Lagniappe

I can't believe I've never done this

2008-05-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

It's my mother's birthday, and I've never in three years done a Five Fabulous Things About Kate post. Well, color me tardy in the extreme, and let's hold forth!

The real challenge for me will be paring it down to five. You, however, are under no such obligation. Please add your own Fabulous Things to the comments.

1. Kate drives her life based on love. She does the things she loves, with and for the people she loves, and expresses that love with a generous spirit. This makes a great example for people raised under that influence, which leads us to Fabulous Thing #2...

2. Kate is a fantastic parent, aunt and grandparent, not to mention daughter. She finds joy in the mundane pleasures of family life, and she is exactly the person you want around in a crisis. In recent memory, she has put her shoulder to the wheel for the care of sick or injured grandchildren, children, and presently her own mother, and for the support of extended family members who are caring for *their* family members during moments of crisis. Just call her the Countess of Sandwich (Generation).

3. Amongst those family ties, Kate keeps her knots loose. No matter how far away family members' lives and opportunities take them, Kate keeps up steady contact sans guilt.

4. Kate is creative, and committed to nurturing her artistic abilities, which are considerable. She's a pillar of her local community theatre circle, has forged national ties as a playwright, paints, draws, knits, crochets, and develops original beauty all around her life. Again with the great example for people raised under the influence.

5. Kate is never bored. This is probably directly related to the other four Fabulous Things, and numerous additional Fabulous Things that had to be eliminated from this numerically limited list. Kate lives her life with zest, and free of the unnecessary drama that folks sometimes create to fill up dull empty time. She knows how to have fun while working hard, and how to have fun while not working at all.

Viva Kate! Many happy returns!

Warning: Dangerous Timewaster Ahead!

2008-04-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

Some benighted, bewitched, bothered and bewildered soul has put together the following:

The 50 Most Memorable Sesame Street Moments

Where else, I ask you, could you find video so tailor-made to glue my siblings -- and quite possibly my parents -- to their monitors, helpless with laughter?

Enjoy, y'all. And if you watch 'em, do list your favorites in the Comments here.

oof

2008-04-29T10:19:00.001-07:00

The big push is on! The new play festival my theater puts on annually has arrived once again.

I will be posting from the Land of Tired and Crazy for the next week or so.

Send good karma my way. :-)

a word from my nephew

2008-04-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

I spent the night at Wright Manor yesterday, and while I arrived so late in the evening that the nephews were nestled all snug in their beds, I got to spend some quality time with both boys this morning. Thence springs this blog post.

If your life is anything like mine, you wake in the morning to some kind of alarm clock. Whether you have a buzzer, a beeper, an old-fashioned bell, or (my personal favorite) NPR, some exterior sound wakes you up at an appointed time. Probably well before you would naturally wake up.

So, for most of us, the first sound we make in the morning is a moan, groan, snarl or cuss word as we turn off the alarm.

Not so for Drew, my 18-month-old nephew, he of the limited but highly expressive vocabulary.

Drew wakes up in the morning and cries, "Yay!"

Sometimes, this is the first thing his parents hear in the morning, his little voice piping "Yay!" as he greets the day. Sometimes he is so overflowing with happiness to be awake, that he doubles the serving -- "Yayyay!!"

I think we can all take a page from Drew's book. (And if you've seen how Drew treats a book, you'll know that the pages would be easy to take.)

Try it for a few days. Say "Yay!" when you first wake up. I personally guarantee, it will not ruin your day.

YAY !!

The Friday Five - Movin' On Up

2008-04-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

A meme from Tripp the Anglobaptist...

1. How many times have you moved? When was the last time?

I have moved from city to city, state to state, time zone to time zone, and/or country to country a total of 12 times. I have moved within cities another 11 times. So, the grand total is 23 household moves so far.

The most recent one was in July 2006, when I moved into an un-air-conditioned apartment during a triple-digit heat wave. This is probably poetic justice, when balanced against the time that I moved to Minneapolis at New Year's and it was 35 below when I arrived.

2. What do you love and hate about moving?

I love the fresh start. I hate cleaning the place I'm moving out of.

3. Do you do it yourself or hire movers?

Professionals came into the picture around move # 15. On an interstate move, I take my "survival kit" myself -- inflatable bed, basic kitchen equipment, alarm clock. etc. -- so that I can camp in my new home until the movers catch up with me. On a move within a city, I handle much of the kitchen transfer, artwork, plants, etc. but still hire pros to do the heavy lifting.

4. Advice for surviving and thriving during a move?

Plan plan plan. Make lists, then make lists of the lists that you've made. Keep a "move file" with notes on all the phone calls you've placed about mundanities like electrical service, changing the address for your newspaper delivery, etc. Never let the "move file" out of your sight until at least a week after the move is complete.

5. Are you in the middle of any inner moves, if not outer ones?

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you...

we made it

2008-03-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

Last night's concert went better than most of our rehearsals would have led one to expect. We premiered two pieces, one of whose composer (Michael Eglin) came up onstage after hearing his piece. I knew that the other composer (Zachary Wadsworth) is only 25 years old, but it turns out that Eglin is a young dude too! If he's over 35, I'll eat my hat.

Aha. It also turns out that Pacific Chorale's composition competition (say that ten times fast) was specifically a "Young Composers" competition. Somehow, that fact never made it into my brain.

Here's a review -- it's from the Orange County paper. Doesn't look like the L.A. Times covered us, since young Maestro Dudamel is performing with the Philharmonic this weekend. Worth noting -- Carver Cossey, the soloist who gets the lion's share of the reviewer's praise, deserves every bit of it. Carver is my friend, and directs the church choir I used to sing in before I moved up to Long Beach, but I believe I still hear him sing with an unbiased ear. He's just a stunner.

I thought I was going to have to miss the first rehearsal for our May concert, since I have an immovable work obligation on Monday night. But Monday night's rehearsal agenda has been revised to work on Daphnis et Chloe, which I bowed out of because of work conflicts with the performances. So, tomorrow night I still won't be there, but it won't matter. :-)

I expected to have to go to work today too, because it's the last day my current production will be in the rehearsal hall. They're off tomorrow, then Tuesday they start working onstage. Usually that last day involves a run-through, but the director decided to devote the day to scene work based on notes from yesterday's run-through. So, I decided not to go in today. After an intense meeting at the Church of What's Happenin' Now, I came home to do laundry, cook and lie low. I was in a terrible mood earlier today and I think its root causes were the usual matter/antimatter combination of not getting enough time alone, and feeling lonely because I'm with other people all the time but it doesn't feed my soul because it's a working context rather than a context in which my companion(s) choose to be with me for my own merits.

In other news, I scheduled a week of vacation in July! Cleverly timed to follow the three-day Independence Day weekend, it will mean I have a good-sized chunk o' discretionary time to play with.

In the comments, brainstorm with me some ideas for what I might do with that time! Keep it cheap if you can, since I'm working away at my goal of paying off the last of the backlog of debt that built up in the financial maelstrom of my move to CA a couple of years ago. I should be free and clear of all non-mortgage debt by the end of the year... but not if I take that luxury cruise through southern France that you're thinking about. :-)

Let the Cheap, Creative Vacation Fantasizing begin!

sloggery

2008-03-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

Frankly, Horatio Parker's music isn't hard enough to be this hard.

(Yes, I expect that didn't make much sense.)

We're less than a week away from the next Pacific Chorale performance, and true to form this year, we are not ready. I do not know what is up with us, our act seems persistently to refuse to get together.

Among the many (many, many, many) pieces on our program of music by American composers, we find Mr. Parker's Jam sol recedit.

It's not a difficult piece. So WHY will it not stay in my brain?

In every rehearsal, I open the piece and it's as if I've never seen it before. The pencil markings are all in my handwriting... how is that possible?

And there's so much else on the program that also refuses to settle firmly into place in my mental space...

Oy vey.

Update:

Extra caffeine helps. A LOT. :-)

Senator Obama's speech on race

2008-03-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

Here is a link to the prepared text.

I don't know how far he may have strayed from it in live delivery, but it's a Very. Worthy. Read.

(Two New York Times links in a row -- I swear, I'm not on retainer to the Grey Lady!)

Happy St. Pat's!

2008-03-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

It's already St. Patrick's Day on the east coast, where most of my darling readers live. So, happy St. Pat's, darling readers!

I wanted to share this article from the New York Times in honor of the day. Make sure to watch the video -- it's delightful.

It tells the story of Caroline Duggan, a young Irishwoman living in New York and teaching in a public school in the Bronx. She introduced traditional Irish dancing to her mostly African-American and Latino/a students a couple of years ago, and not only have they become terrific dancers, but the cross-cultural experience has taught them much more about how big their world is. They have worked hard, and have every reason to be proud of their achievements.

why is today a good day?

2008-02-25T12:05:00.001-08:00

The day that the Girl Scout cookies are delivered is always a good day!

did you know...

2008-02-22T12:36:00.000-08:00

that today is National Margarita Day?

Well, would the Worldwide Web lie to you??

Go forth and honor the day with tequila, triple sec and fresh lime juice. Personally, I'll take mine on the rocks with salt.

Other favorites coming up on the Holiday Calendar:

the Italian Feast of the Incappuciati, which is tomorrow, when we lament the woeful fate of those who can't get their morning coffee with steamed milk, and are thus incappuciated

National Chocolate Souffle Day, on the 28th. If you're reading this, you probably have my mailing address -- feel free to send festal libations on that day. (The 28th is also Kalevala Day. Salmon and chocolate... yummm...)

And March 1, Whuppity Scoorie Day in Scotland. What do you think that one means? Post theories in the comments.

happy V Day from the rose garden

2008-02-14T08:19:00.001-08:00

Found this quick, fun quiz on someone else's blog in honor of Valentine's Day:

You are a Lavender Rose

You represent love at first sight and enchantment.

Your vibe: intense and intriguing

Falling in love with you is: deep and meaningful

What Color Rose Are You?

annual mailing

2008-02-13T21:05:00.000-08:00

A day or two ago, my annual mailing from the Soc.ial Se.curity Ad.mini.stration arrived.

Because of my age, and the unstable state of the program as frequently described in the mainstream media, I take this mailing with a grain of salt. Yes, S.S.A. may not exist by the time I hit the relevant birthdays.

But that's not really the point. I like this annual mailing because it shows the progress of my earning. They're always one full year behind, so this mailing I just received only goes up to 2006. Still, it's nice to see the following:

According to S.S.A., my earning doubled in nine years.

It tripled in about 12 years.

Of course, neither of those proportions will probably hold up over the next nine or twelve years. So I might as well enjoy them while I can. :-)

worker bee

2008-02-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

The past couple of days have been especially demanding at work. This has been a positive phenomenon, for the most part, even though my stamina flags about an hour before the workday is "officially" over.

My theatre is planning like planning was going out of style. We're planning the big festival that happens in the spring. We're planning next season's roster of plays. We're planning a new performance series, and a new ticket pricing structure to support it. We're planning our Web strategy for the next three years. You got something? We're planning it. We are a planning machine.

Being in the middle of all the planning conversations gives me a chance to exert more influence than I have historically had. This bodes well for my ongoing happiness in my job. And, I'm trying to keep my head in the midst of it, and recognize opportunities to move towards my goals for this theatre.

So far most of those moves have seemed to go well. Keeping particular plays in consideration for production next season. Taking initiative to refresh a connection with a NY-based director that had been allowed to languish by some bad communication. Bringing an award-winning local director on board for an upcoming opportunity -- and for whatever reason, the usually hypermicromanaging big boss was inclined simply to let me make it happen, rather than take it out of my hands. Delivering and delivering and delivering on what everybody in the theatre company wants and expects of me.

This is an intense period. I don't know how long this phase will last, but I'm hoping that whenever it ends, I'll look around and realize that all this hard work has moved me yet further up the mountain at my theatre company, and that I have stockpiled even more "political capital" than I had before.

scraps of paper

2008-02-03T17:10:00.001-08:00

I'm feeling better today. Not quite 100%, but definitely better than yesterday or Friday. So, after sleeping in and running a couple of errands, I decided to break out the Annual Storm of Scraps of Paper.

The Annual Storm is a crucial element of my tax preparation every year. There's a wonderful woman who used to be the director of finance for the theatre compay where I used to work (i.e., neither of us works there anymore). She runs a side business preparing tax returns for artists, based on her intimate knowledge of all the ins and outs that help the unorthodox earning lives of artists come out looking as good as possible against the IRS' expectations and systems.

I first hired her to prepare my taxes in 2003. In 2004, she saw me through the purchase of my house. In 2005, she saw me through the cross-country move to California, doing my federal and two state tax returns. In 2006, she saw me through the rental of my house in GA. This year doesn't bring any specific challenges, though it will be the first year that my taxes are affected by a full year's lease on the house.

One of the things she taught me to do was to save the receipts for all the theatre tickets I buy, meals or drinks I have over meetings with other artists, travel expenses to conferences or to see plays (like I did when I went to Ashland, OR this past year). My incredibly sophisticated system involves simply stashing all the receipts in a folder labeled "Receipts for 2007 Taxes."

Then, on some rainy afternoon like this one, early in the year, I open the folder and the Annual Storm commences. I sort, I label, I add up, I curse, I add up again, I wail, I add up a third time. I go diving into my House file for records of how much I paid in mortage interest, homeowner's insurance and county taxes, and into my Auto Registration file to see how much I paid for that this year ($40 less than last year, because last year my relocation caused a kerfuffle that meant my renewal bill didn't reach me until it was already past its due date). I add up the water bills for my rental property, and the total I spent on repairs and improvements (a whopper this year because of the expense of replacing the air conditioning system last summer). I detail my charitable contributions. And everything has its own scrap of paper.

The scraps of paper add up to a lot. A LOT. I boil them all down to a single sheet to send to my wonderful tax preparer, who has in recent years found me refunds that equated to something between two and four weeks' worth of my regular take-home pay. This year it will probably be less, because of the income from the rental property. We'll see how the numbers play out, and whether I need to adjust my 2008 withholding based on her findings.

Part of me is hoping for a small refund, meaning that I didn't give much of an unintentional, interest-free loan to the government this past year.

Another part of me is hoping for a larger refund, because I have two good things I could do with the extra money.

Either way, as the Annual Storm of Scraps of Paper settles, I have reason for hope. :-)

germ invasion

2008-02-02T21:17:00.000-08:00

Cause of yesterday's mood was...

INFECTIOUS!!!

Yes, note to self: Next time Inexplicable World-Shaking Crankiness hits, remember this -- you are probably on the cusp of getting sick.

My two bosses each had minor colds last week, one chest and one head. I had had some tightness in my upper bronchi for a couple of days, but nothing more serious until about 3 p.m. yesterday. While I was watching a run-through of a children's play currently in rehearsal, I felt the little microbial claws sink into my cells. Oh no, here we go. Chest tightness became coughing, plus headache, plus fever.

I had planned to take a road trip this weekend to see friends and see plays. I wound up choosing not to go, and notifying my friends this morning that they would not be seeing me tonight and tomorrow. It's just a cold and I'm not sick enough to need medical attention, but I am sick enough that a many-hundred-mile round-trip drive over just two days would not have been a good idea.

Instead I spent the morning in bed and the afternoon taking care of relatively easy chores: laundry, cooking a meal, cleaning up the hallway after its paint job, interspersed with naps and watching episodes from Season 2 of Lost. Nothing that brought me into direct contact with other people. I shall soon make a toddy and go back to bed. By tomorrow, I hope I'll be fever-free and no longer fear that I might pass the germs along by doing my grocery shopping or picking up the bracelet I had out at a shop for repair.

Thus, I close this entry with the hot toddy recipe I learned from the lighting design professor at my graduate school. It'll cure what ails ya.

HOW TO MAKE A HOT TODDY

1. In a coffee cup, mix about a teaspoon of your favorite sweetener (I usually use honey or brown sugar) and a jigger of your preferred whiskey. (Tonight, bourbon. This is not a suitable use for quality single malt.)

2. Cut a lemon in half. Squeeze the juice from half the lemon into the coffee cup and drop the lemon half in too. Put the other half away for some other use.

3. Top up the coffee cup with boiling water. Mix thoroughly and taste -- add more lemon, whiskey or sweetener as it suits you.

4. Get in bed and drink this. You'll most likely be asleep before you finish it.

crankyannoying

2008-02-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there was a cartoon published in a newspaper. If I could find it online, I would link it here.

The panels featured two little round-headed human stick figures in dialogue. Their entire script consisted of the words "cranky" and "annoying."

Thing One would say "Cranky," meaning that Thing Two was being cranky.

Thing Two would respond "Annoying," meaning that Thing One was being annoying.

Back and forth they'd go.
"Cranky." "Annoying."
"Cranky..." "Annoying..."
"Craaaankyyyy"
"Annoooooooyiiiiing"

And that is my day. A phone chat with my dad during my morning commute was a very good moment; afterwards, everything went hellwards in handbasketry.

I am craaaankyyyyy.

Everything, and everyone, is annooooooyiiiiiiing.

But acknowledging it helps shrink it to manageable size!

page 123 tag

2008-01-31T09:27:00.000-08:00

Tripp tagged me with this meme. The instructions are to pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. Find page 123. Find the first 5 sentences. Post the next 3 sentences. Tag 5 people.

OK, here goes...

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.

For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

Yes folks, Hamlet's Advice to the Players (Act III scene 2), as printed on page 123 of A Sourcebook in Theatrical History: Twenty-five centuries of stage history in more than 300 basic documents and other primary material, by A. M. Nagler.

I'm not going to tag anyone specifically. If you feel like participating in this meme, consider yourself tagged!

there are no calories in this post

2008-01-24T21:44:00.000-08:00

Because this one isn't about food.

My weekend plans got fairly thoroughly rearranged today, thanks to a message from friend M* who lives in Atlanta, and to the weather forecast.

Originally I had planned to use this weekend to work on painting the living room and hall in my apartment. I didn't know whether I would finish them -- they're not large but they will require a fair amount of time and attention to prep. But at least I intended to make a good start.

Then I found out that the weather forecast has us slated for rain. All. Weekend. We need it; our drought level was terrible, and we simply skipped the rainy season last winter. So I'm not kvetching about the rain. Not even a little bit. It's been raining off and on for about 36 hours now, and according to my local paper's website it's supposed to keep raining through Sunday. This is good news overall, though bad news for would-be painters like myself.

Since it makes no sense to try to paint while it's raining, I will just not paint this weekend. I may spackle and sand, if the mood strikes. I will also not paint next weekend, since I will be running up to the Bay Area to see friends and plays. And as La Jersild always said on her blog... don't come burgle my house while I'm gone, it's all boobytrapped, you will die a horrible tortuous death and thereafter be eaten by the attack cat, etc. etc. and so forth.

(No, I don't have a cat at all, let alone an attack cat.)

(No, you don't need to try to remedy this situation.)

The second and happier reason to revise my weekend plan was the email I found from M* this morning, saying she is coming to this conference. I've gone to the first two iterations of this conference, last year and the year before. When info started circulating about this year's edition, I farmed it out to a bunch of friends (including M*), inviting them to stay at my place if they decided they wanted to go to the conf. Nobody took me up on that, and I let that plus the prospect of painting woo me away from planning to go myself.

I haven't seen M* in about a year and a half. So the prospect of her visiting a 90 minute drive away, instead of being a 5-hour flight away, means I shall go!

I have to work tomorrow, of course, and I have plans in the evening that I don't want to miss. Then on Saturday I have an appointment at noon for a badly needed haircut, but I can call to see if there's any room in the schedule to shift it earlier. Once my hair is cut, I'll go up to the conference and kibitz for the day. I have tentative Saturday night plans, but I haven't received confirmation and it's been weeks since I last saw the person supposedly throwing this party, so I'm sort of doubting it's going to happen at all. Another person mentioned a different party on Saturday night, but hasn't called to confirm either. That makes it easier to consider skipping both erstwhile options to hang out at the conference for a bit longer.

I have a 9:30 a.m. call at the COWHN on Sunday to rehearse the Mozart we're singing during the service. But maybe I'll take M* up on her offer of hotel room crash space at the conference site, and drive down early in the morning. It would be a nicer drive in the daylight, even if it's rainy dreary daylight.

