(derekbaker)

Get Up, Stand Up. Stand Up for Your Rights.

had emergency surgery recently. (It was caused by a hernia that I already had another surgery scheduled to fix, but a strangulated small bowel turned an elective surgery into an emergency surgery, and they had to remove about 6-7" of my small intestine and resection back the healthy parts, leading to a week in the hospital and another week at T's, recovering.) As I still don't have a lot of energy -- and a cold is now sapping whatever brain activity I was capable of to begin with -- I pretty much manage to do some light reading every day, but can't concentrate for long before I find myself getting tired. But one thing I've been trying to stick to is the Daily Office (Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, or both) in the Book of Common Prayer. This has become a highlight of my day, to be honest, and I was rewarded today with a Gospel reading that seemed so applicable to feeling so under the weather as I currently do. It was Mark 5:21-43 for Monday in the 3rd week of Epiphany today:

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live."

So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'." He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe." He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!" And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Now, of course, the two healing narratives in this passage are what made the strongest impression on me. I've read this passage many times, I know, but I'm not sure I've ever read it when I was myself was sick -- certainly never when I was recovering from a cold and major abdominal surgery. So it's a comforting Gospel lesson in Epiphanytide for that reason alone.

But I was also struck by a couple of things. For one, it's interesting to me to see that, once again, Christ's divinity is demonstrated through his interactions with women. This happens so frequently -- from his birth to his death to his resurrection -- that we don't think much about it these days. But in 1st century Palestine, I understand, it was rather radical for a teacher and a healer to devote as much time -- including, in this story, travel time -- and (literally) energy to women. Or for a strange woman to touch a man and vice versa. Some part of this openness may be due to the fact that, in Judaism, one traces one's Jewish ancestry through the mother, which itself was a novel concept for the religions of the region and is literally more "feminist" than the paternal line of determining who does and doesn't belong. But it also shows that in Christ, there really isn't "male or female, Jew or Greek." (Or "gay or straight," I would add.) Instead, all are welcome to his grace, even (or especially) a 12-year-old girl.

It heartens me also that the leader of the synagogue was so concerned about his daughter that he sought out this healer he'd heard about and begged him to attend to her. How different a story is that from what we hear how women, and especially girls, are treated in so many parts of the world even today! Here, however, two thousand years ago, was a little girl, a "talitha" in Aramaic, who was loved by her father Jairus and the people in her life as much as any boy might have been. That may not seem amazing to us today -- in fact, anything otherwise is hateful to us -- but I imagine this story has far more resonance in those parts of the world where girls still aren't valued as much as boys and where religious leadership is still solely the province of men.

The other thing that struck me as very modern is the description of the woman's ordeal with her hemorrhage: "Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse."

In other words, our healthcare system, which today continues to bankrupt sick people, hasn't much improved in 2,000 years in how its delivered, only perhaps in the science behind it.

Labels: church, faith, personal

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Air-Conditioning Hassles and John Edwards Get My Dander Up

hey say you're not supposed to call old significant others when you're drunk (or do a lot of other things, for that matter). I think for me, the rule would be you shouldn't blog when you're cranky. Unfortunately, no one took away the keys to the blog as I was getting crankier and crankier today. Let me walk you back through it...

Sometime last night, the window-unit air conditioner in my bedroom decided the compressor was optional. "We're cutting you off! We have to think of the rest of the us: the fan, the coils, the stupid timer that only goes up to 12 hours! It's every feature for him- or herself!" So now it only blows air, a slightly warmed variation of whatever is outside.

As anyone who has lived with me knows, I'm pretty much tied to air conditioning indoors in the summer. I'm okay being outside in the heat and humidity for awhile, but when I'm inside, I want it cool. I want it cold if I'm sleeping. I want condensation on windows, if possible.

So that started me off on the wrong foot today, and it isn't just the hassle of replacing a window-unit air conditioner. That would have been the case at one time, with my old windows. But in their collective wisdom, my co-op board decided every apartment in the co-op (all 500-and-something units, across five different buildings around a central garden) needed new windows, and they had to all be the same, and it didn't matter if your current windows were just fine, worth 2-3 times what the replacements would be (my case), or the drafty originals from 1939. We were all getting new windows.

I objected strenuously, but I also recognized that I live in a cooperative. Outside of New York, that maybe doesn't mean anything to anyone. And, in day-to-day practice, a "co-op" and a "condo" are practically interchangeable. But unlike in a condominium, I don't actually own my apartment, I own shares in the overall cooperative, and am assigned (or maybe I lease? not sure the legal definition) my individual apartment. Like a co-op, I pretty much own the apartment "from the paint in." Which means I don't own the windows, as they're structural and part of the outside of the building too -- and uniformity on the outside was an issue for the co-op board, even though my original windows matched the color scheme of the others very well, they were just far better quality, and I'm on a floor that has slightly different windows anyway from the other floors.

So I gave up the fight about the windows, and probably had the value of my apartment reduced by about 5K or more, I'm guessing. Whatever.

But when it came time to re-install the window-unit air conditioners -- the co-op's buildings are too old to have central air, unfortunately -- they kind of kluged together a solution that essentially involves soldering and sealing the cabinet of your window unit into the open window, using Plexiglass for the side panels, if needed, and lots of clear caulk.

Which is what this means, now that one of those hermetically sealed air conditioners has died on me: I will probably need to schedule a time (and pay) for a window crew to come and take out the current AC unit, get delivery on a new unit from the people who sold me the last one (since it's still under extended warranty, and they'll replace it for the same value) and they take away the old unit, then get the window crew back to install the new unit. If I'm exceedingly lucky, I can get the current unit out, separate from the "cabinet" that houses it, and can get a new AC unit that will fit inside that same cabinet (i.e., the same model, if they still sell it), so the window crew doesn't need to be involved. That is the big question mark at present. All previous attempts to figure out how to remove the AC from the cabinet have failed -- as if it, too, had been sealed in when they sealed in the whole AC to the window -- but I have a newfound urgency to solving that problem, so in the depths of my frustration, there is some hope, somewhere. Meanwhile, I just want the evening temperatures in New York City to remain cool-ish here in August until I have a new air conditioner that can best the humidity.

So it is with all this as background that I started work today, from home (in the still-air-conditioned living room). A friend told me last night that he's decided he "doesn't suffer fools gladly"; he "makes fools suffer." That strikes me as a pretty harsh frame of mind to go through life with -- with more harm, ultimately, to the harm purveyor than the sufferer -- but I admit that became my mental frame of mind today, already annoyed by the air conditioning fiasco.

I have to say, however, that I work with very smart and yet still very real people, and in all the conversations I had today at work, I was struck by how decent and, well, human my colleagues can be. I don't often talk about work on this blog, for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that I've already got a professional platform, being in Communications there, but I don't want the two -- ibm.com and derekbaker.com -- ever confused. (As if.) But I have to say that the people I work with on a regular basis and the vast majority of people I connect with for ad hoc purposes are really decent and helpful folks, in spite of vacation schedules, family pressures, health issues, executives breathing down their necks, whatever it is. That alone helped me get some perspective on the day, but then came Big Annoyance Number Two: John Edwards.

Dude, what in the hell were you thinking? Seriously.

Let's leave aside the fact that you cheated on your ill wife. That would be bad enough, but the entire nation is already feeling sympathy for her, so you were just looking to be the asshole that made her life worse, weren't you? But let's put that aside for a moment, because politics is an ego game to some degree to begin with, and John McCain has done much worse. He cheated on his sick wife, too, but went ahead and divorced her to marry the blonde chick he'd cheated with. (That would be the present Mrs. McCain -- an admitted drug addict who stole prescriptions from poor kids to support her habit. But she's clean now. Whew.)

But, Senator Edwards, how stupid do you have to be to think that your affair isn't going to get discovered and reported on, especially if you're running for President of the United States?

You dolt. I supported you. I sent you money, which you apparently turned around to pay for "videos" (heh heh) produced by your paramour for your Web site -- despite her not having much background or talent to do such.

Infidelity has affectecd the lives of all the front runners' families other than the Obamas (as far as we know so far), from the McCains to the Clintons to now the Edwardses. So more importantly, it's the hypocrisy that makes me cranky. You said you couldn't support the right of gays and lesbians to marry because it conflicted with your personal religious beliefs about marriage. And, from what I've been able to determine, you were "undecided" on the Family Medical Leave Act or immigration rights applying to same-sex couples.

To your credit, you favored the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And you cosponsored the act that adds protections based on sexual orientation to hate crimes legislation. And I have to say, I even respected the way the you expressed your opposition to gay marriage (even if that was only to play both sides of the electorate) by explaining that you weren't there yourself, but your wife and kids had made it clear that they thought you were wrong. That was a much more honest answer than what I heard from Obama or Clinton, at least, who are still neanderthals on this issues.

But -- and I'm sorry, but I have to say it -- your saying that a gay relationship isn't worthy of the status of "marriage" under Federal law even while you're debasing your own heterosexual, government-endorsed marriage is the height of hypocrisy.

I'm mad at you for a number of reasons, John. (And, having sent you money, most recently the exact day before you pulled out of the race in fact, I feel we can speak on a first-name basis, at least.) But not least among them is that you chose to debase my relationship on the grounds that yours was somehow more sacred -- and then didn't even honor that.

So, all in all, a cranky day. Not without reason. Here's hoping tomorrow, for everyone, is a better one.

Labels: personal, politics

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My first name has baloney

Apropos of nothing, and certainly not worth a post in the heat of a presidential campaign on which I haven't written anything in two months, but I found the following interesting facts about my name on WhitePages.com:

There are 30,193 unique 'Derek' first names in the United States.
Derek is the #461 ranked first name in the United States.

# 460 Franklin

# 461 Derek

# 462 Glenda

Top States for first Name Derek

1. California     2482 listings
2. Texas          2188 listings
3. Florida        1601 listings
4. Michigan       1179 listings
5. New York       1130 listings

Most Popular last Names for Derek

1. Smith           402 listings
2. Johnson         293 listings
3. Brown           208 listings
4. Williams        195 listings
5. Jones           188 listings

Take that, Glenda!

Labels: personal

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Odd Sights in Inwood

A break from the political blathering to mention something I saw tonight on my way to the grocery store: a subway train, rolling up Broadway. And not on an elevated track (which we have up here) or somesuch. It went by pretty fast, and I was actually a block away, looking east toward Broadway, but I was able to see that it was actually on the back of a (large) flatbed truck, followed by another truck with what was probably a "wide load" sign.

Considering that there are train yards just east of Broadway way up here on the northern end of Manhattan, where they do repairs and such, it isn't the most surprising thing, but I hadn't seen a subway car rolling up the street before and I know I did a classic double-take. I wish I'd had a camera or cellphone camera to take a picture to show you. Trust me: it was the New York equivalent of seeing a jetliner being hauled up a highway — not that most people have seen that, either, I realize.

Labels: Inwood, New York, personal

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Bad Nonhabits

Just like in keeping a journal (or in exercising regularly, for that matter), I'm not very good at maintaining good habits, if blogging could be considered a good habit. It's getting to the point where the "sorry it's been so long since I've posted" are the only posts I post. As always, I resolve to be more regular (if only to achieve my goal of daily writing-that-isn't-for-work), and think one way to do that is to ignore the need for every post to be a complete essay unto itself.

Not that they've been all that good, as essays, I realize, but having a complete thought, exploring it thoroughly, and making some kind of point always seems the ideal -- but as Voltaire said, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien," which would normally translate as "the best is..." but such exactitude in translation is, perhaps, exactly what Voltaire was warning me about. I must ask him when we meet next.)

So a few random thoughts for now, if only to stake a claim for perhaps future posts. Otherwise, this blog is likely to revert back to its natural state, overgrown with kudzu and marauding bears.

• There's a skunk at the garden party. Or to be more precise (apologies to V.), we have skunks in my co-op's garden. For non-New Yorkers, a "co-op" is an apartment building or complex in which you own shares in the overall "co-operative," but don't own your actual apartment. It differs in some legal ways from a "condo," but in practical terms, it means you have to be approved by the board before you can buy and they can sometimes impose rules that condos generally can't. (As I understand it, a condo you own "from the paint in." In a co-op, officially, you don't, but they generally treat it the same.)
  
