Topeka, KS Part I

Short crocus blades sheathed the purple-and-white hearts that so wished to be first they endured the chill and rain of early spring.

Toni Morrison, from The Bluest Eye

The crocuses here bloomed over a month ago. So did the violets, the irises and the wisteria. We are in full spring mode now, with hop vines taller than me; rose canes falling over from the weight of so many buds and blooms; watermelon-colored azaleas aflame; gladiolas, cannas, crocosmia lucifers all poking up or unrolling from their winter hiding places. We went away for one week. During that one week, our yard became a jungle. If I had a machete, I’d have used it to cut a path through the back yard. But we don’t have a machete. We have a reel push mower…and our hands. And I used both the reel mower and my hands last week to cut the grass. Slim broke out the weed eater last night. Some things you have to force into submission. Our back yard is one of those things…and so are the sawflies that are eating our rose bushes into skeletal remains. What is the most organic way to get rid of sawfly worms? Pick them off by hand and squish them. Which I’ve done most mornings before work. And because I would like to NOT have to spend precious moments picking sawfly worms off of roses, I neemed them, too. Neem is my best friend.

So, I mentioned that we went away for a week. Slim and I went to Topeka for his brother Steven’s wedding to the lovely McKenna Hall. Our visit was a whirlwind of nuptual merriment: brunch supplies shopping at Sam’s Club, reception room set-up, visiting the new apartment, wedding ceremony run-throughs, rehearsal dining at the Brickyard Barn Inn, photographs in Gage Park…and then, the wedding itself! Oh my, but it was a beautiful ceremony, with a delightfully sweet and funny slide show to start things off, communion with the bride and groom, and a reception of good food and jubilant dancing (with many touching toasts). The bride and groom were sent off in a literal blaze of glorious sparklers…sparklers that (for several tense moments) didn’t want to be lit.

The following day was made up of a relaxing brunch with visiting relatives, concocting embrocation with soap-lotion-lip-balm-specialist Lauri Wright, and dinning on Kansas strip steaks from a corn-finished animal of the bovine variety. All was right in the world…

Monday was spent sightseeing in Topeka (the state capital and Monroe school, where the Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education Museum is located), Lawrence (the KU campus), and in Kansas City (the Plaza, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue). I reserve the right to create a separate blog post for this day, as I am still cogitating on all of it…and may still be digesting some of the burnt ends I gobbled up at Arthur Bryant's...

Our final day in Kansas was spent sailing on Lake Perry. Lauri and George are negotiating the purchase of a new, somewhat larger sailboat, so we took Scout out for what may have been her last voyage with the Wright family. The weather was perfect for sailing…a comfortable temperature, mild winds, and lots of sunshine. Later that evening, we dined on delicate squash soup, field greens with fresh goat cheese & strawberries, sea bass (E) and scallops (me) with mashed potatoes & green beans at the quaint French restaurant, Chez Yasu. It was divine. Seriously, it was more than divine. I ate so much, I felt like a tick on a dog. Yep. That’s how I felt. And then I felt even more better (if I may mess with our language a tiny bit more) when we had crème brulee for dessert. I LOVE CRÈME BRULEE. DO YOU HEAR ME? LOVE IT! I slept like a log that night, and dreamt of jumping on a trampoline made of a giant scallop. My hair was flying high with each jump, and every time I landed, I took another bite of buttery scallop…when we got up to leave the next morning, I had leftover mashed potatoes and green beans for breakfast. Now that’s the way to end a vacation. Shazam!

Easy Breezy

After a terribly busy week last week (mom’s exciting first week of chemo…the little trooper…the Three Poets Reading Thursday evening, Library of Congress truck all day Friday and the Gadsden Reads kickoff Friday evening, which consisted of a Parrothead Parade and Buffet karaoke), I was looking forward to an easy breezy week this week. That was not to be. While sitting in my digestive specialist’s (the gloriously named Dr. Vipul Thakorbhai Amin, who happens to be one of the glorious doctors responsible for saving my dad’s life a year and a half ago) office to see him about some recent even-more-shocking-er digestive issues, I received a call from my tree cutters saying that they had us on the schedule to take out our massive pines Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, when it rains, it pours…literally. We were due for some typical Southern spring weather in the form of tornadoes and straight-line winds that very evening, so I thought, “Great, you can remove the arboreal behemoths tomorrow, AFTER ONE MORE nail-biting night of storms.” Sure, I told Jake Cranford of Cranford Tree Service. I’ve got nothing better to do in the next couple of days except try to get ahead at work, exercise my body of some digestive demons, pack for a trip…you get the picture.