So, to recap, the original plan was --
Saturday: prep to paint, go get hair cut, paint paint paint, go to one or both potential parties
Sunday: breakfast at home, Mozart, service, farmer's market, paint paint paint

The new plan looks like --
Saturday: get hair cut as early as possible, go to conference, hang out with extremely cool people I rarely see. Probably stay overnight.
Sunday: breakfast in the car while driving back down for Mozart, service, farmer's market. Maybe spackle and sand. Maybe make pasta sauce? I've used up the last of the batch that was stashed in the freezer.

See, the food snuck in there after all.

bread, then bed

2008-01-23T23:05:00.000-08:00

A rainy evening is a good time to make soda bread. It probably wouldn't be too kind to yeasted bread, but soda bread is hardier. And heck, it's Irish cuisine -- they're the people to turn to for recipes that work when it's wet and cold.

So this evening I made three loaves, then ran to the nearby grocery store for a jar of honey to go with them. Cut the mostly-cooled loaves into wedges, wrapped them up in foil, and handed the whole package off to the agreed deliveryperson I mentioned in yesterday's post. Done!

The rest of the evening has only held putzing. I paid a couple of bills, reread the first several months of this blog, answered some email, didn't answer other email. I had thought I might prep the hallway for painting, but I don't think the spackle would dry well as the rain comes down outside. It can wait till Saturday morning.

Good night, y'all!

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

2008-01-22T20:59:00.000-08:00

The above quote comes to us from J.R.R. Tolkien. And the unexpected motif of today was: food.

It was an ordinary day. And my ordinary days ordinarily have something of a food focus anyway. There are many reasons why I like to cook -- it's creative, it's cheap, it helps keep up the variety in my vegetarian diet, I like to shop for food, and when I get to feed other people too, so much the better!

Ordinarily I only cook dinner a couple of times a week, because it then takes me several days to eat up the leftovers. I carry my lunch to work almost every single day, which uses up a lot of those leftovers. Same goes for the days when I have rehearsal or some other commitment after work that means I need to bring dinner along for the ride too.

For a while, I subscribed to Cooking Light magazine. And I cut a lot of recipes out of that resource. I mean a lot of recipes. I let that subscription lapse in 2004, and I still have a ton of recipes I haven't tried yet from that publication and other sources. There they sit, in a manila envelope on my shelf with the cookbooks, the clippings grouped into big general categories (main dishes, vegetable sides, soups, breakfast/brunch stuff, etc.) Patiently waiting their turn.

This week I pulled two new recipes from the bunch to try. The first was a cassoulet made with white beans, root veggies and faux sausage. I made that Sunday night, after visiting the farmer's market on Sunday afternoon. This was my first attempt to cook with parsnips. I felt like a birdwatcher adding a new species to her "life list."

The second new recipe was tonight, a light curry of onions and chickpeas served over garlicky sauteed spinach (another part of the farmer's market haul). I made plain brown rice to go with it. And while the cassoulet was just okay, tonight's menu was a winner!

In Tripp's Monday video blog, which I was looking forward to throughout the day yesterday, he asked for recipes and recommendations. So I posted the chickpea and spinach menu directions along to him, happy to share the good stuff I had found.

After dinner, I called a friend from the Church of What's Happenin' Now, to help me out with a delivery of -- you guessed it -- yet more food.

The Church of What's Happenin' Now has a teen group that gathers a couple of times a month. Their sessions always include dinner, which is provided for them by various other parts of the church community. This week, it's the choir's turn to feed the teenagers.

I volunteered to make soda bread. I have my late grandmother's recipe for a slightly sweet, white soda bread with currants or raisins. It's superb breakfast food, but not quite right for dinner in my opinion. What I have in mind for tomorrow's teen feast is a plain fruit-free soda bread made with half whole-wheat flour. I've made it before and it's yummy and quick. So my plan is to make two loaves tomorrow evening.

Unfortunately, the hungry teens meet before I can actually get there on Thursday. We're supposed to drop our contributions off at 6:30, at which time I will be somewhere on the 405, creeping along with the rest of the rush hour lemmings.

Since a couple of the other choir members live in my neighborhood, I emailed them today to see whether one of them could take my bread over on Thursday. One of them came right through -- and since he has kids who participate in the teen group, it's easy for him to take my bread along.

So. Food for me today, check. Food for friends today, check. Food plan for tomorrow, check. Food delivery arranged for teen kids on Thursday, check. Food food food... anybody up for Oliver?

more pretty, less mess

2008-01-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

The bedroom is put back together. And I must say, I'm quite pleased with how it looks! The test patch revealed that I had originally bought too intense a color, so I picked up a gallon of plain white and mixed it in. That had just the effect I was looking for. Now the furniture is back in place, pictures and so forth re-hung, bed remade. I keep going back in there just for the pleasure of looking at it.

I'm not a crafty enough painter to get into faux finishes or anything complicated like that. Maybe in another lifetime. But the paint job is clean, smooth and fresh looking. I was a little concerned that the new wall color would make the dings and scuffs on the painted baseboards stand out, but because most of my furniture sits along the walls in there, I don't notice the baseboards at all.

I'm willing to paint baseboards in a home I own. Not so much in a place I rent. And since the place I own has baseboards that are varnished natural wood instead of paint, I don't even have to do that! Though I approved the tenants repainting the entryway (they got rid of the rose pink I put in there, which I liked but I realized was an idiosyncratic choice) I've forbidden them to paint any of the woodwork, just in case.

Mental note, though: it's a bad idea to move my bed by myself. No grave harm done, but I am reminded that it's fundamentally a smart choice to get help moving items that are heavier than you are.

No more painting will happen until at least next weekend, so for now, corners of the living room are dedicated to storage of paint and painting equipment. Not the most aesthetic addition to my decor, but at least it's temporary, and all for the greater good.

painted lady

2008-01-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

The bedroom is now wearing its second coat of paint. It's a beautiful, sunny, dry weekend here, perfect for painting. I have the bedroom window cranked open to let the paint fumes out. (Yes, you chilly East Coasters, I am rubbing it in just a little bit.)

Though friends A* and S* both offered to help paint when I saw them last weekend. they both bowed out on my invitation to tackle it this weekend. S* had scheduled herself to be out of town this weekend, and A* has had a stressful week and needed some down time. No harm, no foul on either count.

But as y'all know, I am not generally the Queen of Patience. When I get in the mood to do a project like this, I don't want to wait. And I often overdo it.

So first, I consider it a personal best that I tackled only one room by myself this weekend. And not even a whole room. 3/4 of a room. The fourth wall of my bedroom is all built-in storage, which is painted off-white to match all the woodwork in the place. No way was I going to paint that.

I did a lot of the preparation work on Friday night. Took down the pictures and hangers from the walls, spackled and sanded where repairs were needed. Moved small furniture pieces out of the room and pushed the big ones (bed, two low bookshelves, chest of drawers) towards the middle. Put up all the blue tape around the edges of the paintable walls. I still slept in there Friday night.

Saturday I had a morning obligation, but the afternoon was free for painting. Down went the dropcloths, and up went the first coat of paint. It was predictably splotchy, but still, just getting some color up on the walls made a tremendous difference to how I felt in there.

It was pretty, but still stinky. I fled the worst of the fumes by decamping to my favorite neighborhood coffee spot, where I found an art troupe preparing for a workshop or something they were going to do in there. They busied themselves taking down the lights strung all over the ceiling, moving furniture from one room to another... it felt just like what I had done to get ready to paint!

My impatience has in the past led me to skimp on the amount of time I've let paint dry and cure. I tried not to make that mistake this time. The first coat dried all evening and overnight, plus through the morning. I slept in the living room, on my air bed. Very comfy.

Second coat went up this afternoon. I expected the muscles in my arms and shoulders to pay the price, but in fact, my legs are the most sore -- probably from climbing up and down the stepladder, on top of the walking I did yesterday, a couple of miles on concrete.

Happily, there doesn't need to be a third coat. I'm going to let it dry overnight again, and since the office is closed tomorrow for MLK Day, I'll put the room back together then.

I'll also Freecycle the leftover paint. I'll wait to post it until I've painted the living room and hallway -- they're getting a different color than the bedroom did -- then I can offer all the leftover paint as a lot. It's not much, but still, I'd rather see it get used than thrown away. The bedroom color is called Roslyn's Blue, and the living room will be a light green called Zen Mist, both by Glidden, for those of you playing along at home.

I do have to look into how to dispose of the empty paint cans and other latex-paint-besmirched debris that will result from this full project.

yesterday's moment of prophecy

2008-01-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

One of the errands I embarked on yesterday was to get the glass replaced in the frame of a print I have had for a long time. It's probably the piece of framed art I've owned the longest; I've had it reframed once already, but when I moved to CA it wasn't well padded enough and the glass broke. I stashed the piece somewhere flat and safe and forgot about it for a while.

Well, now that I'm on my apartment-painting kick, I was motivated to deal with this outstanding errand on two fronts. One, I needed to move the piece anyway in order to prepare the room it was in for the onslaught of my paint roller. And two, once the room where it will ultimately hang is painted, I want to be able to put it up.

The piece is a poster-size reproduction of a photograph of a ballet dancer's feet and legs from about the knees down. She wears battered canvas ballet slippers and mismatched tights and leg warmers with holes in them; behind her feet, you can see the speckled floor of a rehearsal studio. This is no glamour shot; this is a working artist. And her fifth position is terrific. She is in plie, somewhere between two steps, but there's nothing slipshod about this moment. For me, the piece says "Art is hard work!"

My parents bought this piece at an auction that my ballet company held as fund-raiser during the first year that I belonged. I helped carry pieces across the stage for bidding, as did the other dancers. This was the one I wanted, and my parents didn't hesitate to bid on it. If memory serves, my folks paid $90 for the poster; I remember thinking that was a whole lot of money.

So after I posted yesterday's blog entry, I pulled out the piece to take it to the framers'. In the border around the edge of the image runs the acknowledgment of the artist's name and the exhibit from which this poster is drawn.

Lo and behold...

It's from a 1979 exhibit at the LONG BEACH MUSEUM OF ART.

Now, 25 years after I was given this poster... I live about half a mile from the Long Beach Museum of Art. Erin and I walked right past the museum on our way to dinner when she visited here in the fall.

Wow. Who would have known that I would wind up here?

no-commute day

2008-01-18T15:16:00.000-08:00

I organized today to work at home, since I had no meetings on the calendar and no other reason why I would specifically need to be in the office. Skipping the round-trip commute saves me an hour and a half on an ordinary day, and that is very nice! It's now after 3 p.m and so far the only driving I've done today was to move the car this morning. I had found parking on a side of the street that gets swept on Fridays, so once the other morning commuters were gone, I moved my car to another place, out of the sweeping path.

I've read and reported on three of the scripts I brought home for this day of non-commuting. None were awful, but only one of them earned the impulse for me to bring it to the attention of my colleagues who are involved in planning our next season. The other two have been weeded out; screening is part of my responsibility.

I brought home a few more, but I am tired enough now that I think I may stop. No playwright or play should have to overcome the additional obstacle of my being tired or cranky or otherwise in a less than hospitable frame of mind. Reading and reporting on three plays in a day is enough. If I get inspired to read the others over this three-day weekend (my office is closed for MLK Day on Monday) I'll do so. If not, they'll be at the front of the queue on Tuesday.

I'm waiting for the last load of laundry to finish. Once I've folded the clothes and put them away, and remade the bed with the clean sheets, I'll venture out to do a few errands. I have a little jewelry repair to arrange, and a piece of hanging art that needs new glass in its frame. And I need to pick up some coffee beans -- I'm hoping that this independent neighborhood business carries organic, shade grown, fair trade options. They roast their own coffee, which is one of my all-time favorite aromas.

If I'm really motivated and organized, I'll get the grocery shopping done. Isn't the life of a working artist just unbearably glamorous? ;-)

musings on time

2008-01-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

One more night at work, and then I will have fully discharged my responsibilities for the current show. Tonight is our second post-show audience discussion, and it will bring my total-nights-at-work to eight out of the last thirteen. Throw in two evening choral rehearsals and the night I saw J*'s show in Laguna among those five "free" evenings, and you can see why my apartment isn't painted yet. Ben & Wanda did a great job with their studio painting and reorganizing job, though -- if you haven't visited the Atlanta Chronicles in a while, go over and check out the pictures linked there.

Next week looks deliciously calm for me, in comparison to the sprint of the past couple of weeks. My upcoming weekend is heavier on daytime obligations than evening plans, Monday is a holiday (though I still have a Pacific Chorale rehearsal in the evening), and then Tuesday and Wednesday after work I am free. Free! Free!

Thursday is the regular choir rehearsal night for the Church of What's Happenin' Now, Northern Outpost. Friday night I'm going to have dinner and play games with some friends up in West Hollywood. That's a heinous commute on a Friday at rush hour, but my friends are worth it.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to have discretionary time, and to wonder what to do with it. I have never lived that way. Thanks to my lifelong involvement in extracurricular arts, I always have an imposed structure on my leisure time.

I like it that way. I'm a planner and an anticipator by nature -- looking forward to something is half the fun of the thing itself. But there's an entirely other thrill to the spontaneous event or outing that comes together at the last minute, like my afternoon with S* did on Sunday.

Tough to build "be spontaneous" into my calendar, though. Hmmmm.

another review

2008-01-15T19:10:00.000-08:00

The L.A. Times review is up, and it's good. Enjoy.

The Variety review is up, and it's not good. So I'm not linking to it. Take that, Variety.

I'm actually watching the show again tonight -- something I don't always do. But I'm in the building to conduct the first of two post-show audience discussions. The second one is tomorrow night.

Most specifically, tonight I'm watching the show because we have a substitute actress going on. Not an understudy -- we didn't hire any understudies for this show. But the actress who normally plays one of the roles had a family situation arise that requires her to miss tonight's performance. Because we had about a week's notice on this, we were able to recruit one of the other performers who works with us regularly, to prepare for and do just this one show that the regular actress has to miss.

So tonight I'll do a curtain speech preparing the audience for that (I'm couching this as a "special occasion,") then I'll watch the show and pop back onstage after bows to do the audience discussion.

All of which means I must now go brush my teeth, fix up my face, and be backstage in 13 minutes. Au revoir, y'all.

amarylli

2008-01-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

As my sibs and associated in-laws know, my parents have the charming custom of sending a potted amaryllis bulb to each household as an Advent gift. Though I didn't bring any amarylli along on the cross-country move to California, I have now been here for three Advents. Thus, I have three amarylli to play with.

This year's bulb bloomed, a beautiful four-blossom stalk. The flowers were a deep coral on the ends of the petals, shading out to white at the center. Now the flowers have died and I've cut the stalk off, so the greenery remains. We'll see whether it decides to put up another stalk before it's finished.

I tried to overwinter the two bulbs from last year and the year before. I followed the instructions from the National Arboretum, but had to fudge a little because there is no place in my apartment that sustains the faux-wintertime temperature that the instructions call for. Once this year's bulb arrived, I brought the older two out, repotted them in fresh soil, watered them and hoped for the best.

One of the older bulbs has put out greenery, but no sign of a flower stalk yet. The other was much slower to respond, but is now putting out a flower stalk with no sign of greenery to feed it. Curiouser and curiouser!

Perhaps between the two of them I will have all the ingredients for one healthy amaryllis. Or maybe they'll catch up with themselves. Whatever happens, I'm pleased that they're both doing something.

The only downside -- I'm finding that amarylli harbor tiny fruit flies. I'm going to have to search for an environmentally friendly fruit fly banisher.

delicious day

2008-01-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

Two parts to this entry -- first a movie review (really more of a movie remark), then a recipe.

This afternoon I trucked up to Pasadena to see a matinee screening of The Savages with my friend S*. Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco. There was some seriously wonderful acting going on.

I experience movies very differently than I take in plays. I don't work in film at all, and I am not very well educated about its history, nor especially sensitive to its techniques. When I watch movies I am very alert to the stories and characters, but not terribly hip to how that story is being told with film's visual and editing techniques.

Nevertheless I enjoy movies very much, and when the artists are working at as high a level as they are in The Savages, there's a lot there for me to enjoy.

I got home a little before 8 p.m. I had bought fresh kale at the farmer's market earlier in the day, intending to make a favorite dish that would provide me with portable suppers this week. They're important because I won't have another evening off till Friday, or possibly later. Tomorrow I have Pacific Chorale rehearsal after work, and Tuesday and Wednesday I'm staying at work to conduct post-show discussions with our audiences. Thursday I have church choir rehearsal, getting that Mozart ready. Greens will keep for a day or two in the fridge, but I didn't think this kale stood a chance of lasting till Friday in good shape.

So I cooked when I got home, and now I am well fed. Here's the recipe, from Moosewood Cooks at Home:

Gingered Greens and Tofu
Ingredients:
1 cake water-packed tofu, which you tossed bodily into the freezer when you brought the tofu home from the store. Earlier upon the cooking day, you took it out and let it thaw.
1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup dry sherry
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
3 Tbsp brown sugar
6 cups or more fresh greens -- kale, chard, Chinese cabbage, bok choy... whatever you like -- they should be washed and spun dry. Chop 'em if your palate prefers that texture
2 Tbsp fresh grated ginger (the stuff in the jar is fine, but truly fresh is even better)
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp lime juice - fresh is best
a sprinkle of cayenne pepper or a dash of chili oil (optional)
chopped toasted cashews (not salted)

Process:
1. Cook some rice to serve with the finished dish. Preheat your oven to 350.
2. Combine the soy sauce, sherry, vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 1 minute. Remove from the heat.
3. Unpackage the tofu, pouring off the liquid. Press the whole cake between your hands over the sink, squeezing out as much of the liquid in the tofu as possible. Cut the tofu up into 1" dice and place them in a nonreactive dish.
4. Pour the cooling marinade over the tofu pieces and set aside for 5 minutes or so.
5. Wipe down a baking sheet with a little nonstick spray. Place the tofu pieces in a single layer on the baking sheet, reserving the marinade. Bake the tofu pieces for 10-15 minutes; watch that the bottom surface doesn't get browner than you like.
6. Heat the oil in a large dutch oven. Stir in the ginger, then add the greens -- you may need to do this in batches until the greens cook down in volume.
7. Add the lime juice to the reserved marinade. Add the chili oil or cayenne if you're using it, and stir well to combine.
8. Stir and cook the greens until they are done to your taste. Some varieties take longer than others. If you are working with particularly sturdy greens or you're in a hurry, you can cheat by adding 1/4 cup of the marinade to the pot and clapping on the lid, letting the greens steam to hasten their cooking.
9. Remove the tofu from the oven and add the pieces to the pot with the greens. Add the rest of the reserved marinade and stir well to combine.
10. Serve over rice, topped with toasted cashews.

Omnivores, I think this method of preparing greens would also be nice with seared shrimp or scallops, or with stir-fried chicken.

color my world

2008-01-12T17:23:00.000-08:00

We opened the play last night, and I believe the playwright and director were both happy. The audience was full and enthusiastic. The first (mixed) review is already up. I'll link to the L.A. Times and Variety reviews when they are posted.

So today, I didn't have to go to work -- unless I wanted to pick up my glasses, which I managed to leave behind when I went home after the opening night party. Whoops. I decided I could live without them for the weekend.

Even though the party went late -- and I could have stayed much later, but I knew this was coming -- I had a 9:30 a.m. rehearsal call this morning. My church choir is part of the combined choral force singing Mozart's short, easy Coronation Mass as a fund-raiser for the Long Beach Mozart Festival. The concert is coming up Feb. 1, and this morning all the choristers rehearsed together for the first time. The second time will be a couple of days before the concert, and then we're on.

9:30 a.m. is too early to sing. But at least this music is light and fun, and it is emblazoned on some brain cells that learned it when I was an undergrad and will never let it go. So being tired and glasses-less didn't hurt me for this rehearsal as much as it might have for some others.

Afterwards I went to the aforementioned favorite coffee spot. I was slated to meet my friend A* there, whom I hadn't seen in a while. I was early and hungry, so I ate lunch while I waited for her. We hung out and chatted for an hour, and discovered that we're both interested in painting our apartments. So, we're going to help each other with those projects, providing company and labor and motivation to get it done.

