upon our acquaintance with those particular fun, interesting, good-hearted people. We were eager to cool off, see the stars, climb the peaks, build the fires. We got rained on all weekend, and the drive was long, but I loved the thunderstorm-camaraderie, the clean smell of the creek mist and the green, piney smell of the mountain top, the laughter and the beer. That’s my problem – if it is one: I split my bets. When it comes to wine, women and song; food, friends and the road, I live like there’s no tomorrow. When it comes to fulfilling writing goals, I live like I’ve got all the time in the world. The rewards of the former are so immediate; the rewards of the latter, so uncertain, if not altogether unlikely. So be it. All I can do is perpetually re-commit to those elusive writing goals. Who knows, maybe Fall 09 is when the draft gets done (in between teaching comp classes at American and Maryland). But I know one thing for sure: Come Labor Day Weekend, you’ll find me up on the Allegheny Reservoir, enjoying the company of two of my favorite co-campers, Laura and Chris. We’re going to get out on that water and up in those hills, and every fire-cooked omelette and hobo pie will warrant an impromptu ode.