So, we survived severe thunderstorms last night, and today they will begin to remove the trees. Take one more look at them, cause in two days they will be gone. I am sad that I don’t get to watch the guys take them down (I had dreams at one time of being a tree cutter who specialized in climbing…those dreams lasted about five minutes when I thought about being suspended in a tree from a rope while having to wield a chainsaw). They will not be missed.

And on a side note, Dr. Vipul Thakorbhai Amin is treating me for giardia and…and…wait for it…celiac disease. He looked at my life history of digestive issues and listened to what I had been experiencing recently with the removal of gluten from my diet. The jury is still out on the blood work. And I have an endoscopy and colonoscopy scheduled for later this month. Now, if I can only get mom to quit calling the Giardia Ghirardelli. We’re blaming chemo brain (but we all know that she would still call it Ghirardelli, even if she wasn’t taking chemo right now, cause that’s the way she rolls). I WISH I had Ghirardelli…

Mom update: In my last post, I mislabeled mom’s cancer as rectal cancer. It was not rectal cancer, it was anal cancer. There is a difference between the two, and I wanted to make sure that everyone who was following her story had the right information. Mom is doing great. She’s had a little over one full week of radiation, and one full week of chemo. Her radiation guys are two terrific chaps who allowed sister and me to accompany her into the radiation chamber until it was time to zap her. They then allowed us to watch the computer that showed mom’s insides as the radiation was administered. Mom says that they usually play cool music for her when she’s in there. The Beatles. And now Creedance, cause mom brought a disc from home and left it with them. They are good guys who are taking great care of my mom. Chemo took place last week with an hour-long drip of mitomycin, and then a week-long hook-up to her port of 5FU. She was unhooked on Friday. She will get another drip of mitomycin and another week-long hook-up of 5FU the last week of radiation. Right now, she is unhooked. And she’s off the charts in my book ‘cause she’s doing so well. So far, the only side effects have been a daily tiredness and some relatively minor bowel issues. She works a half-day everyday, going in after her morning treatments. Her attitude is as it always has been, one of greeting each new day with thankfulness and humor. Which is why she’ll go in this morning and tell her radiation techs that her daughter has a bad case of Ghirardelli…

Tree update: Just talked with Cranford Tree Service. They couldn't get out today because of the storm damage last night. Too many folks with trees down on their houses. That's okay by me. There are other folks who need tree cutters more than we do right now. And the wait continues...

Everything Happens for a Reason

I was raised with the belief that everything happens for a reason. That no matter how bad a situation seems there will be something good that comes of it. Now, I know not everyone feels this way, but that’s just how my family operates.

So, having said this, I’ve got to fill some folks in on something important that’s been going on ‘round here, something that has changed the lives of my family members and our friends. In January, during a routine colonoscopy for zapping polyps, the doctor discovered that mom had a mass in her rectum. It was, he was certain, cancer. With this news, we did what we always do as a family, circled the wagons and made a game plan which included great team of doctors. The decision was made to have the mass removed without taking any of the lymph nodes (to avoid the whole colostomy bag thing unless it was absolutely necessary), and to send mom in for six weeks of chemoradiation. The chemo will come in the form of a chemo fanny pack (she’ll look like an 80s American tourist in Europe) that will get hooked up on Mondays when she goes in for her radiation and unhooked on Fridays (so she can PAR-TAY all weekend). The chemo is a low dose treatment that has very few side effects and is complimentary to the radiation.