Thus, I came home and put up a test patch of the paint I think I'm going to use in the living room and tiny central hallway of my apartment. I bought the paint a while ago, but my landlady didn't approve the colors I wanted. She's one of these people who thinks that rental property should always be white, because potential future renters will be put off by color. Now that I've been here 18 months, I no longer care what she thinks. Whenever I move out, if she wants to paint the place white again, she can do so.

The potential living room/hallway color is a light fern green, which I think will look nice with my deep red upholstered furniture and dark to medium wood tones. My living room windows face east, so I wanted a color that would be nice in the morning sunlight but would also take compact fluorescent lamplight well at night. I also have a fairly saturated periwinkle blue that I'll test in the bedroom, which gets strong western light. The carpet throughout the apartment is a very neutral light brown with a nice repeated textural pattern, and the baseboards and woodwork are creamy off-white. I fear I'm going to have to put a fresh coat on much of the baseboard and doorframe footage, because the fresh color on the walls will point up the scuffs and chips in the older paint on the trim. Oy.

I also want to put color on one wall of the kitchen -- the other walls are dominated by cabinetry and window, so what wall is there can stay as it is. But what color for the kitchen? Off-white ceramic tiles on the floor, warm oak cabinets, and a ballet-slipper pink vintage stove. Hmmmm. Suggestions?

blogs I like

2008-01-10T19:03:00.001-08:00

I'm in my office, noodling around on the computer, having finished dinner (brought from home, black bean soup and a couple of corn muffins) and waiting for it to be time to go into the theatre for tonight's final preview of the current show. Things are going well, knock wood.

There are links for select friends' and family members' blogs here at Lagniappe. But I read more widely in the blogosphere than just that august company. So for today's post, I thought I would share a few of my other favorites.

Mikel.org -- where my Canadian friend Mikel writes about Web life, politics, and many other interesting things.

A Veggie Venture -- where a food blogger in St. Louis posts vegetable recipes, many of which are very Weight Watchers-friendly (I'm not doing Weight Watchers, but I do consider that a recommendation for the healthiness of the recipes on her site)

The Homesick Texan -- where a Texan in exile writes about the foods of her homeland and her efforts to recreate them in her New York City kitchen. Excellent writing about much more than just food.

Single Ma's Fabulous Financials -- a no-holds-barred personal finance blog that I find highly entertaining.

No Impact Man -- in which the writer documented his effort to live at net zero environmental impact for one year in New York City. Fantastic writing, as well as many adaptable green living ideas.

post for yesterday

2008-01-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

It was actually quite a productive day, but all that productivity left no time for blogging. By the time I got home following my show's third preview, shortly after midnight, I was too tired to turn the computer on. Straight to bed for me. (Ben, this means I still owe you email -- it may be a few more days.)

Since I'm working in the evenings this week, I've taken the mornings off. Hence, I'm sitting in my living room at 9:40 a.m., wrapped in the enormous blue fleece jacket my parents brought me from their cruise in Alaska a couple of years ago, just contemplating taking a shower and getting ready for work. I'll float back and forth between the office and the rehearsal call this afternoon, then attend the fourth and final preview tonight. I don't expect to take many notes tonight, but it's still important that I see it to give the playwright and director the feedback they want and the encouragement they need.

Those two had a tough time earlier this week. The director is extremely sensitive, and the playwright is not terribly diplomatic when giving notes. This was a bad combo to start with, but it got much worse when the playwright started feeling like the director's attention was never available. Thus, playwright got that much more aggressive about giving notes, started giving notes to the actors without the director knowing about it (bad bad idea), and lots of feelings got hurt.

Hence, I finally got them both to the table at the hotel bar next door to the theatre after Tuesday night's preview, and with some prompting and prodding, they started to fix it. Yesterday was much better, and I think we're on the road to a happy opening night.

Personally, as much as I'm looking forward to opening night, I'm also looking forward to having the bulk of my work on this show finished. Between final rehearsals, previews, seeing J*'s show, and my choral music commitments, I haven't had a night off since Jan. 2. I'll have this Sat. and Sun. evenings off, unless something comes up, and then I'm booked again till next Fri. the 18th. Things open out a little after that.

I've finished my coffee. Time to wash the breakfast dishes and have that shower. Y'all have a wonderful day!

watching New Hampshire

2008-01-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

This is the first Presidential campaign I've gone through without the influence of broadcast television. It is a weeeeeeird thing to do, let me tell you.

First, it has shown me how much independent work I have to do in order to make myself the kind of informed voter I insist on being. Seeking out the candidates' websites and reading their position and policy statements, finding webcasts of the debates, figuring out my newspaper's bias and accounting for it.

Second, it has shown me how much the subliminal or overt emotional content of campaign advertising on TV has worked me up in the past. While the stakes are very high indeed, I feel calmer about this election than I have about others. Of course, it also helps that I feel like I can readily support whatever ticket emerges from the Democratic primaries and caucuses. I prefer Obama first, Clinton second and Edwards third, but any combo will do.

This is also the first Presidential election where I will feel the full impact of the time delay, voting on the West Coast. In past elections, I've had friends who grew up out west or who lived out west rail and complain about how the elections get called in the media before the West Coast polls have even closed. Now, I'll be in the middle of that.

So tonight, while I wait for the time for our show's next preview to roll around, I'm clicking and refreshing Cee Enn Enn.com every few minutes to see what the voters of New Hampshire have decided. I find it gratifying to see a close race on "my" side of the aisle -- having more than one strong candidate is gooooood.

So, who do you like?

back in the musical saddle

2008-01-07T23:07:00.001-08:00

Pacific Chorale resumed its usual rehearsal schedule tonight, after a scant two Monday nights off (Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve).

We started with the two pieces that will make up our May concert -- after a few weeks of this, we'll back up and work on the music for our March concert. The rehearsal season is uneven, so our artistic director decided to restore the balance by working this way.

Tonight we read two movements of Horatio Parker's Hora Novissima, which was extremely popular in the 19th century but lost favor after World War I. It sounded too German -- and it really does sound like Brahms sometimes, even though Parker was born in New England.

We also read a chunk of David Del Tredici's setting of "Paul Revere's Ride" -- shout out to Ben and Wanda, since the mighty ASO Chorus premiered this piece. (You can't actually name the ASO Chorus without saying "mighty" first. It's true.)

And in a strange moment of coincidence, I recently saw Hila Pittman, the soprano who premiered "Paul Revere's Ride" with the mighty ASO Chorus, originating another role at a small theatre here on the West Coast. Her husband, the composer Eric Whitacre, has written an opera called Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings, which I saw in its world premiere at the theatre run by my aforementioned friend J*. Pittman played the lead, and the moment she opened her mouth for her first aria, it became abundantly clear why.

Back to tonight's rehearsal. I am not the world's strongest sight-reader, though I am always working on improving that element of my musicianship. So rehearsals that are mostly reading leave me tired. I am tired. Good night!

recipe for Glenn, and everybody else

2008-01-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

I found out this Christmas that somehow I have become the family keeper of this fabulous recipe. Must be because I'm the family vegetarian, and this is a veg recipe. Enjoy!

DRUNKEN CAULIFLOWER
loosely adapted from a recipe in "Food and Wine" magazine, years ago

Ingredients:
2 heads fresh cauliflower, washed, cored and cut into florets
2 cups dry Champagne
2 cups stock -- I use vegetable stock, but chicken broth would surely do as well
3 or more garlic cloves, smashed
2 large sprigs of fresh thyme, or a healthy teaspoon of dried thyme
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole milk
1/2 lb Gruyere cheese, shredded (yes, it really matters that it's Gruyere)

PROCESS
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a 9x13 inch baking pan or casserole dish, pile in the cauliflower, Champagne, stock and thyme. Cover with foil and roast for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.
3. Remove the foil, turn the oven up to Broil and cook another five minutes, until the exposed parts of the florets are turning golden brown.
4. Carefully remove the pan from the oven and turn the oven off. With a slotted spoon, take the cooked florets out of the pan and put them in a covered dish to keep warm. Reserve the juices from the pan; if you used fresh thyme, discard the sprigs' stems.
5. In a saucepan, melt the butter. As soon as it stops foaming, add enough of the flour to make a loose paste -- you will probably not use the full 1/4 cup. Season with salt & pepper. Stir and cook until the roux turns the color of peanut butter. This takes a while. Be patient.
6. Add the pan juices and the milk to the roux; stir till the roux is completely incorporated. When the sauce is smooth and begins to thicken, add the shredded cheese. Stir until the cheese melts completely and the sauce is smooth again.
7. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower and serve immediately. This keeps well and reheats divinely. Leftovers, should there be any, also make good soup -- just add a couple of cups of hot stock and whir it up with a stick blender.

hither and yon

2008-01-06T20:31:00.000-08:00

That was the theme of yesterday. After coffee in the morning at my favorite neighborhood place -- it's a little farther away than the one right around the corner that I thought I would haunt regularly, but I like the favorite's ambience better -- I got gussied up and drove down to Laguna Beach.

First stop: an Episcopal church for a wedding. The bride is a first soprano in the Pacific Chorale, and she and the groom are both subscribers at my theatre. They are lovely, lovely people and they had a correspondingly lovely wedding with many friends and lots of family in attendance. And since there were so many Chorale members present, the congregational hymn singing wasn't bad either.

At the reception I met the young couple who had been in the pew behind me. He's a singer who recently left Chanticleer in order to enter grad school full time in choral conducting; she's a music teacher who recently played an important role in the big holiday extravanganza at an even more extravagant church. They're very nice young folks, and she's interested in opportunities to do plays for young audiences, so I gave her my card. If she follows up, I can connect her with my theatre's casting director and we'll see where things go from there.

My friend J*, an award-winning director, had a show opening at Laguna Playhouse that evening. So she and I met up for a random late-afternoon meal and a quick shopping trip to a toy store so she could get opening night mementoes for her cast and crew. The house was nearly full even though rain (sacre bleu!) was forecast later in the evening. J* had two other guests as well as me; one of them I already knew, and the other I thoroughly enjoyed meeting.

Unfortunately, after the day full of socializing, my energy level and mood crashed right around intermission. I did get to meet the playwright and the theatre's artistic director, so that was friendly/intelligent/useful. Still, as my attention span shrank and my fatigue grew, I know I didn't fully grasp the second act. I'll have to ask J* to email me a copy of the script so I can get what I missed the first time. And perhaps drop a hint that if one of her other two guests gave me a call sometime, that wouldn't be a bad thing...

a day and a night

2008-01-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

This is one of those workdays that started around 9:30 a.m. and will continue to at least 9:30 p.m., probably later. There was a break for dinner & an errand, but apart from that it's All Theatre All The Time. I'm working this evening because our show is in tech, which in my level of professional theatre means working noon to midnight, with many short breaks and one long meal break in the middle. They landed on a run-through tonight, so here I am, spending my Friday night at work. I knew it was likely to go this way, so I didn't even consider making other plans, but still... sigh.

Accomplishments during this long day's journey into work -- we picked our last show for this season (and the heavens opened and the angels sang Hallelujah), the schedule for my next intern's work got clarified, I reuned with the playwright for my current show (who just flew back into town yesterday), and I picked up opening night gifts for said playwright & the show's director a week before I need them.

On that trip I also picked up a gorgeous handmade card for the couple whose wedding I'm attending tomorrow. They are both over 70. I find their choice to get married extra courageous and charming because of their advanced years, and I am delighted they chose to invite me to the ceremony and reception.

The heavens actually did open today, by the way. It's raining in southern California. Sacre bleu!

three days in, already blew it

2008-01-03T22:04:00.000-08:00

Do you make New Year's Resolutions?

I do and I don't. Don't, in the sense that I don't think making teeth-grindingly determined resolutions is especially good for me. Do, in the sense that with the turn of every year I do a little private ritual of writing down good intentions and goals for the year. I think them out, write them down, focus on them for a while...

and then I fold up the paper, put it away and don't look at it again until the following turn of the year. I am often surprised at the percentage of the "resolutions" I achieved, and that there are often one or two that fall completely off my radar.

This year one of my resolutions was to write something on my blog every day during the month of January. I didn't actually do my ritual until late in the evening of January 1, and missed that day o' blogging. Missed yesterday too because after work I spent my evening finishing my reading for a panel I'm sitting on; the panel "meets" by phone next week to complete its work. So, two days down, no blog posts.

Here we are on day three. And for the next 28 days, you can expect a post every day. Some of them may be nothing more than reports on what I did or will be doing that day, recipes, opinions about music, descriptions of experiences. Probably nothing as in-depth as the Sabbath posts were. But, my plan is, they will be daily and they will be here!

How can you help me with this goal? I'm so glad you asked!

You can help by responding in the comments. I am not an actor; I don't like monologues. Nothing motivates me to blog like seeing your smiling binaries showing up in my comments.

Readers who keep blogs and want to jump on this daily bandwagon for January, please do!

the last Sabbath post

2007-10-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. The Sabbath book has gotten buried in the pile on my desk, been unearthed again, fallen off the desk a couple of times... I would say it's definitely time to put this project to bed.

Muller's final chapter is called "Leaving Sabbath Time." In it, he refers to the ritual conclusion of the Jewish sabbath, a ceremony called Havdalah. At Havdalah, a cup of spices is passed around whatever group or family is gathered. The spices serve to perfume the air, what Muller refers to as the "fragrance of rest." Since our sense of smell is so closely tied to our emotions, it's wise to use aroma to trigger and connect with feelings.

Here, the intended effect of the ritual and the fragrance is to create a smooth path down which one can figuratively walk, emerging from the protected time of sabbath into the working week. As the fragrance lingers, so does the physical and emotional sensation of rest that we can carry into our working days.

As many of you know, there were big wildfires this past week in southern California. None of them were near where I lived, but I could see the smoke and smell it at my workplace. Monday was terrible -- extremely hot and dry from the Santana winds, a bad day to have to live in a sensitive skin -- but Tuesday and Wednesday were really the worst times for the smoke. I sneezed and coughed in my office all day long, and my voice was gravelly and awful.

Thursday I had taken the day off, making up some time I had spent at work the previous weekend. That day the desert winds had tapered down and the air was noticeably clearer. And every once in a while, in my apartment two blocks from the beach, I was able to smell the salt of the sea again instead of just smelling smoke.

Now it's near the end of the weekend and the salt fragrance hangs readily in the air. It will be some time yet before our atmosphere is really clear, but our eyes are no longer smarting, and leaving the windows open no longer invites Dust Bowl-sized drifts to form in the corners of the sills.

It would be really nice to have time for a Sabbath nap this afternoon. But I have a commitment in the evening, and a ton of music prep to do before that. So I think it's time to eat something before I sit down at the (musical) keyboard and get to work, while the salty air washes around me.

flowers from the sky!

2007-10-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight and tomorrow, singers from the choir of the Church of What's Happenin' Now, Northern Outpost are doing a little "evening at pops" type of concert. There are a couple of big choral numbers that involve everyone -- the finale from Sunday in the Park with George and the title song from Oklahoma! There are also some small ensembles from quintet to octet size, a duet or two, and several solos. It's all really for fun, but it's also a fund-raiser for the congregation's arts program -- the only person getting paid is the accompanist, who is worth every penny and many more pennies besides.

A couple of folks in the choir encouraged, nudged, prodded and asked me what I was going to do. And I dithered and worried for a good long time. Finally I realized that I was just scared about letting these folks know me more and get closer to me, and that that was stupid and uncalled for.

Ergo, I pulled up one of the maxims by which I live my life:
This alarms me! Therefore I must DO it!

[Disclaimer: this maxim only gets applied to things that are legal and not too terribly dangerous.]

So I prepared a solo, a piece from the musical Wicked called "I'm Not That Girl," and put it in the program. We ran through most of the program last night during the choir's ordinary rehearsal time, moving from the sanctuary where we practiced the piece we will sing in the service this Sunday and going to the room where the cabaret is being held. It's a nice big space with a gallery that runs around three sides.

My song is on the second half of the program, after I've done a small ensemble and one of the big choral works, so I'm nice and comfortable in the room and warmed up. But last night we rehearsed out of order, so I was not so much nice and comfortable. However, some of the other singers were around to be a proto-audience, which was helpful.

So tonight, we had a nice crowd for the first performance, and things went well. I was pretty happy with how the solo turned out, and at the end I acknowledged the friendly applause with a little bow.

Then, WHUMP! A wrapped bouquet of yellow lilies, little white mums and evergreen landed on the floor in front of me -- surprising me and the people in the front row of the audience in about equal measure.

I found out afterwards, it was one of the other singers who had stayed last night to rehearse, who had decided that the song and the performance merited this. So he snuck up to the gallery and waited there, then tossed the flowers down. What a sweet gesture! Then he did it again for the next singer, a guy who performed "All I Need is the Girl" from Gypsy. So he's an equal-opportunity flower-thrower.

I got to thank him for the lovely gesture after the show was over. And tomorrow night, I've recruited a couple of other singers to wait with me up in the gallery, to toss down roses when he does his solo in the first half of the program.

What can I tell you? Paybacks are hell... :-)

on the plane of aspiration

2007-10-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm on the roster to sing the Mozart Requiem with the Pacific Symphony later this fall. We get very little rehearsal time for this piece, so everybody on the roster is expected to be competent with the notes, rhythms and texts before our first get-together.

I sang in a workshop of the Requiem with Maestro Robert Shaw back when I was still an undergrad. We had to purchase our scores for that workshop, and I still have mine. So last week I bought a CD of the Requiem and dug out my score to begin my homework.

When I reached the last page of the score, I discovered that on the blank facing page I had written down a handful of quotable quotes that Maestro Shaw dropped on us that day. Since many of my small group of readers are or have been singers, and Ben and Wanda sang with Shaw before he died, I thought you might enjoy reading them. Here they are...

God loves right notes.

The conductor is just a necessary evil.

Some quarter notes are longer than others.

Melodies are notes looking for a place to rest... consequently one sings their energy quality.

If we had three legs, our marches would be waltzes.

It'll hurt your voice, but it'll be great for your mind.

Make the diminuendo especially contagious... like a terrible disease.

Great music meets great text on the plane of aspiration.

The function of music is to make time meaningful.

The page is dated October 20, 1990. Eeep.

Sabbath: Afternoon

2007-09-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Perfect poetic justice, blogging about this chapter on a Sunday afternoon. It's a gorgeous day in my beachside city. We came out from under a pretty crushing heat wave a couple of days ago, so while it's sunny (It. Is. Always. Sunny.) the temperature is comfortable, and there's a breeze. When i walked out to my car this morning, parked near the ocean, the sailors were out in force.

Muller is winding down. There's only one more, short chapter after this one. And this one consists almost entirely of one-paragraph descriptions of the Sabbath afternoon practices of different people he knows. Some are more literal -- taking the afternoon of the traditional sabbath day to write letters, or make phone calls. Others are not confined to the afternoon or to a single designated day -- one story involved the spouse of a political candidate who escaped the stress and pressure of campaigning by taking long walks; another described a person's practice of playing the flute for an hour or more every day.

To an extent I can see how these practices promote rest and restoration for a busy time ahead.

But my Sunday afternoon challenge tends to be different. What I need is company. As a person who lives alone, I find it perpetually difficult to get enough contact with other people to sustain me. And the attempt requires more extroversion that I am naturally given, so answering that need may actually be an anti-Sabbath practice -- it drains more energy than it renews. What to do?

Today has represented a particularly potent edition of that challenge. I've fought it with phone calls and time spent online. I am also not above a little retail therapy -- I decided to buy, and paid for, an addition to my wardrobe of opening-night options. (I found it on eBay, Mom, so no, I didn't pay [shudder] retail!)

I'm trying not to fight it by distracting myself with work, a tendency I have really worked to change in recent years. But if I'm still lonesome this evening, I have the option to go down to the theatre and watch the third preview of the show I'm currently working on. I attended previews the last two nights, and they don't strictly need me tonight.

Last Sunday, by contrast, was full of social plans. After church I dashed up to Pasadena (note to self: during the next triple-digit heat wave, avoid Pasadena -- it was an oven) and had lunch with Dear Friend #1. Then I attended a matinee of a play, after which I met Dear Friend #2 for drinks and nibbles that lasted into the evening. Having every Sabbath afternoon be like that would be prohibitively expensive. But it wouldn't be lonely.

It also helps to make social plans for later. I'm solidifying plans with a friend to come down next Saturday, and I'm having two other couples over for dinner the following Friday. Knowing that awaits in the future also helps stave off loneliness in the present.

