chrysanthemum

a new year, a new location

mechaieh@gmail.com — Wed, 4 Jan 12 16:16:00 UT

Going forward, I'll be posting mainly to zirconium.dreamwidth.org. JournalScape has been a good yard to hang my hammock in the past four years, but Dreamwidth is a better fit for my current needs (particularly accent retention, comment handling, and a url in sync with my Twitter handle [@zirconium]).

So, hope to see you over there! I apologize for the inconvenience to those of you who have gotten used to this location. :-/ I plan to post some reminders and updates here once in a while (the communications mavens at church tell me it takes at least 7-8 attempts to get the average message to its intended audience, and lord knows how slow I am to update my own feeds), but the bulk of my natterings will be yonder.

Speaking of which, here's the link to today's entry:
zirconium.dreamwidth.org/761.html

we are all just visitors in this world

mechaieh@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Dec 11 11:21:00 UT

Last night, one of my aunts quoted that line from the prayerbook I'd sent to her for Christmas. It's echoing in my head today as I skim the Winter 2011 issue of EKU Magazine -- especially the obituaries section. My grade school classmates and I have reached the age where our parents and teachers are populating that column more often, and even though I wasn't a particularly social or socially aware child (put mildly), I recognized most of the names in the "former faculty and staff" section.

I'm reminded of my friend Richard's comment (made during a memorial service reception maybe seven years ago), about how many of the people around us have extraordinary chapters in their lives that don't show up in everyday conversation, such that we find out about those things only in tributes and eulogies. (Dammit.) I've only now learned that a classmate's father used to play for the Knicks, and that the dean of education became an Episcopal priest after he retired from academia. (Also, the dean passed away over two years ago. And also -- I kind of suspected it already, but it kind of aches to have it confirmed -- the music librarian who put up with me so many afternoons and let me shadow her on career day, she died some time ago, too.)

On a happier note, though, I glimpsed my wonderful fourth-grade teacher's name on one of the donor pages; it's nice to see the university improving its music and science facilities; and, it doesn't take much to get me thinking about the awesomeness of the people still around. (Including the gal who recently posted a paean to her own covey of awesome.) A couple of weeks ago, I was a co-host of Room in the Inn with an eighty-something woman who had just returned from traveling across China with another senior member of my church. She was a professional violinist with the Nashville Symphony -- it was delightful to hear her chat with one of the guests about their careers -- and later a science teacher at one of Nashville's prep schools. Another eighty-something I know is a spry, enthusiastic student of Iyengar yoga; her husband is a WWII veteran, but he would rather talk to me about the time he tried to build a tennis court in his mother's yard (finally giving up when tulips popped up on the baseline). The woman who is one of the church's most accomplished bakers served as a combat nurse in Vietnam. I sing next to people who have appeared on New York stages and as soloists in cathedrals; I get hugs during coffee hour from a man who served on Metro Council decades ago, and hugs during happy hour from the local restaurant owner who used to be a Navy SEAL. I just received a Dorothy Parker t-shirt from a friend I first met at Governor's Scholars twenty-five years ago (EEK); he's now one of Kentucky's top forensics coaches, but I tend to think of him more when I hear songs from Hair or South Pacific or (like yesterday) when the supermarket plays "I Would Die 4 U" on its sound system.

And thinking about these people, in turn, reminds me of the pleasure of spending time with people who are damn good at what they do. I enjoy meeting up with Joanne for coffee or yogurt not only to talk literary shop, but because she's fierce about her day job in a way I totally relate to. I like listening to another friend analyze the learning curve he's traveling on as a trader. I've watched M. bloom as an educator, and it's a treat to hear her talk theory and practice. L. has a young dog she's training with a kind but firm hand; I benefited from D.'s experience as an ER chief during a crisis earlier this year; and hearing my sweetie hold forth on his projects (or, for that matter, heaps of metal and rubber we happen to be passing by) is, well, sweet. :-)

two Hamlets

mechaieh@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Dec 11 08:34:00 UT

From yesterday's New York Times, an article about the cats of the Algonquin Hotel:

Matilda is the latest in a long line of Algonquin cats going back to the 1930s. The first, a stray who wandered in off West 44th Street with as much elan as a famous guest, was known as Rusty or Hamlet. Since then, each cat has been succeeded by another with the same name, Hamlet for the males, Matilda for the females.

