#RiseUp

Okay, you marched on Saturday. Your pussyhat is still on the dining room table. Now what?

Rise up.

The Women’s March is spearheading 10 Actions for the first 100 Days. Every 10 days, they’ll give you something to do – no sign up necessary. This week, it’s send a postcard to each of your two senators. There’s a downloadable pdf, which prints nicely on Avery postcard stock. Run it through once, then turn over and do it again. Tada, two postcards printed front/back - one for each Senator. What are you waiting for?

Subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post – and by subscribe I mean pay for what you’re reading with actual dollars. Today’s Times called Trump a liar in a headline on the front page. They aren’t perfect, but they need support. What are you waiting for?

If you need help or suggestions, there are tools springing up all over the place. What are you waiting for?

Check out Indivisible. It’s a guide, written by former Congressional staffers, which outlines practical steps and pointers for how to get elected officials to listen to us.

You can sign up for Congress.org. Each week that Congress is in session you’ll get a weekly vote monitor so you know who’s voting on what and how, and what’s coming up.

Bookmark The Sixty Five. It’s another tool for hot button issues coming up. Like today, it's encouraging us to call Senators on the Health Education Labor Pension Committee to oppose the nomination of unqualified Betsy DeVos.

Last night I got three emails from three different people - all women of my mother's generation - saying essentially this:

Listen up: The Republicans need to get the message from the majority of Americans that we value and need the benefits of Obamacare. Here's how we do that:
On January 23, everyone who feels that way (our numbers are legion) sends a note to Donald Trump with a simple message:
"Don't make America sick again. Improve the Affordable Care Act. Don't repeal it."
One envelope for every ACA supporter in your household...even if they are under 18 years old. Just that simple message. Put it in an envelope, and put a stamp on it. On January 23, mail it to:

President Donald Trump

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Can you imagine the picture of millions letters arriving at the While House by January 26? It will be a mountain. That image might help deter the Republicans from killing the most substantial improvement to American healthcare since the discovery of penicillin.
Do it today! Drop it into a mailbox near you on Monday, January 23. Please send this email to 20 (or more) of your friends, neighbors, and fellow Americans. Ask them to do the same.

So yeah, I wrote a letter. I suggested that the Affordable Care Act be renamed "TrumpCare". (I'm sorry I am posting this on the 24th, but do it anyway.)

I put a letter to the President and postcards to my two Senators in the mail this evening. You?

Call your two Senators. Call your Representative. Write to the President. What are you waiting for?

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

Like millions of other people, I went marching yesterday, in New York City with my girl and a friend and the friend's daughter who is also my girl's friend. It was an amazing day. Calm, vibrant, focused, irascible, human. I'm so glad we went.

I was wearing my vintage "Save the NEA" button, from back in the 90s (I think), so I was pleased to see a "Save the NEA" sign.

My husband made this nice sign for us. He also stuck one on the car. Here's hoping the car doesn't attract untoward attention. There were many clever pussy hats - not all pink, not all knitted. I knit my hat; a friend from Seattle sent the hat my girl is wearing. It's made of a felted wool sweater, cut into a rectangle and sewn together. 

Once we finally got out of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and started shuffling along Second Avenue, the sun came out. There were people filling the street as far as the eye could see.

66 Countries Are Doing This Today
Donald You Ignorant Slut!

Fallopian Dude. There were a lot of men.  One nice chant was a call and response: "Our bodies, our choice" (by the women) followed by "Their bodies, their choice" (by the men).

I Am Now "Your" Boss DJT. Build Bridges...Not Walls!

Immigrants, We Get The Job Done! (This was far from the only Hamilton-riffing sign.)

Impeach And Convict
We Sing For LGBT Rights
(Alas, the Cabaret Singers were not actually singing.)

Melania, You Can Still Escape
(There was also a "Melania, Poison Him" and a "Tiffany: Blink If You're Okay")

Nasty Woman

This Pussy Grabs Back
There were A LOT of pussy signs.

Roses Are Red & Violets Are Blue...
Trump Can't Choose What My Pussy Can Do.

Seven Sisters Representing with Nasty Barnard Women. My 13 year old was wearing her Wellesley sweatshirt and was amused by an older woman who asked her if she was a student there. 

Truck Fump. This dude was just standing on the sidewalk, all dressed up like he was  going to a funeral.

