Tag Archives: music

The View

Blue and Other Delights

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I am sitting on our deck in the middle of a perfect September day. The sky, and the Cumberland Mountains, are an astonishing blue. I recently had cataract surgery, and my renewed acquaintance with the color blue is a constant delight. I opted for the multi-focal lens implants, so am without glasses for the first time since second grade. But the color intensity is still the most noticeable change. It as if I’ve swapped all the 3000K LED bulbs for 4000K ones.

My vision had become uncorrectable with glasses, one eye much near-sighted, the other extreme in the other direction. It had become so bad that, when driving at night, by the time I was close enough to read a roadside sign, it was no longer illuminated by my headlights. Now, I am watching a hawk sail overhead, a mile or so out over the valley, then back again.

Another recent delight is our new dog. It has been almost a year-and-a-half since the last one died. Nancy has been chipping away at my reluctance for a while, noting that our grand-dogs don’t visit often enough to satisfy her need for a dog fix. She has been haunting the websites of dog shelters, and Jay has fueled the fire with his own web searches. Our new addition looks amazingly like our former one, who, in turn, looked like Nancy’s first dog. So, Mona iii has entered our lives. A rescue, about a year and a half old, seems to be a mix of border collie and lab. And way too much energy for a couple of geezers-in-training. But she is attentive, wants to please, and is a quick learner.

The third major event of our recent lives is the publishing of the first virtual performance of the Oak Ridge Community Band. How does a band keep playing while shut down for a pandemic? Earlier this summer, several small ensembles made recordings while spread out on our deck. Most recently, nearly forty musicians made video and audio recordings of themselves playing in isolation while listening through headphones to a click-track. The piece, “The Distance Between Us,” was composed by the band’s director, Shaun Salem, and honors all who suffer through this pandemic, by isolation and other losses. Nancy has spent the last couple of weeks in a frenzy of effort to merge all the videos and overlay them onto the merged audio track. You can see this virtual performance, and the small ensembles at the ORCB Facebook page.

Frog Blog

The Summer of Covid

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It has been a long while since I wrote a piece for “The Frog Blog.” As Douglas Adams said of his Hitchhiker’s Guide Trilogy (on publishing the fifth book in the series), the Frog Blog is becoming increasingly ill-named. We are approaching three years at this place and have still not constructed a frog pond, despite Nancy’s fervent wishes.

Two problems keep getting in the way of that long-desired pond. First, our steep terrain and the layout of our house frustrate our search for the best location. So far, we have had more than a half dozen candidates and at least three front-runners. Second, and perhaps most important, life keeps happening. This summer, for instance, when we should be taking a break from our war on Japanese stilt grass and English ivy to build a pond, the stilt grass and ivy grow merrily while we are instead frantically trying undo the damage of having to replace our wastewater plumbing. 

The plumbing job is done. But there is a wall to be built in our downstairs laundry/kitchenette to hide the new piping, and flooring to be laid over the patched up four by six hole where the above-slab and below-slab pipes connect. And mud to be cleaned from the ceiling. (When the directional boring head broke through, the operator still had his lubricant water pumping.)

The outdoors part of the plumbing job left us with two large holes only partly refilled and excess dirt scattered over the 35 degree slope behind the house and the roadway below, which rain and heavy equipment left nearly impassable. So I have been moving East Tennessee clay and mulching with the wood chips our tree guy graciously delivered.

Morning

But the Frog Blog was always about more than frogs. It is broadly an irregular and unscientific chronicle of various nature observations. Despite everything, I am blessed to spend time each day (weather-permitting) on our deck—coffee, binoculars, journal, and perhaps a book at hand. The changeable sky is a constant fascination.

Sunset

In the past year, our neighbor to the north stripped a couple of acres of kudzu wasteland and built on it. More significantly for the local wildlife, about two hundred yards to our west, another landowner stripped 10 acres of fine forest. We have wondered how much this habitat loss will affect our neighborhood’s wildlife.

Morning Again

The verdict is not yet in. We are seeing fewer sightings of “our” red-shouldered hawk and “our” barred owl. Not zero, but fewer. Is that because of the habitat loss? Or is it an artifact of our changed habits? Since Mona died, we don’t make those dog walks through the neighborhood several times a day. We are still outside a lot, but our range has diminished. And now with Covid restrictions, we make fewer trips to town, particularly at night, which was the time we would usually see the owl. We have heard it, and an answering call, so we hope it found love and is still in the neighborhood.

This is very unscientific, but I think I see less activity by songbirds and squirrels and chipmunks during my sessions on the deck than I did last year. I am usually out there early in the morning and typically see little besides a hummingbird at our feeder. About a week ago, my schedule got reversed and my time on the deck came late morning. Immediately my eye was caught by five squirrels playing in Treebeard.* So I wondered if our squirrels were sleeping in on their summer mornings. But another late morning session a few days later yielded no squirrel sightings.