Some of the current Matilda's predecessors had real responsibilities. Consider what happened in the 1970s, when the playwright Mary Chase, who lived in Denver, checked in. At the time, her granddaughter was a student at Columbia University's School of General Studies. Ms. Chase, who was famous for the Broadway play Harvey, invited her granddaughter and her granddaughter's roommate to come by for tea.

They were deep in conversation when a mouse appeared in Ms. Chase's room.

She called room service and was told something like: "Just open the door. We'll send the cat right up on the elevator."

Moments later, the elevator doors parted. The cat padded out. It was one of the Hamlets. In Ms. Chase's room, he enjoyed his afternoon snack, and she and her guests went back to enjoying their tea.

And Melena Ryzek interviews Christopher Plummer:

Dying with a sense of joy or breakthrough is easier [to act], he added -- a trick he learned from a mentor, Michael Langham, an early director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, who advised him to play Hamlet with a sense of scholarly wonder. "So you put the words, 'Isn't it extraordinary?' in front of everything," Mr. Plummer said. Then even something brooding like, "the rest is silence" -- Hamlet's last words -- becomes a discovery.

clippings

mechaieh@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Dec 11 09:43:00 UT

Ron A. M. Fouchier, in today's NYT, on the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity's request to scientific journals to suppress details re bird flu research:

The only people who want to hold back are the biosecurity experts. They show zero tolerance to risk. The public health specialists do not have this zero tolerance. I have not spoken to a single public health specialist who was against publication. So we are going to see an interesting debate over the next few weeks between biosecurity experts and public health experts who think this information should be in the public domain.

In a profile of chef Floyd Cardoz:

His path to Tabla was karmic. "At Lespinasse, there was a cook charged with making a consomme and he was failing miserably," Mr. Cardoz recalled. As the rest of the staff razzed him, Mr. Cardoz offered his help. The man never forgot it. "When Gramercy Tavern opened, he went there as sous-chef," Mr. Cardoz said. "He heard that Danny Meyer wanted to do Indian food and recommended me."

"a few old socks and love letters"

mechaieh@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Dec 11 20:59:00 UT

Today's subject line comes from the last paragraph of George Whitman's obituary in the New York Times:

Mr. Whitman had variously called himself a communist, a utopian and a humanist. But he may have also been a romantic himself, at least concerning his life's work. "I may disappear leaving behind me no worldly possessions -- just a few old socks and love letters," he wrote in his last years. Paraphrasing a line from Yeats, he added, "and my little Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart."

That's Whitman's manifesto at the top of this entry. This is the BYM in front of Shakespeare & Company, browsing through a book on the Japanese economy:

This is what the rest of the front patio looks like on a chilly November night:

Lori-Lyn asks (in her "Loving 2011" series), What books made an impression on you this year? One of them was Mademoiselle London Hearts Paris (Sometimes), which I picked up on impulse inside S&Co. I especially like the poem that starts out with her throwing rocks at Hemingway's geraniums.

While in Paris, I deliberately searched for Yves Bonnefoy's translations of Yeats's poems (which I eventually picked up at the Gallimard shop, along with Fuzier and Denis's translations of Donne into French). The thing is, I knew about their existence because I'd come across part of Bonnefoy's rendition of The Circus Animals' Desertion. [I'd post some of the Bonnefoy here, but JournalScape turns diacritical marks into gibberish. There's a mirror of this post at Vary the Line with excerpts from "La desertion des animaux du cirque."]

