tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92291272024-03-07T02:55:03.371-05:00The Personal Is Politicalsometimes truth is stranger than fictionLisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.comBlogger225125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-34163428633363728552018-02-05T11:45:00.001-05:002018-02-05T11:45:33.636-05:00Learning is GoodHello readers new and old. This is a post that is my entree into the new (to me) world of online Open Learning. (If you're not a librarian, feel free to skip this post.) I am always looking for new ways to learn about my field and to keep current. I hope to find new colleagues and learn new skills that I can use for library instruction. Onward!LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-21241609806542017992016-04-24T14:55:00.000-05:002016-04-24T20:24:27.211-05:00Goodnight Sweet Prince<style>
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He always projected an eerily otherworldly aura even when
you saw him in the flesh, and his music reflected that. Even when you felt that
you knew him--as people often do when they are fans of a particular artist—you
didn’t. Like any genius, he was a man out of time and space who did not move
with the rest of the world but instead created his own. This much was recognizable
instantly.<br />
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But being otherworldly, he always seemed as if he was not long
for the world the rest of us live in. That powerful life force, that fire that
could barely be contained was going to burn brighter and faster and be
extinguished sooner. If you didn’t know this from seeing him perform, you felt
it the first time you heard his music. Indeed, his best-known work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Purple Rain</i>, was the artistic statement
he had been working toward since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dirty
Mind</i>, but it was more than that: it was a manifesto, a call for us all to
live in the moment, a dare to be our best selves, to be here now because it all
could—and it would—end at any time.</div>
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Living out the tenets set forth in this manifesto would
exact a great cost from him, but he always seemed as if he knew it. How else,
then, to explain the immediate and overwhelming feeling of nostalgic longing
the title track evokes even at first listen? The narrator speaks from some indeterminate
future time, looking back wistfully at his past; he is addressing someone with
whom he has had a powerful connection, some sort of relationship that is now
over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet it is not clear that there
is someone else listening to him; it feels more like he is giving voice to the
thoughts inside his head. Some distance, physical or mental or temporal, is
separating him from the person he’s speaking to, and feeling unsettled about
where he is now and so is trying to reckon with why and how he’s gotten here.
Someone or something has driven him to this anguished place and he’s reaching
back to this past relationship to resolve this crisis of the spirit.</div>
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But the song moves along and the narrative tone shifts; now
he has morphed into some sort of spiritual guide exhorting listeners to
accompany him into some mystical future that even he doesn’t seem sure of. The
present is a confusing and distressing muddle of which both he and they can
make little sense. The track builds slowly, steadily to its epic climax; a
chorus of voices joins our narrator, following him into the unknown as the
guitar wails. And then just as suddenly, there is a release of tension – they
have arrived at their destination. The storm has ended, the clouds have parted,
and rays of light filter through. The cacophonous wall of sound—voices, guitars,
strings, piano and synth— diminishes to a single note and fades into silence.</div>
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And now he is silent forever. He was perhaps the greatest
live performer of my lifetime. I never saw him as often as I wanted to due to
financial and other constraints. Worse still, I never saw him on that tremendous
Purple Rain Tour, the result of choices I made that were made with no
consideration of their effect on my future but which made perfect sense at the
time. Missing that tour is probably the single greatest regret of my life, but
looking back, I don’t see how I would possibly have arrived at any other course
of action than the one I chose; at 22, you don’t think long-term. And now he’s
gone. I never saw him in his prime, and now I will never see him again.<br />
<br />
But I
have seen greatness. I have seen that electric energy that is barely contained
by four walls, a sound system and a stage. In the spring of 2004, I visited Austin for the annual
SXSW conference. I traveled on a shoestring, staying in last-minute accommodations
obtained via Craigslist and attending events by virtue of an all-access pass
presented as a reward for a favor done for an acquaintance. I came to see my friends’
bands play, I came to discover new bands and I came to see Little Richard. As
things turned out, the only band that to me was unmissable was scheduled to
play at the exact same time as Mr. Penniman, so I did not see Richard during
that fortnight in the Lone Star State. But the universe sometimes gives you just
what you need even when you don’t know you needed it, and what I witnessed instead
was probably the greatest 45 minutes of live rock’n’roll of my life. It was
Marah, and it drove through the midafternoon audience at the Continental Club
like a 20-foot tidal wave. </div>
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I have seen greatness. I have seen Ryan Adams save himself
from oblivion in the Mother Church of Country Music. Standing alone at center
stage lit only by a string of Christmas lights hung on his mic stand as
catcalls echoed from the rafters and filled his mind with darkness, by sheer force of will he stepped back
from the void, wresting his music, his art, his life’s work from those who
would see him fail. I have seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform
as if their very lives depended on it on the night after John Lennon’s
assassination had shaken them to their core. I have seen this and so much more.