*Have I told you about Treebeard? Remember the walking talking trees in Lord of the Rings? Here is an early spring photo of the black oak not far from our deck.

Treebeard

We still have our blacksnakes. We saw a large one from the deck. I guessed seven or eight feet long, but Nancy says only six. Then a few days later, a three-footer was crossing our driveway. Two days ago, I saw that the large one had shed a skin. Nancy was right (what’s new?)—six feet.

Later in the day, when we are inside, we get frequent sightings of goldfinches drinking from the ant barrier in the hummingbird feeder. And deer have found the ninebark and swamp azalea we recently planted. So there is still lots of life going on, if I take the time to be observant.

As I was pondering how to wrap up this post, Nancy and I each had separate experiences that left us deeply touched and warm toward our fellow man. So I’ll expand the Frog Blog purview to include human nature as well. 

My story: I am a fan of Ann Patchett and especially her novel, Bel Canto. I knew it had been made into an opera, but somehow missed that it had also finally been made into a film, until running across it while browsing Amazon Prime Videos. So we rented it and watched. Pretty good film, but mostly left me hungering to read the book again. So I devoured it over the next two days. Devoured, yet savored. This third reading reminded me that really good literature strikes me more deeply each time I re-read it. Not only Patchett, I have had such experiences with Richard Marius, Barbara Kingsolver, Isabel Allende and others. And I realize that this love is much the same as an opera lover must feel on hearing a great opera. As one of the characters in the book says, “Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it.” I found deep joy on re-reading Bel Canto. 

Nancy’s story: I was in Kroger, not a common experience these days, as we mostly order and pick up at the curb, but feeling optimistic since Kroger had announced a mask mandate. I needed only a few items, so headed off to the produce section. I became increasingly annoyed at the number of non-compliant shoppers. Biting my tongue, I patiently waited for them to move on before passing. I complained at customer service — pointing out a Kroger employee sans mask — asking if they were making any efforts towards compliance. She told me that she was prohibited from asking customers to put on a mask. As I was leaving the store, I saw three men coming through the entrance. I saw them hesitate just inside the store then turn around and leave. OMG! These men were leaving because they didn’t have masks on! Who were these unmasked men? I was touched that they would inconvenience themselves, when so many others seem selfish and uncaring. When I got back to the car I looked on the console and saw that I had another mask! I saw the men walking toward their vehicle and sped off in their direction. I rolled down the window and told them how grateful I was that they decided to do the right thing and not enter the store without a mask. Then I extended the mask toward them offering that at least one of them could wear it to make their purchases. Their faces lit up. They were so thankful to have the mask they offered to pay me for it. My faith in humanity is restored. Thank you Angels! I have no idea why there was a spare, unworn mask in my van.

Colorful skies, creatures great and small, great art, the good side of humanity. May you find blessings in your Covid summer.

The View

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“Nothing’s free anymore, unless you’re a liberal!”

We had each somehow stumbled into one of those wrong-way elevator trips and, as it finally reversed, I had made some comment about getting a free ride.

His reply stunned me and has haunted me for weeks. The words on paper are stark enough. In the flesh, their impact was jarring. He and I were alone on the elevator, and nothing in our silent half minute together before his statement was remotely political. Yet the words as delivered, complete with voice tone and body language, carried true vitriol.

I have spent time and energy parsing the words. Does he mean that liberals act as if some things are free, or is he saying that liberals indeed receive freebies from which non-liberals are excluded? Does “anymore” imply that once upon a time, something was free but is no longer?

I have explored—briefly—the definitions and histories of the various manifestations of the liberal tradition, from the seventeenth century until today. It’s an exercise that leaves my head spinning and reminds me why I never enjoyed philosophy. 

These are, I recognize, attempts to distance myself from the visceral reality of the encounter. The anger. His. And mine.

He did not hurl the insult at me personally. Maybe he thought I was a fellow … (whatever label he would give himself; “conservative” seems too mild). But I’ll accept the “liberal” label, even wear it proudly. That’s largely my own visceral and vitriolic reaction—my caricature of “conservative” against his caricature of “liberal.” If he and I were able to carry on a civil conversation, would both our positions be more nuanced? Would we find some common ground? I’ll never know.

I wear other labels, and most are imperfect. “Writer,” for instance. Over the past several decades, I have both embraced and rejected that label. Embraced because I’d like it to be true; distanced when I doubted deserving the honor. By some definitions, a writer is one who writes, indeed one who cannot not write. Confession: the lengthy gaps between posts on this blog are not filled by literary output in any other forum. So, between posts, am I no longer a writer? I don’t lose my God-given talent for stringing words together during those dry spells. But I often wonder whether I have anything to say with those strings of words. It’s different from “writer’s block.” I’m not a frustrated writer when not writing. More often, I’m wearing another label.