Anyway, the last words for tonight should be Monsieur Whitman's, non?

books, books, books

mechaieh@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Dec 11 18:06:00 UT

This morning, I started recording Bill Clinton's Back to Work for the Nashville Talking Library. It's not the happiest of reads so far (I'm in the middle of chapter 2, which includes an analysis of what went wrong in the 2010 elections), but better that than the Glenn Beck tome that showed up on the to-claim shelf this morning.

USA Today recently reported on a signing Clinton participated in last week. As a former bookseller, I adore this paragraph:

[Village Bookstore owner] Solomon's favorite moment came when the former president noticed a young girl playing with books by pushing them back on the shelves. "He said to her, 'You know, in bookstores and libraries, they like to line up the books in the front of the shelves, so let's try doing that,' and they did."

In personal book news, the Kindle edition of 140 and Counting (an anthology that includes two tweet-sized pieces of mine) went live yesterday. Yay!

One of the pieces was originally published in microcosms, which is discussed in this interview of its editor, Stephen M. Wilson. (I am amused by the mention of the contributor who told him she was going to spend her payment on beer. You might be acquainted with her. ;-) )

Loving 2011: Travel

mechaieh@gmail.com — Sat, 10 Dec 11 09:31:00 UT

I'll have much more to show and tell on this topic in January, when I get back to organizing my albums. But, prompted by Lori-Lyn, here are some of the travel discoveries that livened up my year:

Being introduced to Niki de St Phalle's work while in Charlotte for a conference (and encountering it again in Montparnasse.

Some questions are indeed written in stone. Or at least asphalt. (Ouchy lakefront, Lausanne, Switzerland)

Europe is not especially accommodating toward mobility issues, in my experience. So it was nice to see Lausanne making an effort.

My indulgences in Athens included exfoliation by fish.

In Larnaca, Suz and I became regulars at Paparazzi Cafe. This waiter always greeted us with "Hello, my ladies!"

I encountered new angles in Paris...

and met new tweeps in London...

...and fondled some yarn in Camden Passage:

I didn't realize I would still be seeing signs in languages foreign to me once I left France:

It was a lot of fun. And it's good to be back home:

Loving 2011: Inspiration

mechaieh@gmail.com — Fri, 9 Dec 11 17:46:00 UT

A partial list:

Lori-Lyn, spreading love and prompting reflection with questions such as "What inspired you this year?"

Amelia, writing and singing on. I've played Morning Song dozens upon dozens of times since hearing her and Jon Byrd perform it in Atlanta this spring.

Dawn Rae and the other friends and acquaintances whose poems have prompted some of mine.

The people at my church and at the Fluent Self who show me healthy ways to communicate, to lead, and to frame/own/manage one's stuff. The ones who quietly do the things that need doing. The ones whose inexplicable faith in and fondness for me provide a sense of safety and support -- and, in doing so, encourage me to strive toward that same generosity of spirit toward others. (I'm not claiming that I manage it. I'm merely lifting up the fact that I don't lack for good role models.)

My friends and acquaintances who are skilled at their arts and crafts: cloaks and mitts and earrings and the best scones ever and shawls and gardens and the list goes on and on.

My friends who are ministers, rabbis, nurses, teachers, coaches, parents, and the many other kinds of caregivers and teachers to all ages.

My friends who are creating opportunities for the work they want to circulate and preserve. (And whose successes are both cause for celebration and prods/prompts that push me toward working more diligently at my own manuscripts.)

The silver lining to being a jill of many trades and mistress of none is having experienced firsthand how many hours go into the making or performing of things at the level of a rank beginner -- and thus being aware of the many more hundreds of hours that are invested in the making and performing of things that are worth keeping and remembering. I loved the Viggo Mortensen profile by Zoe Heller that appeared in last Sunday's NYT, because he articulates so well how I feel: "Every time I see something beautiful, I not only want to return to it, but it makes me want to see other beautiful things."

That in course the flower may flourish

mechaieh@gmail.com — Thu, 8 Dec 11 10:16:00 UT

[Subject line from People, Look East, my favorite Advent carol.]

Even in winter
you will find light
everywhere you look:
inhabiting both
the coils of the stove
and petals in flight.