  Anyway, my co-op is actually five separate buildings, each divided into two sections with separate entrances, surrounding a 2+ acre (?) garden, which is obviously a rarity in New York City. A few weeks ago, they posted a sign in the elevator informing us that the management office was aware that we had a skunk in the garden and that a humane trap had been set, and the skunk would be removed (and released elsewhere?). A week or so later, the note in the elevator told us all that we had so far caught four skunks. I saw a fifth, dead skunk on a sidewalk about a half block from our co-op a week ago that someone had likely poisoned (as it was lying beside a snow shovel that had the remains of an orange, probably poisoned, on its blade.
  
  
• If you follow anything going on in the Episcopal Church or the wider Anglican Communion, you know that there's a huge showdown underway between the U.S. church, the minority of fundamentalists in our church, and the fundamentalist Anglican archbishops (also a minority, but representating a majority of the world's Anglicans) of other national churches. It's getting both tense and ridiculous, but listening to the arguments on all sides, it's made me update my bias against Biblical literalism, which would be....
  
  
• I've long felt that Biblical literalism replaced a worship of God with a worship of the Bible -- or bibliolatry, in other words. Despite the fact that the church created the Bible (or determined its canon and scriptural nature), and not vice versa. I've decided that, too often, even that doesn't adequately describe the ways literalism is used to pervert the Gospel of Christ. Pretty much these days, it's not even worshiping the Bible, it's worshiping a concordance of the Bible.
  
  An excellent exposition on this was written by the Rev. Thomas Woodward at the Episcopal Majority blog, to which I posted a comment and then got into the kind of "Bible says/Jesus says" argument that this stuff generally comes down to these days.
  
  
• I'm co-chairing a capital campaign at church this fall, and the preparation for it (including a four-color brochure and pledge cards) is taking up all my non-work time. But this is also the time of year that life picks up steam, anyway. Right now, for example, I need to quit adding random bullets to this post and go practice a few hymns on the keyboard, as I said I would play the bells before the service tomorrow. I'm also filling in for someone else as a torchbearin' acolyte. And next week, I have a Voices of Ascension concert to attend (at Carnegie Hall; normally they're at church), and a campaign committee meeting to attend. So as I say, the fall is picking up steam. As in "steamroller."
  

Labels: church, faith, Inwood, personal

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Shut Up and Dance

All sorts of serious and not-as-serious things to talk about -- Virginia Tech (serious), Don Imus (whatever), rogue Episcopal parishes (redundant?), the importance of early screening for breast cancer (serious), the politicization of (pick one) the Justice Department, the FDA, the military, healthcare (all varying degrees of seriousness and ridiculousness) -- and I'm choosing tonight to ignore them all.

Instead, I'd rather write something personally revealing. Which is music. I just exported a list of all the songs on my iPod that I've given five stars to, which is the basis for my "Favorites" playlist. (Or, to be precise, my "--Favorites" playlist, so it will show up first in the list.) I figure this says a lot about me, althought not everything. There's nothing classical or liturgical in this list, and very little in the way of jazz, for that matter, even though I listen to those genres pretty frequently too -- as well as podcast editions of NPR's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, The Splendid Table and Speaking of Faith; To The Best of Our Knownledge; audiobooks; and more of the genre "Pop Vocals-Classic" and "New Age" than is reflected in this list.

But this list reflects my ideal playlist if I owned my own radio station for a day, as it represents 22 hours worth of music, leaving roughly enough time for commercials and promotional spots. And, for pop music, it shows my tastes as well as any other list. (With the caveat that much of these songs either have never been "popular" or were popular so long ago, there's no radio station tracked by Arbitron that still plays them.)

There's much to snicker at in here, I know. And much head scratching for someone else's head. For example, why would anyone include Blue Öyster Cult and Wayne Newton on the same list? Or, for that matter, OutKast and Nancy LaMott? (Helen Reddy and the Indigo Girls probably makes some kind of sense, actually.) And then there's all that Bruce Springsteen, but also Cher ... and the Ray Conniff Singers, for God's sake!

I also realize there are a few duplicates in here -- two versions of the same song by different artists (I Could Write a Book; All of Me; Hallelujah; How High the Moon; New York, New York; Pieces of Dreams; etc.), two versions of the same song by the SAME artist (I Got You Babe, by Sonny & Cher; Les Nuits, by Nightmares on Wax; etc.) and a ton of covers (Birdland; Downtown; Peace Piece; Sexual Healing; Walk on the Wild Side) that are far better known in their original versions, not to mention several live versions of things (such as by Bruce, The Pretenders, and others) that never got as much airtime as the studio version, but have a cool energy added with a live setting. IMHO.

In the end, it's a bizarre mess inside my head, I admit -- full of kitsch, camp, and block rockin' beats -- but no Chemical Brothers, I notice. Anyway, here's Exhibit A for my commitment hearing. I've put a few in bold noting those that I think deserve more attention than they otherwise get.