“Lazy” might sometimes apply, but let’s stick with nouns. Labels I would happily claim include “gardener,” “woodworker,” “do-it-yourselfer.” In my working career, I claimed “economist” and “engineer.” In my younger days, “backpacker.” I also claim “journal-er” (i.e., one who journals) and “contemplative.”

“Musician” is a new label for me, and one with fewer bona fides. Despite two painful years of childhood piano lessons and some choral singing in my younger adulthood, only within the past few years have considered myself a musician, specifically “singer.” 

Even more recent is my halting attempt to become an “instrumentalist,” a “percussionist.” By virtue of Nancy’s strong-arming (and her believing in me), I am a not-totally-deadweight member of one of her bands, capable of banging out a regular two-or-four-beats-per-measure rhythm on a bass drum and occasionally bringing in a cymbal crash or triangle note at the right time. Keeping up with where we are in the score or reading a more complicated rhythm or quickly switching from drum to woodblock to cowbell—well, let’s just say I have a lot to learn.

What I notice as I write this piece is that the labels I embrace are vocational/avocational.   They describe me, yet allow me to be multidimensional, to be more than the label. The ones I’d rather not claim are tribal. Political labels—conservative, liberal—at least as used in public discourse, are tribal. They separate my tribe (the good guys) from your tribe (the bad guys). How else to hear the scorn in my elevator companion’s “liberal” (likewise the “conservative” I silently voiced back at him). It’s as if we’d shouted “I’m a Vol and you’re a Gator,” only with more acid, if that’s possible.

Unfortunately, labels of nationality, regionality, ethnicity, and religion, as with politics, are mostly used in the tribal sense, to separate us from the other. It is true that I am an American and a Christian. Yet when I hear people claim those labels (or their own tribal equivalent), I frequently hear exclusion. I cringe; I don’t want to be in that kind of tribe.

Let me take this idea of labels in another direction.

For the past couple weeks, I have frequently found Nancy in her studio, painting. “That don’t mean a thing to you, but it does to me.” [See footnote] I know how much Nancy has longed to get back to her art, both to have the space and time, and to have the inspiration. So, seeing her at work/play, with paint-stained fingers, happily creating again, is a source of joy for me, too. 

And, as I watch her work, I see a coming back to true self. That idea, found in various literature—on vocation, on creativity, on spirituality—asserts that there is in each of us a wholeness that we lose sight of and must re-discover. (For an introduction to one thread of this literature, see Richard Rohr’s meditation for July 31.) Is that not what we mean by vocation/avocation? What is it that brings us deep joy? Acting out of our truest, deepest, God-given nature. 

Any name that we give to this deepest, truest self will be inadequate. Nancy is an artist, a painter. But that is not the entirety of her being, and the labels do not attempt to confine her to that box. So that’s the distinction I wish to make. Some labels build up, invoke joy, leave open; others tear down, invoke scorn, enclose. Or, in the words of a song I once heard, Some things do and some things don’t lead us to higher ground. May the labels you attach to yourself and those you bestow on your neighbor lead you both to higher ground.

Footnote: The best road trips are those on which we allow for interesting side trips. So we unabashedly move off-topic here to enjoy some gems of Americana music. The line, “That don’t mean a thing to you, but it does to me,” perfectly conveyed what I wanted to say there. And it took me on a side trip to the source, Lori McKenna’s song, “Lorraine.” Take that trip with me. You can find it on YouTube, and probably many other sources. Likewise, I recommend a trip to Gretchen Peters’ website and a listen to her rendition of Stephanie Davis’ song, “Wolves.” (Not Selena Gomez’ totally different song with the same title!) “Wolves” popped into my head while musing on the exchange with my elevator companion, which, fairly or not, led to musing on the plight of refugees. Both songs are powerful. Both artists are superb talents. I invite you to extend your side trip and explore more of their music. Practitioners of theological reflection will find much to reflect on. Some of my McKenna favorites include “You Get A Love Song,” “If He Tried,” “All I Ever Do,” “If You Ask,” “One Man.” Favorites by Peters include “Everything Falls Away,” “Five Minutes,” “Little World,” “Jubilee,” “The Cure for the Pain,” “Guadalupe.”

The View

Old Dogs, New Tricks

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“Have you moved yet?”

It’s a common question, and a reasonable one. I wish it had a straightforward answer. My life would be so much simpler.

Yes, we have moved. We have moved all the clutter from the old house. Old House is ready for realtor showing. It looks as if you could move your stuff in and have plenty of room. It does not look lived in, unless your version of “lived in” means that everything is put away each morning, the beds are made, and the Better Homes and Gardens photographer could show up without notice.