We peeled off at Grand Central Terminal. We'd been on our feet for 5 1/2 hours - walking from GCT to 47th & Second, and back down Second and across 42nd. On a normal day, you could have walked that loop in a 1/2 hour. I loved that there were cheerers on the Pershing Square bridge over 42nd Street. 

And now, after today's day of rest, tomorrow we RISE UP.

The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.

I have, for the past several days, been writing posts in my head about the "peaceful transfer of power" that occurred earlier today, and the frightening prospects for the short term future.

Shall I rail about the Affordable Care Act? I could, but instead I will send you elsewhere to read a letter my sister sent to her local newspaper.

Shall I bemoan the threat to public education? Betsy DeVos is not only unqualified to be the Secretary of Education, but she is clueless and claimed to a Senate committee that it was a "clerical error" that her name appeared as Vice President in the tax return of the family foundation bearing her mother's name. I can't even.

Shall I point out that the National Endowment for the Arts has a budget of $150 million - which is a drop in the friggin' budget so let's just leave the arts out of all this? I don't need to go on about it; the Washington Post did a fine job of pointing out that "cutting federal support for the arts and humanities is a way to fight the culture war, not to tackle the federal debt."

No.

Here's the thing. Pete Souza, who may well be a national treasure, hung around and took just a few more pictures of President Obama as he left the White House today. One of those pictures is an overhead shot of the oval office - where you see the rug. Did you know that the rug has words in its border?

The welfare of each of us is
dependent fundamentally upon
the welfare of all of us.

A photo posted by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Jan 20, 2017 at 11:19am PST

Teddy Roosevelt said that in 1913, in a speech to the New York State Agricultural Association.

Remember our motto? E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

We - you, me, your mother, my boss, that guy who made your sandwich, your friend from college - we need to stick together and rise up as one. We. What I do affects you, what you do affects me, and together we can affect us all.

Yes We Can.

Letter to the White House

11 January 2016

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

Thank you for 8 years of grace, intelligence, and empathy, and for your fierce drive to make our country better for everyone. These United States are immeasurably stronger because of your vision of economic prosperity, health insurance reform, racial justice, gender equality, peace. Two steps forward, one step back – governing America must often feel like a Sisyphean task, but you have borne it with elegance and dignity.

As I watched your farewell address last night and heard you say “Show up, dive in, stay at it”, I thought to myself this is not a farewell, this is a call to arms. You cemented that when you said “I won’t stop; in fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my remaining days.”

I look forward to your next chapter, and I assure you that I too believe that #YesWeCan.

Thank you.



Sincerely,



Me

(PS, yes, I put a hard copy of this letter in the mail, with a stamp, to the White House.)

My 2016 In Books

As is my wont, I checked my Goodreads stats to see how many books I read in 2016, and I was kind of shocked to see that I'd not met my goal of 60. I was also shocked to see how far off of 2015 I'd been.

However!

One of the books I read in 2016 was actually an omnibus volume of all six of the Mapp & Lucia books - 1,119 pages! - so really, the total should have been 62. And 2015 was clearly an aberration; how I read 79 books in a year is beyond me. Looking at 2011 to 2014, 60 books is pretty close to average for me. Here are some of the 2016 highlights, bookwise.

Non-Fiction that has totally stuck with me: M Train
Patti Smith's memoir completely got under my skin. I need to buy my own copy, and scribble in the margins. I did chase down some Weleda salt toothpaste, and I think of her every time I brush my teeth.

Non-Fiction that was everything I hoped it would be: Hamilton: The Revolution
The sound track is terrific, but it wants a libretto. (CDs and LPs are sorely missed in that regard.) Genius is all well and good for lyrics with annotation, but sometimes you want paper. The Hamiltome is pictures, essays, lyrics, notes - all in one glorious package.

Fiction that totally surprised me: The Girl With All The Gifts
Zombies! I'm not a sci-fi horror zombie aficionado. But several people, from different parts of my life, recommended this and I succumbed. It blew me away. Yes, the main character is a zombie. Put your preconceived notions aside and read it.

Delightful new-to-me author: Sarah Caudwell
Caudwell wrote four mysteries. Her master solver is one Professor Hilary Tamar (of indeterminate sex), the cast of characters includes a bunch of London Barristers, and the crimes all hinge on arcane points of British law. The dialogue is wry, the settings are fetching, and I have read three of the four and am saving Thus Was Adonis Murdered for a moment of great need.