An aside: Mom’s surgeon is Lucian Newman, III. He is a young doctor from a long line of doctors, and he performed mom’s lumpectomy over seventeen years ago as well as my sister’s mastectomy over five years ago. Three, as we call him, is a towering, strapping surgeon who loves to snow ski, golf and hunt. He is also missing one arm, which he lost in a hunting accident several years ago. So, he doesn’t really give you the chance to ever feel sorry for yourself ‘cause he’s just so full of self-confidence and so darn sure that whatever it is you’ve got, he can take it out and leave you better for it. He always shoots it straight, giving you worst and best case scenarios so that you won’t be surprised either way, and he makes you feel like you WILL be fine (you just may feel like hell a bit while you heal). We pretty much like everything about him…

So Three removed mom’s mass a little over a month ago. She did great during and after the surgery, only having to spend one night in the hospital. She was doing so well, she started trying to do too much and ended up NOT feeling so great for a couple of days. After the first post-op meeting with Three (about a week after the surgery), mom was able to get into a routine of butt-care-best-practices, and she’s improved drastically ever since. At the second post-op meeting, Three told us that Mom’s margins were clear from the surgery, and that she retained great rectal function, so he granted her a reprieve from the chemoradiation treatments until after she had healed a bit more. We will meet with him again next week to make the final plans…in the meantime, butt jokes are de rigueur…

Something great that has come out of this (besides the obvious fact that mom is doing well): Mom and dad have gotten real interested in the food they eat, specifically in the fiber they consume. They have been taking recommendations from me and Vicki, adding more fruits, vegetables and whole grains to their diet. And I’ve been adding additional whole grains to my diet as well, which has let to me feeling, well, pretty darn awful. I've had stomach trouble since I was a child, and was diagnosed with IBS years ago when I lived in Denver, so I’ve always been careful about what I eat. But I can’t recall a time in my life when I’ve ever experienced the things that I’ve been experiencing lately (out of modesty, and out of fear of sharing too much information, I will spare you all the details). So, I’ve been keeping track of what I eat, what symptoms I have, and when those symptoms crop up…and I suspect that I have a gluten intolerance. After feeling like hammered dog poo all day Wednesday at work (and eating my usual granola breakfast, hummus with pita chips lunch, guacamole on fiber bar dinner), and almost not making it to Ash Wednesday services at the church because I thought my stomach was going to explode, and fearing that once I got to church, that I was going to have to dash away from the prayer bench while knocking clergy and congregants out of the way so that I could get to the bathroom during services, I decided to take matters into my own hands and have a gluten-free Thursday to see if there was ANY relationship between whole grain goodness and hammered dog poo (or feeling like hammered dog poo).

If you don’t want to read a mundane passage about what I ate yesterday, then you may want to just skip to the next paragraph…Yesterday, I ate oatmeal for breakfast. I had a grilled chicken salad on a bed of field greens for lunch. I ate some cashews from the vending machine for onesies (which is very much like the hobbit snack time elevensies. Sister and I believe in elevensies, twelvsies, onesies, twosies...you get the picture. We like snack time, so we'll turn whatever time we need a snack into snack time). And I had great northern beans with tuna and rosemary for dinner. I didn’t eat anything at the Red Cross benefit concert last night at Blackstone because they didn’t have anything on the menu that was gluten-free. I did, however, watch Brandy, Dave and Slim eat some of that decadent white cheese dip with chips and toasted bread (I was salivating like Niagra Falls the whole time, but I was fine…really I was FINE). And I felt fine all day yesterday.

So, this morning I feel more energetic than yesterday (really, I feel more energetic than I have in awhile). I ate oatmeal again for breakfast (a double serving because I got so hungry yesterday). I am planning on eating another chicken salad on field greens again for lunch. And I’ll eat something non-gluten-y for dinner. I am going to continue my gluten-free crusade to see if I continue to feel better. And I am going to Apple-A-Day today to buy some almond flour so that Slim can make pizza dough for Saturday Night Supper Club at the Catoes (or what I am going to start calling Saturday Night Bison Hunt with a Leap of Leopards)…pizza dough that I can eat without blowing my whole food experiment. To be continued…