No, we have not moved. Our in-season clothing, our food, our dishes, much of our furniture are still at Old House. We sometimes camp out at New House. But mostly, we sleep at Old House. Nancy calls it “going back to the hotel”—neat and clean, but lacking the comforts of home.

New House is currently not-quite-habitable. The kitchen has been gutted and the ceiling in the kitchen and family room is being raised to the roof line. We found mold, so had a delay for remediation. We are adding a kitchenette downstairs in the laundry room. That room has been an adventure, with unpleasant surprises revealed each time a wall is opened.

We are also building a “Narnia closet.” (We already have the lamppost.) By co-opting part of the carport closet, we will have an insulated and finished storage space behind the foyer coat closet. Push the coats aside (a la the wardrobe entry into Narnia) to enter this domicile of the seldom-used but moisture-sensitive.

All of which is to say that our lives are in more than the usual amount of turmoil. Where did I put my travel toiletries? My study book for Men’s Group? (It was missing for three weeks, showed up for a week, then was lost again.) What do I need to pack for an overnighter at New House? The musical instruments are at New House (except when they are not, see below), and the tools are migrating that way one toolbox at a time.

Our poor dog is having a time adjusting to this lifestyle. Mona is thirteen years old and has always been somewhat neurotic. She likes the constant stream of workmen who come to New House to pet her. She likes the larger grounds on which to romp and mark and patrol for chipmunks. But the changes are also stressful, and her anxiety levels are up. Plus, she is losing her hearing. Sometimes she loses track of where we are and wanders randomly in search. I call out, but she doesn’t hear. (The deaf calling the deaf.) On a recent day, I was trying to get her into my truck for the trip back to Old House, and she got distracted by the meter reader, followed him for a while, then wandered into a neighbor’s yard, looking lost. I called and called, but finally just waited for her to turn in my direction so I could summon her with hand signals. Sometimes I wonder if she is losing more than her hearing.

Can that old dog learn new tricks? Can I? Nancy recently convinced me to swell the percussion section of one of her bands. I have a little experience with singing but none as an instrumentalist. Our conductor and my fellow percussionists are kind—like indulgent parents, with lavish praise when I get something right and tolerant smiles when I don’t. I’m still more useful as a roady than a musician.

The music schedule and logistics are a nightmare. We will one day have an organized music room with a place for everything and everything in its place. And checklists. One day. But not yet. Consider: Nancy is a regular member of two bands and a church ensemble. We’ll call them Band 1, Band 2, and Church. For each, she uses a different combination of major instruments (bells, xylophone, cymbals, base tom), secondary instruments (triangle, tambourine, mark tree, wood blocks, shakers, Claves, jingle bells), plus supporting stands and holders, mallets, and sheet music. Here is the schedule for a recent two weeks:

Day Band 1 Band 2 Church
Tuesday practice
Wednesday practice
Thursday practice
Saturday performance
Sunday performance performance
Tuesday practice
Wednesday practice
Thursday practice
Saturday
Sunday performance performance
Tuesday practice

That second Band 2 performance also required an “anvil,” a 25-pound chunk of steel with its own support table and a pair of hammers. All this equipment is in constant flux among the venues, Nancy’s car, and the music-room-to-be at New House, where it shares space with the furnishings and materials of the art-studio-to-be and other stuff. Is it any wonder that we showed up at Band 1 practice one night missing the cymbals and her primary set of mallets?

“Have you moved yet?” I once thought we’d be in by Thanksgiving. Now I am hoping for Christmas. Our sanity is wearing thin. Bah! Humbug!

The View

Adventures in Shop-ing

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Part I—Inspiration

I was in my shop the other day, sorting through screwdrivers and drill bits, when Canadian singer-songwriter, Fred Eaglesmith, came to mind. In one of his opening monologs, he describes a bored man, home alone while the rest of the family is out, who resorts to visiting his shop to do a “finishing nail inventory [and] check out the three-quarter inch screws, …”

I am not abandoned or bored. Rather, a combination of desperation, motivation, and inspiration drove me to an afternoon sorting drill bits.

For a long while, I must confess, I have been in a state of paralysis about the overcrowded and disorganized state of my shop, not knowing where to begin, and thus, doing nothing. Two breakthroughs have enabled me to start tackling the problem. First, Nancy helped me realize that clustering some powered tools in the center, in and around a multi-use table I will build, rather than spreading them around the perimeter, would make better use of my space. That gave me a new direction for imagining a workable layout.

Second, I sold my radial arm saw and have not yet brought its replacement miter saw into the shop. Remember those puzzles with eight sliding tiles arranged in a 3 by 3 pattern with one empty space? To arrange the tiles in order requires many successive moves; an adjacent tile is slid into the empty space, opening another empty space and another opportunity to move a tile. Now imagine that puzzle with all spaces filled. Gridlock. The empty space means opportunity. My shop with the radial arm saw was like a faulty puzzle with no empty spaces; without that saw, I have opportunity.