26 of the books I read were library books. I didn't finish three, because they were too tedious for words. Only one book was a re-read (Supreme Courtship, and that was by accident on vacation, because I found something in the book swap in the rental house laundromat, but it was fun to read again and had an odd synchronicity to the presidential election). Another book was a suggestion from my (then) 12 year old daughter (The Memory Keeper's Daughter). And one book was edited by someone I know (Joanne Bamberger's Love Her, Love Her Not) and I met one of the other authors (Sari Wilson, of Girl Through Glass) at a work event.

And, because of all the new books for Christmas and my December birthday, the pile next to my bed is as huge as ever.

Soup of the Instant Evening

I succumbed to the lure of the Instant Pot and gave it to my husband for Christmas. He hasn't actually used it yet, but I opened it up and inaugurated it with a potato leek soup. It worked admirably well even though I barely read the instructions and didn't really use a recipe. Well, the instruction book had a recipe for ginger butternut squash soup, so I kind changed out all the ingredients and used that. Does that count as using a recipe?

Potato Leek Soup, in the Instant Pot

1 medium onion, chopped
3 leeks, split down the middle and cut into 1/2" half rounds
1 parsnip, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
3 large potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 quart chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you prefer)
2 T. butter or olive oil
1 t. salt
a few good grinds of pepper
1/2 t. dry tarragon
1/2 cup heavy cream (optional)

Have all of the vegetables prepped before you start. Plug in the Instant Pot, put the butter and onion in the pot, and hit "sauté". The pot gets hot very quickly, so have the ingredients in before you turn it on. Once the onion is starting to soften, add the leeks. Give the onion & leek a stir or two and once the leeks are wilting, turn the Instant Pot off (use the Keep Warm/Cancel button). Add the parsnip, celery, potatoes, stock, salt, pepper and tarragon. [My stock was frozen, and I didn't bother to defrost it - I just dropped the whole block in the pot.] Put the lid on, latch it in place, and make sure the steam release lever is set to "sealing". Then hit "manual" and set the time for 10 minutes. Wander off. The machine will heat up and pressurize; once at pressure, it will cook for 10 minutes. When it beeps that it's done, release the pressure - this will be a dramatic, noisy and unexpectedly long whoosh of scalding hot steam, so be warned and be careful. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup (or transfer to a blender or food processor). Add heavy cream, and eat. Makes about four servings.

New Year

To kick off the new year, we went for a walk, in a park on the Hudson River. I was taken with the gnarled intrepid trees along the shore, unprotected from the elements and showing it.

This battered, misshapen tree was magnificent ... and then we noticed the hole in the side.

Not only was the hole nearly the entire diameter of the tree, you could see straight through.

Naturally, I took a picture looking back out.

Though assaulted, the tree stands. There is hope in the future.

Ponzi Schemes, And Other Tales

A few months ago, I happily signed up for a Ponzi scheme, perpetrated by the inimitable Citizen of the Month.

Neil is like some kind of internet era Pied Piper. I first encountered him years ago, when he was organizing the Great Interview Experiment. He is also the ringleader of the Annual Blogger Christmahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert, which he started back in 2006, and which I have contributed to several times.

The schtick of the Ponzi scheme is that it's a book swap - instead of an old-style chain letter, or the recipe or poem chains that I get regular emails about - it was this:

WANTED: Participants for a book-loving social experiment. Comment if you want to participate and I’ll send you details. What do you have to do? Buy or locate your favorite book and send it to a stranger (I’ll send you a name and address). You will only be sending one book to one person. The number of books you will receive depends on how many participants there are. The books that will show up on your door are the other people’s much loved stories #SaveTheCulture #BookExchange #LongLiveBooks

So I duly mailed a book off to a stranger, and in return, had five books show up on my doorstep:

I'd read A Man Called Ove, but hadn't read any of the others - and they were all good: serious, interesting fiction. And even though I'd read Ove, I was happy to get a copy, because I'd read it as a library book, and I think my 13 year old will like it.

I was particularly happy to read the Flannery O'Connor. She'd been on my mind, because someone in my office loves her and talks about her a lot, but somehow I hadn't ever read her. The Violent Bear It Away is powerful, crazy, interesting and mind-bending - and the first thing I did when I finished it was take O'Connor's letters out of the library. Fascinating woman.

Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread is kind of shaggy, kind of meandering, kind of touching. I rather loved a passage about painting the swing blue, which reminded me of Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, and turns out to be a contentious plot point. "I'm thinking a kind of medium blue, like a ... well, I don't know what shade exactly you would call it, but it's darker than baby blue, and lighter than navy. Just a middling blue, you know? Like a ... maybe they call it Swedish blue. Or ... is there such a thing as Dutch blue?" It goes on, winding though Mediterranean blue and sky blue and not powder or aqua or pale and back to Swedish blue.