Name	Artist	Album
Faith	AB+	AB+
When Time Does Not Wait	AB+	One
Les Seigneurs (Theme )	Adani & Wolf	Seigneurs (Episode 1)
Hand In My Pocket	Alanis Morissette	Jagged Little Pill
You Learn	Alanis Morissette	Jagged Little Pill
Sexual Healing	Alibi & Rockefeller	Ultra 2007
The Lucky One	Alison Krauss & Union Station	New Favorite
Lonely Boy	Andrew Gold	Rhino Hi-Five: Andrew Gold - EP
Águas De Março (Waters Of March)	Antônio Carlos Jobim	Verve Jazz Masters 13
Rollin' On Chrome (Wild Motherf*cker Dub)	Aphrodelics	The K&D Sessions (Disc 1)
Marching On	Ballistic Brothers	Serve Chilled (Disc 2)
Evergreen	Barbra Streisand	The Essential: Barbra Streisand
You'll Never Walk Alone (Bonus Track)	Barbra Streisand	The Essential: Barbra Streisand
Somewhere In The Night	Barry Manilow	Even Now
Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe	Barry White	All Time Greatest Hits
Love's Theme	Barry White	All Time Greatest Hits
Honey Please, Can't Ya See	Barry White	All Time Greatest Hits
You're The First, The Last, My Everything	Barry White	All Time Greatest Hits
All That Jazz	BeBe Neuwirth & Company	Chicago
Bye Bye Blues	Benny Goodman	Benny Goodman Sextet
Brand New Lover	Bibiche	Trick
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant	Billy Joel	The Stranger
Vienna	Billy Joel	The Stranger
Only The Good Die Young	Billy Joel	The Stranger
In the Deep	Bird York	Crash (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Ocean Beach (Cinematic Cyberphonia Remix)	Black Mighty Orchestra	Rendezvous Lounge
(Don't Fear) The Reaper	Blue Öyster Cult	Entertainment Weekly Presents Killer Riffs (Disc 1)
Clementine	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 2)
Mack the Knife	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 2)
Artificial Flowers	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 2)
Hello, Dolly!	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 3)
Sunday in New York	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 3)
Beyond the Sea	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 2)
Simple Song Of Freedom [Live]	Bobby Darin	The Bobby Darin Collection (Disc 4)
Indiana	Bobby Darin & Johnny Mercer	Two Of A Kind
Finale: Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' (Reprise)	Broadway Cast	Oklahoma!
Land Of Hope And Dreams (Live)	Bruce Springsteen	Live in New York City (Disc 2)
Sherry Darling	Bruce Springsteen	The River (Disc 1)
I'm On Fire	Bruce Springsteen	Born In The U.S.A.
No Surrender	Bruce Springsteen	Born In The U.S.A.
Racing In The Street	Bruce Springsteen	Darkness On The Edge Of Town
The Promised Land	Bruce Springsteen	Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Man's Job	Bruce Springsteen	Human Touch
Hungry Heart	Bruce Springsteen	The River (Disc 1)
Atlantic City	Bruce Springsteen	Nebraska
Open All Night	Bruce Springsteen	Nebraska
Reason To Believe	Bruce Springsteen	Nebraska
Thunder Road	Bruce Springsteen	Born To Run
Streets Of Philadelphia	Bruce Springsteen	Greatest Hits
Born To Run (Live)	Bruce Springsteen	Live in New York City (Disc 1)
If I Should Fall Behind	Bruce Springsteen	Lucky Town
My Lover Man	Bruce Springsteen	Tracks (Disc 4)
We Shall Overcome	Bruce Springsteen	We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
Bobby Jean	Bruce Springsteen	Born In The U.S.A.
Growin' Up	Bruce Springsteen	Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
Pieces Of Dreams	Buddy Rich	Big Band Machine
Love Will Keep Us Together	Captain & Tennille	Ultimate Collection: Captain & Tennille
Mame	Charles Braswell	Mame - 1966 Broadway
Believe	Cher	Believe
Love One Another	Cher	Living Proof
Song for the Lonely	Cher	Living Proof
All or Nothing	Cher	The Very Best of Cher
Different Kind of Love Song (Eclectic Version)	Cher	Living Proof
Saturday In The Park	Chicago	Greatest Hits Vol 1
Just You 'n' Me	Chicago	Greatest Hits Vol 1
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is	Chicago	Greatest Hits Vol 1
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You ?	Chieftains & Van Morrison	The Long Black Veil
Tubthumping	Chumbawamba	Tubthumper
Don't Panic	Coldplay	Parachutes
One	Company of Chorus Line	The Best Of Broadway
All Of Me	Count Basie	Compact Jazz - Count Basie
The Heat's On	Count Basie	The Best of the Count Basie Big Band
My 909 Blues	Daniel Wang	Freezone 6: Fourth Person Singular
Take Five	Dave Brubeck	Dave Brubeck's Greatest Hits
An Actor's Life	Dave Grusin	GRP New Magic Digital Sampler
The Best Of What's Around	Dave Matthews Band	Under The Table And Dreaming
Satellite	Dave Matthews Band	Under The Table And Dreaming
Marisa	Dave's True Story	Dave's True Story (Version 2002)
I'll Never Read Trollope Again	Dave's True Story	Sex Without Bodies
Walk On The Wild Side	Dave's True Story	Sex Without Bodies
Sequined Mermaid Dress	Dave's True Story	Dave's True Story (Version 2002)
Please Forgive Me	David Gray	White Ladder
Babylon	David Gray	White Ladder
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye	David Gray	White Ladder
That's Amore	Dean Martin	Capitol Collector's Series
Ain't That A Kick In The Head	Dean Martin	Capitol Collector's Series
You Light Up My Life	Debby Boone	The Best of Debby Boone
Livin' It Down	Delbert McClinton	WFUV New Music Sampler
You Gotta Be	Des'ree	I Ain't Movin'
This Bitter Earth	Dinah Washington	Jazz Masters 19
Sunny Side Of The Street	Dinah Washington	Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury Vol.4, The (Disc 3)
I Could Write A Book	Dinah Washington	Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury Vol.4, The (Disc 1)
There'll Be A Jubilee	Dinah Washington	Complete Dinah Washington on Mercury Vol.4, The (Disc 3)
If I Were A Bell	Dinah Washington	Complete Mercury Recordings - Vol 4 (Disc 3)
Drift Away	Dobie Gray	Ultimate Collection: Dobie Gray
Oh Happy Day	Edwin Hawkins Singers	Great Black Gospel Music (Disc 1)
Mr. Blue Sky	Electric Light Orchestra	Electric Light Orchestra: Greatest Hits 1973-1977
Sweet Talkin' Woman	Electric Light Orchestra	Electric Light Orchestra: Greatest Hits 1973-1977
Turn to Stone	Electric Light Orchestra	Electric Light Orchestra: Greatest Hits 1973-1977
Sweet Georgia Brown	Ella Fitzgerald	Compact Jazz
How High The Moon	Ella Fitzgerald	Compact Jazz
Manhattan	Ella Fitzgerald	The Songbooks
Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me	Elton John	Greatest Hits
Your Song	Elton John	Greatest Hits
Bennie And The Jets	Elton John	Greatest Hits
Don't Go Breaking My Heart	Elton John & Kiki Dee	Elton John: The Greatest Hits 1970-2002
Proper Education (Radio Edit)	Eric Prydz vs. Floyd	Proper Education
Dreamweaver	Erin Hamilton	Trick
At Last	Etta James	Sweetest Peaches (1960-1966)
How Can I Keep From Singing?	Eva Cassidy	Wonderful World
We Walk The Same Line	Everything But The Girl	Amplified Heart
Missing (Todd Terry Remix)	Everything But The Girl	Amplified Heart
Troubled Mind	Everything But The Girl	Amplified Heart
Twin Cities	Everything But The Girl	Worldwide
Don't Stop	Fleetwood Mac	Rumours
Second Hand News	Fleetwood Mac	Rumours
Slow Ride - Foghat	Foghat	Entertainment Weekly Presents Killer Riffs (Disc 1)
My Kind Of Town	Frank Sinatra	The Reprise Collection #2
The Lady Is A Tramp	Frank Sinatra	The Reprise Collection #4
Stars Fell On Alabama	Frank Sinatra	Capitol Years-2
I'll Be Seeing You	Frank Sinatra	Capitol Years-3
New York, New York	Frank Sinatra	The Reprise Collection #4
All Of Me	Frank Sinatra	Capitol Years-1
Chicago	Frank Sinatra	Capitol Years-2
Come Dance With Me	Frank Sinatra	Capitol Years-3
Rainbows, Barbies and Clowns	George Faulkner	Rainbows, Barbies and Clowns
Rhinestone Cowboy	Glen Campbell	All the Best
I Am What I Am	Gloria Gaynor	Dancing Queens
Hollaback Girl	Gwen Stefani	Love, Angel, Music, Baby
We Are In Love	Harry Connick, Jr.	We Are In Love
It Had To Be You (Big Band And Vocals)	Harry Connick, Jr.	When Harry Met Sally
I Could Write A Book	Harry Connick, Jr.	When Harry Met Sally
I've Heard That Song Before	Harry James	Hannah And Her Sisters
Salome's Last Chance	Hawke	Heatstroke
I Am Woman	Helen Reddy	Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits (And More)
I Don't Know How to Love Him	Helen Reddy	Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits (And More)
Delta Dawn	Helen Reddy	Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits (And More)
Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress)	Helen Reddy	Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits (And More)
You and Me Against the World	Helen Reddy	Helen Reddy's Greatest Hits (And More)
Love Train	Holly Johnson	Blast
Galileo	Indigo Girls	Rites of Passage (Remastered)
Theme From 'Shaft'	Isaac Hayes	The Best Of Isaac Hayes, Volume 1
Sleep All Day	Jason Mraz	Waiting For My Rocket To Come
Heaven Right Here	Jeb Loy Nichols	WFUV New Music Sampler
In Your Eyes (Live)	Jeffrey Gaines	WFUV New Music Sampler
Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)	Jim Croce	Greatest Hits
Photographs & Memories	Jim Croce	Greatest Hits
In Too Deep	JMJ & Flytronix	DJ Kicks (Disc 1)
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Live)	Joan Baez	Joan Baez: The Complete A&M Recordings
One Of Us	Joan Osborne	Relish
Hallelujah	John Cale	Fragments Of A Rainy Season
Have A Little Faith In Me	John Hiatt	Far Gone
Drive South	John Hiatt	Far Gone
Cry Love	John Hiatt	Walk On
Trudy And Dave	John Hiatt	Far Gone
Back To You	John Mayer	Room for Squares
Waiting On the World to Change	John Mayer	Continuum
Your Body Is A Wonderland	John Mayer	Room for Squares
Not Myself	John Mayer	Room for Squares
No Such Thing	John Mayer	Room for Squares
The Mission Theme (Theme for NBC News)	John Williams	An American Journey - Winter Olympics 2002
Chances Are	Johnny Mathis	Super Hits
Must Be You	Josh Joplin	Future That Was
I Am Not the Only Cowboy	Josh Joplin	Future That Was
Wonderful Ones	Josh Joplin	Future That Was
Future That Was	Josh Joplin	Future That Was
Blighty	Judith Owen	Twelve Arrows
Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again - w/ Barbra Streisand	Judy Garland	Judy Duets
Carolina In The Morning	Judy Garland	Route 66: Capitol Sings Coast To Coast
SexyBack (Pokerface Remix)	Justin Timberlake	SexyTracks: The SexyBack Remixes - EP
New York, New York	Keely Smith	Keely Sings Sinatra
Palm Springs Jump	Keely Smith	Swing, Swing, Swing
High Noon	Kruder & Dorfmeister	G-Stoned
Definition	Kruder & Dorfmeister	G-Stoned
We Shall Overcome	Larry Goldings	Quartet
Space Walk	Lemon Jelly	Lost Horizons
Soft	Lemon Jelly	Nice Weather For Ducks
Nice Weather For Ducks	Lemon Jelly	Lost Horizons
Desperado	Linda Ronstadt	Greatest Hits
Blue Bayou	Linda Ronstadt	Greatest Hits
Downtown	Liz Callaway	The Beat Goes On
Peace Piece	Liz Story	Solid Colors
Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)	Looking Glass	Sony Music 100 Years: Pop Music - The Golden Era 1951-1975
Don't Worry About Me & I'm In The Mood For Love	Louis Prima	Zooma Zooma: The Best Of Louis Prima
Angelina & Zooma Zooma (medley)	Louis Prima	Zooma Zooma: The Best Of Louis Prima
Blackberry Time	Luka Bloom	Salty Heaven
I Can't Wait To Meetchu	Macy Gray	On How Life Is
I Try	Macy Gray	On How Life Is
Don't Wait Too Long	Madeleine Peyroux	Careless Love
Good Vibrations	Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch	Pure Party (Disc 2)
Too Busy Thinking About My Baby	Marvin Gaye	Command Performances-15 Greatest Hits
Gospel John	Maynard Ferguson	Chameleon
The Way We Were	Maynard Ferguson	Chameleon
Chameleon	Maynard Ferguson	Chameleon
Too Close For Comfort	Mel Torme	Compact Jazz
Pieces of Dreams	Michel Legrand	Sarah Vaughan with Michel Legrand
New York City	moe.	WFUV New Music Sampler
Superstar	Murray Head & The Trinidad Singers	The Best Of Broadway
Wonderful	Nacho Sotomayor	La Roca
Help Is on the Way	Nancy LaMott	Beautiful Baby
We Live on Borrowed Time	Nancy LaMott	What's Good About Goodbye?
Rhode Island Is Famous for You	Nancy LaMott	My Foolish Heart
Listen to My Heart	Nancy LaMott	Listen to My Heart
Orange Colored Sky	Nat King Cole	The Nat King Cole Story (Disc 1)
Number One In Heaven	Nemesis	Number One In Heaven - Single
Les Nuits	Nightmares On Wax	Another Late Night
Les Nuits (album version)	Nightmares On Wax	Serve Chilled
Wonderwall	Oasis	(What's The Story) Morning Glory?
Champagne Supernova	Oasis	(What's The Story) Morning Glory?
Don't Look Back in Anger	Oasis	(What's The Story) Morning Glory?
The Best of Times	Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording	La Cage Aux Folles
Hey Ya!	OutKast	Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
The Way You Move	OutKast & Sleepy Brown	Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
The Night Chicago Died	Paper Lace	The Night Chicago Died - Single
Gonna Move	Paul Pena	New Train
New Train	Paul Pena	New Train
Kodachrome	Paul Simon	Negotiations And Love Songs 1971-1986
Loves Me Like A Rock	Paul Simon	Negotiations And Love Songs 1971-1986
Double Drums	Peace Orchestra	Peace Orchestra
Happy Heart	Petula Clark	Greatest Hits
When the Voices Come	Projekt: PM	Hi-Fidelity House Imprint 1
I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)	Ray Conniff Singers	The Essential Ray Conniff
Georgy Girl	Ray Conniff Singers	This Is My Song and Other Great Hits
Theme from "A Summer Place"	Ray Conniff Singers	Always in My Heart
Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from "The Godfather")	Ray Conniff Singers	The Essential Ray Conniff
Baby's Arms	Robert Cray Band	WFUV New Music Sampler
Feelin' Good Again	Robert Earl Keen	Walking Distance
I'll Be Here For You	Robert Earl Keen	Walking Distance
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face	Roberta Flack	Atlantic Rhythm And Blues 1947-1974 Volume 6 (1966-1969)
Killing Me Softly with His Song	Roberta Flack	Killing Me Softly
Day By Day	Robin Lamont & Company	The Best Of Broadway
Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk	Rufus Wainwright	Poses
Hallelujah	Rufus Wainwright	Shrek
Smooth Operator	Sade	Diamond Life
The Birth Of The Blues	Sammy Davis Jr.	Sammy Davis, Jr. - Greatest Songs
The Candy Man	Sammy Davis Jr.	Sammy Davis, Jr. - Greatest Songs
Mr Bojangles	Sammy Davis Jr.	Sammy Davis, Jr. - Greatest Songs
Smooth	Santana & Rob Thomas	Supernatural
Ice	Sarah McLachlan	Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Angel	Sarah McLachlan	Surfacing
Possession	Sarah McLachlan	Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Ice Cream	Sarah McLachlan	Fumbling Towards Ecstasy
Building A Mystery	Sarah McLachlan	Surfacing
Ooh What Cha Doin' To Me	Sarah Vaughan	The Divine Sarah Vaughan - The Columbia Years 1949-1953 (Disc 2)
Perdido	Sarah Vaughan	The Divine Sarah Vaughan - The Columbia Years 1949-1953 (Disc 2)
Better Luck	Scissor Sisters	Scissor Sisters
Take Your Mama	Scissor Sisters	Scissor Sisters
I Don't Feel Like Dancin'	Scissor Sisters	Ta-Dah
She's My Man	Scissor Sisters	Ta-Dah
Kiss From A Rose	Seal	Seal
Prayer For The Dying	Seal	Seal
Bring It On	Seal	Seal
Day Tripper	Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66	Brasil 66 Greatest Hits
Going Out Of My Head	Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66	Brasil 66 Greatest Hits
Look Of Love	Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66	Brasil 66 Greatest Hits
Scarborough Fair	Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66	Brasil 66 Greatest Hits
Goldfinger	Shirley Bassey	Goldsinger. The best of Shirley Bassey
This is my life	Shirley Bassey	Goldsinger. The best of Shirley Bassey
Diamonds are forever	Shirley Bassey	Goldsinger. The best of Shirley Bassey
Bridge Over Troubled Waters (Live)	Simon & Garfunkel	The Concert In Central Park
The Sound Of Silence (Live)	Simon & Garfunkel	The Concert In Central Park
The Right Thing	Simply Red	Men And Women
You Do Something To Me	Sinéad O'Connor	Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute To Cole Porter
I'm A Believer	Smash Mouth	Shrek
United We Stand	Sonny & Cher	Cher and Sonny & Cher: Greatest Hits
I Got You Babe (Live in Las Vegas, 1973)	Sonny & Cher	Cher and Sonny & Cher: Greatest Hits
I Got You Babe	Sonny & Cher	The Essentials: Sonny & Cher
The String Thing	Soul Ascendants	Variations
Afternoon Delight	Starland Vocal Band	Starland Vocal Band
Stuck in the Middle with You	Stealers Wheel	Reservoir Dogs (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture)
Maybe Tomorrow	Stereophonics	Maybe Tomorrow - EP (CD 1)
This Could Be The Start Of Something Big	Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gormé	The Best Of Steve & Eydie
Suddenly	The Bogmen	Life Begins At 40 Million
Sing	The Carpenters	Singles (1969-1981)
Top Of The Word	The Carpenters	Singles (1969-1981)
Summertime's Calling Me	The Catalinas	Beachbeat Shaggin'
Ode To My Family	The Cranberries	No Need To Argue
Fluxus	The Dining Rooms	TRE
Prigionieri Nel Deserto	The Dining Rooms	TRE
Così Ti Amo	The Dining Rooms	Numero Deux
Without The One You Love (Life's Not Worthwhile)	The Four Tops	Greatest Hits
Baby I Need Your Loving	The Four Tops	Greatest Hits
It's The Same Old Song	The Four Tops	Greatest Hits
Reach Out I'll Be There	The Four Tops	Greatest Hits
I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)	The Four Tops	Greatest Hits
Everybody Plays the Fool	The Main Ingredient	A Quiet Storm
How High The Moon	The Manhattan Transfer	Bop Doo-Wopp
Birdland	The Manhattan Transfer	Best Of The Manhattan Transfer
Jackie Blue	The Ozark Mountain Daredevils	20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of The Ozark Mountain Daredevils
Come On Get Happy	The Partridge Family	Come On Get Happy - The Very Best of The Partridge Family
I Think I Love You	The Partridge Family	Come On Get Happy - The Very Best of The Partridge Family
At Long Last Love	The Porter Project	The Porter Project
Back On The Chain Gang	The Pretenders	The Isle Of View
Brass In Pocket	The Pretenders	The Isle Of View
On The Road To Fairfax County	The Roches	Keep On Doing
Skin & Bones	The Sundays	Reading, Writing And Arithmetic
I Kicked A Boy	The Sundays	Reading, Writing And Arithmetic
Here's Where The Story Ends	The Sundays	Reading, Writing And Arithmetic
Hey Hey Baby	The Swingin' Medallions	Beachbeat Shaggin'
One	Thievery Corporation	Sounds From The Thievery Hi-Fi
Holographic Universe	Thievery Corporation	The Cosmic Game
Black and White (Single)	Three Dog Night	Celebrate - The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975
What'll I Do	Tierney Sutton	Dancing In The Dark
Here's Where I Stand	Tiffany Taylor And The Company	Camp
Lifetime	Tom Burris	For Sale
Anyone Can Whistle	Tom Wopat	The Still Of The Night
The Moon's A Harsh Mistress	Tom Wopat	The Still Of The Night
Gute Laune	Tosca	Dehli 9 (Disc 1)
La Vendeuse Des Chaussures Des Femmes Part 1	Tosca	Dehli 9 (Disc 1)
Love Warriors	Tuck & Patti	Love Warriors
They Can't Take That Away From Me	Tuck & Patti	Love Warriors
A Letter From Home	Ulrich Schnauss	A Strangely Isolated Place
... Passing By	Ulrich Schnauss	Far Away Trains Passing By
As If You've Never Been Away	Ulrich Schnauss	Far Away Trains Passing By
Les Techniques De L'amour	Ursula 1000	Kinda' Kinky
Did Ye Get Healed?	Van Morrison	Night In San Francisco (Disc 1)
Tupelo Honey	Van Morrison	A Night In San Francisco (Disc 1)
When I Fell N Love - UBQ Project	Various Artists - Glasgow Underground	SlowBurning
The Rockford Files - Post, Carpenter	Various Artists - GNP Crescendo	Fantastic Television
Linus And Lucy	Vince Guaraldi	Charlie Brown Christmas
Werewolves Of London	Warren Zevon	Entertainment Weekly Presents Killer Riffs (Disc 1)
Danke Schoen	Wayne Newton	Wayne Newton: Ultra-Lounge Artists Series 4
Volare (Not Blu Di Pinto Di Blu)	Wayne Newton	Wayne Newton: Ultra-Lounge Artists Series 4
More	Wayne Newton	Wayne Newton: Ultra-Lounge Artists Series 4
I'm In Love	Wilson Pickett	Atlantic Rhythm And Blues 1947-1974 Volume 6 (1966-1969)
Lift Ev'ry Voice And Sing	Winard Harper	Faith
Never Let Me Go	Wynton Marsalis	Standard Time, Volume 3: Resolution Of Romance