And what's interesting is, I don't have trouble being alone. I just have a surfeit of opportunity to exercise those skills. I need a better balance, and that is [expletive deleted] difficult to come by in this stage of my life.

Links to Tripp's and Cristopher's posts will appear here.

RPE complete

2007-09-07T19:29:00.001-07:00

What do Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, Isaac Stern and I all have in common?

We have now all played the Hollywood Bowl. :-)

Last night's performance of Boris Godunov seems to have gone well. The L.A. Times review is mixed -- and this reviewer almost always finds something nasty to say about Pacific Chorale, so no surprise -- but the audience seemed to have a good time.

I will confess, I'm looking forward to preparing music in an easier language than Russian. Next up is a program of Italian composers in November, so I expect it will be Latin and Italian texts, both refreshingly easy.

Sabbath: Morning

2007-09-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

When people of Christian background or persuasion think about the Sabbath, most of them tend to think of Sunday morning. It's the traditional time for group worship services, often followed by a special meal with family and friends.

As a person who stayed as far as possible from churches for about half my life, I rarely thought about Sunday morning as the Sabbath. When I was in graduate school, I did try to keep Sunday free from meetings or rehearsal commitments (usually a losing battle), but that had more to do with fighting physical fatigue and trying to defend time to keep up with my academic workload than it did with any spiritual impulse.

It still, frankly, bugs me that I go to church. I don't know whether or how I'll resolve that. But that's not really what this chapter is about.

With this chapter, Muller recommends and recounts different ways that people can use morning time to practice the Sabbath. He describes individual and family traditions ranging from verbal prayer to meditation to outdoor athletics to the "slotha yoga" he referred to in an earlier chapter.

There's nothing in the chapter that is especially revolutionary when taken on its own. What makes Muller's approach somewhat innovative is how broadly he answers the implied question "How can one celebrate or establish Sabbath in the morning?" Many people's answer would be "Go to church." Full stop. Muller brings much greater breadth of mind than that.

For me, the best way to ruin my day is to make me rush in the morning. Now, I tend to be on time for things. Since I'm singing in the choir at the Church of What's Happenin' Now, Northern Outpost, that means I need to be in the building by 9:30. So I let my alarm go off as early on Sundays as I do during the week, and that gives me time to arise somewhat slowly and gently, shower and dress, make a real breakfast (legacy from my father, who worked his way through college as a short-order cook and later established the practice of Sunday morning breakfast for my family, including the dog, who ate eggs and bacon with the rest of us) and clean up before I have to leave.

I wouldn't strictly count any of that as Sabbath in the spiritual or theistic sense. But it's damned healthy for me, whatever label you paste over it. And by the time the 10:00 service begins, I am alert and focused for whatever message that service may bring, and usually ready to pay good, loving attention to the people in the congregation.

I also think it helps to live someplace that is so remarkably beautiful in the morning. If I have the time and inclination, I can walk two blocks south from my apartment building and stand on the bluff overlooking the beach and the Pacific, passing gorgeous flower gardens and noting the neighborhood Buddhist monastery that stands on the corner by the ocean. (It used to be an RCC facility -- they still have a "Virgin Mary in the grotto" on the lawn.) And it is always sunny. It. Is. Always. Sunny. Just try to be grumpy in the morning after walking a couple of blocks in the cool, clear sunlight.

Thus endeth the Sabbath rambling for this week. Links here to Cristopher's and Tripp's posts, if and when.

The Russian Peasant Extravaganza

2007-09-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hereafter, the RPE.

The L.A. Philharmonic plays its summer season at the Hollywood Bowl -- which, as has been pointed out to me, was historic before the sports industry started calling playoff or championship games "bowls." To close this summer, they programmed a concert presentation of the opera Boris Godunov. Yes. The whole opera.

Since the group from the Pacific Chorale did such a good job with the "Alexander Nevsky" film score last spring, the Phil has rented us again -- this time more of us, about half of the Chorale's total forces. So for the past two weeks, 80 of us have labored mightily to learn the choral part of Godunov -- happily not too extensive and not very difficult musically, which freed us to apply all available brain cells to the fiendishly challenging Russian text.

This past Wednesday, at our most recent rehearsal, the singers started to get on top of the text. A few times, and more and more as the rehearsal went on, we were able to peel our eyes up off the page, start taking cues from the conductor, and sing as a group. Which is always a great feeling -- it's a large part of what I do this for.

A former boss of mine used to distinguish between feeling like you're driving the bus, and feeling like you're being dragged behind the bus. We had been dragged for several rehearsals, but this most recent one saw us taking some moments in the driver's seat.

The next rehearsal is tomorrow evening, even though it's a holiday. We'll troop up to Disney Hall to rehearse with our piano accompanist and the conductor who will lead the performance.
Here's hoping we remain in the driver's seat for that rehearsal.

We get together with the orchestra on Wednesday morning, rehearse with them and presumably with the opera soloists on Thursday morning, then perform Thursday night.

I'm thinking about what to do with Thursday afternoon, when I'll be up in L.A. with a few hours to spend. Maybe the L.A. County Museum of Art? or the Museum of Contemporary Art? or maybe I'll schedule another visit to M* and H* and see how baby G* is getting along -- they live right in the same neighborhood where the Bowl is located.

Sabbath: Evening

2007-08-28T07:45:00.001-07:00

With this chapter we begin the downslope out of the book. It describes ways to create or celebrate Sabbath time by borrowing from various religious and cultural traditions that embrace Sabbath. I believe that Muller's intention is not just to promote those practices, but to stimulate his readers' imaginations to adapt or create their own Sabbath traditions. What you do isn't as important as how it works on you.

He begins with Evening, which is the traditional Sabbath commencement in Judaism. Since I grew up in the RCC, the evening approach is an intriguing novelty for me. Muller describes ritual bathing, lighting candles, sharing a meal, and blessing those gathered, as ways to introduce oneself to Sabbath time.

But the point isn't to be clean or well-lit or well fed, or even to be generous with one's blessings or the grateful recipient of others'. Instead, I think, the point is to adjust one's temperament, feelings and mindset into the Sabbath groove. (I love that word for its dual implication -- the strength of a track that will keep one going in the right direction, and the musical rhythm of an irresistible groove. Groovy...)

In Muller's phrase, this approach "gently alters the quality of our attention."

For my money, this is the best idea in the chapter. It bears repeating.

"Gently alters the quality of our attention."

Over the millennia of human development, lots of different people who have become recognized as spiritual leaders from diverse cultures have articulated this same idea. How you focus on or attend to what's going on around you determines the quality of your spiritual experience.

You can be in the middle of the most beautiful, quiet place, participating in the most moving ritual, but if the quality of your attention is aggressive, or unfocused, or worried, or whatever -- the spiritual experience will be lessened. And you can be in the middle of the most trying circumstances, in great danger or inescapable aggravation, but if the quality of your attention is serene, grateful, generous -- the spiritual experience will be there, under the least hospitable conditions.

Last weekend I attended an event that was essentially a panel discussion about a peace mission in Israel and Palestine. I expected a talking heads event, so imagine my surprise when I arrived and found a band setting up their equipment. Karma 101, originally from San Antonio (hi Cristopher!), had volunteered their time to play. Their music is a challenge to describe, but I'd put it on the border between improv jazz and the massive category of "world music." The interplay between the trumpet player and the amazingly talented random woodwind player was astonishing, and the vocalist's style was noticeably Arabic-influenced. It was a great choice for the evening.

And, it altered the quality of our attention. Or at least, it altered mine. I had been busy that day, with a music rehearsal in the morning (more about the Russian Peasant Extravaganza in a future post, soon) followed by a visit to my friends M* and H* and their brand new baby boy G* in the afternoon. By the time evening came, I'd been in the car too long and felt permanently rushed. The music smoothed that right out of me, leaving my brain stimulated and open, but cleansed of stress. When the panel began, I was more ready to listen than I had been when I entered the room.

And it all happened on a Saturday evening -- so there you have it!

Consciously altering the quality of my attention is the key to my adjustment into the Sabbath groove. The more frequently I do it, the better my life is. There are lots of ways to manage it -- Muller's old technique of "guerrilla blessing" does it well, as does my resolution to sing every day just because it's good for my body and heart -- so whether or not I use his more traditional suggestions from this chapter, I fully embrace the idea they're intended to promote.

Good job, Wayne.

Links will come here to Tripp's and Cristopher's posts when they go up.

Sabbath 30

2007-08-20T23:20:00.000-07:00

Links here to Cristopher's and Tripp's posts when they become available.

This chapter is the last in the "Consecration" section -- the book's final section, on the construction and conduct of a Sabbath day, will begin next. This chapter's title is "Breaking the Trance."

Since this chapter stands as something of a conclusion, it consists mostly of an eloquent restatement of Muller's main point for the book. Muller begins with an extended metaphor about how we are distracted by a movie to the point where we are briefly disoriented by the sudden return to our real lives (shades of Plato's Cave, campers!)

And just when I'm getting good and artistically het up about Muller's apparent disapproval of what art offers in our lives, he saves the day with the following acknowledgment:

"During the week our work, our contributions to the well-being of our family and community are essential and necessary."

This, finally, answers a lot of the objections I've raised to Muller's apparently black-and-white thinking over the course of the book. If only he had said it sooner, he could have saved me a lot of stress! But he didn't trust his readers to absorb the message of balance without his presenting it in a way that didn't actually embody that balance. Oh well. He made it there eventually!

As Muller goes on to say, "Sabbath time offers the gift of deep balance." And it was the need for such balance that drove me into this book in the first place.

When my friend Margaret gave it to me a few years ago, she was exactly right to do so. Then this year, when I offered it to Tripp and Cristopher, it was good for me to return to it.

I'm just about ready to be done with the book -- four chapters to go! -- but I'm glad that Muller has reminded me about deep balance. I can aim for it over the next chunk of time, however long that may be. And when I lose sight of it, the book will be there on the shelf to remind me.

Sabbath 29

2007-08-12T20:14:00.000-07:00

Someday, perhaps, I will renew my interest in blogging about something other than this book. For now, though, you get another chapter.

This one is short and wonderfully coherent. It's called "Ownership," and it addresses the often invisible trade-off between the time and energy it takes to own things, and the other uses to which we could put that time and energy. In some ways this chapter hooks up to some of the principles enumerated in Your Money or Your Life, a book I have not read, by Joe Dominguez.

How do I know that the chapter and the other book coincide, if I haven't read the other book? Well, about three years ago, it seemed like every time I turned around somebody mentioned Your Money or Your Life to me. Through those discussions, I picked up the basic gist.

Our time and energy is finite. The quantities may be vast, but eventually they do reach an end. Dominguez's book focuses on finding the best balance between time/energy spent pursuing money and time/energy spent pursuing anything else. Everything else.

Reflecting on the chapter, I began to think that I own a fair amount of stuff. I own a car, I own furniture, I own books and works of art. I own kitchen equipment and clothing and shoes. I own linens. I own cleaning products, I own this laptop, and I own a seemingly endless supply of empty envelopes waiting to have their backs decorated with grocery lists and to-do reminders. I own electric candles to put in my windows at Christmastime (one fewer candle than I have windows, since I broke one candle taking it down last year).

But, especially since moving to CA, I don't acquire much new stuff. I borrow books from the library, and return them. I take care of my clothes so I don't have to spend money on new ones. I don't buy CDs; I don't even buy songs online to download (in my opinion, maintaining one's virtual possessions such as a library of downloaded sound files can toss one right into the same time/energy-drain trap that maintaining one's physical possessions does).

And I don't give much of my time/energy to those who want to sell me things. I've passed the one-year mark of my No Broadcast TV Experiment, so for the past year I haven't let TV advertisers use my time/energy. I skip the ads in the newspaper, though I read the articles. Periodically I will flip through a print catalogue, but 7/8 of them go straight from the mailbox to the recycling bag without passing Go or collecting $200.

This leaves me time/energy to do things like read those books I borrow from the library, enjoy the music on those CDs I do own or new music I hear on the radio, crochet afghans for friends and family (requires acquiring yarn, but I don't keep it, so I think it falls on the safe side of the Ownership Risk), talk on the phone, and otherwise try to keep myself in touch with the world as I know it and care about it.

This is the upside of a relative lack of wealth. Much of what net worth I have is tied up in the house I own but don't get to live in and can't sell any time soon, and in the retirement accounts I feed without ceasing and otherwise pretty well ignore. I spend relatively little time/energy taking care of my small stock of money, and much more time/energy doing things that don't require me to touch that small stock. I spend more time/energy maintaining what I own, so that I won't have to replace it any time soon.

Could I own more? Sure. But I don't need more right now, and I enjoy not feeling owned by what I own. (In Netspeak, that would be "pwned by what i pwn," but I'm just not that hip.)

Tripp posted on this chapter already; apparently, he came back from New Orleans ready to throw himself back into the Sabbath reading project.

Cristopher seems still to be distracted by Texas football season, but I am hoping his missing copy of the book will come out of its hiding place soon.

Sabbath 28

2007-07-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

This week's chapter is called "The Way of Enough." Muller begins it with a recap of the story of the manna and the Exodus. He uses this old story to make the point that, as he puts it, "whatever was given would be enough."

And yes, already in the very first paragraph of the chapter, I'm ready to challenge Muller. Immediately my brain says back, "Oh yeah? Tell that to the family in my neighborhood that can't keep their kids fed."

Muller knows who his intended readers are, and they don't include the family who can't keep their kids fed. He's writing for bohos like me, who actually have enough money to provide the necessities of life for themselves, but who have a problem with overwork and overwhelm. For us, his privileged audience, he draws a finer distinction betweeen "abundance" (that is to say, "too much, more than you need") and "enough." Muller argues that we should focus on the fact that we have enough, and allow that fact to relax us, not focusing on making it to the abundance of having more than we need.

This is where my second challenge arises. Enough now is not necessarily enough later. I spend significant time concerning myself with later. Muller might argue that time spent worrying about later is not Sabbath time.

He's not saying "Never concern yourself with the future." He is saying, "Use the Sabbath time to admit a new point of view to your thinking. Use it to experience having enough, and being thankful for the enough you have." When Sabbath time is over, then there's time to return to planning and working and storing away... and perhaps one will do that so much better because of the restoring effects of the Sabbath.

Muller's recommended exercise this week instructs us to set an empty place at our tables, and hold in mind all the people living and dead, near and far who "join you there in spirit." This will be an interesting thing to try at some supper this week. I have no one to explain it to, so it will just have the chance to work on me.

Links to Tripp's and Cristopher's posts when they go up.

Sabbath 27

2007-07-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

And, we're back, all from our various early summer travels. Tripp and Cristopher have both posted about this chapter already. It begins a new section of the book, entitled "Consecration."

Since I'm posting this from work, I'm going to confine myself to two quick points -- one thing in the chapter that resonated well with me, and one thing that didn't. (Cristopher, I'll give you one guess as to what the second item will be.)

What Worked: Something Muller mentioned in a story about a woman preparing to scatter her late mother's ashes. He referred to her "making the day a sacred vessel" for this purpose. While "sacred" has many meanings to many people, and is therefore a particularly potent and dangerous word, even standing back from it I appreciated the deliberate commitment of the day to a particular purpose. I find that calming and strengthening, and it's an approach I may incorporate into my life more frequently, even concerning events that are nowhere near as important as the scattering of someone's ashes.

What Didn't: The exercise. (Yes, Cristopher, you were right.) Muller, who apparently was never Catholic, advocates for a more or less formal act of confession.

FEH!

After Cristopher read this chapter, we had an interesting email exchange about a key difference between the RCC sacrament of reconciliation and the Episcopal approach to the idea of confession. The RCC posits that only a priest can deliver the absolution of sin. (I say again, FEH!) Cristopher articulated the Episcopal approach as considerably looser, with the clergyperson as reminder and articulator of God's love, not as gatekeeper to absolution.

As many of my small group of readers know, I have little use for clergy. It's a neverending challenge to me that two of my dear friends have chosen ordination. And I certainly have little use for clergy inserting themselves into the fundamental relationship between the individual and the divine, as is done in the practice of confession.

Needless to say, I won't be pursing Muller's exercise for this week, avec ou sans clergy. Next!!

Sabbath 26

2007-06-04T21:41:00.001-07:00

Links to Cristopher's and Tripp's posts when they appear.

With this chapter, titled "Beginner's Mind," we reach the end of the Wisdom section of the book. After this chapter my co-readers and I are taking a three-week break to accommodate some overlapping travel plans within our little trio. We'll resume on or about July 1 and proceed through the eight or so chapters still ahead.

"Beginner's Mind" posits the universal truth that we don't know, for sure and in complete detail, what's coming. Muller advocates for taking regular Sabbath rest as a source of strength, calm and sometimes, problem-solving in the face of the vicissitudes life throws at us.

Muller describes many people's devotion to busy-ness as an attempt to shield themselves from the slings and arrows (sorry folks, Hamlet opened three days ago, these phrases are running rampant in my brain) or to prepare for the un-preparable-for. Of course, this technique doesn't work 100% of the time.

There's wisdom in working hard and being prepared for what you can be prepared for. But there's folly in believing that having worked hard, you are completely prepared and proof against bolts from the blue.

He tells a funny story about a man who wouldn't say he knew where he was going, even though he'd gone to the same place at the same time by the same route every morning for the past 25 years. Of course, I'm more interested in where people think they are going, or where they're trying to go. And then we head down a semantic cul-de-sac that is just not very interesting. So, no more of that.

About midway through the chapter, Muller hits on a sentence that makes me smile. "Only inertia and faith keep us upright -- and still we worry, and often." Oh yes, we do -- or at least, I do.

And that connected with a sentence late in the chapter that did not make me smile: "The presumption of the Sabbath is that it is good, and that the wisdom, courage and clarity we need are already embedded in creation." This is an excellent reflection of the basic leap of faith that one may or may not be capable of taking.

And if you can't take the leap? Sometimes pretending, or entertaining the possibility of, gets you part way there. I can't say for sure that creation is good, or imbued with wisdom or kindness. But I can pretend it is and choose my behavior accordingly, leaving a thin background of watchful suspicion but committing most of myself to the "what if" of the moment.

Similarly, I can't say for sure that a god exists, let alone whether that god resembles anything like the portraits that are painted by the Judeo-Christian scriptural collection. But I can entertain the possibility of god, and see where I go from there.

Consciously pleasurable bathing is Muller's exercise for this week. I'm easy to haul on board with that, though this week's schedule of music rehearsals and performances every night will make time for long baths scarce. Nevertheless, it's a good idea.

Sabbath 25

2007-05-27T18:28:00.001-07:00

This is a long and interestingly personal chapter. In it Muller encapsulates his life's history of being a natural confessor -- that is, a person to whom others naturally confessed their troubles. He also describes a key experience of having a college counselor acknowledge the sadness that the counselor noticed in young Muller, and how that opened into an immense and apparently very memorable experience of benefiting from the same quiet listening and sympathy that Muller had often given to others.

Muller describes that sympathetic listening as a practice of "being Sabbath" for one another. I expect Tripp to rejoice in that coinage of phrase, as he has often used it himself. :-)

Near the end of the chapter, he winds back towards his book long theme that our lives are too busy and too full of stuff. In this iteration, he recounts a friend's experience refusing to thin her abundant garden, and winding up with less produce because of it. In this week's exercise, he recommends a metaphorical thinning of our lives, beginning by thinning out one thing we don't need -- an unread book donated to the library, unworn clothing donated to charity, unrewarding extracurricular activities cancelled.

I think it's a good idea. I own more stuff than I need, and as I hope to move into smaller quarters in the future, I would do well to thin it down. But I want to balance the impulse to minimize, with a full celebration of the love I associate with many of my possessions. I have artwork made by my mother and by a friend -- those pieces will always have places of honor in my home, wherever my home may be. The photographs that sit on my desk, bookshelves and bureau are not there because the frames look pretty; they're there because each photo reminds me on sight of people I love, many of whom I don't get to see in person anymore. Books were given to me by people I love; so were kitchen items, pieces of furniture, etc.

Now, to be fair -- my mother describes my decorating style as "minimalist" already. I don't think it's all that Zen, but it's not crowded Victoriana either.

