excuses, excuses

First I went on vacation, and then I spent a week wallowing in self-pity about having to actually work for a living. And in the in-between times I was walking the dog and playing the bass and hiking and going to a fabulous local music festival and seeing an actual movie... in a theater and everything!

So, that's where I've been. Worry no more. I'm still here. Just distracted.

There's no way to adequately describe the wonderfulness of my vacation, so here are just some snippets from the past couple weeks.

There was the night of the staff concert that lasted forever and ever, after which most people stumbled out toward their dorm beds (or, just as likely, their very-late-night jam session of choice), and Jean Ritchie, living legend of traditional Appalachian ballad singing, no spring chicken herself, came into the theater lobby where I was working in the CD booth and sat down to sing shape note hymns with a very lucky few bystanders. That's my dear friend Meredith on the right, and my new friend Matt (also my neighbor - we live in the same town in southeastern Vermont so of course we had to go to western North Carolina to meet) on the left. Milt, the lovely music prof who taught my only-slightly-torturous-in-a-vacation-sort-of-way 9am music theory class, is the guy just over her left shoulder. And that's Jean's son peering down from above. There's a photo on someone else's camera of me sitting next to Matt, singing with Jean. Talk about once-in-a-lifetime magical moments.

There was also the utter hilarity of the entire week. I haven't laughed that hard, that often in a long time. Working in the CD booth was so fun that, I kid you not, I spent a lot of my free time there when I didn't have to be working. That's messed up. Not only did I get a whole lot of musical knowledge and some fabulous new friends out of it, but it also gave birth to - you heard it here first - a new band. We found ourselves singing a couple songs in harmony, and the good acoustics of the theater lobby can't take all the credit for how great we sounded together. Here are my two lovely new bandmates, and, of course, the leftover bourbon:

Of course, forming a new band with three people who live in North Carolina, Ohio and Vermont presents some logistical challenges, but we have strong faith in the power of technology, road trips to magical music festivals that A Certain Someone is going to be given absolutely no choice about going to, and the rest of that bourbon to make us utterly ready to take the show on the road. When we're all done with college and grad school and day jobs, that is. (I have a hunch I'll be ready to give up the day job before they're through with those other things.)

And speaking of music festivals, unassuming little Greenfield, Massachusetts has a very impressive thing going on, as I found out this past weekend. Apparently the Green River Festival has been happening for 22 years now, and growing every year. It's a great, chill, community-oriented festival that just happens to have people like Lucinda Williams and Mavis Staples and Los Straightjackets playing. I baked in the heat and humidity on Saturday and had a nasty dehydration headache by the time Lucinda Williams came on in the evening (and that's after 2 liters of water! that I totally just sweated out). But they did a good job on both musical entertainment (did I mention Cajun music? GOOD Cajun music!) and meteorological effects, especially since we only had to suffer a few minutes of rain to get this very intense rainbow.

Another thing I did on Saturday was see an apartment that I can but shouldn't decide to afford, where I could live alone and have space for all my stuff and all the guests and potlucks and houseplants (light! the apartment actually gets daylight! I'm not sure I remember what that's like) I could hope for. I was supposed to live this coming year with a sweet housemate in a sweet house while the house's owner moved temporarily to Mexico, but the latter fell through and I may give up on the former and just take the plunge into the living-alone scenario I've wanted to try since... well, since I first started living in apartments at all. Is this the time? I know I want it, but I've still needed to spend the last couple days asking everyone to convince me I'm not crazy.

Feel free to add your two cents on that question in the comments. Housing-related or not.

i [heart] big colorful explosions in the sky

I should not be blogging right now, no no. I should be finishing up packing for my Glorious Week Of Vacation and getting to bed. I need to be out the door around 6am to catch my flight to North Carolina. Sweet, sweet vacation. Sweet week of singing and fiddling and harmonizing and geeking out about music with lovely people in a really beautiful place. Have I mentioned how totally absurdly excited I am? It is past time for a week away.

But I just wanted to say one thing tonight: Despite all the things my country does that make me so angry and horrified and sad, and despite what it says about us that we celebrate our country by shooting off big explosions (fitting, no?), OHMYGOD fireworks are so cool. Fireworks in Wilmington, VT, no less. Wow.

So, I wanted to say that. And then I realized that I said pretty much the same thing last year. At least I'm consistent on a few things in life.