Labels: music, personal

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Dangerous Combinations

don't usually like to start celebrating Christmas too early. Certainly not before Thanksgiving -- it's almost an insult to the First Thanksgiving's Pilgrims and Native Americans, neither of whom, for their different reasons, believed in celebrating Christmas at all. And, really, even the day after Thanksgiving seems a rush that we could do without. Strictly-strictly speaking, "Christmas" isn't even celebrated until December 25, and for the 12 days that follow. And Advent (the season before Christmas) begins today, on December 3.

One nod to the holidays, however, was to move all my Christmas music from my PC over to my iPod. With my old 40GB iPod, I didn't have enough room for all my music, so I would have to pick and choose which genres to keep on the iPod, usually leaving the Christmas stuff off all year until December, when I'd swap out the classical stuff (5.83GB right there) for the Christmas stuff.

With the 60GB iPod I got this summer, however, I can just barely get everything on there. I know -- does anyone really need 60 gigs' worth of music? And there are admittedly some things on there I either rarely listen to or haven't gotten around to. In fact, I have a playlist I created called "Due for a listen." And, now that I check, I still have 15.8 days worth of music that iTunes says I haven't listened to yet.

Which isn't actually true. Many of those titles are songs that I just haven't listened to on either this iPod or on this PC (both of which are only a few months old at this point). Since I just added the Christmas music to the iPod, for example, that alone accounts for 2.9 days' worth of the "Due for a listen."

Yep. I have 2.9 days -- 1226 items, or 4.59GB -- of music in the genre "Christmas." Much of it came in originally with the genre of "Holiday," but some didn't, and I use the genres so much in my "smart playlists" that I have to make sure they're accurate at least insofar as my own listening is concerned.

Using the "comments" field of each song's tags (in Windows, right-click on a highlighted track or tracks and choose "Get info"), I've broken much of that down even further. For example, I have 17 hours' worth in the "Christmas-Traditional" playlist (Genre contains "Christmas"; Comment contains "traditional"; Comment does not contain "weird").

That playlist covers everything from the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble "Festival of Carols in Brass" and the Julie Andrews/André Previn album (originally a Firestone Tire release!) to things by John Tavener, Herbert Howells, and stuff sung by Chanticleer. Oh, and a Shirley Bassey singing "Ave Maria" is in there, too.

I would have expected more in this vein from my collection, but surprisingly, it's not the Christmas playlist with the most titles. That distinction goes to the playlist "Christmas-Pop," which has a full day's worth of all the Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Harry Connick, Jr., The Roches and Sarah McLachlan stuff. So it covers a wide swath, and there's obviously some overlap with both jazz -- Diana Krall shows up in both -- and traditional: the Henry Mancini Orchestra's medley of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," "Away in a Manger," and "The First Noel" is pretty traditional -- but in a 60s, easy-listenin' way. So for some reason I left him out of "traditional" but put Shirley Bassey in. Go figure.

The "Christmas-Jazz" playlist has 14.2 hours of tunes in it, but in addition to a few overlaps with "Christmas-Pop," there are also a few overlaps here with "Christmas-Piano," such as George Shearing and Liz Story.

Actually, the "Christmas-Piano" playlist is made up almost entirely of cross-listings with either "jazz" or "new age" or both -- all 9.2 hours of it.

And speaking of Liz Story, she may be the most represented on any of my Christmas playlists, which is probably appropriate, because her album The Gift is one of my all-time favorite Christmas albums. Not only does she do some thought-provoking medleys, pairing up carols and hymns that one doesn't hear often recorded ("Bring a Torch Jeanette, Isabella" and "Il Est Ne, le Divin Enfant"), she even includes some that I've never associated with Christmas at all -- but it works. "Pange Lingua," which I usually think of as a Maundy Thursday hymn, is paired with "A Hymn to the Virgin"; or "The Truth from Above" combined with something she calls "O King of Light and Splendor," which I've only ever heard as "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," a classic Good Friday hymn, but the same tune is apparently used by Bach in his Christmas Oratorio (and again in his St. Matthew Passion).

They're all good, but the best track on that album, in my opinion, is the medley of "In the Bleak Midwinter/O Sanctissima." I have the sheet music for this; someday, I'll take the time to learn it.

As I said, this album The Gift is on several of my Christmas playlists, because it crosses genres, but among those genres I have to admit includes "Christmas-New Age." I hesitate to even mention this playlist (although I do have, uh, 13.5 hours' worth of Christmas music in this category). And some is definitely better than others, but it's almost all from Windham Hill, almost all acoustic, and includes, other than Liz Story, people like George Winston, Alex De Grassi and William Ackerman. So not a Mannheim Steamroller number in the bunch. So get off my back.

Except to hear a few of these tracks here on the computer while I wrote this, I haven't yet played the Christmas music on the iPod yet. I'm just not in the mood yet this year, and not sure how much of a Christmas mood I'll be in this year anyway.

I'm taking a few days of retreat up at a convent north of New York City this week, just to clear the head. I'll take the iPod with me, but we'll see. I imagine the convent is all "decked out" for Advent -- meaning, not at all festive, since it isn't yet Christmas -- so I doubt there will be much inclination to listen to holly and jolly for a little while yet, anyway.

But thanks to iTunes's "smart playlists" and the obsessive-compulsive tendencies they enable and nurture in some of us, I'm ready, just in case that holiday spirit does hit.

Labels: faith, music, personal

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The Bells in My Head

kay, so that was weird.

I had to get to church early to play the bells last Sunday. It was my first time, actually: the bells are up in the tower, but you play them from one of the ranks on the organ, and we have a small group who volunteer to play two verses of three or four hymns on the bells before the service as people are coming in.

I had gone through my first hymn, and my friend Ned was standing next to me at the organ console giving me encouragement and explaining which switches go on or off before and after, and I get through the second hymn, and it's on the third hymn -- which is the toughest, and I have to transpose it down a key to play on the very limited scale available with our bells -- when I hear Ned whisper, "Oh, my gosh!" I thought I'd done something wrong.

"What??" I say, as I'm playing the hymn "Crown Him With Many Crowns" (we'd be singing it in a few minutes, as one of those traditionally sung on the last Sunday before Advent, sometimes known as the Feast of Christ the King).

"There's a guy who just came up to the altar," he said. I glance quickly to my right and see some young guy in the chancel start to kneel down in front of our communion altar. "I can't really look," I said, "or I'll flub this."

"He's...he's taking off his shirt!" Ned said. So I glanced again to my right, on a whole note, which I could hold a bit longer than even was warranted. And sure enough, he was.

My peripheral vision isn't great with my glasses on, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was arching his back with his hands extended, in something like a cross between Alvin Ailey and a yoga move. "This is so bizarre," Ned said.

We're both whispering, of course, but we could probably haved spoken in normal tones of voice at this point and no one would be paying attention to what we were saying -- or to my bell-playing, for that matter.

I gave a quick glance again as I ended the first verse. "He's in remarkably good shape for a crazy person," I observed.

As I started the second verse, I saw one of the assistant sextons come up to the front and approach the man -- not aggressively (we used to have a sexton, who was a wonderful old Haitian guy, who would bodily and forcibly grab and remove disruptive crazy people -- which happens more often than you'd think, even for a church in Greenwich Village in New York City) -- but definitely in a careful way; he may have thought the guy might have a gun or a knife on him, which was perfectly possible.

The guy put his shirt back on and the assistant sexton led him back down the aisle and out of my peripheral view. Apparently, he left the building about as quickly as he had rushed in, and the rector saw him just a few minutes later, headed back up Fifth Avenue, possibly to pull the same stunt at First Presbyterian next door. You never know.

That was my last hymn. Our organist and choirmaster showed up to play the prelude just as I was shutting things down, but he hadn't seen any of the commotion, so we told him. I think he was sorry he'd missed it.

Of course this would happen on my debut on the bells, which is probably the largest audience for which I've ever played keyboards (if you consider the neighborhood that's in earshot), and especially on a hymn (with accidentals, no less) that I was transposing.

The rector, who was standing at the door greeting people as the guy rushed in and was again rushed out, seemed to think, and he's probably right, that the guy was at the end of a long, all-night crystal meth bender, and probably out of his mind. He said he had the jerky walk and mannerisms associated with people he'd seen on speed or maybe acid. (Our rector came of age in the 60s.) While I myself can say the guy was maybe "tweaked out on tina," the truth is, I am so ignorant of drugs and drug culture, I only know lines like that from watching Queer as Folk when it was on Showtime.

When I told my dad on the phone about my bell debut later that evening, I told him that the rector thought the guy probably was on drugs. "Yeah," my dad said, "or else needed to be." Which could also be true. Funny how that brain chemistry stuff works.

Labels: church, personal

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If Derek's Making Mashed Potatoes, It Must Be Thanksgiving

Had a great Thanksgiving gathering with our friends at Jeff's and Renee's again this year and, as usual, we left asking ourselves, why don't we see all these people more often? But then, I think we ask ourselves that every time we get together with friends -- which is far less frequent these days than when most of us were in our 20s or early 30s.

Now we're all mostly in our late 30s to mid-40s, many of our friends are married (to other friends, so that's good), and several now have kids. Which made for a far more hectic Thanksgiving Day than we used to have seven or eight years ago, but very fun, just in a different way. I think I counted seven kids, but only the really young ones stayed still long enough to count without tying strings on them to mark as already counted.

For better or worse, I have brought the mashed potatoes to our communal meal the last several many years, so I'm usually always looking for the ultimate-but-basic mashed potato recipe. I've got a file of probably more than 30 variations -- garlic, ginger, blue cheese, chipotle, basil, you name it -- but since most people seem to want to stick to tradition on this day, I tend to avoid my natural inclination to add on. Which reduces the ingredients down to a minimum and therefore puts greater emphasis on the process and chemistry of the thing if it's going to be right.

This year, to give them just a little bit of zing beyond last year's cream and butter, I used buttermilk instead. Which can be a bit tricky, because buttermilk apparently curdles at 160 degrees (which just-boiled potatoes are way above), unless its molecules are well-coated in a fat like butter.