A Brief From My Girlhood

Poetry reading at the ‘brary a couple of weeks ago went really well. The poet, Lightsey Darst, was in the area (from Minnesota) to visit friends of hers who now live in Anniston. Lightsey is a dancer, dance critic, English instructor, and poet. Her first book of poetry, Find the Girl (Coffee House Press), is “A poetic expose of girlhood, obsession, and the CSI industry.” I was very intrigued by this description, and by the cover of the book, which is a grainy photo of caution/crime scene tape. It is a book worth owning, and Lightsey is a poet worth keeping an eye on. She is experimental, and quite fearless. Her reading had a performance art feel to it, and reminded me very much of one of the Merce Cunningham dance pieces (the one choreographed to John Cage’s music) Eric and I saw performed in January. I mentioned thinking this to her and she told me of the time she interviewed Merce Cunningham. She also spoke of the time she saw two of Merce Cunningham’s dancers perform to poetry being read by Anne Carson. How amazing would that be to dance to poetry?

In the meantime, I am prepping for my adult summer dance class here at the GPL. I’ve decided to focus less on traditional ballet (that worked well last summer), and more on world dance. In addition to ballet, we will be covering modern Indian/Hindi dance (Bollywood), Egyptian belly dancing, the Spanish paso doble & flamenco, and Chinese Tai Chi. I am no expert at any of these dances, but I find all of these genres to be very fascinating and beautiful…and I’ve dabbled in them enough to teach and have fun with beginner students. The goal of each class is to learn something new about different forms of dance, to celebrate our differences, and to laugh as much as possible! Life is too short to sweat the small stuff!

Speaking of not sweating the small stuff, I had an interesting conversation with my boss and a coworker last week about just that. In a somewhat circuitous way, we began talking about the mentality of “if I can’t do it right, then I’m just not going to do it.” All three of us are reasonably intelligent people, and all three of us are perfectionists to a certain degree. But clearly, my coworker and my boss are perfectionists in a far different way than I. They do things that they know they can do well, and don’t do things that they don’t do well. They admitted to trying new things that they think they would like to do (painting, sewing, cooking), but when they discover that they are unable to do those things to their perceived standard, they tend to not pursue learning how to do better the thing that they want to do so that they will eventually learn how to do it to their perceived standard. I, on the other hand, do lots of things that I love to do (dance, sew, paint, landscape, cook, write), but that I probably don’t do to perfection. I do get frustrated when I hem a pair of pants wrong (sorry mom), or make a really unpalatable biscuit (sorry Slim, Laura and Kris). But I was encouraged by my mom and dad as a child to not give up when I made mistakes, to keep trying until I learned how to do things right.

My parents’ house is littered with evidence to their crusade to keep me trying. The letter of encouragement that my dad wrote to me on a sheet of my brown tablet paper when I was probably in kindergarten, stating something to the effect that we all have to learn to read and write, how else could he be writing me this letter, and how else could my sister be reading it to me right now. The really bad oil painting I did of a wide-eyed owl perched on a dead branch, in the dead of winter, in the dead of night that my mom STILL insists on leaving hang on the wall behind my dad’s recliner (I had a blue period where I was very prolific in the painting world…of my mind…more on that later)…photos of me as a pudgy child in a purple tutu with a hideous purple bonnet on my head (in an effort to help me build self-confidence and lose weight, my mom enrolled me in dance classes at the age of six…I LOVED dance classes so much that I stuck with it for fourteen years, and even taught dance for many of those years). All of these things (painting, dance, writing, reading) were things that I did not do very well at all when I first started doing them. But my parents always believed in me, and ALWAYS made me feel like my mistakes weren’t really mistakes...they were just signs that I was learning, and that I would get better if I kept at it. It also didn’t hurt that my parents always offered to patronize our hobbies when my sister and I initially embarked upon one. Like the de Medici’s with Michaelangelo, my parents offered to keep me in painting supplies if I would just keep painting. They did the same thing with my dance classes (new point shoes, tights, and costumes whenever I needed them, just KEEP DANCING), with my sewing (any material, buttons, ribbons to help me come one step closer to my dream of winning a 4H first place ribbon…I never came close, not even with my stunning nod to the Kennedy’s of Hyannis Port’s pleated-front Kelly green pants with a baby pink jacket that buttoned up the front with little green alligator buttons), and with my reading (allowing me to read authors and books that my friends were not allowed to read at such a young age…Stephen King, Anne Rice, the occasional bodice-ripper). I learned to learn from my parents. And although I don’t feel like I do any one thing exceptionally well, I enjoy doing the things that I do.