Having begun to address the overcrowding, I face the bigger problem of disorganization. Why do I have four #2 Phillips screwdrivers within arms’ reach of my workbench (not to mention a couple of #1s and three identical #00s), but frequently have to walk across the shop and behind my table saw to get a chisel or a hammer? Why do I have two nearly complete and rarely used sets of drill bits for a quarter-inch-hex-drive cluttering a toolbox in addition to the two sets I use—one at my workbench and the other in my traveling drill-driver bag? As I rearrange the large pieces, I have the chance to correct some of my sloppy placement of the smaller items.

As if to reinforce my newfound resolve to be deliberate about where I store my tools, a few days ago, I happened onto The Toolbox Book: A Craftsmans’ Guide to Tool Chests, Cabinets and Storage Systems, by Jim Tolpin. Filled with photos of beautifully-crafted wooden cases that woodworkers designed built to protect and organize the tools of their livelihoods, it inspires me to do more than bang a few nails into the wall when I re-organize my shop. My tools, too, deserve better. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Hence, the screwdriver and drill bit inventory. I am assessing just which tools I reach for most often and then designing a layout which places them in arms’ reach of my new workbench location. Redundant screwdrivers, drill bits, wrenches, and odd parts long separated from their original purpose are being sent to what Nancy calls “purgatory.” (Think both soft “g” and hard “g”—“purge” and “not-quite-hell.”) Some will go immediately to my sons who are building their own tool collections. Others will remain in “purgatory” for a while until I can assess whether I miss them, then be consigned to alternative second lives or trash/recycling.

Part II—Interlude

I took a side trip on the way home from visiting my mother. My mission—deliver some vintage Macintosh computers to a collector who is buying them from my father-in-law. While I was enroute, Nancy called me with the news that The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was playing tonight at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin, NC, very near my destination. I’m stunned—a beautiful 1500-seat venue in Franklin, NC! Stunned—the Dirt Band in Franklin, NC! Stunned—the Band is 50 years old this year and still together!

The Performing Arts Center turns out to be a one-stop-shop for me. I park in the lot two hours before showtime, buy my ticket, eat at an adjacent restaurant, book a room at an adjacent hotel, and still have an hour to kill. I pass up the $25 “50 Years of Dirt” t-shirt.

It’s a full house. Almost all of us looking … well, looking 50 years older. We are treated to two non-stop hours of excellent showmanship.

Part III—Perspiration

My mother is in a nursing home, and we sold her house early last year. Later in the year, my in-laws decided to give up their large house and move to an apartment. So I have witnessed serious downsizing up close. Beside those experiences, purging my shop is nothing. I am letting go of a few extra tools and wood scraps; our parents are letting go, not only of stuff collected over a lifetime, but also activities that once, in part, defined them.

Nancy took on the task of bringing order to her parents’ new apartment. If my shop was a gridlocked 3 by 3 puzzle, that apartment, once the movers had done their work, was a gridlocked 33 by 33. To create the one empty space and begin to make progress, Nancy filled her mini-van and our spare room. Then she and her friend, Cathy, worked magic. Slowly, slowly. Yet another source of inspiration.

I have just begun my shop makeover, and I expect it to take a while. For one thing, I am still visualizing and will take it in stages. Also, I continue to use it during the makeover. I am in the middle of the first of two major projects I had confidently promised “before Christmas.” (Well, I did not specify a year!) This one involves curves, lots of curves. (See my earlier post, Not Afraid of Curves.) Six identical Trinity knots or triquetrae. (The singular is triquetra.) The project has included my first experience with a scroll saw, more use of a router than I have done in the previous decade, and painful re-learning of many pitfalls along the way. It has been two weeks of false starts, self-doubt, re-grouping and starting over.

Triquetrae

The second of the promised-before-Christmas projects is the re-build of the frame for Nancy’s xylophone. She continues to haul it to practices and concerts, and the existing frame is shaky. I cannot put this off much longer. And then there is the new fixture I have to build that will make the re-configured shop work—a combination outfeed table and miter saw base and (maybe) router table with built-in power wiring and dust control ducting. Both projects need much conceptual work and detailed planning before I begin to cut wood.

Nancy’s xylophone

Finally, there are the “honey-do’s.” Would you cut this shelf? Drill a hole here? Fix this lamp? It could be a long time before I get to that finishing nail inventory. But I’ll not be bored.

The View

The Xylo

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In our post about the car search, I mentioned that Nancy recently bought a nearly 100-year-old xylophone. It was her first e-bay purchase, so an adventure in more ways than one. She is now the proud owner of a Deagan 844 “Drummer’s Special,” manufactured sometime between 1917 and 1929—three octaves (C5 to C8), Honduran rosewood bars, plated resonators. (Deagan introduced the 844 in 1915, with pitch A=435. They switched to A=440 in 1917. Nancy’s instrument is stamped A-440, so is a 1917 or later model.)

