(derekbaker)

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 company we 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, 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. We ended up staying at a friends 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 cancelled 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 collecti