I learned all this from Cook's Illustrated. And my recipe was a combination of their Buttermilk Mashed Potato recipe and the Cook's Country recipe for Super-Creamy, Super-Easy Mashed Potatoes (both publications are from America's Test Kitchen, and if you enjoy cookbooks or cooking -- even if, like me, you have no actual talent for it -- they're the best).

In the trial run I did two nights before, I included the chopped chives and carmelized leeks from the buttermilk recipe, which were really good, but on the principle of archetypal cooking for Thanksgiving, I left 'em out of the big batch. So, herewith, my new leading recipe for mashed potatoes for approximately 20 people. (Here's my 2004/2005 recipe, if you want to compare.)

10 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled
5 bay leaves
Salt
1 lb butter, melted in 140° oven, then cooled to room temperature
3-1/3 cups buttermilk, brought to room temperature

Note: As I peeled the potatoes, I put them in cold water to keep from turning brown as I peeled the rest; you can also add a drop or two of vinegar to the water, which really slows down any browning, but I didn't, as I didn't intend for them to soak any longer than was necessary.

1. Cut potatoes into ¾-inch rounds. Rinse in a colander or wire basket under running water to wash off as much starch as possible.


2. Put in 5 gallon pot.
   Note: I have a wire basket that fits in this pot perfectly, and it holds almost exactly 10 lbs of potatos cut up, so I put the potatoes in the basket and the basket in the pot. It keeps any potatoes from being right on the bottom directly above the flame, and with the basket handle I can lift the potatoes out easily to drain them once they've cooked, and then just pour out the scalding water into the sink, rather than try to pour it and the potatoes into a colander.


3. Cover with enough cold water to cover potatoes by about an inch. Add 5 bay leaves and 2 to 3 Tbs salt.


4. Bring water to a boil then reduce heat to medium and cook for 18 minutes.
   Note: With a pot that big and that much water, it takes it forever to reach a boil, and even then it may not be much more than a simmer. So I brought it to an almost boil with the lid on (which sped it up) and then removed the lid and cooked for about 18 minutes, but with the heat still on high.


5. Near the end of the cooking time, combine the room-temperature buttermilk with the now-merely-warm melted butter. Mix thoroughly.


6. Drain potatoes, discard the bay leaves. Return potatoes to pot [in wire basket, if you're using one], set heat to low and stir gently for one to two minutes, to dry water from potatoes.


7. Turn off heat. Using an oven mitt [Ove-Gloves are perfect for this], take potatoes out, a few rounds at a time, and use potato ricer over a large bowl to make smooth.
   Note: A food mill works as well or better for this, but the potato ricer is more fun. Of course, you can also use a masher, they'll just be a little lumpier is all.


8. Gently stir in combined butter and buttermilk alternating with a wooden spoon (for mixing side to side and in circles) and a masher (for mixing up and down). Add salt to taste as you mix.
   Note: I only added a little bit of salt at this stage, and no pepper, on the grounds that people would salt and pepper their potatoes to their liking.

Serves 20.

Labels: food, personal

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A Look Back at the Page Scandal of the Early 80s

My last post here was made just as a scandal was breaking in Washington involving a Republican member of the House of Representatives who, it was alleged, had engaged in salicious e-mails and IMs with a congressional page.

That story soon grew to include the head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, the Speaker of the House, the Office of the House Clerk, and an ensuing media maelstrom.

Foley was, apparently, a closeted gay Republican. And now, the only openly gay Republican in Congress -- although he understandably downplayed his sexual orientation -- Jim Kolbe, is being investigated for a camping trip he once took with his sister, National Park rangers, and -- wait for it -- two Congressional pages.

I wanted to write a post here about these scandals, but felt a personal barrier. My site doesn't receive that many visitors, but even among those who've visited, I'm not sure everyone who does knows the whole truth about me.

In this day and age, especially given the media coverage and exposure, it shouldn't be that big a deal.

But even still, some people may be yet shocked with the full background here, so I was reluctant to "come out," so to speak, in the middle of this scandal.

I realize, however, that in order to have any degree of integrity or credibility in talking about this issue, I need to first something reveal about myself, my background, and what I have in common with this developing news story. So -- deep breath -- here it is:



I was a House page, in the summer of 1981.

Now, when I was a page -- "back in my day, you know..." -- there wasn't even a dorm for pages. I lived in a boarding house on East Capitol Street that was owned by a man who worked for the Republican House cloakroom.

I was a Democratic page, because the member of Congress who sponsored me was a Democrat (James R. Jones, 1st District, Oklahoma -- back when Oklahoma elected Democrats). However, I was "on loan" to the Republican cloakroom as a page for my last two weeks. That really never sounded dirty until now.

The job, however, was the same: take an envelope from the floor to some House member's office. Pick up something else in that or a nearby office to go to another office. On occasion, take something over to a Senate office, or to an office in the Capitol building itself -- which only happened a few times a day, as I remember, because most offices are in the Cannon, Longworth, Rayburn House Office Buildings, or their equivalents in the Senate, not inside the U.S. Capitol building itself.

Regardless of which side I was paging for, I never had many encounters with members of Congress. (At the time, I remember a fellow page or intern describing Barney Frank as sounding like Elmer Fudd -- but this was even before he was outed as gay.)

In fact, I can only really remember two encounters with congressmen "up close and personal," compared to seeing them or talking to them in passing in the Capitol Building or one of the office buildings.

In one, I babysat for my own congressman's elementary-aged kids one night while he and his wife went to Tip O'Neill's house for dinner. I remember we went for a walk after their parents left so the older one could pick up some information about joining the local Boy Scout troop. In the other, Congressman Bill Whitehurst (R-Virginia) and his wife, the "incomparable Lady Jane Whitehurst," as he always referred to her, came to the boarding house where I lived with many other pages and interns for casual summer-evening dinner. We made chili, she brought a cobbler for dessert, and they regaled us with very tame gossip about other members of Congress.

I did, however, have one slight connection to that earlier page scandal that broke in 1982 and led to the censure of Reps. Dan Crane and Gerry Studds. That whole scandal actually came about due to false accusations.

Leroy Williams was from Little Rock. He started his pageship that same summer of 1981. Unlike me, though, he stayed on after the summer for a semester of the school year, too.

In March 1982, back in Arkansas, he told CBS News that while a page, he had engaged in sex with three members of Congress and had arranged an appointment with a male prostitute for a Senator.

That, and rumors spread by another former page, were what kicked off an investigation headed up by Joseph Califano, whom the House Ethics Committee had asked to perform the role of special counsel investigating what had become a sex-and-drugs-with-minors scandal. However, in the middle of all this, Leroy Williams failed a lie detector test about the charges that he had made and, later, he admitted making the whole thing up.

By that point, however, there were other pages and people coming forward, and a year later, Crane and Studds were censured in front of the full House of Representatives.

That scandal also led to a major overhaul of the page program. They upped the minimum age for senate pages (which had been as low as 14) and they built a dormitory for all pages, with a curfew -- which was a far, far cry from the wild life we lived as 16- and 17-year-olds in Washington, D.C., with no supervision during our off-hours and a a curiously incurious army of bartenders and waitresses serving drinks to people who barely looked 18, let alone 21, that summer.

I didn't really know Leroy at all, except that he lived in the same boarding house as I did, and so occasionally we would be hanging out with the same crowd. That's him on the far right, me in the dorky glasses on the far left.

Labels: history, personal

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9/11 Fatigues

In my neighborhood, a group of locals created a memorial here in Inwood to the fallen of 9/11. In one of the large parks nearby, they commandeered a soccer field to plant 3,000 American flags in formation, to recognize the approximate number of victims on that day five years ago. I went down there just before the sun set on Thursday to get some pictures, and again just now.




It's impressive and touching in many ways: all those flags, hanging silently on their poles, standing in memory of a person who went to work or got on a plane that day and didn't come home.



Even from a distance however you can see that something seems wrong with these flags. As you get closer you realize that each one has a white strip, maybe 12 inches high, along the bottom, which in aggregate makes the field seem far more white than red or blue. Getting even closer, you can see that the white strip has printing on it.



On most of the flags, it says:



And, sure enough, on the white and red stripes are printed all the names known, as of this day three years ago, of those who died that day.



The flags around the perimeter of the field are Flag of Heroes™ flags. Using only the red stripes, these list the emergency service personnel who responded that day and, when the buildings collapsed, died trying to save a few more lives beyond the 15,000 they had already saved that morning.

Not everyone who died that morning was an American, of course. Being New York, there are bound to be citizens of just about any country affected by anything on a large scale that happens here, and this was one of the largest. So to the side of this field of flags they have placed the flags representing the countries who lost citizens on 9/11.



I understand and appreciate the impulse behind this field of flags. So it probably seems catty to say I think this memorial would have been a stronger statement if they'd just used actual flags, without the printing, especially the printing below the flag itself. And it sounds churlish to point out that, even if it's the names of victims of these attacks, there are generally no exceptions made for defacing an American flag.



But I can't deny the very real motivation that drove people to plant these flags. So it's not exactly the way I would have done it. Maybe my armchair stage-managing such an event is a worse motivation than their honest attempt.



At 8:46 a.m. five years ago, I was in a rental car, driving into the front entrance of my company's corporate headquarters in Westchester County. As I walked into the third floor for my 9 a.m. meeting, I noticed several of the executives who had TVs on their desks were watching something happening on the news. As we sat down in the conference room, someone came in to the meeting and said that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. From the way they said it, we figured it was a small twin-engine plane.

At 9:03 a.m. five years ago, the meeting was just getting underway. Someone else came in to say that a second plane had hit the other tower. I suppose because we still had no idea that these were major jetliners and not just some small prop planes, we continued with the first item on our agenda, whatever it was.

At 9:37 a.m. five years ago, I was in a meeting, wondering why two planes had hit the World Trade Center. A few minutes later, someone came in to tell us that yet another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. At which point the person chairing the meeting said that we had more important things to worry about, obviously, than whatever we had been discussing before that. It was hearing the Pentagon was hit that I remember going from "I wonder why two planes would hit the World Trade Center within minutes of each other" to the cold realization that the country was under attack. Everyone had that moment on that day at some point -- probably earlier if you were watching TV rather than hearing about it second hand. For me the realization came about 9:40 a.m.

At 9:59 a.m. five years ago, I think I was watching CNN on one of the TVs in the conference room when the South Tower fell. Or else I was already out in the cubicle area, crowded around a smaller TV on someone's desk. At some point that morning, I called my parents to tell them that I was okay, not even in the city that morning, safely in Armonk.

Around 10:06 a.m., when Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, I was probably trying to leave a message for my mother at the school -- my alma mater middle school -- where she taught, so that when she heard about the attacks in New York, she'd also hear that I was okay.

During all of this, the television was reporting rumors that an explosion had occurred at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, that the Sears Tower had been hit, and other such things that hadn't happened.

At 10:28 a.m., I think I was sitting in the conference room again. I've seen the footage so many times -- saw it nearly 100 times that day alone, I'm sure -- I can't remember if I saw the North Tower collapse when it happened or not.

Many of us there in the office that day -- including Tom and me -- lived in Manhattan, but everyone was probably equally stunned. Tom even lived across the street and one block south of the New York Stock Exchange at the time, and I remember for a long time he had no idea whether or not his building and any of the other buildings in the blocks around the Trade Center were still standing.

Since all of us in the conference room were part of the company's communications staff, we had work to do immediately. Over the next few days, we learned that we had lost two employees that day -- one on a flight, another at the World Trade Center for a meeting. I was editor of the intranet at that time, so I had several updates to make that day and other questions to field from various areas.

In one of the only moments of grim levity I remember that day, someone fielded a question from the site operation for a local office in, I think, North Carolina. Or maybe it was Minnesota. Or somewhere else. Driven by that very human and very admirable motive to help, to do something, anything, they wanted to know -- perhaps around noon or a little after -- if they should be flying their flags at half-mast. We all looked at each other in confusion and disbelief that that was what someone was worried about, when finally someone said, "Tell them to look out the window to see what the post office is doing, and follow their lead."

Not very funny, I admit, but there wasn't much funny that day. Tom and I ended up staying at a friend's apartment in Westchester that evening, since all the bridges and tunnels back into the city were closed. (Our friend was stuck in Dallas, because his flight home had been canceled along with every other flight in the country, but another friend of his had a key to his apartment, which we were able to retrieve.)

That's some of what I remember about 9/11 -- before "today" became known as "9/11" or the "World Trade Center" was called "Ground Zero."

It's inevitable, of course. We experience tragedy and we remember and memorialize it in human ways -- emotionally, greedily, hopefully, fearfully, spiritually, mawkishly. We may even be driven to war by the memory.