The xylo needs some work. The felts on which the bars rest have lost most of their cushioning ability, there is a century’s worth of dirt, rust and grime to be cleaned up, and the rear frame rail that supports the incidental bars arrived broken. But, the important parts—the bars and resonators—are in good shape. All the musicians who have heard it praise its acoustics. (The photo shows the instrument without its resonators, temporarily mounted on a Z-stand. The colored stickies are place markers for a complicated passage from Shostakovich’s “Polka of the Golden Age” that she is working on for the next concert.)

Nancy's xylo without resonators
Nancy’s xylo without resonators

We have decided to build an entirely new frame. Applying a temporary fix to the broken rail revealed more weak areas in the original frame. Nancy’s goal is to have a high-quality instrument to support her band and orchestral activities, not a meticulously restored antique. And, while Deagan built the “Drummer’s Special” series with portability in mind, we are hoping to improve on that aspect. We are playing with several design concepts, but are not far enough along to publish anything yet. Stay tuned.

While you wait, check out SuperMediocre, a blog/website that follows a father and his middle school son as they construct, from scratch, a concert-grade xylo for the son. That quest involves digging into the math and physics of tuning wooden bars, a number of empirical experiments to verify/refine what was learned, and the actual shaping and tuning of 44 Honduran rosewood bars. Lots of hard work. Lots of father/son interaction. Lots of the joy of learning and doing. To get the full story, you need to start at the beginning, which in blog format means going to the bottom of the stack and reading up towards the top. It’s worth the effort.

The View

Love Cars, Hate Buying

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We have been looking at cars. Nancy’s beloved Audi wagon is 14 years and 210 thousand miles old, and it seems prudent to begin thinking about its replacement. We’ve had a lot of cars, it seems, but when one is meeting our needs, we hold onto it for a long time. We bought this one used, have had it ten years, and are responsible for more than three-quarters of those miles.

In many ways, it is still meeting our needs. Its seats are the only ones in which Nancy could sit for long periods without discomfort, and that includes other vehicles, sofas, and a long series of office chairs. The station wagon configuration has worked for us, too. The Audi routinely transports band instruments and gardening tools; frequently is pressed into service for the dog, bales of pine straw, and pots of perennials; did yeoman’s service when we emptied Mother’s house before selling it; and has on occasion hauled 300-pound rocks for Nancy’s ornamental garden.

But her hauling needs are growing. Nancy is playing mallets and miscellaneous percussion for two community bands, a community orchestra, and a church ensemble. She started small—one band and a borrowed set of student practice bells (glockenspiel). Then she bought a full-size set of orchestra bells, and started joining other groups. That means her 35-pound instrument has to be loaded into and out of the car six to ten times a week, along with its X-stand, a music stand, mallets, sheet music, and the hand cart we use to roll it to and from the car. But wait!—as the infomercials say—that’s not all. For one group, she also plays bass drum. For two others, xylophone. The drum and xylophone belong to their respective bands and normally reside at the practice sites. But, as concerts near, they, too, get carried around in Nancy’s car.

For now, the Audi wagon is just barely big enough, if we are content to be constantly reconfiguring: seats up, seats down; cargo mat in (for dirty gardening work), mat out (for musical instruments and other “clean” uses). But Nancy recently bought her own xylophone—a fine 100-year-old instrument. It needs some refurbishment, but once we get it fixed up, I suspect she will be taking it back and forth to practices and concerts. This one has resonators, and will require a more substantial stand than does the borrowed one. I am sure we could fit everything into the Audi, with a few more contortions. But the inconveniences are mounting.

So, there is our dilemma. We are looking for luxury car seats and utility van roominess. SUVs don’t quite do the trick. Nancy wants to sit down into a seat, not climb up to it. And the loading heights are fearsome. Remember that 35-pound set of bells? The xylophone with its resonators will be as heavy—and larger with a much larger stand. Utility vans and the boxes-on-wheels that have come out in recent years are, well, Spartan. Full-size wagons have mostly gone out of production, and would, in any case, not solve the space problem. Minivans come close, but the seats are somewhat higher than she finds comfortable, and surprisingly, do not offer passenger-side 8-way adjustability. With all the motors on modern minivans, for side doors and lift gates and so on, why not two more, so the front passenger could adjust the height and tilt of the seat bottom?

I have been wondering if one vehicle can do what Nancy needs. Should we consider two—a stripped down box for local hauls (music, gardening) and a conventional car for long trips and general transportation? I am not ready to give up the open bed of my pickup; we have too many needs for mulch and gravel. Half our carport is already taken with a 280-Z whose fix-up is on hold while our son works to get established in another town. So that would mean four vehicles sitting at a two-person household.