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri is a rich family saga. Towards the end, she writes "In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another." In so many ways, every family's life is like that - this book and A Spool of Blue Thread are exceptional iterations of that age-old truth.

The Giant's House is beautifully written, but I vacillated between really liking it, and feeling like it was just going through the motions. Nothing really happens, but some of the descriptive language is beautiful and sharp and inventively odd. Like this:

Somebody did want his bones: me. Not just bones, or the quilted muscles that wrapped them, or the resistant but assailable cartilage in his ears. I wanted to ladle together my hands and dip them in him and cast from my netted fingers a net of blood onto the floor to read, untangle what was wrong and fish it out, see, no wonder you felt poorly, this was in your blood.

I found the ending to be tidy and preposterous - and if a book ends poorly, it leaves a bad taste. That said, I plan to read Elizabeth MrCracken's memoir, called An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, about her life in the aftermath of a stillborn child.

But what is my point? Not all pyramid schemes are bad. At worst, I'd have been out a book plus postage. That I got five books from complete strangers was gravy.

25: Louisiana Christmas Day

And it's Christmas!

My sister-in-law texted me right around Thanksgiving:

I started before Thanksgiving, as post-election therapy. I'm referring, of course, to playing my Christmas music. Usually in the car, full volume, sometimes in the house, but only with earbuds. (Husband doesn't share my obsession.) And I'd like to recommend a song to you: Aaron Neville’s Louisiana Christmas Day. Wonderfully bayou (if you like that sorta thing). It's style is native to part of the country that was solidly Trump, alas, but I can't NOT play it.

I texted her back and told her I loved it, and that she needed to listen to Sharon Jones singing White Christmas - not that they're similar, but they'll both get you bouncing around the house.



Happy Christmas!

24: I Am A Latke

And you thought I was going to skip Hanukah. NOT A CHANCE. I did, however, wait until today, because it is the first night of Hanukah. Light that first candle, and fry up some latkes. And make sure you've got Debbie Friedman channeling a latke: "I do not want to spend life in this blender".



And for gravy? Here's the US Army Band & Chorus doing Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah.

Here's to latkes! And may your oil last for eight nights.

23: Angels We Have Heard On High

Angels We Have Heard On High is one of my favorite carols to sing, what with all the melismatic Glorias - they're so much fun! Here it is, done nicely by Chanticleer, an all male chorus based in San Francisco.



If you like this, there are other Christmas songs available to stream on the Chanticleer website. (And how goofy is that Yule log of a video?)

22: The Christmas Song

Right. The proper title is "The Christmas Song" but do you ever call it anything but "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"? Maybe that's just me.

It has been recorded over and over and over - the Wikipedia page for the song lists over a hundred "notable renditions". I myself have 29 copies of it, including two by Ella Fitzgerald. She recorded a disk of Christmas songs in 1960, and when it was rereleased on CD in 2002, they included an alternate take.

Anyway, here's Ella, swinging. Listen to how she works with the beat. It's just splendid.

21: The Nutcracker (Selections)

A Christmas round-up just wouldn't be complete without something from the Nutcracker. Me being me, I not only have the whole score, but I also have the Duke Ellington suite based on it, a klezmer version by the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra, and a few odd one-offs. Herewith, three selections:

Entr'acte*
Duke Ellington



Tants Chinese
Shirim Klezmer Orchestra



Candy Cane
NYCB Orchestra

* Despite it being called an Entr'acte, and placed in the middle of the Ellington Suite, it's based on the Overture, so I put it in first place.

20: Vauncing Chimes

When it comes right down to it, what I like about the Christmas music is the plethora of interpretation. You take a body of work, and let a whole mess of people at it, and you get a whole mess of variety. Seventeen recordings of Beethoven's Op. 111 are all going to fall within a narrow range - all the notes will be there, and while there's a little room for interpretation in tempo and dynamics, it's going to be pretty straight ahead. (But Maurizio Pollini's is the best.) Seventeen recordings of Silent Night are going to be all over the map. Vocals, no vocals. Brass band, full church choir, musical saw. Straight 3/4 time, swinging 5/4 time.