While consolidating the house office the other evening, I found my old mini Boston stapler. This was the stapler I used to staple receipts from the painting sales I made at the art gallery I owned as a child. The gallery was actually our abandoned chicken coop off of the garage, so it wasn’t really mine, but my parents turned it over to me for the sake of my art. I spent many a hot summer’s day with shovel, rake, hammer and nail to make the place opening-night-ready. It didn’t matter that the only guests at the gallery opening were my mom, dad and sister…

In case you haven't read it, here is my Goodreads book review of Lightsey's Find the Girl:
Girls, Girls, Girls. Girls as flowers, blooming into womanhood. Girls as fruits, ripening for consumption. Girls as precious artifacts, waiting impatiently underfoot for someone to discover them, to rescue them, even if it is only their remains that are rescued. Find the Girl, the debut book of poetry by Lightsey Darst, reminds us of our lost girls; the girl who ran away, forever disappearing with her red lips, swinging braids and lunchbox. Or the girl who was taken, snatched by a predator who loved and dreamed her best. Find the Girl…the girl’s name is familiar from our childhood story books, our newspaper headlines, our high school history lectures: Gretel, Helen of Troy, Snow White, JonBenet, Yde Girl, and the Greek Koré. The more venerable girls, beribboned and red fruits to be opened by the Ripper’s knife, go by the names Annie, Liz, Kate, and Mary.

Lightsy’s poems, tucked behind the caution tape, are cautionary (“we escape someone doesn’t/ life for ours”), and remind us of girlhood fears still fresh in our memories (“what’s the worst that can happen”). The final and lasting words of the girl that didn’t get away: “I wish the earth bare myself a throat & nails only so that/ you might hear this, I might dig myself screaming/ free from the moss and the grapevine over me & my call/yes heard though miles away & through a young girl’s fever dream.”

With a View

Although I’m certain that this winter has been no longer than any other winter, it has seemed to drag on FOREVER. We’ve had an unusual amount of snow this year, and we’ve had stretches of very cold weather, both of which have kept most of the neighborhood kids indoors for a good part of the season. This has made for ambushes on the semi-warm days. Small squadrons of toy-gun wielding commandos who, at the slightest smell of baking cookies, will drop from the trees, come stumbling from behind the barricades (parked cars), or crawl up from the sewers for much needed rations. The day I baked for the annual holiday cookie swap, I decided to see if the urban troops were doing okay (this after listening to their yelling and tumbling and fake fire-fighting outside the kitchen window). The minute I stepped out onto the porch, Jace and Jesse stopped mid-attack to say hello (they are polite young men). I asked if they were doing okay (they were), and they asked if I wanted to come out and play. Because they are seriously just that polite. And they don’t believe in ageism when it comes to play. I politely declined their offer, begging off to bake. “What are you baking?” they asked. “Cookies for a cookie swap.” Jesse: “Oooo, my mom is coming to that swap!” “Well, I guess I’ll see her there. You guys want some cookies? Ya know, for tackling feul?” Their eyes lit up. Yes, they would like some cookies. What kind of stupid question is that. So, I went in and grabbed three gift bags of cookies, one for each of them, and one for Jace’s sister who wasn’t feeling well and had to stay in for the day. With a mouth full of cookie, Jace promised delivery of Memphis’ cookies. I know that he kept his promise because now, whenever Memphis knocks on our door for a band aid to cover a scraped knee or pinched finger, she also asks if we have any cookies…