The site of the World Trade Center is a burial ground. Ground Zero, however, is the first of many battlefields.

As a burial ground, it continues to keen loudly in this town and will probably do so at least until new buildings and grassy berms are allowed to scab over that wound.

But as a battleground, it demands satisfaction, however unsatisfactory it feels, and even if that leads us into countries that had nothing to do with 9/11 and between factions not represented here on that day.



The tragedy represented by those 3,000 flags didn't end that day. The death toll on 9/11 was, officially, set at 2,973. As of today, however, the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan and Iraq has grown to 2,999. How many of those had to die to rout the Taliban from Afghanistan, to eliminate al Qaeda and capture Osama bin Laden? And -- because we've obviously been sidetracked from that mission -- how many didn't?

I went back down to look at those flags again a few hours ago. The weather today was, yes, exactly like that day five years ago. But seeing that field again made me wonder just who those flags stand for now.

Labels: history, Inwood, New York, personal

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Chapter 2 of Our Quest to Put the Good Back in Tangible Goods, in which We Discover the Joys of Stationery

From my earlier discussion of Pens I Have Known, we move to Paper I Have Loved. And I have to say: much as I love pens, stationery is even better. I know, I know: this is bizarre. This is bordering on fetish material, you're thinking. You're just going to have to trust me on this one. Avert your eyes if it gets too kinky.

By far the best paper for notes and letters is by an Italian company called Pineider. Their paper is nearly impossible to find outside of Italy, I've discovered -- there was a store in New York I just happened upon that stocked several very cool "wallets" of hand-bordered correspondence cards with matching lined envelopes a few years ago, and I was hooked. Unfortunately, that store no longer carries Pineider, last I checked, and nearly nobody else in this country seems to, either. Except for a guy on eBay -- who happens to operate out of New York, by coincidence. Pineider does have some stores themselves in Italy, but now even their Web site seems to be out of business -- not that you could order from that, anyway, but it was nice too look at.

All their paper is extremely smooth -- not glossy, of course, but really, really smooth. It's almost always got a thin border in a contrasting color, and the envelopes and enveloper liner match the stationery colors. And, of all the kinds of stationery they make, the best is the correspondence card, which is of a heavier stock than the note paper stationery and measures 3 1/2" by 7 1/8". But really, any Pineider stationery will easily be the best in your desk drawer.

In my view, second to Pineider -- or, really, equal to them, but for different kinds of paper -- would probably have to be Dempsey & Carroll. They also have great correspondence cards (these vary in size, but are generally around 5 1/8" by 3 3/4") which are also hand-bordered, but their real claim to fame is their engraving.

After Pineider and Dempsey & Carroll are some smaller companies that put out some very good correspondence cards. (As you may have guessed, this is my favorite format for stationery, because it's just enough space to write a good note to someone, without it turning into -- or feeling like it ought to be -- a letter. Plus, since they're just a flat card, instead of something folded, it feels somewhat unique in the realm of notecards.)

The Grosvenor Stationery Company in London has a small line of hand-bordered correpondence cards, in a size similar to Dempsey & Carroll's, but with a finish closer to Pineider's. The Wren Press also does correspondence cards with engraved motifs, contrasting borders, etc.

Then there's the whole world of letterpress stationery, which has become completely revitalized as a printing method for cutting edge design in recent years. One of the very best in this area is a company out of California called "Little Oranges" -- they do flat cards, folded cards, greeting cards, and seem to be expanding, both in terms of designs and availability. Another leader -- not as big, it seems, but with some of the best greeting cards in letterpress -- is a Chicago company called "Snow & Graham."

You'll notice a very prominent American stationery name that I haven't yet put on the list; that would be Crane & Co. Crane's is an excellent stationer, and I have some of their engraved cards I use for some kinds of notes. While they still handle high-end stationery business, they've gone a little more middle-of-the-road with a huge number of products and business lines of late, including interactive kiosks for customer-designed paper and ink-jet ready stationery and printing templates for use on your computer. They even have a whole division that does industrial projects for things like cars and satellites that need paper-like materials.

However, exacty because Crane's is so all-over-the-map now, and seem to have at least some of their products carried in just about every paper and stationery store in the U.S., they're almost too ubiquitous to be considered very "special" anymore. But don't turn up your nose at a gift of Crane stationery -- they do know their stuff. For one thing, the company also makes the 100 percent cotton paper for our U.S. currency, thanks to their contract with the Federal Reserve that dates back to 1879. Today, they recycle old jeans, among other things, to get that rag content.

Labels: personal

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Time, instead, for some serious materialism, I think

think, after that last, long blog post, I'll take a break here from too much that can inflame the emotions or even excite the intellect. (Not that I've ever managed to do those things effectively before, but I wasn't consciously avoiding it, either.)

So, instead, I plan to post more frequently here, but with far less in the way of emotional impact (for me, at least; you may indeed be moved to tears. Perhaps rage. We'll see.)

For one thing, I've often heard it said that you can't buy happiness, and this is true. I've also experienced buyer's remorse over some purchses. (My brother will be glad to tell you about a bottle of "Sun-In" some summer in...junior high? high school? some time in there...that turned my hair orange.)

But I think I've been far more likely to make a purchase and then be very, very glad I made it. My iPod is a good example of this. Actually, I am now on my second iPod, because I had more than 40GB of music on my hard drive (vast majority from CDs, plus a few things bought online), which wouldn't all fit on my old 'Pod. Then I managed to erase all my music while trying to recover from a PC hard drive crash, and I couldn't even update the 40GB iPod for over a year, which is how long it took me to get around to re-ripping all those CDs. Having done so, it seemed time to give the 40 gigs to Tom and get myself a brand-spanking-new 60GB video iPod. Very little video, but about 48GB of music. Oh, how sweet it is.

A few other things that just spring to mind that, I have to say, I still really like having around:

My space pen
Know ye the Fisher space pen? It's great. I have two, each about $15 bucks; one's silver(-colored) and the other is a black matte. The great thing about it is that the ink it's solid until you write with it. I think. Or maybe it's fed to the point with gas pressure that otherwise holds it in unless pressure is being applied to the point? Or the enclosed barrel keeps it from leaking or drying out? Whatever it is, I can put my space pen in my pocket, it barely takes up any room, and it never leaks. And, yes, it can write upside down, underwater, and across grease. Which means David Blaine could write with it on his scalp, I suppose, if he wanted to.

The other space pen I keep in a wallet in my back pocket that holds lined 3x5 cards for notes to myself. And I have another, even slimmer ballpoint that is in fold of the money clip/card case I keep in my front pocket. So, yes, I have 2 or 3 pens on me at all times. Just, you know, in case there a Declaration of Independence or a papal bull or something somebody wants me to sign.

My fountain pens
One of my favorites I didn't, in fact, buy -- it belonged to my grandfather, my mom's dad, and my brother found it in a box in a drawer of a writing desk that's now at his house. It's an Esterbrook, brown. Probably from the '50s. I bought another, nearly identical, but in gray, a few years ago. And before I came to possess either of these, I have an Esterbrook "Relief" pen, made in England in the 1920s. The Esterbrooks were never much collected until recently, because they were really just solid, well-produced, affordable pens. Which is why they hold up to this day, and such a great example of good mid-century product design.

But just last fall, I also bought a great, blue-with-white-polka-dots pen from Campo Marzio, in Rome.



And I have some others I love that I've bought over the years: a blue Eversharp Skyline. A matte stainless steel pen from Rebecca Moss. A green Namiki Vanishing Point. A Rotring. A green Schaeffer Snorkel.



You get the picture.

So next time, the most logical, favorite thing I could talk about? No, not ink. Stationery! MMMmmm!!

("Yes, he's apparently that shallow. And he's now too old to outgrow it.")

Labels: personal

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Marilyn A. Baker, September 7, 1940 - June 12, 2006

y mother loved animals -- especially dogs and, for some reason, rabbits. Maybe she remembered them from her growing up around the forests of the southeast United States; her father was a forest ranger. Or maybe it had something to do with how rabbits are how children get introduced to the Resurrection, just as Santa Claus is how we introduce them to the Incarnation. Maybe she just thought they were cute.

As a consequence, probably because someone just gave her a cute rabbit figurine at one time, my mother ended up collecting representations of rabbits: naturalistic resin casts, indigenous carvings, kitsch porcelains, stuffed animals, Durer prints...you name it. She eventually had to put a moratorium on any more rabbit gifts, but they still seemed to multiply, just like the originals.

Sometime around March of this year, her granddaughter -- my (then) 17-month-old niece -- discovered that she had bunny rabbits in her backyard. My mom told me that whenever she went out the back door, she'd go off running to look for the "bunnies" wherever she had last seen them -- thinking they might still be there, I guess, waiting to play.

So you can probably imagine just how much more popular Grandma was, therefore, when my niece paid her next visit to my parents' house and suddenly discovered all these bunnies she'd never noticed before. Bunnies everywhere, bunnies she could hold, some she could touch, others she could just look at. On Easter weekend, my parents took her to their church for an Easter egg hunt. (Mom said her granddaughter quickly figured out that the plastic eggs with something inside them were pretty special, and got blasé pretty quickly about the empty eggs she came across.)

There they met a very, very big bunny -- I never heard how that part went over, but judging by the picture Mom sent me, it wasn't too bad an introduction, if a bit tentative.

---

month later, my mom was in the hospital, unable to breathe -- most likely due to a reaction to methotrexate, which she'd just started taking for rheumatoid arthritis a week and a half or so before Easter. On May 11, she and Dad had gone first to her rheumatologist, who refused to consider that she might be having a reaction to her prescription, but admitted she was very ill, so they went a few floors down to her internist's office, and his partner checked her oxygenation levels and put her on oxygen right away, and had his nurse wheel her across to the hospital to admit her. She was in a hospital room for a couple of days, with a nose clip delivering oxygen, but early on Mother's Day, they rushed her down to the ICU to intubate her on a ventilator because she couldn't breathe at all on her own.

She was there, in the ICU, for nearly three weeks and on a ventilator for about two-and-a-half weeks of that. I was with her -- and with my dad, brother, sister-in-law, and niece -- in Tulsa for most of the time she was in ICU and for a few rough-but-still-hopeful days once she got out of the ICU. Once she was back in a normal hospital room and, it seemed, starting to regain her strength and not need as much oxygen, I came back to New York, much as I hated to say goodbye when she was still not out of the hospital.

She had some tough days and some better days once she got out of ICU, but mostly her overall progress seemed to be in the direction of recovery, albeit very slow and painful recovery for her and for my family. However, a week after I returned to New York, she took a turn for the worse, and I flew back to Tulsa when my brother called to tell me that her lungs weren't working again all of a sudden. They weren't sure why, but they had to keep increasing the amount of oxygen, and even then her oxygenation levels were dropping back into dangerous percentages.

I got the next flight to Tulsa. Hoping I wouldn't need it, I packed a suit this time, but I wanted to arrive to find her condition had stabilized and things were looking like they were going to be okay. As I headed toward the front entrance of the airport, I saw my brother come in the door. I think I said something like, "Perfect timing!" since I'd just landed and was just headed out that same door to look for whoever might be picking me up. I'll always remember my brother walking up to me, and looked past him to see his wife, my sister-in-law, a few steps behind him. I turned back to him, and he said, "She's gone, Derek."

He said Mom had died less than an hour before. For some reason, it occurred to me then that my plane had probably just begun its descent into Tulsa.

---

ur last in-person conversation had been a bit fraught with tensions, as she was suffering from a steroid-induced psychosis. She'd been on heavy doses of prednisone for three weeks by that point, and the hospital staff said it was very common. Also common, unfortunately, is that people in a kind of hypomania like that will often take it out on those most familiar to them (i.e., family and friends). Which she did, but we rationalized that, as long as we were there to play the bad cop, the doctors and nurses could do their jobs more easily to get her weaned off the steroids and well enough to go home. Which was all she wanted to do, she kept saying: to go home, see her dogs and her granddaughter. However, she was too weak at that point even to sit up for longer than 10 minutes, and so there was no way to get her home and in the house, let alone have her take even the most basic care of herself once there.

So she was going in and out of confused or angry moments and lucid conversations the day I was heading back to New York, but the last thing we said to each other in person was "I love you" and "I love you, too." And the night before she died -- although none of us, including her, had any idea that that was what it was -- we talked on the phone. She was on an oxygen mask; she'd been having some problems getting enough oxygen into her system, for some reason (the first signs that her lungs were worsening, we realized later), whereas just a few days before she'd been doing pretty well on just 28 percent oxygen delivered through a nose cannula. But despite the mask muffling her words, we were able to have a brief conversation. She wanted to know if Tom had made it back okay from India and asked about his trip.