The covers by jazz performers are some of the best. Take something you know, and pull it apart into seventeen explorations. Or maybe, create something new using lots of familiar elements. Like yesterday's River, today's Bobby Watson track, Vauncing Chimes, starts with a riff on Jingle Bells, goes off on an ecstatic jazz explication, weaves in some Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and blows the roof off the house.



Besides, who can resist something called Vauncing* Chimes?

* Yeah, look it up. It's an obsolete word meaning to advance.

19: River

Sometimes I live in a fog. Really, it wasn't until very recently - like weeks ago when my brother sent me the Spotify playlist of Pitchfork's 50 best Christmas tunes - that I had any idea that Joni Mitchell's River had kind of entered the Christmas music canon. And honestly, I'm not sure that it belongs. Well, it starts and ends with a minor key riff on Jingle Bells, and it begins and ends with lyrics about Christmas:

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace

But it isn't really about Christmas, and it's certainly not terribly happy, and when I cued up the version by Madeleine Peyroux and k.d. lang, my sister burst into tears and I had to turn it off.

So, I'm not entirely sure why I'm including it at all, except that that Peyroux/lang cover is gorgeous.



Me being me, I had to poke around on the tubes. Despite finding a Washington Post article titled How a ‘thoroughly depressing’ Joni Mitchell song became a Christmas classic, I am still rather mystified. It seems awfully reductive to assign a song to the Christmas canon simply because it mentions Christmas.

But I am embracing the flow of that frozen river.

18: A Ceremony of Carols

For most of December, I am content to put the holiday playlist on shuffle and listen to whatever comes up. Sometimes that doesn't work so well, like when you get that excerpt from a long form piece - like the odd recitative from the Handel Messiah, or a bit of business music from the Nutcracker - in between the Silent Nights and Joys To The World.

There's one long form piece that, for me, works both ways: Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols. I find that the individual carols flow within the shuffle, but it's also good to listen to it straight through. It's also amazing to sing, and because it's written for a three-part treble chorus, the choir at the women's college I attended was able to sing selections from it.

Anyway - it is a stunning piece of choral music, and I can smell the gingerbread wafting through the kitchen as I listen to it.

My favorite record is one from King's College Cambridge, in which the processional and recessional are recorded in space - you hear the singers approaching during the processional, and retreating at the end:



I couldn't find that recording on YouTube, but I did find a nicely filmed version sung by Sankt Jacobs Ungdomskör. It's cued up at the forceful Deo Gracias, but start at the beginning if you'd prefer.

17: Party This Christmas

A couple of weeks ago, there was a profile in the New York Times of a guy named Bill Adler. For years, he's been making a jolly holiday mixtape for his friends. My reaction? Why don't I know him??

Happily, the article was shot through with links, including a truncated Spotify playlist - I had lots of fun poking around, and loved this new to me Christmas zydeco tune by Rockin’ Sidney, called Party This Christmas.

It's got a great groove.



Now, ring the bell. Ring that bell.

Jingle bell.

16: Santa Baby

No countdown of Christmas tunes could be complete without Santa Baby - and it has to be the original. Eartha Kitt's sultry divine letter to Santa, with its delicious internal rhymes, gets me every time.

Santa cutie, and fill my stocking with a duplex, and checks.
Sign your 'X' on the line,
Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight.

15: The Little Drummer Boy

If you are in the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, you might want to look away. Or at least, don't click on the YouTube link.

I go back and forth. Sometimes I think The Little Drummer Boy is just appallingly horrible pablum, and sometimes I rather like it. It has been recorded A LOT. The Wikipedia page for the song lists an impressive number of recordings, but the one I picked is not on that list. [Maybe I should add it!]

Gregg Miner is a multi-instrumentalist with a deep collection of musical instruments, self-styled as the Miner Museum of Vintage, Exotic and Just Plain Unusual Musical Instruments. As a way of showcasing his "museum", he recorded two disks of Christmas music. The Little Drummer Boy is done on sitar and tablas, "which turned out quite interesting."



The drone of the sitar is quite effective, given the inherently repetitive nature of the song.

---

After I had written this, but before it posted, an old friend (like, I've known her since she was about 5) sent me a link to a wackadoodle sultry Grace Jones appearance on Pee Wee Herman's Christmas show, once upon a time. So, in case you need it too, here's Grace Jones singing the Little Drummer Boy to Pee Wee:

14: Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town

My initial thought was that Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town had to be the delightful version by Bruce Springsteen. But then I remembered the Joseph Spence. His rendition of the lyrics defies transcription.

So here you go, a twofer - two iconic versions of Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town.