But my calendar... now, that's another story. I've blogged some over the past year about my mixed feelings about the Pacific Chorale. It so happens that over the next two weeks I will spend parts of ten days rehearsing and performing with the group, first the "Alexander Nevsky" score with the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall, then "Carmina Burana" with the Pacific Symphony at the Segerstrom. This is the most crowded Pacific Chorale schedule of the season, and after these performances are complete we go on hiatus till August or September. My question this summer will be, all other things being equal, do I rejoin the Chorale in the fall? Or do I step out to have more time for myself, keeping the choir at the Church of What's Happenin' Now (Northern Outpost) as my sole musical outlet? Food for thought.

Spinning backwards from the suggested exercise into the material of the chapter. I can see that there is a degree to which my life resembles Muller's description. I am glad that friends and family members trust me with their confessions of pain and trouble, and have the chance to feel better if I listen to them well. But I'm not so good with the reciprocation. I have issues about being known, and those issues limit my relationships. I continue to mull over how to uproot them. (The issues, not the relationships.)

Links to Cristopher's and Tripp's posts on this chapter.

Sabbath 24

2007-05-20T20:45:00.000-07:00

In this chapter Muller discusses humility -- not just as a virtue for its own sake, but as a way to get out from under the feeling of Responsibility For Everything, All The Time. That feeling can keep us tied to the exhausting wheel of perpetual effort. In Muller's opinion, when we make space to recognize that we are tiny in the grand scheme of everything, and when we take sabbath rest and witness the fact that lo, the world does in fact continue spinning on its axis, that disaster does not result because we took our hands off the metaphorical plows for a little while; then, not only do we gather in the benefits of the actual rest we took, we receive a much greater blessing -- the feeling that we are not Responsible For Everything, All The Time. With practice at sabbath, we can make it so that we will never be that tired again.

Of course, there are lots of reasons to disagree with Muller. In one of Cristopher's posts about a previous chapter, he noted that he and his wife discussed how one of Muller's weekly exercises was clearly designed by and for someone who didn't have a boss, a pet or a kid. Confronted with Muller's thoughts in this chapter, I find I feel somewhat the same: this is work written by somebody who wasn't single and living thousands of miles from all his nearest and dearest.

My major point of reflection and eventual difference from this chapter illuminated something I hadn't recognized before in my response to this book.

It seems to me that Sabbath takes no real note of the future.

I worry about the future a lot. I worry about it financially (will I be destitute when I am too old to work full time?), I worry about it professionally (what will happen when my current bosses finally retire), I worry about it in terms of health (again with the too old to work), relationships, and all other dimensions of my personal life. Sabbath doesn't help me much with those worries. Muller's view of time seems very short -- a day, a week... never much more than that.

So. Muller's book wasn't written with my specific situation in mind. Big deal! I'll make what use of it I can, and forgive him for not hitting my personal nail on its particular head every single time.

In the bigger picture of this book's intentions, I think worrying about the future is as debilitating a full-time occupation as any other form of stress or worry that sabbath practices are intended to counteract. So, I have the opportunity here to figure out how to put sabbath practices to use in my individual situation.

That's it for this week. Tripp's post is up. And now, so is Cristopher's.

wrong side of the bed

2007-05-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

What do you do to drag yourself out of a bad mood into a good one?

I'm a moody person. I freely acknowledge this. And I do my best not to let my bad moods leak over onto other people. (I'm happy to let my good moods be contagious, of course.)

This morning, the instant I woke up I knew I was in trouble. A bad mood was already in progress -- must have pounced on me from the ceiling fan and sunk its claws in while I was sleeping.

So, here's an interactive post: tell me in the comments what you do to adjust a bad mood and brighten up your outlook? Extra bonus points if your technique doesn't involve spending money.

Sabbath 23

2007-05-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

In this chapter, titled "Be Still and Know," Muller brings up more of his direct experience with Bread for the Journey, the organization he founded. It's refreshing to read something so grounded in the real-world work he does, but at some points he still launches out into magical thinking.

He continues advocating for sabbath rest as a key component of good decision-making and a source of wisdom to undergird one's plans. His examples branch out to a larger description of how Bread for the Journey begins evaluating a community not by assessing its needs, but by assessing its strengths, many of which may be hidden or seem at first glance to be irrelevant to the needs at hand. I smiled at Muller's acknowledgment that "If people are alive, they will have unmet needs." In the face of that truth, the assessment of needs becomes a Sisyphean task of limited utility, doesn't it?

I also smiled at the place earlier in the chapter where Muller wrote about the "deep, crippling loneliness" that afflicted a single mother who was later borne up and supported by a network of other single parents who helped each other with the mundane tasks of family life, but also offered crucial if unspoken recognition and support to one another.

Smiling at someone's loneliness may seem cruel on the surface, but I don't mean it that way. I smiled because I think everybody suffers from loneliness sometimes, and that that loneliness undergirds many of our more intractable social ills. (See, Tripp, that phrase is still resonating in my memory -- I'll have to bring that "where do they come from?" question back to you soon!)

I think loneliness drives us to materialism when we try to fill the empty spaces in our lives with toys and gadgets, with "security," or just to distract ourselves with the stimulation of new stuff.

I think loneliness drives us to many addictions (this is not to discount the biological and social components that contribute to addiction) -- we use food, or sex, or pharmaceuticals, or alcohol to self-medicate our loneliness or to find an instant community we can feel part of. During my last couple of years of undergrad, I often ate in the smoking area of the student center (those were the days...) although I wasn't a smoker myself. But lots of the other arts students were, so that was where "my people" tended to be found.

Muller comes to this idea of self-medicating by another route, when in this chapter he notes that many programs or proposed solutions to social ills are flung out in a desperate attempt just to make the symptoms go away. It is hard to suffer ourselves; it is hard to witness others' suffering; so we try anything and everything to get rid of the suffering. Muller suggests in this chapter that we waste a lot of energy and other resources in this frantic approach. He believes we would do better if we sat with the problem a bit longer, listened to the people experiencing the problem a bit more, and kept our minds attentive to the solutions (which he seems to believe will be more effective) that arise in or after a time of reflection.

I'll go part way down this road with Muller. There are problems we can afford to wait for solutions to, and there are crises that we can't. If a person is starving, I can't afford to wait -- I have to feed them now, not meditate on how to establish an organic garden for them. But as was famously pointed out in the fishing parable, feeding a person is a temporary solution. We need to be smart about where we apply tourniquets, and where we engage in serious long-term rehabilitative therapy. (Okay. I'm going to stop beating that metaphor to death now.)

Perhaps the idea I'm groping towards is that we must do what we can do now to alleviate suffering, to preserve Nature, to nurture each other, etc. -- but that doing what we can do now does not let us off the hook for good. Perhaps palliative care, or the respite that comes after the starving person has been fed, just buys us the time to meditate and listen for deeper, more permanent solutions. They are two parts of the same process, and we must devote ourselves to both.

This chapter's exercise extended the "let go and let God" practice from the last exercise, inviting the experimenter to return to his/her problem of choice after a night's sleep and see what new ideas or feelings may have grown in that space during the night. Certainly, I can understand how a night's sleep untroubled by the worry du jour would boost one's courage and creativity, whether or not there's any divine influence!

The question of divine influence has resounded more strongly for me in this second reading of the book than it did the first time. My hackles come up any time that Muller gets too Organized-Religion-Godly in his language. Mostly because I think that non-believers should get to rest too.

Links to Tripp's and Cristopher's posts.

Sabbath 22

2007-05-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

My co-readers had their busy week(s) leading up to Easter. Mine was last week, and the refractory period has rendered me late posting on this chapter. Cristopher's post is up; Tripp's went up today. I put off reading Cristopher's post until after I'd read the chapter, which I did while I made dinner this evening. It often falls to me to summarize the chapter because I am often the first of the three of us to get a post up. Here, since I'm late, I'll just refer you to what Cristopher says about the chapter -- he captures what I think are all the important parts. The rest of my post will be written partly in response to the chapter and partly in response to Cristopher's post, so if you haven't followed the link above, you might want to do so now.

On the chapter -- some of my thoughts concur with Cristopher's. While I agree in theory that many decisions are better made with some rest behind them and some pause that creates space for alternatives and new ideas to grow, I also note that practically speaking, that method offers far too much opportunity for passivity, or for stealth maintenance of the status quo. The example that leaps to my mind is the sexism and homophobia of the Roman Catholic Church. Periodically when I get up on this soapbox (which I'm going to abandon in a minute, I promise) some well-meaning individual suggests that I just need to be patient, that the RCC will reform itself in time.

Well, kids, if 2,000 years isn't enough time for the extraction of the institutional head from the institutional orifice... I'm not waiting any longer. This is Exhibit #1 of "time for weighty thought" standing as an excuse for "privilege maintaining its place." This isn't waiting for wisdom. I'll none of it.

However, there are certainly instances in the individual life in which pause and rest contribute to wise decision-making. For one example, I've staved off more than one episode of potential retail therapy by postponing the decision to buy for a couple of days.

If you've been reading the co-readers' posts on these chapters, I hope you have found that you share my pleasure at the different paths our thoughts can take traveling through and departing from the same base material. Cristopher's progression to intercessionary prayer gives a great example.

Agnostically speaking, I don't have much ground to stand on re: intercessionary prayer. If you're not sure there's anybody there, then praying to the potentially-not-there person for direct action would be a pretty big waste of time.

Muller's chapter highlighted this for me with this excerpt from his prescribed exercise at the end of the chapter: "During Sabbath, we rely on forces larger than ourselves at work on healing the world." I read this and my brain said, "I'm not sure there are forces larger than ourselves."

Now that's not to say there is no force larger than myself. But ourselves, now that's a different matter. The collective power of human energy and ingenuity is more than enough to damn the planet, for example, and we'd better pull like hell and hope it's enough to save it.

So if collective human energy is all we've got, I would suggest that that human energy still needs the resource of rest to be at its best, and to be guided by the greatest available wisdom.

The full exercise Muller details for this chapter smacks of magical thinking, but it's an effective way to defuse the shrillest anxious responses our problems can evoke in us. I would suggest that one might start with the exercise, but should not stop with it. If we experience the relaxation and sense of well-being generated by the exercise, we would do well thereafter to feed it into active thinking about the problem at hand, and to practical actions guided by that thinking.

Sabbath 21

2007-04-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

Muller titles this chapter "Sensuality and Delight," and in it he discusses the physical, sensory pathways into Sabbath rest.

As part of that, Muller touches on sex. I'm not going to, as this is far too public a venue. C'est tout.

In his usual anecdotal style, Muller tells a couple of other peoples' stories to illuminate his points about the give-and-take between sense input and Sabbath rest. The first is a story of a woman who re-encountered the traditions of Jewish sabbath when visiting her sister, and because of the sensory impressions of wholesome food, soft music, inviting light and the sound of prayers, was overcome by a sense of belonging -- and by grief over what she had been missing in her life. I also found that that story reminded me how a re-encounter can mean much more than one's initial encounter with the same experience did. When we miss something and long for it, being reunited with it is more meaningful. And when we don't realize that that experience's absence is making us poorer, the surprising power of reunion with it can overcome us, as it did the woman in Muller's story.

The second anecdote I want to pull out appears near the end of the chapter, when he describes a woman who cradled and rocked her hyperactive son whenever he started to spin out of control. The phrase he quotes from her said that she did this "until he could remember who he was." I believe that's a key to Sabbath rest, too. When we dash around accomplishing things, our attention is on the things we're accomplishing, or the obstacles that keep us from accomplishing. When we worry about money or the future, our attention is outside ourselves. Part of Sabbath rest seems to be the experience often phrased non-religiously as "centering ourselves," bringing our attention to rest in our own hearts. In my opinion, this does not reach the self-indulgence of navel-gazing; it just provides a chance to touch base and gently gather our strength for the next push outward.

My last comment about this chapter should be read in the context of a gentle grin at Muller for his focus on the feet. My astrological sign is Pisces, and Pisces is said to be the ruler of the feet. So when Muller brings up images of walking barefoot outside, and of the tradition of foot washing in the Christian churches, I am simultaneously connected to what he's saying, and amused by it. As far as walking barefoot outside goes -- I'm a committed environmentalist, conscious consumer of "green" products, and religious recycler -- but I'm not particularly interested in direct contact with Nature. I live two blocks from the beach, and I am never drawn to go there unless I have visitors I need to entertain. I'm simply an indoor person -- though, it's worth noting, I typically go barefoot at home!

So when Muller brings up outdoor barefootedness as this week's exercise I say to him, as I so frequently do, "You go do that, if it works for you!" But I must salute Cristopher for trying it out. Tripp's post is up now too.

Sabbath 20

2007-04-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Annnnnd... we're back.

This week's chapter is called "The Tyranny of Choice." In it, Muller discusses how the proliferation of choices in contemporary life have made that life more exhausting, and yet, how fiercely people defend their right to that degree of choice.

The most substantial part of Muller's message begins with this: "we chafe at any restriction on our capacity to generate options, and we revolt against any concept of prohibition... Who do those ancient sages think they are anyway, always telling us what we are not allowed to do?"

On the one hand, I find that I'm happier when I decline to deal with certain choices. For example, see my recent post about not having broadcast TV in my home. I spend almost no energy now deciding what to watch on TV -- I have a maximum of three options at any time, since that's the number of DVDs on my Netflix subscription. Most of the time I don't think of watching TV at all, especially during this busy season in my professional year.

But on the other hand, it's extremely important to me that reducing the number of options in my life be my choice -- not a curtailment of options visited on me by presumptuous persons -- who in my cultural and religious tradition are overwhelmingly statistically male.

Muller seems unaware of, or unconcerned about, the gender implications of his reliance on ancient religious traditions, which are statistically overwhelmingly oppressive of women.

He also lapses into his bad habit of generalizing from his own emotional experience and making statements as though those emotional experiences were the only ones that anyone could have under analogous circumstances. Which is lame and lazy thinking if it's what he actually thinks, and is a disrespectful and transparent attempt to manipulate his readers if it's not.

Muller concludes the chapter with an anecdote about a convent that supported itself in part by raising and caring for cattle. When the convent changed its grazing practice to limit the pasture to a small part of the available land, and moving the fence to another small patch of land frequently, they later found that vegetation grew much more richly in the fallow land. This is a nice illustration of the fact that certain things will simply not happen if you're constantly churning up the figurative soil of your life -- but periods of rest and calm will create the conditions in which those things have a chance to happen. (Not guaranteed that they will happen, but at least they'll have a chance.)

His recommended exercise this week is a moment of creativity to either calm or rev up your soul, whichever it needs. Since I'm creative full-time, this would further tire rather than refresh me. I'm skipping it.

Cristopher's post comes at this chapter from a completely different direction, which I think is one of the true joys of a grupenreading experiment like this one. Tripp's post appeared this morning.

Tripp thinks I'm weird

2007-04-17T09:47:00.001-07:00

My dear friend Tripp tagged me with a meme.

And what, some of my dear readers may ask, is a meme? Well, here's Wikipedia's article that describes it generally. And here's a description of the term meme as used in the blogosphere; scroll down about halfway and you'll find the section.

Essentially, a blogger asks a question (like, "Name five things you own") and links to other bloggers' blogs, thus asking them to answer the meme. You answer the meme on your blog, and link to still other blogs, who answer the meme and pass it on. Basically it's a form of chain letter.

I never ever participate in chain letters, including ones passed on by email. But I don't mind memes. Those of you who may be looking for consistency in this statement should consult Walt Whitman. :-)

So! Without further ado, here are Six Weird Things About Me:

1. Everybody thinks I'm organized. They are so fooled!!
Actually, everybody thinks I'm naturally organized. That's where the error lies. I'm naturally entropic. But if I want to keep a roof over my head and food on the table, now and in the future, I have to manage things left-brainedly. There's a corollary here that states, Everybody thinks I'm logical. In fact, I only use logic to explain or convince everybody else of what I already know intuitively.

2. I like my color-changing hair.
There isn't enough yet to really show whether it's white, silver or gray, but it's coming in, and I like it. I don't intend ever to color it -- just keep cutting it shorter and shorter as it gets lighter and lighter. Of course, if I change my mind about the color option at some point, again I will refer you to Walt.

3. I'm enjoying life without broadcast TV.
When I moved last July, I decided not to subscribe to cable TV for a while, for economic reasons. Then I discovered that I couldn't get any reception of the supposedly free airwaves either. So for the past... what... nine months now? It's been Netflix or nothing. And it's been nice.

4. I'm an agnostic who regularly attends church.
Walt again. 'Nuff said.

5. I'm an INFJ.
Go here to discover what that means. Apparently, it's rare.

6. You should feel free to fill in the last one.
Use the Comments! (I borrowed this from Tripp.)

and speaking of music:

2007-04-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's L.A. Times had a front-page story on the baton pass from Esa-Pekka Salonen to Gustavo Dudamel, effective in 2009. Not the front page of the arts section. The Front Page.

Dudamel's first conducting gig with the Phil caused quite a positive stir. Salonen wants to spend more time composing, though he will still conduct (of course). So, there you go.

This leads me to wonder whether the Pacific Chorale's relationship was with the L.A. Phil, or with Salonen. If the former, we'll probably still be the go-to chorus for anything Dudamel winds up programming that requires choral forces. If the latter, then maybe the upcoming performance of Alexander Nevsky will be my only shot at the Disney Hall stage.

Either way, it looks like the players are happy.

half kicked out

2007-04-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

Blogging suffered while I was opening the second of my two overlapping shows this spring -- today was the day for savage reviews to come in. I'm not providing links. Feh upon them.

But the title of this posting doesn't refer to my professional life. Instead, it's connected to a recent choice about Pacific Chorale. We're preparing for a two-part concert: Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony and Golijov's Oceana.

Last Monday night's rehearsal was an unmitigated disaster. The conductor told us he was going to call an extra rehearsal for this Wednesday night (unfortunately, a night I could not attend because I have to work late).

Then tonight when I arrived at rehearsal, one of the other singers told me that the artistic director had decided to have the Golijov be performed by a smaller choir from within our ranks. Those singers had already received emails asking them to do the piece. I received no such email.

I don't know whether I wasn't invited to sing the piece because I wasn't doing well enough in rehearsal, or because my rehearsal conflict with Wednesday night was already known. Either way, it works out the same -- I'm only singing the Sea Symphony.

Now, I really hope that Sea Symphony is first on the program.

Sabbath 19

2007-03-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

Muller titles this chapter "Selling Unhappiness," and uses it to point out how the contemporary Western market economy is predicated on the implication that the potential buyer is unhappy, but will become happy if he or she buys this product.

If the potential buyer is already happy, the would-be seller is outta luck. This ties back to Muller's point that working harder to have more money to buy more stuff will not make us happier. It will just make us more tired.

He takes the point one step further with this paragraph:

"It is imperative that we recognize that our particular model of civilization is actually designed to produce suffering. If we simply work harder and longer and more efficiently to make it work better -- without stopping to see what we have built -- we will simply produce suffering more efficiently." [emphasis is Muller's]

Well, whoa. I don't want to produce suffering more efficiently. Do you?

Muller goes on to point out how many people in marketing venues (catalogues, advertisements, etc.) are portrayed in postures of leisure that reflect what Muller's vision of Sabbath contains. So in Muller's opinion, the answer is not to buy. The answer is to stop and rest, content with what you've got.

The practice Muller recommends at the end of this chapter was given the charming name "slotha yoga" by a friend of Muller's. It is the simple but luxurious act of not hopping out of bed when one wakes up. Stay in bed a while, enjoying whatever's going through your mind, or whatever may be going on in your outside world.

I certainly believe in "slotha yoga," but I don't practice it very often. During the week, my alarm goes off at 6:00 and I must be up and moving if I'm going to get to the gym before work. On the weekends, it's actually easier on me to keep the alarm set at 6:00, rather than constantly requiring my unwilling body to readjust to the 6:00 wake-up on Monday. On the days when I'm not gym-bound, I enjoy not having to rush to get out of my apartment on time; perhaps that's a modified version of slotha.

I confess, though, it tickles me that Muller advocates for staying in bed on the Sabbath. How many people do you think he's making late for the religious services of their choice, which tend to be scheduled in the morning on the Sabbath?

Cristopher's post; Tripp's post

nephew to the rescue!