Our last words then, too, were "I love you" and "I love you, too." Not that either one of us needed to hear that to know it -- we'd told each other that so many times, and meant it, I never would have had a doubt even if she'd been at the worst stage of her steroid psychosis a week before. But I'm still glad we said it. I didn't get to hug her goodbye, and I could have really used that -- but then, almost no one does get to do that with the people they love and lose, because we never really know that this time, it's actually the final goodbye.

---

he second thing my brother told me at the airport was that, according to Dad, upon her death Mom had wanted her body "donated to science." We weren't even sure what that meant, but it didn't surprise us in the least. It was exactly like her. But in order to make such a donation of a body or tissues, one needs to make arrangements ahead of time with a medical school and the hospital staff needs to know, because certain things are done at the moment of death for such donations. Additionally, the hospital staff said that, because she had rheumatoid arthritis, none of her tissues could be safely used in organ transplants and, because she'd been on oxygen for so long, even her eyes couldn't be donated. So, unfortunately, that was one wish we weren't able to fulfill for her.

Not two minutes after my brother told me she had died, Tom called my cellphone while we were in the short-term parking lot of the airport, and I told him. He'd been in meetings somewhere all day, and I hadn't had a way to find him and tell him before I'd left that afternoon, so I'd just left messages on his phones. Once I told him, he immediately ordered tickets to get to Tulsa the next day, and later that night, after we'd talked again, he sent out e-mails to my friends, church and colleagues to let them know what had happened.

My brother, sister-in-law, and I went to the hospital and the room where she'd died. The irony, among many sick ironies, is that her room was on the the physical therapy floor, because they wanted to get her strength back so she could, in fact, go home. While not unheard of, I'm sure, I imagine the physical therapy ward sees fewer deaths than most of the wings of that hospital. My dad, his sister, and some other family friends (I forget now who) were there, as was one of the ministers from my parents' church.


The minister related a true story involving a track meet and a girl who'd barely finished the last lap, or didn't, or something, as a metaphor for what Mom had just been through. It didn't actually make any sense to me, but at that moment, basically nothing did.

Then he led us in a prayer. We told him we'd be by the church the next day to discuss the memorial service arrangements, and then he left. After he left, I read Psalm 121 from my prayer book, because on one day a few weeks earlier, when Mom had been extubated from the ventilator (but was then reintubated less than a day later), I had read that to her and she said it was her mother's favorite psalm. So I read it again now in a different hospital room and feeling very different from that earlier moment when we'd had so much hope.

I lift up my eyes to the hills;
     from where is my help to come?

My help comes from the Lord,
     the maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved
     and he who watches over you will not fall asleep.

Behold, he who keeps watch over Israel
     shall neither slumber nor sleep;

The Lord himself watches over you;
     the Lord is your shade at your right hand,

So that the sun shall not strike you by day,
     nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;
     it is he who shall keep you safe.

The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in,
     from this time forth for evermore.

I also read the commendatory prayer, which at other times I've thought is one of the most beautiful and moving prayers in the entire Book of Common Prayer. At that moment, it was the only one I could read that made any sense to me:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Marilyn. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

May her soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

We each said a few tearful words to a body we recognized, but the person was clearly no longer there. Then we gathered up the few things she'd had with her in the hospital, including the beautiful flowers Tom had sent which had arrived just that morning. (Since she hadn't really been able talk with the oxygen mask on full force at that point, there was a note beside the flowers that she had written in a very shaky penmanship, asking a nurse or aide to read the card to find out who they were from.)

It sounds absurd now to say so, but the next thing we did was go out for Mexican food. To her favorite restaurant, to be sure, but even at the time, it felt a little weird.

---

he next day, my father, brother and I met with the one of the directors at a funeral home near their house, owned by someone they'd known for many decades at their church. It was not a happy occasion, certainly, but it probably was one of the less emotionally troubled meetings that funeral director had to deal with all week. For one thing, my mother was not highly sentimental, at least not in conventional ways. About people and her dogs, she could be very attached, but all our choices at the funeral home at least were very easy. When it came time for the the sensitive issue of the "price list," we just looked at it and knew that we'd need nothing on it except cremation and, maybe, a guest book for the memorial service.

No special urns. We didn't need any limousines, ushers from the funeral home, and certainly not a Thomas Kinkade Memorial Portfolio, or whatever it was. Some people do need and want those things, and I understand that. Mom wouldn't have, however, and so neither did we.

The next stop was planning her memorial service, which was far more emotional for us, but still and all pretty simple. For example, she had loved Christmas all her life, and for years had told people that she wanted the second verse of Away in a Manger sung at her funeral, because for her, it summed up the Christian faith so simply, yet so completely. She told people this for years, and they'd nod and probably think she was a bit nuts, but harmless. Finally, one day someone who knew that hymn well looked at her and said, "You mean, 'The cattle are lowing...'? That verse?"

"Oh!" she said. "I mean the third verse, don't I?"

She told that joke on herself for years, so we've known, for decades, that we were singing the whole thing, just to be sure we got in the manger, the lowing cows, and the prayer that occurs in the last verse.

We chose two other hymns she loved, plus asked that the organist play There Is a Balm in Gilead right before the service, as it had had special meaning for her mother, and thus for her and all of us. Then we selected some appropriate readings (she was pretty conversant with the Bible, but I don't know if she had many "favorite" verses; or perhaps, she'd have too many for us to choose). Two things we knew right off the bat: When the minister started asking which epistle lesson we might use, Dad said "Nothing from Paul." Not that she didn't read Paul or listen to his letters being read, but his misogyny always annoyed my mother and we figured, at the very least, we didn't have to invite Paul to her funeral.

When the minister near the end of our meeting started to suggest some recorded bagpipe music, my brother started shaking his head emphatically before it was completely out of the the man's mouth. "She hated the bagpipe," my brother said, laughing. "The only thing worse than a recorded bagpipe would be to have an actual bagpiper." Which, as a Presbyterian, is almost as big a heresy as using the salad fork throughout the main course is for Episcopalians, but there you have it. Her secret is out.

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om had died on Monday, June 12. The funeral was to be the following Friday, June 16. Many family members would be driving and flying in from out of town, and there were also a large number of friends arriving from out of town who are really family, too, so it made sense to hold it as late in the week as possible.

The funeral was, strictly speaking, a memorial service, because her ashes would not be present at the church during it. They're to be inurned in the new columbarium at John Knox Church sometime in the near future. But the morning of the funeral, we went by the funeral home to get any flowers from there that had been delivered to the funeral home. There were a few, along with a box containing her ashes. I asked them just to keep those for awhile longer, until Dad would be able to get them. I think they're at his house now. For awhile, we even entertained the notion of putting her ashes, pre-inurnment, on a shelf alongside those of Shadow, Burk, Sugar, and Ivy -- dogs my parents or brother and sister-in-law had had. We figured she'd consider there to be no higher honor than to have her ashes kept alongside a few of her favorite canine critters.

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e'd asked the funeral home to suggest that people make a donation to the Heifer Project in lieu of flowers. That word didn't really get conveyed, but several people did so, anyway. As it was, there were still many, many flowers, which were really beautiful. There were already a lot at Dad's and also at my brother and sister-in-law's, and when we got to the church that morning, there were probably another 20 arrangements on tables in the narthex. We were asked to gather the family about 20 minutes prior to the service in the church's "living room," which is just a nice room with sofas and easy chairs for small meetings and gatherings. There were easily 40 people in that room -- and we're not actually that big a family, if you just define family by the immediate relatives of the deceased. Which, as a family, we really never have, so it was good we had a huge contingent in there together.

We didn't really have any idea how many other people would show up at the service, however. The church had received many calls during the week, asking for details, so they had printed up 350 service leaflets, just to be on the safe side.

We, the family, had to delay entering the nave ourselves, as a long line of people were still entering the church at two p.m.. Apparently, sometime right before we went in with the ministers, the ushers ran out of service leaflets. I like that.

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didn't get a good chance to look at the crowd, but I could tell, walking past everyone down the aisle, that the church was packed. The first several pews had been set aside for the family, so we went all the way down to the front -- which would normally be a very un-Presbyterian thing to do, I remember thinking.

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he assistant minister, who had been in mom's hospital room with us after she'd died and who met with us the next day in the church office, wrote up a wonderful tribute to Mom that was inserted into all the service leaflets. As tough as it can be to capture someone well in a just a few paragraphs, I think he did. Here's what he wrote:

Marilyn Baker joined John Knox Presbyterian Church along with her husband, Gary, on June 23, 1965. For more than forty years, Marilyn was a devoted member of this congregation and involved herself in a wide variety of its ministries. For instance, Marilyn served as a deacon, elder, Sunday school teacher, youth sponsor, Stephen minister, member of the Prayer Chain, and was a member of the Pastor Nominating Committee that called the Reverend Dr. Richard Evans to John Knox Presbyterian Church. Marilyn also valued social justice ministries and was responsible for beginning Project Merry Christmas at JKPC and regularly supported the Heifer Project. Her concern for God's children outside of John Knox Presbyterian Church led her into classrooms where she spent more than twenty years of her life as a teacher.

In today's service of worship, we have used three hymns that Marilyn loved. They are not ordinarily a part of services like this one, but they possess a wonderful and hopeful theology that is worth explaining. Marilyn believed verse 3 of Away in a Manger summarized the Christian faith. When you sing that hymn today, notice its prayer-like quality. We do pray that Jesus will stay close by us throughout our lives and that He will fit us for life in God's kingdom. That is our hope. The hymn, Eternal Father, Strong to Save, is better known as the Navy Hymn. That said, the references to those who face the danger of chaotic and threatening seas brings to mind Jesus' disciples who depended on Him to calm the seas and save their lives. At times like this, we may feel threatened and terrified, too. This hymn ends with a beautiful and repeated prayer that God will save us from all of the perils we face wherever we happen to be. That same hymn also has the value of reminding us to pray for the members of our armed forces who are in harm's way and suffer to secure our right and freedom to worship.

We hope that you will take to heart this quotation that meant a great deal to Marilyn: "'We are not human beings having spiritual experiences -- we are spiritual beings having human experiences."

The call to worship was a responsorial reading of Psalm 121 -- given how I'd read it to her in the ICU, how I'd read it again in her hospital room after she'd died, and how we'd used it here for the call to worship, I will always and forever associate that psalm with my mother. It's a good one. And at least it isn't, say, Psalm 137, instead.

Following the opening prayer, we sang This is My Father's World. I knew she loved that one, because it has a strong environmental theme to it and reminded her as well, I'm sure, of her own father and his forests. When I was in elementary school and taking piano lessons, she'd wanted me to see if it was possible to play a kind of medley on the piano of that hymn with the John Denver song Whose Garden Was This? It was beyond my abilities and probably still would be, but the envrionmental message was not lost on me, even then.


This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.


Then followed a Prayer of Confession. An Assurance of Pardon. The Gloria Patri. The Old Testament lesson (Isaiah 40:28-31), the Epistle lesson (Revelation 21:1-4,22-25). Then we we sang the hymn: Eternal Father, Strong to Save. Who knows why Mom loved this one, except that she did. She lived in a landlocked state, but grew up near the coast, in North Carolina, so maybe it reminded her of the ocean. It was sung at the funeral of Franklin Roosevelt at Hyde Park, and was played by the Navy Band as JFK's body was carried up the steps of the U.S. Capitol. And it was sung at Marilyn Baker's funeral, too. One of my brother's and my oldest friends who was there is an officer and a lawyer in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps. I'm sure she thought of him, too, whenever she sang it.


Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm has bound the restless wave,
Who bid the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.

O Savior, whose almighty word
The wind and waves submissive heard,
Who walked upon the foaming deep,
And calm amid its rage did sleep:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.

O Holy Spirit, who did brood
Upon the chaos wild and rude,
and made its angry tumult cease,
and gave, for fierce confusion, peace:
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.

O Trinity of love and power,
All travelers guard in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go:
Thus evermore shall rise to thee
Glad praise from air and land and sea.


The Gospel lesson was John 14:1-6,25-27.