The weather is just about perfect right now. Temperatures have been in the upper 60s/low 70s during the day, and the nights are quite cool. It is perfect weather for yard work, dining on the front porch, and taking strolls in the adjacent historic district. This will be our first full spring in The Bungalow (we moved in March of last year). The birds sing every morning. Unidentified spring blooming plants are busting their way through the soil (I am watching them very carefully so that I can identify them and record their names and locations for next year). I’ve worked on the back flower garden all winter (with Slim’s help), and everything I’ve transplanted or salvaged from other people’s yards seem to have survived (and even thrived). We have irises, roses and cannas from mom and dad’s place; more cannas from Douglas’ rubbish pile; cosmos and a small hydrangea from one of mom’s coworkers; red velvet yarrow & Russian sage from the seventy-five cent sale at Lowes; a blue fescue and several unusual irises (one black, one red, one yellow) from the Finlayson’s landscaping company in Southside; and a bunch of stuff that I’ve transplanted from other parts of the yard. I’ve just ordered some red sedum for the rocky part of the yard, some flowering thyme for erosion control around the pavers, a climbing blue rose (in memory of my gran and my uncle), and…wait for it…ten Crocosmia Lucifer bulbs. I’ve wanted Crocosmia Lucifer since I seeing a picture of them in a friend’s Facebook album. They will be magnificent...I may try to plant them en masse over Fancy’s grave (Miss Mildred’s beloved cat). Yes, I did locate her approximate burial site. And no, I did not disturb her resting place too much. I just uncovered the pieces of marble that covered her grave so that they could be part of the walking path through the garden (a walking path made of pieces of marble collected from all over the property…haven’t figure out why there are so many pieces of marble lying about). The path is in the shape of a question mark. Because of the great Why in the universe (a nod to George Emerson of Forster’s Room With A View).

All of our baby trees survived the winter, too. So, once we have the giant pines removed, we may plant either a crab apple tree or a Washington Hawthorne in the front. Both bear fruit or berries that birds find yummy. And we want to encourage the birds to stop by our place because we have lots of bugs. Why just yesterday, Slim and I were both attacked by swarms of gnats outside our front door…and in a couple of months we’ll have the plague of devil grasshoppers that thrive around here. I’m not looking forward to their return. They were bad.

The days are getting longer, which means that there is still enough daylight after work to get out and spread top soil, or lay stepping stones, or rake up mulch…Most nights, if you stand at our back windows overlooking the flower garden, you can witness a lovely occurrance. Through the trees of the woods, the western sky is visible. And although you cannot see the actual sun setting, you can see the spectacular colors that result from its descent. It can be startling and breathtaking, making us stop whatever it is we are doing at the time so that we can stand and watch it.

Listening to: Arcade Fire & Radiohead

Merce Cunningham Dance Company: Or Another Reason To Pee My Pants

On January 20th I received an email from the Alabama Ballet. I usually only open emails from Alabama Ballet a few times a year (November, when they are gearing up for their December Nutcracker performances, and whenever I see that they are performing the work of a favorite choreographer…Balanchine, Tharp, Graham, etc.). The subject of this particular email was “A Special Offer on a Not-To-Miss Performance.” Normally I wouldn’t open such a non-specifically subjected email, but I did. And I must say that I am glad that I did. Contained therein was the following message:

“The Alabama Dance Council makes dance history by presenting Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) at the 2011 Alabama Dance Festival.

Co-presented by the Alabama Dance Council and the Alabama Ballet, Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s residency is part of the company's final Legacy Tour and their first and only performance in Alabama. It is the last opportunity to see Merce Cunningham’s work performed by the dancers he personally trained.

Guided by Merce Cunningham’s radical approach to space, time and technology, the Company has forged a distinctive style, reflecting Cunningham’s technique and illuminating the near limitless possibility for human movement. For more than fifty years, MCDC’s collaborations with groundbreaking artists from all disciplines have redefined the way audiences experience the visual and performing arts.”

The email ended with the urgent, “Don't miss out on dance history in the making!”

Merce Cunningham Dance Company, I pondered…THE Merce Cunningham Dance Company (my brain screamed)?!? I found that I suddenly couldn’t breathe. My stomach was in knots. I wanted tickets. I wanted tickets right then. I wanted tickets right then, before they sold out (because I knew that all of the Merce Cunningham fans in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee would unite together into an impenetrable ticket-buying force that would prevent me from having what was rightly mine)! But the performance was on the Friday night before the Bamacross Gadsden weekend. Slim and I were going to be terribly busy that weekend (and unbeknownst to us, we would have other, more important fish to fry the week of the performance when a health issue cropped up unexpectedly within the family nucleus). Could we possibly swing a trip to Birmingham to see one of the last performances of a dance company whose founder was one of my all-time-favorite modern choreographers? Of that, I was not sure.