2007-03-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

Recognizing that his Auntie Megan was feeling gloomy, Connor decided to cheer her up by doing THIS...

It worked!

hamster on the wheel

2007-03-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks I have been running as fast as my little feet will carry me. I had two plays in rehearsal at the same time, a challenge I will not relish seeing again any time in the near future. I had houseguests, dear friends whom I was truly glad to share quarters with while they were in town working on a project. I had various levels of minor illness, culminating with the present unpleasantness of having a little cut in my gum from an errant popcorn kernel, big inflammation, hurts to eat or talk, hoping it will take care of itself and not require a visit to the dentist in the next couple of days. I have generally been Overworked and Overstimulated with a capital O-O.

So where am I writing this from? Work. Of course.

Tonight and tomorrow night I'm facilitating post-show discussions with the audience for the first of the two plays that is now up in its run.

The actors are lovely. I predict that the audience will also be lovely. I'm good at these discussions, can do them in my sleep.

But I would rather be actually sleeping, thank you!

Sabbath 18

2007-03-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

Cristopher's post on this chapter gives a good summary, so I find I don't have to. Tripp's post shows a deeper, if more romanticized, message from the chapter than anything you'll read here today.

Much of "The Gospel of Consumption" is redundant information for me. But given:
a. my choice of career and its somewhat limited earning potential (a situation I believe my co-Sabbath-readers mostly share),
b. my location, where all living expenses are through the roof,
c. my single status, meaning that what I earn is what I got, no exceptions,
and finally
d. the financial challenges I've faced trying to keep the house I bought in Georgia while living in California,
... any tendencies towards gratuitous consumption would have been beaten out of me during the past year and a half.

As it is, my mother calls my decorating style "minimalistic," and I don't shop for fun, so I am not a particularly good match for Muller's description of the driven consumer who can never be satisfied.

However, the desire to consume and the ability to consume are two different problems. So even if I'm living in a way that prevents most unnecessary consumption, I can use this chapter to look at my desires and see where they may be holding me back from the happiness Muller posits as the goal he'd like to share with his readers.

For this purpose, I think the shop-but-don't-buy exercise would serve pretty well.

The practicalities of the exercise are aimed towards bricks and mortar, and for that reason at first I thought I might not do it. I truly hate to shop in clothing stores, bookstores, etc. I get "merchandise overwhelm" very quickly and wind up not buying anything and having a terrible time. I do most of my shopping online for gifts, clothing when I buy it, and so on. I use the library for books, reserving for later the decision to buy a copy of a book I really enjoyed or found useful when I read the library's copy. I use Netflix for DVDs because I don't want to own DVDs.

But then I thought, "Aha! I could do the exercise in the drugstore." Every month I make a trip to the drugstore, and picking up small odds and ends I find it easy to drop $40-50 even using coupons and special prices. So perhaps this month I'll try Muller's exercise and see how it goes. Or perhaps I'll try an online version, using one of the sites where I could easily spend hundreds of dollars if I had them and chose to use them that way.

Sabbath 17, or, why I would make a very bad Buddhist

2007-03-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

This chapter marks the beginning of a new section of the book. The section is titled "Happiness," and the chapter title is "The Pursuit of Happiness."

In this chapter, Muller takes aim at desire as the anti-rest, anti-Sabbath force. He draws on examples from the Buddhist traditions to bolster his argument, which is essentially that craving results in constant striving and action, which countermands rest but gives birth to more craving. The cycle continues with the human being never finding satisfaction, always wanting more.

Towards the end of the chapter, Muller turns his attention towards gratitude. If one is busy giving thanks for what one has, one cannot simultaneously crave more. Returning to craving can closely follow the act of gratitude, but it can't actually be simultaneous with it. So, the more time we spend being grateful for what we have, the more we break the hold of craving on our psyches.

The major flaw I find in this chapter is Muller's disregard for any happiness that one might find in one's work. From what I know of him, he likely gains some happiness from his own work, so I decided to chalk this oversight up to authorial strategy. I think at this moment in the book, if not throughout the volume, Muller is staking out one pole, a rather extreme position, in the hope that his readers will leave the opposite pole and land somewhere in the middle.

Because my work makes me happy, I'm kind of a bad target audience for this chapter. Other things make me happy too -- this is what makes one attempt to create the fabled Work-Life Balance.

But I'm also aware that my core beliefs are pretty far from Buddhist tenets. Where Buddhists preach DEtachment, I embrace passionate ATtachment to the people, ideas and pursuits I love. I know I'm buying a certain amount of pain guaranteed to come with love -- which leads to the second way I'd be a bad Buddhist. Buddhism attempts to end suffering, or avoid it. I believe that suffering is currency. If I want love, I have to buy it with willingness to endure pain when that love is not returned, or when the person I love leaves. I'd rather do that than never love. I'm willing to suffer.

This chapter's exercise is so general as to approach being difficult to identify. In short, Muller says, "Be consciously grateful for the good things you have." Well, right on. And I'll begin by being grateful for however many chapters may limp by before Muller uses the phrase "bread from the oven" again. I'm about ready to pop him in the nose for gratuitous repetition.

Tripp's post on this chapter is here; here is Cristopher's.

but reck'ning by my natal day...

2007-03-07T09:48:00.000-08:00

Okay I am not "a little boy of five," no matter how one reck'ns.

But since Cristopher posted a lovely birthday greeting to me over on his blog, I wanted to share the link here.

Happy birthday to me!!

Sabbath 16

2007-03-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

Cristopher has summarized this chapter, the final one in the "Rhythm" section. It consists mainly of examples of putting into action the principle Muller has explored in the section: to value that which only grows in time, as much as or more than one values that which only grows with money. Tripp's post on the chapter appears here.

Between my first reading of the chapter and my second a couple of days later, I thought a bit about changing my own life vs. changing society. For most of the book, I've been considering its principles and recommendations just in the context of my own private life. This chapter suggested the extension of "Sabbath values" into our interconnected, societal lives.

As you saw in Cristopher's post, if you followed the link above, the idea of stewardship for one another's well-being permeates this chapter. Not that we should impose Sabbath on one another, but that creation of the elements of Sabbath -- rest, ease, companionship, abundance -- can and perhaps should happen outside our own four walls, as well as inside.

I had never thought of myself as a politically or societally powerless person (Bush "elections" notwithstanding), so it was interesting to me that during some of my consideration of this chapter I kept hearing in my head the refrain "I can't change society... I can't change society... I can't change society..." But the work of Bread for the Journey, and especially the example of the now-Nobel-winning work of establishing the world's first microcredit bank, shows how much good can be done with resources that are not enormous. Time to get rid of that mental refrain.

The exercise this week is challenging. There's never been a group I couldn't feel outside of. But, lame though that is, I do have some minimal experience establishing conscious community. For example, when I lived in Minneapolis, I had a mutual airport transportation pact with another single friend who lived alone -- any time I needed a ride to or from the airport I could ask him and he'd say "Yes" if he was free, and vice versa. This small, articulated contract relieved us both of a lot of stress, since we knew we would not be bugging the other person and potentially endangering our friendship by asking too often.

Living so far away from all the people who are most important to me, it is that much more incumbent upon me to keep up my end of all of those long-distance relationships. It may be more work than usual, not just to do the calling/emailing/etc., but to remember to do it, and not to let anybody go too long without contact. But that's just what Muller is talking about in this chapter -- our relationships only really grow with the application of time and attention. There is no substitute for that.

Principle: Love One Another

2007-03-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

Love one another.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the best organizing principle for a life that I have ever heard, read or found.

It is also the sum total of the Christian doctrine that I truly believe. This will explain why my appointment in Tripp's virtual university is to a chair in heresy, among other things...

Was Jesus divine or human? Dunno. Not particularly worried about it.

Did Jesus exist, historically speaking? Dunno. Probably, given his literary longevity and the way that the writings about him sprang into being.

Does God exist? Dunno. I know I won't find out for sure until I die, if even then. And that's why the first part of the Great Commandment doesn't appear here.

But even if the answer to all of the above questions is a resounding, final NO...

Love One Another is still the best organizing principle for a life, that I have ever heard, read or found. I'm sticking with it.

Principles: on speech

2007-03-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

It's a three-for-one today, folks. I was musing on what principle to post, and I bet there is actually a uniting principle somewhere underpinning the three of these. But I couldn't winkle it out, so I'll put up the three. Maybe one of you will be able to identify the unifying principle!

1. Those who choose not to participate in the making, don't get to bitch about the outcome. A.K.A. the Election Principle, for example: if I don't vote, I forfeit my right to complain about the measures or people who are elected. But the same is true for any decisionmaking process, large or small. Important caveat, though: this principle addresses choosing not to participate. Those who are excluded from making or decisionmaking (I'm looking at you, RCC) have every right to bitch about the outcome.

2. Those who got it, don't talk about it, and those who talk about it, probably don't got it. (grammar deliberate. yes.) A.K.A. the ESP Principle, for example: those who claim to be "good readers" of other people's thoughts and feelings, usually aren't. But in my life, it extends to discussion of talent and other such personal attributes. This principle's important caveat involves avoiding false modesty. In my world, you don't bring up the fact that (for example) you sing well. But if somebody else brings it up and compliments you, you don't deny it -- that's false modesty. You thank them and move the conversation on.

3. Say exactly what you mean. A.K.A. the Responsibility Principle, which is to say, I am responsible for everything I say and everything I do. Being drunk isn't an excuse -- I'm still responsible for anything I say or anything I do when I'm drunk. Being angry isn't an excuse -- I'm still responsible for anything I say or anything I do when I'm angry. Etc. etc. and so forth.

Principle: "Safe" is just a baseball term

2007-02-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

While I was more than happy to stand up for the first two principles, I have a more ambivalent response to today's. But if we're gonna talk honestly about the precepts that lead to the ways we live our lives, we risk getting into some deep and murky territory.

It is my opinion that nothing and nobody is ever truly safe. It is my further opinion that thinking one is safe is a delusion, consciously chosen or not.

This is probably factually true. "Safe" is an absolute condition. Absolute conditions very rarely exist, and almost never endure.

Complete physical safety and complete emotional safety are equally impossible to come by.

Right now I'm sitting in my desk chair in my office at work. "Safe," right? But of course at any second the building could catch fire, or I could develop a violent reaction to the mold in the walls, or the lamp standing next to my desk could short-circuit and explode, shooting shards of hot glass and metal into my body.

I'm "safe" in the company of friends, right? But other people can be depended on, finally, only to pursue what's best for them. So, one can only be "safe" in relative terms, not absolute ones.

True as it may be, this is not a very useful principle on which to base decisions or live a life. It might be more useful to say, "Yes, you're not safe. Nobody is. Live anyway."

I may, however, continue to snicker inwardly at the frequent references I hear and read to "making a safe space" for this or that. (This phrase comes up a lot in artistic pursuits, maybe an occupational hazard.)

Principle: Pull Your Weight

2007-02-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

There are several corollaries, or possibly other ways to state this principle. "Earn what you enjoy." "Never assume you're entitled." "Don't be any trouble if you can avoid it."

But essentially, I think it's the step beyond gratitude. I still remember the time and place during my freshman year of college when I realized what a terrific family I was part of. Perhaps that was the time when I'd heard a critical mass of stories of other families whose members didn't treat each other with the love and support that mine did, and does. But it was a pivotal moment for me -- I identify it as a significant event in my becoming an adult.

At that moment, I realized that I couldn't just feel lucky or even just be grateful for this good fortune of mine. Now that I was conscious of it, I had to pull my weight to make it continue to be true. I had to do my part to promote loving, healthy family dynamics... for the rest of my life.

It doesn't stop at the borders of family, either. I have to pull my weight in my friendships, in my professional relationships and opportunities, in my community of neighbors and strangers.

Don't just be grateful. Take action. Pull your weight.

so many thumbs, so little time...

2007-02-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

Your thumb...

... or mine?

Principle: Show Up.

2007-02-26T12:39:00.000-08:00

Nothing demonstrates commitment and support like actual attendance. Appearance. Being There.

When something important is going on in the family... show up. Example: flying to DC this weekend for Drew's christening.

When something big is going on for a friend... show up. Failed example: not going to friend W.'s wedding to his beloved B., because financial and emotional energy were both too drained at that moment.

When something politically or artistically large is going on... show up.

When work is hard... show up.

When you are tired or money is tight... show up anyway.

And there's a corollary here: Keep Showing Up. Example: after a couple of years of writing recommendations for a playwright friend of mine, I saw that writer enter a prestigious graduate playwriting program this past fall. Now I need to Keep Showing Up by emailing that writer every now and again, just to check on how things are going. My support shouldn't stop just because the writer has gotten into the program; in fact, after my own bloodbath in graduate school, I know that extra demonstrations of caring and support may help that writer finish that program!

Sabbath 15

2007-02-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

This week's chapter is called "Why Time Is Not Money." Tripp's post appears here (he's been very sick, so send him a get-well email if you get a minute!), and Cristopher's is here.

In this chapter Muller develops his theme of the lack of appreciation and value placed on tasks, occupations and experiences that are accessible only through the application of time, never through the application of money.

He rails at some length against the measurement of Gross Domestic Product. I grasp his point that economic productivity is not the only or necessarily even the best method of measuring the well-being of an individual or a society. In fact, I found myself growing annoyed because I grasped the point long before Muller seemed ready to let go of it. Railing against the measurement of GDP feels to me a lot like fussing because the measurement of my height fails to take into account how much body fat I have. GDP is designed to measure one thing -- it's our fault if we try to make it measure everything.

When Muller fails to acknowledge that his reader/audience can probably grasp a complex idea, I as reader/audience roll my eyes in exasperation, and feel a little sorry for him. This would probably annoy him as much as he's annoying me.

☺

At the end of the chapter, Muller dives into the idea of the non-money-susceptible rewards he believes Sabbath to bring. "How do we count friendship or laughter? How do we count the value of honesty, or bread from the oven? How can we count the sunrise, the trusting clasp of a child's hand, a melody, a tear, a lover's touch?"

And I skated off into reflecting on how Muller's Sabbath emphases lack insight into typical women's experience. A woman on the Sabbath doesn't get to stop nursing the baby who depends on her for sustenance every two hours. Who makes sure that the pantry and fridge contain the ingredients for the bread he's so rhapsodic about? Etc. That led me to think about how multi-person households might conflict on how to spend Sabbath time. What if one person wants Sabbath time together, but the other one only wants time alone (the classic extrovert/introvert dichotomy)?

Despite my lack of enthrallment with this chapter, I was quite turned on by the exercise. Muller asks, "What are some of the inviolable precepts that guide your life?... Make a list of the principles that shape your days. Include both those you currently follow and those you would like to be able to follow."

Well. Now we're talking! I think I will post one principle per day this week, making clear which are current and which are hoped-for future, and invite your comments on them. I hope Tripp and Cristopher will consider doing the same -- and anybody else who reads this particular post and feels like playing along!

at the top of the ski jump

2007-02-21T20:47:00.000-08:00

And I know it's going to be a long, fast ride with not a lot of control!

I start rehearsals on Friday for New Play #1. It overlaps by a week with the beginning of rehearsals for New Play #2. Once I've completed both of those, I have one week of regular office work before I start rehearsals for the Festival Workshop. Two weeks later, four more playwrights arrive, and a week after that about 100 of my colleagues from across the country arrive for the Big Fat Festival we run every year.

This is all good work, but man! It's a long chain with no breaks.

Happily, I managed to get all my tax documentation together and it goes out in the mail to my magic tax person tomorrow.

The remaining personal to-do list includes:

getting info together and scheduling an appointment to take my car in for its 120,000 mile checkup
printing personal photos to put in their assigned frames and hang up
cleaning my apartment thoroughly before my two houseguests arrive
making an appointment to get my hair trimmed on Saturday morning so I won't look shaggy in photos from Drew's christening festivities

It goes on and on... not really complaining, just amazed!

Sabbath 14

2007-02-20T12:55:00.001-08:00

I'm the latecomer this week -- Cristopher and Tripp have already posted about this chapter. I was out of town for the weekend, but read the chapter over breakfast this morning. Now it's lunchtime, and I want to post at least a few scattered thoughts.

Re the description of the factory going to six-hour shifts and then back to eight hours later, I immediately began to wonder whether that factory's workers had a pension they could count on at the end of their working years.

Nowadays, I work one day a week for savings (10% of my pre-tax income into the 403(b), another 10+% of my take-home pay into cash savings for emergencies, big planned purchases, etc.) and four days a week for the money to live on.

Would I rather work a 30-hour week now? Absolutely. But even if it were possible from my employer's point of view, I would be trading off any retirement security I'm ever going to have, in favor of additional leisure time now. Personally, I'd rather be tired and overworked now, than be reduced to eating cat food when I'm old.

Re the altar exercise, I think of my whole home in that way. I keep photos of people I love in the living room and bedroom. I hang original artwork by people I love in different places in my apartment. I keep the whole place as restful and comforting-feeling as I can. I'm not so much interested in having an altar at home that I would be expected (by someone who will never know me) to sit and look at, by myself, in silence. The heck with that.

Cristopher, re your joke about Muller asking me to read a new play for relaxation -- I'll just invite you to remember that I was a dancer, trained in the art of communicating thought and emotion in gestures... and leave you to imagine my response to Muller thus. :-)

not just reading

2007-02-13T21:51:00.000-08:00

I realize that my non-Sabbath-related blogging has fallen off a lot in recent weeks. This period has been the beginning of my long busy season at work that runs from the turn of the year through the middle of May, nearly nonstop.

So, personal blogging has slowed on two fronts: one, I often don't feel like plugging the computer in when I get to spend time at home, and two, I don't have much going on apart from work to blog about!

I thought I would at least make a stab at it tonight. Nothing terribly heavy, just a look at a few things besides Muller's book.

I've just almost-finished getting my tax documents together; one more thing to print, and them I'm done. Tomorrow or Thursday, I will try to pry a moment free to call the professional person who has prepared my taxes for the past few years. I'd love to work with her again this year, but she's changed "day jobs" in the interim, and I don't know whether she will still be running her tax preparation business on the side. Here's hoping.

Tonight, I figured out the mileage I put on my car in the last year, some of which I can list as deductible expenses. This is a scary set of numbers to grapple with when you live where I live. I put 10,000 miles on the car just commuting to and from work last year. I put over 2,000 miles on the car going to see theatre hither and yon. Yowza.

I'm planning to run away for the four-day weekend and visit some friends up in the Bay Area. My theatre will be closed on Monday for Presidents' Day, and since I worked all through this past weekend and had to stay late last night, I have claimed Friday as an additional day off. I'm going to hit the road going north early Friday morning, and come back sometime Monday. I'm meeting with theatre folk while I'm there, so, more mileage to claim on next year's taxes!

For now, I must to bed. The alarm will ring at 6:00 and I want to be well enough rested to get my butt to the gym before work.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all! I'm going to spend tomorrow being the Generalized, Undifferentiated Valentine's Day Fairy to everyone I know, spreading love regardless of people's romantic status.

Sabbath 13

2007-02-11T20:12:00.000-08:00

Tripp's post is here. Cristopher's post is here.

With this chapter we enter the next section of Sabbath, entitled "Time." The chapter title is "A Life Well Lived."

This is one of my favorite chapters of the book so far. In it, Muller makes the point that certain elements of life simply cannot be obtained with any currency other than time invested in achieving them. No matter how much money you have, you can't buy wisdom. Only investing time results in wisdom. No matter how much money you have, you can't buy understanding. You have to invest time to gain understanding. Etc. etc.

Some of Muller's reflections in this chapter reminded me of Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's seminal 2000 book about the degradation of American people's involvement in public life from 1945 to the publication date of his book. I read Bowling Alone a couple of summers ago. It's dense, but I recommend it to you.

This chapter does require us to forgive Muller for not being an economist. Several times, he compares the amount of money individual Americans spent on consumer goods in 1947 (he gives this as $6,500) with the amount they spent in 1999, when Sabbath came out (he gives this as something over $14,000). The point he tries to make is that we spend more money than people did decades ago, and then we lament that we don't have the elements of life that Muller argues can only be purchased with time.

To begin with, I agree with Muller. I think that as a culture, we Westerners and specifically we Americans self-medicate by spending money.

However, Muller's picture is way too simple to support his point entirely. He mentions no factor of price inflation -- the grocery budget of a person in 1947 would not suffice to buy the very same items today, or in 1999.