My mother would have been sixty-eight today. Of her many plants, the two Christmas cacti in my bathroom are the ones that have survived.

I've been conscious all week that her birthday was approaching, but I didn't remember it today until I was uploading these photos. That's okay. The remembering isn't as important to me as what I make or give from it.

(For instance, there's teacher in Tulsa seeking donations of any amount to fund a cacti-growing project for her students. [Which, if I may be shameless for a moment, would make a lovely present to me, if you happen to be one of those readers whose lists I am on...])

From cooking 2011

I started reading Nigel Slater's Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch during breakfast this morning. This sentence made me giggle:

The house had previously been home to a celebrated collection of Italian art, a Victorian slum so grim it had a closing order slapped on it, and a hospice run by Catholic nuns (one of whom appears not to have quite departed).

And this one reminded me of a couple of shoeboxes downstairs:

Wherever your seeds come from, they need some form of organization. An old shoebox, constantly in a state of suppressed chaos, sufficed for several years. When it finally fell to pieces, I found opened packets five years past their pull date. Then someone gave me an old church collection box, much polished, with spookily creaking hinges and two compartments just the right size for seed packets. What used to hold the harvest festival coins now holds a harvest festival of its own.

My mother-in-law helped me prepare my mother's house for sale three years ago. One of the tasks I asked her to handle was organizing my mother's stashes of seeds. She's a master gardener, so I figured she'd know (better than I) what was worth keeping and maybe find some things of interest to her.

This past August, my mother-in-law showed me one of the newer plants in her garden:

She'd grown it from one of the seeds in mom's stash. Knowing that something beautiful has sprung from that mess -- and after who knows how many years in that basement -- it does make me happy. Furrows, be glad. Though earth be bare / One more seed is planted there . . .

Loving 2011: The Body

mechaieh@gmail.com — Wed, 7 Dec 11 08:02:00 UT

Prompted by Lori-Lyn: How Did You Honor Your Body This Year?

I explored different exercise options (mainly via LivingSocial vouchers): a no-frills gym, a boot camp, a pole-dancing class. None of them ended up being right for me, but I learned a lot about what does work for me in the process.

I started hiking around Radnor Lake weekly, with a friend. I'm really looking forward to getting back to that once my lungs let me.

The upside to the current bout of bronchitis is that it's knocked aside my caffeine habit for the time being.

I indulged in a chair massage at the Cincinnati airport, a visit to the fish spa and a Turkish bath while in Athens, and a full-body massage while in Larnaca. I'd like to include massages in my 2012 budget. Ponder, ponder...

I found non-goopy makeup and painted my toenails more than twice. (On the other hand, I haven't had a haircut since .. um, I'm not sure one happened this year. I basically dumped my last stylist when I found out she hadn't believed me when I told her I use no product in my hair.)

Big sis took some cheesecake photos of me while we were traveling. I like them.

I splurged on a couple of daring dresses and some other flatteringly cut clothes. The reaction to them has been gratifying.

I have a realistic fitness plan sketched out for 2012. And it won't break my heart if I don't meet even those targets. The numbers are secondary to the overarching goal of feeling better.

all despised and all holy

mechaieh@gmail.com — Mon, 5 Dec 11 12:42:00 UT

Lessee. Since I last posted, the Beautiful Young Man and I visited London and Dublin, and then returned to Nashville. As are many of you, I am now in the thick of work deadlines, holiday plans, and a dragged-out-and-dragging-me-down bout of flu-turned-bronchitis, so we'll wait until after Epiphany to get back to those photo diaries, yeah?

In the meantime: the subject line of this entry is from the sermon Rev. Gail delivered yesterday at church, "Giving Birth to Hope." It being the first Sunday of Advent, it had been advertised as a reflection on motherhood -- but Rev. Gail spoke also about women's relationships with their bodies, women enduring and then escaping battering, and how "God is with us when the people we know make it real" (i.e., in their actions, in everyday kindness and radiance).