Now, to music camp! See you on the flip side~

striking terror

I started today with my boss making me want to cry.

But it's totally not what you might think (actually, I have the best boss in the world, hands down). See, she spent the last few days camping in Maine, and when she came back today she talked about listening to New Hampshire Public Radio on most of the car ride up before losing reception and switching over to AM talk radio, which is about all you can get in rural Maine.

She said NHPR had an interview with Seymour Hersch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's been writing lately about Bush's quiet-but-very-real preparations for attacking Iran. He talked about feeling that six months ago he never would have dreamed that we'd be where we are now, that preparations would have proceeded this far, that we'd be so ready. He never would have thought it would be so likely. But it is, he says, and there's going to continue to be a gradual, pseudo-reluctant buildup to it so that when it happens it seems like we had to do it. We'll start hearing that Israel is threatened, that they need to strike against Iran before they get attacked, but that they can't do it successfully without our support [because we have such a track record of success in these things, riiiiiight...]. Terri Gross was, apparently, in disbelief.

And then my boss switched over to AM talk radio and immediately heard the ABC news break reporting that - GUESS WHAT! - Israel needs to attack Iran, but they may not be successful without U.S. support! If we don't join them, Israeli and U.S. targets could be threatened!

[Insert vaguely threatening, slowly crescendo-ing music here.]

In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Hersch said: "I mean, this has been an issue for this president for three years. As you know, I've been writing in the New Yorker, you know, constantly about this stuff. And it doesn't go away. After three years, our submarines are there, they have the targets, our cruise missiles, our destroyers are there. The cruise missiles are loaded on 'em and all targeted. Our Air Force, the Navy in particular is going to have a big role -- not so much Navy, but Marines. Air Force and Navy, they have their target selection, they've gone through the practice. We have ground troops. One of the problems with hitting Iran, if you hit 'em big, is a lot of their anti-aircraft and anti-missile batteries are dug in underground so Marines or other units have to go in and basically blast them out. Before you bomb Iran, you have to take out their radar and their defensive systems. So you can't do it in any other way than a big package unless you want a lot of your planes shot down. And so, this has all been practice, it's been exercise. They've done it, they're ready to go. I can tell you that, no matter what Gates thinks, and no matter what Mullen thinks, if the president says "go" on January the 13th, 2009, a week before the inauguration, they will go. Because that's just the way the system is."

Here's his New Yorker article on the subject.

This isn't a joke. Apparently it doesn't matter how many of the military's top guys say we shouldn't do this. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense are both publicly saying it's a bad idea. Yet the Democrat-controlled Congress is letting it happen. Who approved that $400 million? Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Way to lead the "opposition." Idiots.

We can't sit back and think we wouldn't be this stupid. WE ARE THIS STUPID. And I'm terrified. So I'm talking about it. Please talk about it. This is not just me being a tree-hugging liberal. We all know at least a little bit about the awful shape our military is in as a result of the war in Iraq. How in the world could we fight Iran - a country with far more organized and loyal armed forces than Iraq had - at the same time? More than half of our national budget is already going to "defense" spending. We're already in a recession that few people are really acknowledging. How could attacking Iran be anything but disastrous for the U.S.? And see, it seems like most people agree. Yet, we're sliding right toward it.

I'd like to say we can stop this, but the amazing thing is that this administration has really effectively obtained the power to do a whole lot of things in secret and pretty much do whatever it wants without oversight. As Hersch says, they've basically managed a total corruption of the democracy in which we like to think we live. So, um, I'm not actually sure we can stop it. But if we don't try, then we might as well stand on the street corner with "Bomb Iran" signs.

And gosh darn it, I was in such a good mood when I came into the office this morning.

for real this time

According to some, I officially became an adult in June 1993 by reciting Torah in front of a bunch of my friends and family. Others might say it happened the day I left for college, or perhaps the day just before the beginning of senior year when I signed the lease on my first apartment and wrote my first rent check.

I don't know if any of those milestones really made me an adult. I'm not sure I know what being "an adult" really means, since I've often seen so-called adults acting pretty childish or childlike (with negative and positive connotations, respectively). In fact, I'm increasingly less sure that this whole adulthood thing is really all its cracked up to be.