I have been reading online reviews, studying Consumer Reports, looking at ads. The starting point of all the advice assumes you at least know the type of vehicle you want—a small pickup, a mid-sized sedan, a large SUV. It is hard enough, from such a starting point, to choose the models and options and to decide whether to buy new or used. The latter is a hard choice. I have an unhappy history with cars purchased new. I have done that twice, and twice had financial reverses force me to trade down. I like the idea of buying a three or four year old car and letting someone else absorb the initial depreciation. That’s the only way we ended up in the Audi. Yet, the electronic safety features on today’s new cars seem too good to pass up, so we’ll at least consider taking the new car plunge again.

But first, we have to get to first base. We have to settle on a type of car.

We learned early on that if you want dimensions, you have to measure them yourself. The only thing the sales staff or literature know is volume. Nancy’s instruments have length, width, height—as do most things you put into a vehicle. I crack to a salesman that volume only matters if I am a party planner with a load of balloons.

We are, perhaps, not typical car shoppers. Waltzing in with tape measure and notepad in hand, we are not interested in a test drive or a list of features or the JD Power ratings.  “Do you want to look at the engine?” No, thanks. We assume it has one.

We ask how the rear seats can be collapsed or removed, then put them through their paces. Is there a way these tracks, these lugs, can be covered? How smooth and level is the resulting deck? Can we slide an instrument case in without catching on some hardware?

Mercifully, we draw salesmen who are intrigued and amused. Only one, out of more than a dozen, tries the high pressure tactics. He’s young, still has lots to learn.

It is done. Nancy’s new ride is a minivan. After more than a month of “maybe this, maybe that,” the choices and tradeoffs and preferences seemed all at once to pull us to a convergence. With end-of-season incentives, we could get a new car for the price of a two-year-old one. We did end up with the same color as the Audi.

Gone are those luxo Audi seats, the leather still supple and un-cracked after all the years and miles. Weighed against 210 thousand miles, the trade-in value of the whole car was not even close to four figures. We’d have given that much to transplant the seats to the new minivan. “It will void your warranty,” is the salesman’s dry response. As if I’d seriously considered taking a welder’s torch to a brand new car. (Nancy says her heart leapt when I mentioned the idea.)

The result is a compromise. Most of life is, I suppose. We gave up some creature comforts for hauling capacity. Even the “8-way” adjustability of the driver’s seat promises more than it delivers. The seat-height range is high-higher-highest. Nancy is a long-legged 5’ 7-1/2”, and is barely comfortable at the lowest setting. I read that the “average” adult female in the US is 5’ 4”.

On the plus side are modern cameras and safety systems and other “i-features.” On the plus side is all that room for hauling. On the plus side is the peace of mind that a long trip is not a risk. On the plus side is that new car smell.

The View

Signs of Spring

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In my recent rant about loud in-store music, I almost added the descriptor, tacky. Almost. I know a class of once-upon-a-time college sophomores who would think that’s rich, coming from the guy who tried to teach them about economic growth using Steve Earle’s song, “Hillbilly Highway.” They were, unanimously, not-amused. Our different tastes in music were seemingly unbridgeable.

I like to think of my musical tastes as moderately eclectic. Yet if you scanned my library, you would find more than nine-tenths of it in the category called Americana, with only brief smatterings of blues, ancient rock, classical, Taize hymns, movie scores, etc. Of hip hop or recent pop and rock, I am in total ignorance. While I was enthralled by Ann Patchett’s novel, Bel Canto, and have read it more than once, my knowledge of opera barely goes beyond Elmer Fudd’s Wagnerian, “Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit.”

So I am intrigued by a review of the musical, “Hamilton,” in a recent issue of The Economist. A hip hop musical about Alexander Hamilton that can be praised by both Barack Obama and Dick Cheney? The reviewer finds in the musical a hopeful statement about where this country came from and where it is going, a vision of an inclusive nation, despite current trends toward exclusiveness. A bridge builder.

Crocus After Rain
Crocus After Rain

To judge from the current presidential campaigning, this is “the winter of our discontent.” Deep discontent. A mood of anger and distrust and fear and exclusion. An us-vs-them, zero-sum victimhood of despair that sees walls as solutions. And yet, James Fallows’ article in the March issue of The Atlantic (“How America Is Putting Itself Back Together”) chronicles dozens of stories to the contrary at the local level in communities all across the country—stories of cooperative action and partnership and initiative and welcoming the newcomer, stories in which distressed communities are turning their fortunes around and moving in positive directions.

What has this to do with my parochial musical tastes? I could argue—with some justification—that taste is taste. That overcoming innate preferences is infeasible if not impossible. But, deep down, I suspect that more than taste is at stake. If I listened with an open heart, I could learn at least to appreciate, if not enjoy, what others see in hip hop and opera. I wonder, then, if my too-ready dismissal of other genres as uninteresting is perhaps, at the least, emblematic of the same attitude that dismisses otherness, demonizes the alien, acquiesces in the building of walls.