I hurriedly forwarded the Alabama Ballet email to Eric with a personal message:
EEEEEEKKKKKK! Please tell me we don't have anything planned that night!
Eric: I don't think we have anything.
Me: OMG! I'm going to check on the price of tickets. I may pee on myself before I am able to though...
Eric: If tickets aren't ridiculous I'll help pay. Actually even if there are...(awww…isn’t that sweet of him?)

At this point, I was already online, pricing out the tickets, and checking the seating that was still available. I began to G-chat Eric while I was checking out the tickets so that I could communicate faster with him. I began furiously entering all of my credit card information, billing information, favorite foods and colors…everything they asked! I typed information as if my life depended upon it! And, as I typed, I kept hearing the bong of the G-chat doorbell, indicating that Eric was trying to reach me…I thought my heart was going to explode…but not before I peed on myself. And then, we had tickets! Orchestra seating, on the floor. And they had only cost $16 each. I was shaking, I was so excited. I, for one, was NOT going to miss out on dance history in the making! And, by gosh, neither was Eric!

Now, let me take a moment to fill you in on Merce Cunningham, should you need some filling in (my explanation is not academic in the least…it is merely information that I have stored away about an individual whom I have admired over the years). Merce Cunningham was a very unique pioneer in modern American dance/choreography whose fruitful and long-lived career was made even more interesting by his domestic/professional partnership with equally unique American composer John Cage. Cunningham’s choreography was, in addition to many things, an experiment in absence and presence; Cage’s music was an experiment in the “activity of sound,” the releasing of sound…from just about anything (I know a muralist who played a trashcan lid for one of Cage’s recordings). Cunningham and Cage often created their collaborative works independent of one another, with Cunningham creating choreography for Cage’s compositions without hearing Cage’s music. It worked. I know it worked, because I saw a perfect example of their collaboration Friday night…Xover.

Xover was performed by approximately fifteen people: eleven dancers, one singer (positioned on a side arm of the stage), and three musicians (in the orchestra pit). Cage’s composition (Fontana Mix with Aria) was performed via computers by the three musicians (one who could have been Merce Cunningham’s twin brother, if he’d had a twin brother), and vocally by the rather operatic chanteuse Aurora Josephson. It is difficult to describe the music, as it really needs to be experienced in order to get the full effect…Ms. Josephson sang the Aria, the musicians played the Fontana Mix through their computers, and the dancers athletically danced. At times, Ms. Josephson would create additional percussion through the gargling of water, the winding and springing of a jack-in-the-box, and the ringing of a bicycle bell. The music and the choreography meshed; concurrently, the music and the choreography stood apart. Moments of silence were filled with perfectly performed dance sequences. The silence was part of the music. It was Cunningham and Cage in its purest form.

The second performance was a more traditional modern dance piece called Crises. Crises was performed to Nancarrow’s Rhythm Studies for Player Piano (various numbers), and had a bit of a rag-time feel to it. It was an interesting piece, accessorized by fog/smoke, with dancers who made me think of flames that were attracting each other. I had to look the piece up on the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s website because I was afraid that I totally missed any meaning. Crises is described as a “dramatic… dance concerned with decisive moments in the relationship between a man and four women.” Hmmm…I suppose I wasn’t completely off the mark by thinking that the dancers were flames attracting each other…

Dance history in the making. That’s exactly what it was. When I read of Merce Cunningham’s passing in the July 27, 2009 edition of the New York Times I lamented the loss of such a great dancer and choreographer. I felt robbed of ever having the chance to see his work. I briefly lectured on his work last summer during my Ballet for the Uncoordinated class, explaining his importance to the world of dance, and his avant-garde style. I even mentioned that his and Cage’s collaborations were often parodied when people went to the trouble to parody modern dance. Then I went on to explain to my students that Mr. Cunningham had left specific orders upon his death that his dance company dissolve, yet I had heard word of a few Central Park performances (a friend and poet who lives in Brooklyn happened upon one of the performances on a beautiful afternoon). I never dreamed that a tribute tour would come to Alabama. Good and unexpected things happen…sometimes disguised in the form of an unspecific subject line of an email.