There are some expenses considered de rigeur now that would not have been present in the 1947 person's budget. A personal computer, for example -- the laptop on which I'm typing this post cost me just over $1,200 almost two years ago, and that would have been nearly 25% of the 1947 person's expenditures for the year.

Muller goes on to argue that we, collectively and culturally, have gone too far in exchanging our time for someone else's money. He presses his readers to rebalance that equation. Again, there are places in this chapter where his class bias shows -- he seems able to imagine only two possibilities: people with too much money and no time, and people with no money and too much time. Immediately, my imagination goes to the working poor, who may hold down two or three jobs simultaneously, and wind up with not enough money and no time. Just worth mentioning.

Muller's exercise for this month is very general. He writes about a couple of families and individuals he knows who consciously set aside time regularly and keep that time unavailable for any part of their working lives. Then he asks his readers the following questions:

When do you set aside time for play? How inviolable is it? Make sure to create a regular period for enjoying your children, spouse, or friends. Play nourishes our delight. When we engage in "purposeless" enjoyment of one another, we harvest some of the sweetest fruits of life.

A few thoughts arose in my mind in response to this exercise. We'll push past those that have to do with family and friends being too far away for the kind of enjoyment I believe Muller intends, and go towards two thoughts I found more interesting.

One, most of my forms of play involve "work" -- that is, they involve effort towards a goal, and mastery of a skill or task. Choral singing is a great example. I love the mere experience of singing with other people who know what they're doing. I don't care about the performance -- as I told my friend Jonathan long ago, I would continue to sing choral music even if nobody ever showed up to listen to a performance. And in fact, during my last year in Minneapolis I was part of an octet that got together once a week to sing, under the explicit agreement that we would not perform. We just wanted to sing together and enjoy the experience. It was great -- different people brought different pieces of music to the table, and we had a fantastic time. When two of us took job opportunities that would move us out of town, the group did decide to perform for a select audience of families and friends, just once before we separated. That turned out to be fun too. But to return to my thought, my other forms of "play" tend to follow that pattern of involving or requiring commitment and effort, learning, and mental and sometimes spiritual growth.

My second thought was about an experiment I've been conducting since I moved to my current city last July. When I was setting up the details of my move, I decided not to subscribe to cable TV for a while. This was partly an economic decision, but I thought it might also be a nice change of pace. When I got here, I discovered that my TV's internal antenna, unaided, got no broadcast signal at all. So for the last eight months, it's been Netflix or nothing.

It's amazing how much more time I have with no TV. I use my Netflix subscription for movies and to catch up on series I never saw, or want to see again. I always have a couple of Netflix DVDs on hand, but now I might watch one episode of Deadwood or Northern Exposure or half a movie in an evening, instead of flipping on the Food Network when I come home at 7:00 and leaving the TV on until I go to bed several hours later. I'm also completely protected from television advertising, which was an unplanned bonus to my experiment.

I read the newspaper more now than I did before I started this experiment. I play more solitaire, I read more books faster. I probably blog more, though I'm not always tempted to turn the computer on when I'm home. And I'm simply not as tired -- not because I'm necessarily getting more sleep, but because I'm escaping the level of overstimulation TV can subtly provide.

I don't intend to turn into one of those affected, snobby people who brag about how they don't watch TV. As I kill my debt off, I may well decide to rechannel some of that money into the treat of a cable subscription. But for now, it's nice to have my evenings feel longer because they're not chopped up into half-hour or hour-long show chunks, and further subdivided into six-minute intervals between commercial breaks.

Sabbath 12

2007-02-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

With this chapter, we reach the end of the section called "Rhythm." The chapter title is The Book of Hours.

In this chapter, Muller advocates for the internal and external benefits of private prayer guided by the established practices of a faith community, and of participation in communal liturgy and the paraliturgical events that mark religious festivals.

The internal benefits he describes are the antidote to the stresses of continual striving towards progress (remember his riding forth to joust against commitment to progress, a couple of chapters ago?) Muller writes regarding following the prayer prompts of the Liturgy of the Hours, "When I stop to pray, I feel my body release, disengage slightly from the rush of activity and progress, and float on the tides of a deeper time..." Wouldn't many people's cardiologists, psychologists and endocrinologists just love to be able to report such benefits from their treatment or their patients' lifestyle adjustments?

Moving into discussion of the collective liturgy, Muller makes a cogent point about how the mistake of striving for progress can mount a sneak attack there. He remarks on how many religious professionals and devoted volunteers grow desperate, frustrated and vastly overworked when they try to make this year's Easter service or Christmas pageant more moving, more meaningful, more glorious than last year's or the one the year before that. There's a risk of piling too many lilies on the altar, having too many parts to the procession, too much involved in the pageant, and finding oneself and one's congregation way out on the other side of the point of diminishing returns.

Instead, Muller writes, "The perfection is in the repetition, the sheer ordinariness, the intimate familiarity of a place known because we have visited it again and again, in so many different moments."

And my antennae and hackles go up.

Muller, as his photo on the Bread for the Journey website reveals, is a white dude. Now, he's a white dude who has devoted a great deal of his time and energy to working with the most disadvantaged people he could reach, and I want to give him credit for that.

But I also want to point out that by advocating for liturgy as-is, Muller fails to recognize and root out the sexism, racism and homophobia that is embedded in liturgy as-is. It's possible that he misses this because the sexism, racism and homophobia have never been directed at him. When you're the target of such hate, you learn to recognize it and resent how mere repetition equals tacit endorsement. When you're not the target, you can be blissfully ignorant.

Muller's exercise for this week starts out simple, but rich, with the idea of the lectio divina, the practice of contemplative reading which originated (like most things with Latin names) in the Roman Catholic Church. While the phrases he gives as examples are all drawn from Judeo-Christian scriptures, it's clear that the function and effect are much like mantras in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

Muller cautions against employing analytical faculties when choosing to do this kind of reading, saying instead that one should "allow it to quietly work on you, as leaven in the bread, as water on a stone. The key is to read slowly, chew over the words, and allow them to quietly nourish and heal you."

While I appreciate the benefits of meditation as much as the next gal, I am frankly quite suspicious of any recommendation that a person stop thinking, especially when that recommendation comes in a religious context. But if one is going to do so, I'm certainly less worried if they do it in the private setting of lectio divina than in any of the public settings of life.

This chapter is full of references to Henri Nouwen, so I expect that's going to make Tripp happy -- his post is here. Cristopher's post is here.

Sabbath 11

2007-01-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

This week's chapter is called "Let It Be." (And yes, I'm hearing the Beatles inside my head right now... aren't you?)

"Let It Be" is actually one of my favorite Beatles songs, more for the yearning hymn-like melody than for the words, which I don't actually know. Perhaps I should go look them up and see whether they stand up to the tune for me... but on the other hand, I don't really want to know. Finding out that the words aren't great would detract from the song's overall appeal. I think I'll... let it be.

In this chapter, Muller makes a potent argument against the error of putting off rest until one is finished with one's work. First he notes that the Jewish Sabbath is set to begin at sunset. The sunset happens at widely different times of day as the year goes on -- I was especially aware of this during the summers I spent at northern latitudes in Ireland, and the winters I spent at northern latitudes in Minnesota. There's nothing quite like looking out your office window at 4 p.m. and seeing dusk light to point out that this is one time of year... then watching the sun go down at 10:30 p.m. six months later.

But Muller's point is that the Jewish Sabbath doesn't begin "when you're finished with your work on Friday." It doesn't even begin at the end of the *business* day, necessarily. It begins when the sun goes down -- and the timing of sundown doesn't have anything to do with "when we're finished."

He uses this practice as the thin edge of a wedge he then begins to drive in, to try to lever his reader away from the habit of postponing rest until one is finished with one's work. I think of the hundreds of unread plays waiting on my shelves, the essays yet to be written (and deadlines approaching), the research to be done for my next two productions, let alone any gesture I might make towards building freelance opportunities (because yeah, I need more work in my life...) -- it's hard to imagine being Finished with my work, in any permanent sense.

That is actually part of Muller's point, too -- that Finished is an illusion. He sees individual human lives as collections of tiny cycles inside the much larger cycles of families, societies, and even the ecological life of the planet.

I'm not so much in tune with him on that score, but I do concur that putting off rest until one is Finished is a futile effort. I aim to find a balance between finishing actual tasks before I rest -- I won't usually leave my office with a play only partially read, for example -- and resting in good time, leaving the next part of my work for the following day.

As I've been thinking about my responses to the past few chapters, I have felt like I've been too critical of Muller. Critical thinking skills are tools, and like any tools, they can be used for good or ill ends. While I do take some pride in my tools and keep them sharp, I do want to use my powers for good. So, I'm trying to cut Muller more of a break when he fails to read my mind (Really! What's the matter with him?) and take a larger view of what he's writing about. He doesn't have to get it perfectly right, in order to have something worthy to share.

One thing I noticed in this chapter was that as I read, my brain kept saying, "Spoken like a man who works for himself, Wayne." Much of my past and present struggle with rest has had to do with fear of losing a job. Muller doesn't seem to share that worry, so I perceive him as a person who doesn't have to answer to anyone for how much work he accomplishes. It's useful to me to notice how much fear about employment and money affects my decisions -- not just about rest, but about everything. Having gone through the biggest financial scare of my life in the past couple of years, I expect I may feel the reverberations of that fear for some time to come, but I'll feel them less and react to them less if I remain aware of the fear and keep it in realistic perspective.

Muller's exercise for this week is regular prayer -- simple and short, but enacted in a regular rhythm. He uses the Catholic Angelus as his example, a midday pause for a prayer that the faithful were taught to recite silently to themselves at the cue of a ringing churchbell. It is, in some ways, a revision of the exercise from an earlier chapter in which one was to take a mundane cue (ringing phone, or in Cristopher's case the use of a fountain pen) to take three deep breaths.

I object to the exercise because it presumes that there is someone or something there to pray to. (At some point, it would probably be easier going if I reconciled myself to this book's devotional slant. But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that if I were you, folks.) The exercise excludes, or at minimum, disregards, everyone who doesn't perceive or believe in a someone or something.

Happily, there will be another chapter and another exercise coming next week.

Interestingly, to me at least, the exercise that has stuck with me the most so far is the practice of guerrilla blessing. My time on the highways gives me lots of opportunities to bless other drivers and passengers, but I also frequently bless the people at my gym in the mornings. I need to start doing it with my co-workers, some of whom have tried my always dramatically limited patience in recent weeks, and with the playwrights who send me their work.

Cristopher's posting on this chapter appears here; Tripp's, here. (Tripp, please go look through the comments on Cristopher's post -- there seems to be a question before us.)

Tripp's Sabbath 10 post

2007-01-23T09:35:00.001-08:00

Can be found here. He quotes Alice Walker, which is a cool thing. Enjoy your reading!

Sabbath 10

2007-01-21T20:03:00.000-08:00

In this chapter, called "Hurtling Toward the Eschaton," Muller finally cuts loose with a full-fledged rant. No more quasi-poetic litanies about the nature of biological beings. No more coddling. Instead, Muller introduces an opponent which he seems to find worthy of heavier artillery.

The foe? Progress.

Muller draws a connection between the millenial mindset of first-century Palestine, representing a widespread expectation that the world would soon end and the concomitant events described in one's religious tradition would come to pass, and the devotion to progress that Muller found just as deeply characteristic of his own time and culture. He notes that devotion to progress tends to result in an unwillingness to give up forward motion, even temporarily, in favor of rest.

While I see Muller's point, my mind goes immediately to what I perceive as exceptions, or data points that lie outside the scope of his acknowledgment in this bit of writing. For example, if my work concerned feeding other people, and my resting resulted in their going hungry, then damn straight I'm going to have a hard time stepping away from the millstone. If my work concerned protecting people, and my choice to rest resulted in their being injured or killed, then yes, I would resist putting aside my vigilance. As it happens, my work involves nothing nearly as directly vital as either of those examples. So my quickness to come up with exceptions and objections may just be my workaholism talking.

But then Muller goes even a step further, suggesting a theology that comes close to reincarnation. (For the record, I don't believe in reincarnation, but I don't have a problem with the belief as others hold it.) First he describes the "theology of progress" as a mad rush towards the future where rest and peace reside, but which we can never reach because when you get to the future, voila, it is the present!

Muller then says, "What if we are simply living and growing within an ever-deepening cycle of rhythms, perhaps getting wiser, perhaps learning to be kind, and hopefully passing whatever we have learned to our children?... What if this single human life is itself the jewel in the lotus, the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl of great price? What if all the way to heaven is heaven?"

Well, okay. "Single human life" palliates the comparison to reincarnation. But clearly, Muller is much more willing to be satisfied with his life, than I am with mine. The conditions of his life may promote that satisfaction, and the conditions of mine may thrust it away. But this book isn't about the conditions, it's about what one can do within them. If I find Muller's imagination sometimes lacking, that's not really the point -- it's up to me to have sufficient imagination to figure it out.

I'll leave you with the exercise, which can be boiled down to two words: Go Outside.

Well, feh, Mr. Muller. I'm a confirmed indoor person. You go ahead outside. I'll catch up with you next week.

Cristopher, whose enthusiasm for this chapter far outstrips my own, has posted here. Stay safe until that central Texan ice melts, Cristopher; I remember how crazy things can get on the roads! Tripp's posts usually go up on Mondays; when it appears, I'll put in a link.

yay for JetBlue

2007-01-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

I'm planning a trip back to the East Coast in a few weeks, to attend wee Drew's christening. The original plan was to fly out on Saturday, attend the christening festivities on Sunday, and come back to California on Monday. I had it all worked out -- approval to take a personal day off that Monday, airline reservations made during JetBlue's winter sale, etc. etc. I would be back here to start rehearsals for a new play at work on Tuesday, all refreshed.

Well. You know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men... apparently it also applies to dramaturgs. After I had made all my personal plans, the first rehearsal got moved back to Monday.

This is where we get to the "yay, JetBlue!" portion of our message. I don't usually do much corporate cheerleading. But through JetBlue's exquisitely clear website, I was able to change my flight to the previous day, at a later time, and still get a direct flight back to my nearest airport... all for less money than most other airlines charge for even thinking about changing a flight.

So. Drew can't talk yet, so let's all say it for him: Yay, JetBlue!

Sabbath 9, and checking in

2007-01-15T14:35:00.000-08:00

The project that has intermittently populated this blog over the past couple of months started when Tripp and I started reading Wayne Muller's book Sabbath "together," reading the same chapter every week and blogging about it on Sundays. Cristopher shortly joined the project, so now it's a three-way co-reading among San Antonio, Chicago and L.A.

Gentlemen, the holidays did a number on this practice, so I'm checking in with you this week about how to go forward. Tripp, are you still in? Cristopher, where are you in the reading? [Ed. note -- after publishing this post, I went to Cristopher's blog and found his posts on chapters 8 and 9, so it looks like we're in synch with the reading.] Are there any adjustments either of you would like to make to this practice? The simultaneity of reading the same chapter every week was a big part of the charm for me, so I'd like to continue that if we can.

Meanwhile, this week I read the chapter called "Inner Music." Great! I thought. Tripp and Cristopher are both musicians, as am I; this is bound to be juicy.

Well, Muller then didn't mention music once in the chapter. Psych!

Instead he continued discussing the way that organisms cling to circadian rhythms, even when the external signals are being manipulated by researchers, commercial growers, or anybody else. As soon as the manipulation goes away, the organism reorients itself to a roughly 24-hour circadian rhythm of activity and rest. Okay, Wayne, we get it!

One thing that did spark me in this chapter was Muller's mention of the garden Linnaeus planted, including plants that would open and close their flowers in succeeding hours of the day. By glancing at the garden, he could always tell what time it was.

I haven't heard of anybody duplicating Linnaeus' feat, but there are two other kinds of gardens that stick in my memory. One is a "Shakespeare garden," that includes plants and flowers mentioned in Shakespeare's plays and poetry. The one linked in this paragraph is near the outdoor Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, where the Public Theater does its famous Shakespeare in the Park productions during the summer.

The other is the Garden for the Blind at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. I didn't know about it until a friend took me there while I was still in grad school, more than ten years ago now. We had gone to the Botanical Gardens, and after much wandering around, my friend suddenly said to me, "Wait here." He headed off across a footbridge, then shortly came back, took my hand and said "Close your eyes." We went back across that bridge and came into a garden that is designed to be experienced by touch, scent and sound, which thanks to his foresight and guidance was exactly the way I experienced it. Pretty amazing.

Muller's exercise associated with this chapter is classic Zen meditation, focused on the breath.

moment of random cuteness

2007-01-10T20:50:00.000-08:00

Apropos of nothing at all, I recently came across this image and just had to share.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a baby sloth. Doesn't it look like it should be a muppet?

Signs of the times

2007-01-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Walking through the Church of What's Happenin' Now, Northern Outpost (COWHNNO) this weekend, I noticed the pastor's office door for the first time. Upon that door was posted a sign -- just a regular piece of 8 1/2 x 11 inch office paper turned landscape-wise, with the following text printed in big black letters that I had no trouble reading without my bifocals on:

THINK FOR YOURSELF
YOUR MINISTER MIGHT BE WRONG

The more I learn, the more I like this guy and the church he's affiliated with. His sermon last Sunday consisted of reading a letter he wrote to a Long Beach city attorney, explaining why he refused to cooperate with the city's order that the COWHNNO stop letting homeless citizens sleep in the protected area behind the fence that surrounds the building. Other churches have won lawsuits over the same issue, citing helping the poor as a fundamental expression of their religious beliefs, thus protected by the Constitution and the laws that support it.

At the end of the sermon, the congregation stood up and applauded. Thing was, the sermon wasn't theatrical. It was passionate and clearly stated, but there were no histrionics. So I believe that the standing ovation was an expression of full concurrence and support of his decision on behalf of the church, not an overflowing of emotion based on his performance of the sermon.

Here's a link to a short statement he wrote describing liberal Christian theology as he understands it and the COWHNNO tends to practice it.

Sib of the Week

2007-01-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

Laurie is one of my imaginary friends.

My imaginary friends are those I know through my online community, but have not met in person. Once I meet someone in "real life," they are no longer imaginary.

Laurie has recently returned from doing field research in a far-off place. She's finishing a doctorate, and now that she's back in the U.S. I can hope to make her non-imaginary someday.

Anyway. Laurie's most recent blog posting concerns her decision to call her younger brothers more frequently. I used to be magnificent about calling my siblings, from the time I went away to college and used to time my calls home such that my youngest sister and brother might be home and awake.

For a while, I implemented the Sib of the Week system. Conveniently, my sisters and brother number four, so I could call one of them each weekend, and everybody would get one call a month. Sometimes, to avoid long games of phone tag around people's busy schedules, I would give them a heads-up: "Hey, you're Sib of the Week this week! When should I call you?"

But over time, the Sib of the Week system disintegrated. Now I can go for many days without my non-work phone ringing. So here's the question: should the Sib of the Week system go back into action? And how could responsibility for initiative be shared?

Changed the template.

2007-01-07T19:41:00.001-08:00

I got tired of trying to read my own stuff in light letters on a dark background.

Sabbath 8. Really this time.

2007-01-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

With this next chapter, we move into the second major section of the book. The section is called Rhythm, and the chapter title is "The Rhythm of Creation."

Muller opens this chapter with a story from his own life that is considerably longer than anything we've encountered so far. This is a welcome change. I didn't particularly feel like I needed to know more about Muller, but when the longer story came, it felt good. The story is of a severe bout of pneumonia and the year-long recuperation period that led to the initial realizations that ultimately took form in this book.

From discussing the micro-rhythms of his recovery in good days and bad days, periods of activity followed by no-choice naps, Muller broadens out into a discussion of the rhythms that he perceives in everything that is created. This retreads some ground from the earlier part of the book, but this doesn't annoy me as much as last week's example.

He includes the image "The fruit contains the seed, and the seed contains the fruit." which puts me in mind of 1970s psychedelic animated cartoons... shows you exactly when my formative years fell, doesn't it? But silliness aside, the image is potent. Everything we do has the future embedded in it, but the thing we do now and the future are not alike. There are times that will be full and abundant (fruit), and times that will be hard, small and seemingly immobile (seed). Over and over.