Upland Chorus Frog Singing in Nancy's Pond
Upland Chorus Frog Singing in Nancy’s Pond

By the calendar, it is still winter. And yet, this week I see signs of spring all around. Crocus are blooming and dogwood buds are swelling. Flocks of robins visit our yard and the upland chorus frogs are calling and mating in Nancy’s pond.

Mr. Fallows sees signs of spring. The author of “Hamilton” sees signs of spring. May we seek an end to the winter of our discontent. Let me see—no, let me BE— signs of spring. Let me build bridges, not walls.

The View

‘Whale Song’ in the Gold’s Gym Pool

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I was doing my usual after church swim one recent Sunday when I heard singing. I looked toward the spa and therapeutic pools and saw no one. Nancy was the only other person in the lap pool, and her head was underwater. I briefly thought of whale song, then kicked off for another lap. Still the strange music. Given the acoustics of the pool area, it had lots of reverb, and no apparent directional source. At the end of that lap, I stood and waited. Nancy came to the end of her lap and emerged to move her lap counter. The singing stopped. Then she re-submerged and kicked off, and the singing started again. Nancy swims with a snorkel. She was singing through her snorkel! The Taize’ hymn, she later told me, that we had sung earlier that morning. Singing helps her relax into a smooth un-rushed rhythm, she said, to feel at one with the water.

Swimming as a form of working out is relatively new to both of us. We both learned to swim as kids; me with some lessons, Nancy less formally taught. But neither had ever swum laps nor gotten comfortable with that head under the water thing until several years ago. When Nancy’s hip problems began to render her infirm on land, she joined the gym for access to a pool where she could get weight off the joints, and stretch and exercise without trauma. I joined, too, in support of her and in acknowledgment that my exercise-at-home strategy was not working. While she was in the pool, I would use the treadmills and ellipticals and rowing machines and resistance equipment.

Gradually, Nancy began to swim laps. She would watch the strong lap swimmers, ask questions, and watch instructional videos. She developed excellent form and respectable speed. And she began to ask me to join her in the pool. Reluctantly, I did.

I acknowledged my thin skin a few posts ago. I hereby do so again. Nancy would occasionally make a suggestion on my swimming form, and each time, I bristled. Sulked. Resisted. And then gave it a try and found she was right.

Nancy still has better form than I do. She swims her thousand meters faster than I do. She looks better in a swimsuit than I do. But I have come to enjoy swimming as my regular exercise. I started by swimming in lieu of a dry workout maybe once in three trips to the gym. Then twice in three. Now it is nine times out of ten, or more. Sometimes, maybe often, I feel at one with the water. And, inside my head, I sing.

The View

Dancing

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If I were to ever undertake the discipline of centering prayer, as have a number of my friends, I’d choose as my sacred word, dancing.

On our first date, Nancy and I tried dancing to the music of a Zydeco band. The results were laughable, but we signed up for dancing lessons, and by the end of the course, had set a wedding date. In those giddy days of new love, we’d sometimes start dancing to the piped-in music in the grocery store. The topper on our wedding cake was a dancing couple. The band for the reception was chosen for the danceability of its music.

Those days are long gone. But sometimes, life itself seems a dance, in which the events of our lives are our partners and each step we take is in response to their moves. It is easy to think of dancing to the hug of a grandchild; the yellow and blue of maple leaves against an October sky; the silence of snowfall; work well done or a game well played. Then we get knocked for a loop; by illness, betrayal, loss. For a time, we feel more like a pinball, battered by events beyond our control. But then, by grace, we find the rhythm and the grace, and we take up the dance again.

In Robert Earl Keen’s song, “No Kinda Dancer,” the chorus goes:

     I tried hard to tell you I was no kinda dancer
     ‘Took my hand to prove I was wrong
     You guided me gently
     Though I thought I could never
     We were dancing together at the end of the song

Can you find a better definition of love than this—the lover leading us beyond our self-imposed “can’t,” into a world of greater possibilities? I have received such gifts, as God, the ultimate lover, sometimes acting through Nancy or another agent, has led me, pushed me, “guided me gently” to places “I thought I could never.”

In literal, physical terms, I remain “no kinda dancer,” the aforementioned lessons notwithstanding. We haven’t danced in years. I sometimes fantasize that we’ll take lessons again, that we’ll move like Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere in Shall We Dance, that we’ll tango like Jessica Biel and Colin Firth in Easy Virtue. Not likely. But, the larger dances still go on. And there is always hope.

That’s what dancing means to me: hope, gratitude, grace, thanksgiving, love.

     And it made me feel lucky that I had a partner
     to teach me the dance steps
     And come back again