Listening to: Blind Pilot & Radiohead. I think a Merce Cunningham/Radiohead collaboration would’ve been pretty darn awesome.

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Oh, my. If you have never read anything authored by Daniel Woodrell and you are planning to start with his latest novel Winter’s Bone, you’d just best go ahead and brace yourself. As chilling as the wintery Appalachian landscape in which Woodrell’s characters live (and, in some cases, die), Winter’s Bone is the dark, poetic tale of sixteen-year old Ree Dolly. She’s looking for her daddy, Jessup Dolly, a known meth cook who has disappeared, leaving her as the sole caregiver to her mentally ill mother and two younger brothers. He has also signed over all of their property, house included, in order to post bond on his most recent arrest. If Jessup doesn’t show up for his looming court date, everything will be lost. The only people who can help Ree locate Jessup are her kinfolk…and they’re NOT talking. Woodrell uses his words sparingly; carefully and brutally telling Ree’s story. Every word of this novel is important. Don’t skip a single one.

What speaks to me the most about Woodrell’s work is his precise description of the poor Appalachian inhabitants of Ree’s community (most of whom she is in some way kin). Having spent most of my adolescent summers and Thanksgivings at my grandmother’s house in rural Kentucky, I recognize the truth in Woodrell’s words. Familiar are the close shacks, or trailers pulled up next to trailers, families living up under each other. Familiar are the fresh animal carcasses hanging from trees and porches, a different kind of strange fruit. Familiar is the justice effected by members of the community, not by the law. Living in rural Appalachia leaves its mark on a person. Ree best describes some of the most visible marks. “With her eyes closed she could call them near, see those olden Dolly kin who had so many bones that broke, broke and mended, broke and mended wrong, so they limped through life on the bad-mended bones for year upon year until falling dead in a single evening from something that sounded wet in the lungs. The men came to mind as mostly idle between nights of running wild or time in the pen, cooking moon and gathering around the spout, with ears chewed, fingers chopped, arms shot away, and no apologies grunted ever. The women came to mind bigger, closer, with their lonely eyes and homely yellow teeth, mouths clamped against smiles, working in the hot fields from can to can’t, hands tattered rough as dry cobs, lips cracked all winter, a white dress for marrying, a black dress for burying, and Ree nodded yup. Yup” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 28&29).

Everything foreshadows the danger and brutality Woodrell’s characters face daily. “The sky lay dark and low so a hawk circling overhead floated in and out of clouds. The wind heaved and knocked the hood from her head. That hawk was riding the heaving wind looking to kill something. Looking to snatch something, rip it bloody, chew the tasty parts, let the bones drop” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 29).

Especially compelling is Ree’s baby brother Harold, who is tender, even as Ree tries to teach him how live in their merciless environment. Harold wants to set food out for the coyotes because they “look like dogs” and “they’re hungry.” Impatiently Ree responds, “’Settin’ out food’ll draw ‘em close-that’s likely how they’ll come too close and get shot, Harold. Don’t set no goddam food out. It looks like you’re doin’ nice, but you ain’t. You’re just bringin’ ‘em into range, is all.’” Harold still pleads, “But you can hear how hungry they are” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 46). Hungry sounds the same, whether the sound comes from child or animal. Harold painfully recognizes the sound of hungry because he’s been hungry himself. In another moment when Ree is teaching the boys to shoot squirrels, Harold has shot one in the hind quarters without killing it, and the animal is writhing in the snow. Ree instructs Harold to “’notch his head ‘tween two fingers’n pull-like with a chicken.’” Harold cries, “He’s callin’ for his momma!” (Woodrell, Winter’s, pg. 103).

I could keep on with this review, but that would keep you from going out and getting a copy of this book to read, because everyone should read this book. Now, go on out and get it.