Dr. Evans read the Gospel lesson, and then preached the sermon, which was really a eulogy. He and Mom had known each other for 30 years or more. He retired several years ago, had had some health problems with his throat in recent years, and hadn't preached but one other time in the past two years. But he agreed to preach at her memorial service, and God bless him for doing so. He took as his text the 25th chapter of the book of Matthew and... well, I can't describe his sermon nearly as well as he can preach it, and I can only ask you to listen to this. It isn't too long (17 minutes) and if you are at all still interested by this point (and weren't there to hear it in person yourself), this sermon was, I think, among the finest things anyone could say about my mom, and many, many people said many fine things about her, both during her life and after it.

Listen to the sermon

At one point in the sermon, Dr. Evans also mentions me, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my niece. He didn't mention Tom, which my dad would have preferred as well, but Tom and I were both fine with that. Dr. Evans hadn't even known about Tom until a day or two before, and still didn't know, or wouldn't have remembered, his name. And to be honest, it was already enough emotional drama that week to "come out" finally to my extended family and friends -- all of whom were very nice to Tom and seemed to like meeting him, I should say -- in addition to the obvious drama involved in a family death and a funeral, so I really wasn't up for yet another, wider opportunity to be out, loud and proud that day, all things considered.

Following the sermon, we said the Apostles' Creed, we closed with prayers of thanksgiving, supplication, intercession, and the Lord's Prayer, and we then, as advertised, sang all three verses of Away in a Manger.


Away in a manger, no crib for his bed,
the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the sky looked down where he lay,
the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes,
but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes;
I love thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
and stay by my side until morning is nigh.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay
close by me forever, and love me, I pray;
bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
and fit us for heaven to live with thee there.


I couldn't really get all the way through the last verse, and I don't think I was the only one, but I made sure I sang "the cattle are lowing," at least, with gusto.


The organ postlude began with Amazing Grace -- with bagpipes blissfully absent, and the family walked out while everyone stood. We left immediately, because everyone was invited to my brother and sister-in-law's house for a reception afterward, and a ton of people showed up. Fifty? Seventy-five, or more? I didn't try to count, but it was It was really a wonderful party, everyone said, and it was too bad my mom wasn't there to enjoy it. However, more important to me was seeing just so many of the really wonderful, funny, occasionally warped, and caring people my mom had known and befriended and loved in her life, all together. That was, in its way, the greatest eulogy of them all.

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ne thing that hurts is knowing that my niece won't remember her Grandmother Baker. So I want everyone who can, either in writing or in person, to share with her as she's growing up everything they can remember about Marilyn Baker. Not only the stuff of eulogies and sermons, but also the mundane, day-to-day memories. So that someday, when someones asks her, my niece can say, "I don't remember my Grandmother Baker, but I wish I did, because she sounds like she was an amazing lady."

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t some point in the week, I'd said to my dad that I thought the very thing that had made Mom's death so tough to handle is the same thing that will get us through our grief and on with our lives, which is that we've always been a close family. And I had to keep reminding myself that, as awful as we were feeling that she was gone, what is the only other alternative in such a situation? To feel nothing -- or to feel only regret, or guilt, or anger? So I'll take feeling awful if the reason for feeling that way is because of how much I'll miss Mom.

Because my dad and brother both agreed I should take it, I have her Bible, in which, on the endpapers, she had copied verses and quotes from people that had struck her as important. She has quotes from Anne Lamott, the Psalms, Menno Simons, John Calvin, Isaiah, and many others. Among her quotes on one of the last pages, she'd also written Tom's name, with the last name hyphenated -- apparently as a way of making sure she'd learn how to pronounce it correctly. When I saw it I realized that she'd probably written it there two weeks after September 11th, which was when I told her and Dad about Tom and, by extension, about me. I'm sure that did drive her to her Bible that day for some courage and support, but once she met Tom and they grew to know each other more and more over the last several years, she soon found she loved him very much.





On the title page of the Bible, she'd written another quote, this from Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, a writer and Episcopal priest to whose writing I'd introduced her a few years earlier. I knew Barbara Crafton slightly a few years ago when she worked for the Seaman's Church Institute in Manhattan, and so it was always a pleasure for me to give Mom one of her latest books for Mothers' Day or birthdays. Here's the quote Mom had copied into her Bible:

It will matter that we're gone if it mattered that we were here.

-- Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

I'm sure she knows it now, but I'd still like to be able to tell her: It certainly does -- because it definitely did.

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n the day after the funeral, we went over to my dad's to help him start to move stuff back into the kitchen. Sometime in early March, they'd moved everything in the cabinets and drawers into either my old bedroom, or the family room, or the dining room -- wherever it could be put, so that they could have the kitchen ripped out and a whole new kitchen put in: new floor, new cabinets, new appliances, all of it. The not-very-funny irony to this is that it really was my mom's idea and desire for a new kitchen. My dad admits that, if it had been only his decision, it probably wouldn't have even occurred to him to put in a new kichen, even though the old electric stove never got hot enough to make even basic things like popcorn. It's just a shame that she never got to see or use this kitchen, but Dad can already cook, and said he might take some cooking classes even, because the worst thing would be to put in this completely new kitchen and then never use it for more than microwave dinners.

However, the kitchen is still not completely finished as of this writing, four months later, although nearly so. And on this particular Saturday, in mid-June, the cabinets and drawers at least could be used, so we helped Dad move things back into the kitchen and make any decisions of "keep it or pitch it," since they'd been waiting until the new stuff was installed to make such decisions.

My niece helped all day long, too. Every two minutes, if not more frequently, she'd yell, "Papaw! Papaw!" And Dad would have to go find her -- because apparently whatever it was that was so important, she wasn't going to come looking for him -- to see what she wanted to show him. Whatever it would be -- a book, a spoon, his cane, whatever she had gotten her hands on since he'd last been to see what she had for him -- she'd hold it up for him to take, and he would.

It was actually kind of helpful, for me at least, to be there at the house and doing something to help get it back to normal in terms of all the stuff that had been moved out to these other rooms. And while there were certainly more than enough moments when my eyes would tear up if I ran across something with some memories or if some other bitter irony hit me, it helped just to be there at the house. There was all her stuff, her desk, her books, all of it, but she wasn't there, and that made it easier for me, I found, to acknowledge that she was, in fact, gone.

In some ways, I can see why parents who have lost a child sometimes keep their room exactly as it was. It may not be so much because they can't bear to let go, but that, rather, seeing the things of the person without the person among them might help some people acknowledge they're gone. "Letting go" is such an inaccurate expression -- except in instances where people actually can't mentally accept that the person is, in fact, gone. But for most people, I don't think "letting go" is the right expression at all. You can never let go of something that you didn't possess, and possession is a poor substitute for real love in any relationship, especially with those closest to us.

You'll notice I'm doing my best here to avoid quoting any proverb that uses the expression "set it free; if it comes back to you...."

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he next day, Sunday, was Fathers' Day.

Tom had to fly back to New York (I was leaving the next day myself), so I took him to the airport. The rest of us had originally planned that we would each go to our own churches that morning -- me to the Episcopal church downtown, my brother, sister-in-law and niece to their church downtown, Dad to John Knox -- having spent quite a bit of time and emotion with each other for the past five weeks. However, my brother had seen the sign-up sheet for chancel flowers at John Knox on Friday, and observed my Mom and Dad were coincidentally signed up to give the flowers for that very Sunday -- probably in honor of fathers in our family or fathers everywhere. So, given the emotional weight such a notice in the bulletin could have carried, my brother and sister-in-law had decided instead to take my niece to church to sit with my dad, and so I decided to join them, too. And, having decided so, it made all the sense in the world to us that morning, since it was, in fact, Fathers' Day.

As it turned out, the service leaflets for that Sunday had been done on Friday, and realizing that they had more than enough flowers from the memorial service, the church staff had kept the flowers from Friday to use on Sunday, which was nice. The flowers from Friday in the narthex were all still there, too. We wanted the church to distribute the cut flowers to shut-ins and any parishioners in the hospital or in nursing homes, but we took those with roots home with us afterward, so that my brother could replant them in his yard, which I'll enjoy thinking about when I picture his house from now on.

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he strangest things have meaning when you're emotionally exhausted, I guess. And I was, as I'm sure we all were.

Later that Sunday, after we'd eaten dinner over at my brother and sister-in-law's, I went outside with my niece. She'd been a very good girl all week, especially when you consider just how many new and different people were around. Not to mention how everything going on around her that week had upset her normal schedule which -- when you're 20 months old -- can be pretty traumatic itself.

It had been a warm, sunny day, and coming up on the longest day of the year, so that the sun had started its descent, but wouldn't be down for another hour or so. Soon my niece would be going in to bed and I'd be following my dad home, since I wanted to stay at my parents' house for my last night in town.

We walked outside and my niece very carefully closed the door behind us, as she's learned to do. She can barely reach the doorknob, but can just enough to get the door to shut if she doesn't have to pull it too hard. She had just closed the gate that leads from the deck to the backyard, too (because it was open, and obviously needed to be closed, okay?), when I pointed out to the yard and very quietly told her to look, there was a bunny rabbit.

It was maybe 15 or 20 feet from us. I expected my niece to run as fast as she could out into the yard to catch it, but she didn't. She looked at the rabbit, she looked at me, and then she sat down on the step leading out to the yard to watch the bunny rabbit. I sat down next to her. For over five minutes -- an eternity for her, at this age, to be quiet and still -- the two of us sat there watching the rabbit watch us.

Then she got up, and I thought that surely then she'd be running to catch it, but she just walked, very slowly, toward it. I expected it to turn tail and run, but for the longest time, it didn't; it just watched each step she took, getting closer and closer. She was probably within five feet of the rabbit when it very calmly hopped another 10 feet away, toward to the back of the yard, but still within very close range. Then it stopped and watched her continue to make her way toward it.

This kept up for several more minutes that early evening after a warm June day in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The backyard was a mottle of sunlight and shadow from the big oak and sycamore branches overhead, and the rabbit would move in and out of the light as it hopped a few feet along toward the back fence every few moments.

I stood back to avoid spooking the rabbit. But my niece continued to follow her bunny rabbit slowly through the yard, and it watched her progress, moving a little further along each time and then stopping again, waiting for her to almost catch up before it hopped ahead and led her further on.

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Epilogue

hree weeks after my mom died, Tom and I were in Vermont for the week with friends. I've spent the last seven Fourths of July with this same group of people, and it made for a very relaxing, recuperative time for all of us, I think. Two of the other couples are now married and have three kids between them -- all within a year or less of my niece's age -- so it was a very different vibe than our younger vacations. It's nice, though, to get older and go through the years with friends you keep year after year.

We were having a wonderful vacation, having arrived on the Saturday before the Fourth, but on Monday morning as the sun streamed in our room, I woke up crying and immediately remembered why. I'd just had a very emotional dream and, even in remembering it on waking, it still hit me hard. In fact, it still does to an extent when I think back on it.

In the dream, we were on a wide, open plain. I'm not sure who all was there with me, although I know my immediate family was there, I think Tom, maybe friends or others. There were several of us together, and we were standing on the top of a rounded hill that overlooked the rest of the plain. From our spot, we could see hundreds of thousands of people in a huge migration, all headed toward the east (or, at least, off to my right). People were joining different streams headed in that general direction, and some groups left one stream of people to join another, and some lines of people converged and others separated, but all were heading east.

We were going to be joining these hundreds of thousands of people, and we were up on the hill saying our goodbyes. Apparently, I and maybe some other people were leaving to join one of the groups headed toward wherever everyone was going, and others on the hill, singly or in small groups, would be joining other, larger groups of these pilgrims. I remember distinctly that my mom would be heading off with a separate group of people, and I vaguely recall someone in the background, taller than the rest of us, who seemed to be waiting patiently for everyone to say our goodbyes so he could take Mom to join the group of people with whom she would be traveling.

So we were hugging each other and saying our goodbyes, and I hugged my mom, and my dad, and the other people who would be going off to their own groups of people headed eastward. It was emotional, but the mood was also bright, as if we were all finally getting underway, and in the bustle of getting on the road, everyone was excited. But I remember feeling a strong sense -- as if I knew, or maybe we all knew -- that I wouldn't be seeing my mom again as soon as I would see the other people. She was eager to get going along with everyone else, but we hugged each other again tightly and said goodbye, and then she left on her way, and the rest of us went on ours.

And that's when I woke up that morning crying, immediately surprised at the force a dream like this could have for me -- and still surprised at the effect it continues to have. They weren't entirely sorrowful tears -- they couldn't be, not with the meaning behind such obvious and sentimental symbolism -- but they were very hard tears, nonetheless.

Goodbyes hurt like that sometimes, even when you know you'll see each other again someday.

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