The chamber choir sang Clif Hardin's arrangement of "Veni, Veni Emanuel." You can glimpse part of our rehearsal via this YouTube clip (caveats: this was the same evening as our first read-through of the piece, and a bunch of us were singing through colds, including me). Rev. Gail quoted from the version in the UU hymnal in her call to worship:

O come, you wisdom from on high,
from depths that hide within a sigh,
to temper knowledge with our care,
to render every act a prayer.

(I always have to suppress a small giggle when I see the UU version. There was another Advent service a couple of years ago when I blithely [and loudly] started to sing the lyrics I'd learned as a child -- which were not the ones in the hymnal, which I didn't realize until several lines in. Oops. As the choir processed up to the stage, the director stepped behind me and hissed "Traditionalist!" into my ear.)

montparnasse cemetery, thursday afternoon

mechaieh@gmail.com — Fri, 18 Nov 11 22:50:00 UT

It's winter in Paris
yet in Montparnasse
a mosquito nails my shoulder.

a walk through Montparnasse Cemetery

[Click the image to view more photographs from my walk.]

and she feeds you tea and oranges

mechaieh@gmail.com — Mon, 31 Oct 11 00:29:00 UT

[Subject line from Leonard Cohen's Suzanne. There's a guy singing in one of the tavernas below, and for a while, it sounded like he was covering "Suzanne" in Greek.]

Updated albums:

CERN

Athens, part 1

[more on Athens TK]

Larnaca, day 2

Larnaca, day 3

seeing the sun rise over Larnaca Bay

mechaieh@gmail.com — Sat, 29 Oct 11 10:23:00 UT

I'm in Larnaca! (Which I have finally learned to spell, eight months after this trip was initially discussed.) At some point I'll settle down (or crash into the need for more sleep), but at the moment, it's just too thrilling to be less than 1000 feet from the Mediterranean Sea:

From larnaca day 1

Basically, back in February, my de facto big sister started talking about visiting friends in Cyprus sooner rather than later. "Sooner" became "the off-season later this year," and somewhere in there I decided to make it a six-week sabbatical, the better to squeeze in attending Simchat Torah in Paris and a couple of tennis tournaments.

There will be some telecommuting later, and I brought a mess of drafts to work on, but for the moment, there are chocolate-covered orange peels from Glykopeirasmoi (Sweet Temptations, a candy shop on Filiou Zannetou), there's looking out at the people walking around and stretching out on the sun-chairs (in spite of a local friend emphatically telling us that it's too cold for that -- normal Cypriots apparently wait until it's 30 C [mid 80s F] before they consider it warm enough for the beach), and there are photos to organize. Here are the albums I've organized since my last post:

the weekly market in Ferney-Voltaire

first night in Lausanne

Sunday in Lausanne

gears and wheels in Lausanne (mainly for my sweetie)

[CERN, Paris, and Athens TK]

first day in Larnaca

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In other news, I am a contributor to the latest language carnival, on signs.

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From Florence Teets's She's Going Abroad, chapter 5 ("Sleeping"):

Any traveler will agree that having a room with bath, in a grand hotel, with a maid to press frocks, and a boy to run errands, is a comfort at the end of a long day's sightseeing, but no experienced adventurer would allow the lack of these amenities to spoil her enjoyment of climbing an Alp, looking at a Mediterranean sunset, or hearing a Vienna symphony. ... If you want to see the world and not the inside of hotels, if you want a clean room but can manage without a private bath, Europe has thousands of middle-class, average hotels, small but adequate inns and taverns. Indeed, the intermediate hotel is advised for the woman traveling alone, for the young woman interested in meeting young men, for the less particular woman whose purse is limited but whose curiosity in life is always growing.

nosing around Switzerland

mechaieh@gmail.com — Sun, 23 Oct 11 01:29:00 UT

From geneva 20-22 oct 2011

photo diary, Geneva (with some glimpses of Ferney-Voltaire)

On deck: the Ferney-Voltaire market (or, why I suddenly found myself wondering if I would need to hitchhike to Geneva).