Regardless, I think maybe my real passage to adulthood happened during the past few days. My first serious boyfriend got married. Two of my dearest friends in the world announced that they are (well, technically she is) pregnant with their first child. And, for the first time in my (very lucky) life, I am dealing with the very sudden and shocking death of a friend.

It's funny how things hit you sometimes in a particular way, at a certain time, and take up nearly the whole world. Other friends and people I've dated have gotten married. It's not like he left me for her; in fact he got together with his now-wife a few months after I had a fairly immature romantic crisis and ended our relationship (um, you're welcome?). Other friends, including some very close friends, already have or are about to have (yay for the Lady of the Lakes and Cool Cat!) babies. And people I love - people to whom I was, frankly, much closer than I was to the friend I just lost - have died.

So why is this so hard?

Is it because I feel very far away from the joy and very close to the sadness?

I see wedding photos that someone posted on Facebook, full of many of my closest friends, and it hurts a little that I wasn't there to help celebrate. I know that sounds nuts, but I'm actually on good terms with just about everyone I've ever dated, and I was friends with Boyfriend Numero Uno long before we were in a relationship. I miss him like I miss other people who were a very major and positive part of my life at one time or another, and I still care about him. All that I-use-to-love-you-but-now-you're-pond-scum stuff has never made sense to me, unless the other person cheated on you or kicked your dog. I'm so happy for him, and just wish I had a way to convey it without feeling slightly awkward.

I read and write emails to my close circle of friends about due dates and growing bellies, and know that nothing I could say in an email or in our rare phone calls will ever convey how much I love and am excited for these women with whom I have and will continue to grow into "adulthood," even as I wonder when or if I will (want to?) experience those supposed "joys" of pregnancy. I want to be there, darn it! Watching their bellies grow and hearing the daily updates and feeling the same infectious excitement that enveloped me when they got married, that made it actually fun to be around celebration-planning even though hunkering down over the minute details of a big formal white wedding has never really been on my to-do list.

But I'm not there. I'm here, remembering the moment last Friday night when I noticed out of the corner of my eye Mel Long walking out of the contra dance to head home. And I remember looking for her Saturday morning at her booth at the farmers market where she's been doing massage therapy for years, and seeing only a sign announcing that she'd be "back in 10 minutes" - a few minutes more than my friends and I were planning to stick around. And I think about this weekend and next, and all the dances and markets I will go to from now on where I won't see her huge smile or feel the squeeze of her hand as she said hello.

Mel was the only person who gave me a birthday present this year. She came to my potluck and quietly handed me a small white cardboard box, which I opened to find a perfect little bird's nest. She kept finding them in the woods around her house, she said, and loved them, but had collected too many and thought it was time to share.

Thank you, all who have shared your love with me. I will keep trying to not take it for granted.

from poetry to...

While it's true that, like most Vermonters, I mostly eat granola and hug trees, as you know I do like a few aspects of "pop" culture. The one that really makes me seem freakish to most of my community here is that I love sports, and the one that doesn't make me a freak but does force me to drive a ways to find a friend who actually owns a TV is my annual addiction to the best darn TV show in primetime: So You Think You Can Dance (otherwise known to its supremely creative loyal fans at SYTYCD).

I'm not going to say much about the latter except that this week was AMAZING and I highly recommend checking out some YouTube videos* of Wednesday's performances. See, Thursday night is TV Night, in which I and several of my hippie friends gather at RaRo's (aka Friend With Television) house and watch Wednesday's episode on tape before watching the live results show. It's a beautiful tradition that I firmly believe should last forever and ever.

But back to the sports thing, for the few of you far-away friends (and strangers who read my blog? I love finding out that strangers are reading my blog. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, Patti in Seattle!) who actually share this interest. Or maybe I'm just talking to my brother here. Anyway, we are in the thick of sports fun these days, between the Celtics and baseball season and one of the best Euro Cup tournemants in years. Also, the NBA draft just happened, and while I don't actually have the time or interest to follow it in minute detail, the ESPN.com commentary is hilarious.

Today is meandering along, and I'm just counting down until I can skip away from the computer and go on a swimming and picnic outing with the Adventure Man and then head down to what promises to be a ridiculously good dance. TGIF, I'm telling ya.

*Update: the copyright people for the network are trolling YouTube and the links might have been taken down. If you're really motivated you can search YouTube for "Kerrington & Twitch hip-hop", "Chelsea and Mark hip-hop" and "Katee and Joshua samba."