Of course, Muller brings this back to more advocacy for regular periods of rest -- that is, after all, the overarching subject of this book. He closes the chapter with the opinion that observing sabbath time is not intended to be "a burdensome requirement from some law-giving deity -- 'You ought, you'd better, you must' --

and this makes me hope that Tripp will respond to this post. In many of his early posts, he noted that he wanted to create a Sabbath "discipline," and I argued with him briefly that that approach made Sabbath into work, which was the exact opposite of the point. Then I backed off, because I thought, "Who am I to tell someone else how to manage their sabbath, or any other part of their life? Let him do it his way. Maybe I'll learn something."

So Tripp... how's it going?

This week's exercise is called the Sabbath Walk. It is, essentially, to take a walk without an agenda, stopping when you feel like it and starting when you feel like it.

Of course, because Muller is Muller, he waxes fulsomely on about things like "a leaf, a stone, a color..." Fulsome he may be, and more focused on time spent outdoors than I ever will be. But the exercise feeds into something I've set an intention to do anyway: to walk in my city once a week.

I have the habit of staying home, born of the need not to spend money and an abiding distaste for the place I had been living until this past summer. But since I moved, I want to get to know the place I'm living. And God knows this is the world's friendliest climate for walking.

So, today after church I had 45 minutes to absorb before the library would open. I walked a number of blocks in downtown Long Beach, along streets I had not traveled before. It wasn't at all the Sabbath walk Muller envisions, because frankly I can't afford to be that relaxed while walking alone. But I don't intend to do this one of Muller's exercises anyway. I'll move along and see what the next one offers me.

My Beautiful Nephews

2007-01-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

Two little brothers, sitting on the couch.

Connor singing an aria. We're not sure yet whether he's going to be a tenor or a lyric baritone.

Sabbath 7

2007-01-02T19:43:00.000-08:00

Darnit, I thought this was Sabbath 8. Ah well.

Cristopher has already posted his response to this chapter and its exercise. Tripp is out of town and laboring in the grip of a strep infection. So I suggest we all say a prayer for his swift and easy recovery, and cut him a sabbath-like break.

The chapter at hand is entitled Dormancy. It is, largely, a rehash of points Muller made earlier in the book, about how a cyclical period of rest enhances the health and life of all kinds of organisms, delivering up such interesting statistics as these:

A woodchuck's body temperature may drop more than thirty degrees Celsius [during hibernation]. That's a drop of 54 degrees Fahrenheit, for those of you playing along in the U.S.!
The jumping mouse's tiny heart, which normally beats between 500 and 600 times per minute, slows to 30 beats per minute during hibernation.

I know. How did any of us make it to the year 2007 without knowing the resting heart rate of an average jumping mouse?

In truth, I'm mocking Muller because he's repeating himself, and because I found a lot of unnecessary God ladled all over this chapter. Apparently when I read it I was not in the mood for more God -- or, more accurately, I was not in the mood for more of another person's opinions about God.

The exercise, however, is a big big winner. Here it is:

The Sabbath Box

Make a Sabbath box. When you set aside time for Sabbath -- whether it is an hour, a morning, or a day -- put in the box those things you do not want to use. For some, a computer or telephone will be too cumbersome, but something symbolic -- an address book or a floppy disk (shows that this book first came out in 1999, eh?) -- can serve as a physical reminder of what we leave behind when we enter sacred rest.

You can also use the Sabbath box to hold all the things you feel you have left undone. Perhaps write on a small piece of paper a word or phrase that signifies a particular worry or concern you would like to leave behind for the time being... Whatever remains to be done, for now, let it be. It will not get done tonight. In Sabbath time we take our hand off the plow, and allow God and the earth to care for what is needed. Let it be. Then, at the end of your Sabbath time, be aware of how you open the box, and how you respond to what you receive back into your life.

I like this exercise a lot. Now, I already have a basket on my bookshelf which is the designated spot for my keys, my cell phone, and my sunglasses if I had them on when I walked in the door. When I come in, I drop those things there. Never anywhere else. This is one of the many systems I've built up to defend myself against my own absentmindedness and tendency towards entropy. It works. This basket is also where I put anything that must go out with me the next time I leave the apartment -- outgoing mail, etc.

So I had a habit I could just enhance into what this exercise called for. I'm especially moved and pleased by the idea of laying down perpetual cares and things left undone, and as Muller says "letting God and the earth care for what is needed." This is a lovely thought for a solo person who feels the weight of her present and future entirely on her own shoulders. It's also a lovely thought for a person who is always afraid of forgetting to do something. All in all, this exercise is a winnah!

To be fair, I must note that where I placed an ellipsis in the exercise description above, Muller calls for a little ritual of lighting a candle and speaking aloud with friends or family the cares one is laying aside. I cut it partly because it seems a little precious to me, unlike some of Muller's other candle-related suggestions. I also cut it partly because there's nobody here to speak the cares aloud to/with/for.

quick holiday update

2006-12-31T13:11:00.000-08:00

The next in the series of Sabbath blog posts is due imminently, but before I do that I wanted to deliver some highlights from my holiday trip back east. (And no, getting up at 3:30 a.m. will never qualify as a highlight.)

Travel went easily, including the drive up to LAX which only takes half an hour when traffic is that light! There were planes, trains and automobiles, plus subways in two different major metropolitan areas.
All relations were in good health and spirits, from the 90-year-old grandfather to the 2 1/2-month-old nephew.
The Wilmington Drama League's Playwriting Bake-Off was a rousing success. Highlights from the plays included a chase scene between a recently retired gentleman and his wife, a revelation of a bank robbery, and a three-way tango to "Hernando's Hideaway."
Two solid job interviews. Neither was the big hit out of the park that I have had with some interviews, but that suggests to me that my reach exceeds my grasp, which is in the end a good thing.
Chances to visit with three friends who live in NYC and one who lives in Washington DC. The DC visit included live performance of flamenco a foot from my elbow.
Shannon laughing at the note I attached to her Christmas gift, which I promptly had to take back from her to return and exchange for the gift I thought I had ordered for her, but apparently didn't.
Feeding Spaghetti-O's to Connor. This is a full contact sport.
Sipping Scotch with Lee.
Sort-of trying on the pieces of the sweater Mom is making for me, in the hopes that I will soon live somewhere cold enough to use it. :-)
Being introduced to vocalese by Erin, who is something of a connoisseur (connoisseuse?) of the genre.
Admiring the engagement ring Joe bought for Julie, and then hearing later after he drove home to Georgia that she had accepted said ring and they are Now Officially Engaged.
And of course, meeting Drew, who expressed his approval of me by sleeping on my shoulder during most of the time we spent together.

Now I'm back in CA, getting ready for a quiet solo New Year's Eve. It may involve a walk down to the beach (two blocks away) just before midnight. I like to be outdoors at the turn of the year. But it will certainly involve the petite bottle of Chandon Brut Classic that my assistant gave me as a holiday gift.

I fleetly flee, I fly

2006-12-20T18:28:00.000-08:00

One more concert with Pacific Chorale tonight, and then I am off for a week's travel back east. Can you believe this timeline?

8:00 curtain up on the concert
10:00 or so, lights down at the end of the concert
11:00 or so, Megan gets home
3:30 a.m., Megan's alarm clock goes off
4:00 a.m., Megan takes her stuff to her car
5:00 a.m. or so, Megan arrives at LAX long-term parking
5:30 a.m. or so, Megan is situated in LAX, drinking a peppermint mocha from Starbuck's and wondering why it is so early!!!
6:30 a.m. Megan's flight takes off
2:30 p.m. Eastern time, Megan's flight lands
7:00 p.m. Eastern time, play reading begins with valorous Bake-Off playwrights at Wilmington Drama League

Ladies and gentlemen, that is a loooooong 24 hours... and given the time change, it's actually only 21.

Sabbath 6

2006-12-17T20:43:00.000-08:00

This week's chapter was a mixed bag for me. Some things Muller says were bang on, from my point of view. Others displayed Muller's biases in ways that are ultimately not helpful to me.

The title of the chapter is Fear of Rest. In it, Muller discusses the reasons people tend to fill every little bit of their time with Something To Do. Some people, he postulates, do this out of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, or even guilt, feeling like their stopping to rest requires that others suffer more, longer. Others, he says, fill their time in order to avoid the emptiness that (he believes) sits inside every one of us, and can drain our sense of self-worth. Still others, he suggests, keep moving all the time in order to stay ahead of the accumulated weight and momentum of the griefs and losses in their lives. Both these latter populations fear that if they stop and encounter the thing they're trying to escape (emptiness, loss and grief) they will be consumed by it.

Muller himself praises the emptiness, linking it to the Kabbalist concept of ein sof, "the infinite." If we touch this state, by stopping and permitting silence to catch up with us, Muller says we can receive the gifts that only come when a person is in a state of rest. When Muller describes the rewards of this practice, I find we are almost at opposite poles. He says "Prayer, touch, kindness, fragrance -- all those things live in rest, and not in speed."

Prayer -- I find prayer shows up wherever I have the presence of mind to think of it, including when I'm running very fast indeed. In addition, Muller may presume a level of faith I am not fortunate enough to share.

Touch -- from whom? of whom? This is Muller's bias about people not living alone, or people not being alone. Either way, it's a missed shot.

Kindness -- again, from whom / to whom? Same as the above.

Fragrance -- I'm giving him this one on grounds of poetic license, but I'm laughing at him all the same.

I'm really glad that Tripp is reading this chapter, because one of the lines in it reminded me especially of him and the challenges he faces in his first full-time pastoral job. After telling a story of a massage therapist who succumbed to overwork and linking it to the tale of the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive oil and earned rebuke from the apostles, Muller says,

Just as there is time for every purpose under heaven, so there is a time for nourishment and joy, especially among those who would serve.

I'm also glad that Cristopher is reading this chapter, and he has asked me particularly to talk about my experience worshipping in silence with the Quakers. As most of my small band of readers will know, I attended an unprogrammed Quaker Meeting in Atlanta for about two years before I moved to California. In an unprogrammed Meeting, the worshippers sit in silence until and unless someone is inspired with a message that they believe has divine origins. That person delivers the message as simply and briefly as possible, and then the congregation returns to silence. I have attended some Meetings where the messages flew relatively thick and fast, and others where the silence was never interrupted, even once, by a single message.

Reading about Quakers and Quakerism, I discovered frequent mention of a phenomenon usually named a "Gathered Meeting." That term was used to describe an ineffable union of consciousness that linked all the worshippers at a Meeting in their silence. It's the Quaker version of transcendence. I never experienced it myself, but I liked the silent worship very much indeed.

What a worshipper was supposed to do in the silence was not pray as we typically think of prayer, where we throw words at God and hope God will respond positively. Instead, we were trying to hear God's voice inside us. Not only is that where the messages for the congregation came from, but it was the source of God's intervention and instruction in our own lives, help in our own struggles, and ideally, some measure of peace.

Back to the chapter for a moment. The place where Muller reached me most directly in this chapter was in his diagnostic mode. I definitely carry more than a touch of what he calls "fear of rest." I think I fall squarely into his category of people who keep moving all the time in order to stay one step ahead of the massive weight of grief and loss I've experienced so far. This is less of a crisis than it has been in the past -- partly because I've learned to incorporate loss and grief better than I used to, and partly because I am less frantically in constant motion than I used to be. But the temptation is still pretty strong.

Muller's exercise didn't reach me as well this week, partly because it displays again his bias about people not living alone. The exercise involves creating a deliberate Sabbath period of silence, which might be a designated part of a day, or the duration of a designated activity like a long walk. This isn't as directly applicable to my life, because who am I going to not-talk to? Maybe I'm not drawn to this exercise because I already have the practice of seeking silence pretty deeply ingrained in my life.

Interestingly, Muller includes a poem in this chapter, one of whose verses reminds me of an insight I picked up a year or two ago, and returned to many times since. Now I can't remember who the author was (bonus points to any of you who can figure it out) but the idea went as follows:

Think of the thing you can least bear the thought of losing.

Know that you will, for sure, lose that thing.

Sounds terribly depressing at first glance, doesn't it? But for me, it helped to balance out my fear of future losses, based on my experience of losses in my past. Muller includes a poem by Jill Bialosky with this verse, which made the link in my mind:

I know how difficult it is,
always balancing and weighing,
it takes years and many transformations;
and always another loss to stop for,

to send you backwards.

Why do you worry so,
when none of us is spared?

Ocular Karma, please!

2006-12-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

Nephew Connor is having a minor procedure tomorrow morning, to help him see better. Not only is this a good thing on its own, but better vision will also help him with his tasks in school, and make all sorts of physical and occupational things easier and more fun for him.

So if you're a praying person, please say a prayer on his behalf today or tomorrow morning. If you are a vibe sender, send vibes. Think good thoughts. Do whatever it is you do, but do it for him!

Bocelli and Friends

2006-12-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

Lots and Lots of Friends.

Last night's concert, held in a hockey arena (seriously, the home of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks), seems to have gone well. Signor Bocelli sang about half the program solo, but the lineup also included three orchestral pieces without any vocal component, and a number of additional musicians.

There was a soprano who did "Ah, je veux vivre" from Romeo and Juliet, and a baritone who sang the Toreador's Song from Carmen. They both sang duets with Bocelli, and the three of them performed a trio that concluded the first half of the program.

In the second half, which included more pops selection and promotion of Bocelli's recent album Amore, the album's producer David Foster came onstage and played the piano part of a song the two men had written together for the album. A beautiful pop singer came on to sing Heather Headley's part of the duet "My Prayer," also from that album.

And then there was Paul Anka.

Yup. Paul. Anka. He appeared to sing "My Way" with Bocelli. The combination was moving at times, comic at others. Anka started repeating and riffing on the lines Bocelli sang, and then Bocelli started doing the same back to Anka -- Bocelli's English deserves praise, it is not easy to joke in a second language!

Conductor Steven Mercurio kept the evening moving, including many trips to the stage door to guide Bocelli (who has a vision impairment) to or from his place at the microphones. Mercurio's conducting style is very loose -- I do not want to see that man's golf swing -- but he does a great job using gravity to emphasize his downbeats. Sometimes with his entire body. Watching him, I was reminded of some of Mickey Mouse's gestures in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The choir held up, despite the fact that half the time we didn't have light on our music. I think some changes in the order of the program might not have made it to the lighting world in time.

And it only took me 15 minutes to get out of the parking lot. Given the thousands of people who came to the show, I thought that was pretty impressive.

Sabbath 5

2006-12-10T14:07:00.000-08:00

Before I plunge ahead into this week's chapter, I want to confess: I did not perform well on last week's exercise. Every once in a while I would remember the three-breaths idea, but I failed to attach it to any trigger or to do it regularly.

Oh well. I'll find a way to have it take root, or I won't. Even if it doesn't work the way Muller envisions it, any time a person stops to take a few quiet, full breaths, that is a Good Thing (tm).

This week's chapter is entitled It Is Good. Unfortunately, I think the chapter wasn't, particularly. Good. In this chapter, Muller give free rein to his tendency to bend scriptural ideas to fit his idea of rest. He even coins an unnecessary word, "rhythmicity." Give it a rest, Wayne.

Though the chapter as a whole didn't do much for me, one of the ideas Muller puts forward in this chapter did. He addresses the concept of innate human wholeness. I actually groove with this idea, that everyone is essentially whole and healthy, though there are times of pain, grief and difficulty which temporarily obscure that basic condition. But at root, we are each whole and, to borrow the chapter title, good.

Muller moves on to discuss how he understands and employs this concept in his work as a therapist. And here we part ways again. When Muller works with patients who are grieving or in pain, (he says) he believes his role is to remind them that they are essentially whole, and to believe in that wholeness when the patient isn't in a position to do so himself or herself.

This is where we differ. When I'm in pain, I don't want to be told that I'm essentially all right. I know that already. What I want is for my pain to be acknowledged, and not diminished or brushed away. So, dear readers, if you're ever in a situation to deal with me when I'm grieving or in pain, practice this phrase which will come in handy: "Wow, you're right, that really sucks."

Interestingly, though the chapter didn't hold much for me, one part of the exercise at the end of the chapter did. Here's the quotation I like...

[Buddhist meditation teacher] Sharon Salzberg suggests we practice guerrilla compassion -- silently blessing people on line at the bank, at the supermarket, in the cars next to us in traffic.

The basic blessing phrases Muller uses in this chapter are "May you be happy. May you be at peace."

There's nothing in those phrases about God, or Jesus, or Buddha, or any other divinity or organized spiritual system. Just "May you be happy. May you be at peace." Even if all that is behind the phrase is our own personal momentum, I still think that's significant.

And, it definitely feels good to do it. I recommend it strongly to everyone. Go on out there and practice some guerrilla compassion, especially at this time of year when schedules tend to be unusually packed, and tempers can grow short from fatigue, hunger, cold, darkness, and stress. You'll never get caught, and it will feel goooooood.

two out of three tenors

2006-12-08T07:55:00.000-08:00

I think I posted early this fall about performing with Pacific Chorale in a concert that featured Placido Domingo as the headliner. (Who knew Sr. Domingo had a website?)

Now, we didn't sing with Maestro Domingo. We sang the opening two pieces of the concert, then Domingo came on and sang a song cycle with the orchestra while we sat very, very quietly in the choral stalls.

But this weekend, I'm singing with a group from Pacific Chorale and Cal State University - Fullerton, as the Pips to Andrea Bocelli's Gladys Knight. (And he too has a website! Must be the thing to do when one is an international opera superstar these days.)

He's singing a mixed program -- happily for me, none of it is in German -- mostly Italian and a little French. There are places where we sing with him a lot, and other pieces where we sing four measures out of the whole thing.

But even when we're not singing... we get to listen to Bocelli, for free. What's not to love?

Sabbath 4

2006-12-03T18:24:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted to note that my friend Cristopher has joined the Sabbath blogging fun. I also want to put links in to Tripp's first, second, and third Sabbath posts.

And I believe Cristopher is right: a dinner party with himself and Tripp both as guests would be rich indeed. It would be full of music and laughter. Tripp and Cristopher both have amazing capacities for putting up with me!

Muller's Chapter 4 is entitled A New Beginning. He starts by letting us who are not scholars of Biblical languages into some new insight about translations of phrases and sentences in Genesis and Exodus (and Wayne, what's with the lack of chapter and verse notes?) Muller drives towards the point that God made rest on the seventh day -- that rest is part of creation, not separate from it or inferior to it.

About halfway through the chapter, Muller briefly discusses how important the Sabbath tradition was to preserving the Jews' identity as a people, as well as their religious life, after the destruction of the first Temple and the exile that followed. He draws a parallel to the exiled people of Tibet, noting that the Dalai Lama consulted with rabbis and other Jewish leaders about their experience of the Sabbath, considering how it might help his people in their exile.

That's interesting to me as someone who moves around a lot. My Sabbath practices can unfold wherever I am, under whatever circumstances present themselves.

Having drawn the line from Palestine to Tibet, it seems only meet that this week's exercise immediately puts me in mind of Indian yoga, which would be a stop along that line. The exercise calls for choosing a common daily event -- Muller suggests a stoplight while driving or hearing a telephone ring -- as a trigger. Each time that trigger arises, Muller says, stop and take three silent, mindful breaths, then go on with what you need to do next.

I heard a related recommendation on Lime radio, one of the billion channels I get on satellite thanks to a Communist plot of a birthday gift from my sibs and brothers-in-law. I was listening to Lime on the way to the gym one morning last week, and a brief spot featured yoga teacher Rodney Yee recommending a method of mindful breathing in stressful situations.

Yee recommends releasing tension from muscles in the head and neck while inhaling, and "lengthening the side waist" while exhaling. Since I experience a lot of tension in my head and neck muscles, this is an especially good idea for me. The lower-body relaxation associated with the side waist is good for me too.

So this week, I anticipate combining Muller's and Yee's suggestions, using the physical method Yee describes for the three breaths that Muller prescribes. Using the ringing phone would be great for me -- I have lots of bad associations with the telephone, which I am trying to train myself out of -- but I don't think I have the patience for that yet. I think on my work days, I will use the commencement of reading a new script as my trigger. On weekend days, I'll use the act of exiting my apartment door. And we'll see how it goes.

What about you? What daily act would be a good trigger for a momentary break, of the length of three breaths?