I know that I missed Purple Rain 1984 because I made the only decision I could
make at the time. There should be some
degree of comfort in this, and yet I am not at peace.</div>
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I am not at peace because he was Prince. And we will not see
his like again.</div>
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LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-4414406110254680152016-02-23T21:05:00.000-05:002016-02-23T22:05:29.767-05:00Going Back to The River<style>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I wasn’t even supposed to be at the Spectrum on Tuesday,
December 9, 1980. My original plan was to catch Bruce at the Boston Garden on December
15 or 16, but between exam schedules and difficulty getting a ticket, I had to
settle for an 8-hour bus ride to Philadelphia. I had never really been to
Philly before, though I grew up only a couple hours’ drive from the City of
Brotherly Love. And I had only traveled long distance by bus a handful of
times. This trip was definitely going to be an adventure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I awoke and went about my usual morning routine. I must have
turned on the radio at some point. There might have been a news report, or
maybe the DJ made an announcement. Last night in New York City, former Beatle
John Lennon had been shot dead. So many questions popped into my head – how had
this happened? Who was responsible? And as the horror of the news began to sink
in, I began to wonder whether the show at The Spectrum – the “First Bruce Show”
I’d been anticipating for weeks – would even take place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But I didn’t have time to give it too much thought. I had a
bus to catch. A bus that would take me from the verdant Hampshire Valley of Western Massachusetts into
Springfield, where I would catch another bus to the very city where this
atrocity had taken place - I had to change buses again at Port Authority
Terminal in NYC. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It was already grey and cloudy as I headed from my dorm to
the bus station in downtown Northampton, and as I recall, it stayed that way throughout
the next couple of days. By the time I arrived in New York City, a misty rain had
been falling for a while. I gazed sleepily out the window as we pulled into
Port Authority, and saw only wet streets, people going on about their business. Any response to Lennon's death that was going on in the city that day was happening elsewhere. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Continuing on south into Philadelphia was disorienting, strange.
Darkness had fallen, and I was eager to be out of the near empty bus station on
Arch Street. I hailed a cab and a short time later arrived at the sports
complex on South Broad, a sprawling and forbidding place anchored at one end by
the concrete oval of JFK Stadium and Veterans Stadium on the other. In between
was The Spectrum, an arena I had only seen on TV. My seat was about 15 rows
behind the stage, dead center, and I still couldn’t believe that in an hour or
so, I would be in the same building with Bruce Springsteen. It was different
then-athletes, musicians, politicians-you didn’t see them everywhere like you
do now. Being there in person <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">meant
something</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I don’t remember many specifics from that night anymore,
only that every song seemed imbued with newfound meaning, particular lines jumped
out and grabbed you by the throat with an immediacy and a relevance never
dreamt of by their writer:</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Point blank/ They must’ve shot you in the head</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Cause point blank/ Bang bang baby you’re dead</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Stolen Car”, “The Price You Pay” and on and on – how was it
possible these songs could mean this much on this particular night? And yet
they did. It was a long time before I learned of the fierce debate that had
taken place in the hour or two before Bruce and the band took the stage that
night, a discussion which saw a shocked and disheartened Springsteen, who had talked
of postponing that night’s performance convinced by an impassioned Steve Van
Zandt that the show must go on. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Just as it had shocked and saddened those of us in the
audience that night, the news of Lennon’s shooting had affected Bruce and the E
Street Band deeply and profoundly. For people of a certain age, the long-ago
Sunday night in February when John, Paul, George and Ringo made their American
television debut on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ed Sullivan Show</i>
had been the proverbial “Big Bang” – that life-changing moment after which
nothing would be the same. Kids around the country had formed hundreds of bands
in the weeks and months following that seminal broadcast, and the E Streeters
had been among them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They, like many of
us in the Spectrum that night, were lifelong fans, and John’s sudden and tragic
death had taken with it part of our collective past. And it had brought with it
the inescapable conclusion that this senseless violence could happen to them—to
any of us—too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The usual pre-show crowd buzz was tempered that night by a palpable
dread. Would the show bring release, or would it further expose a gaping wound?
The tension was unbearable. At length, the house lights dimmed, and the band
made its way to the stage. After a roar of recognition, a hush fell as Bruce
approached center mic. I couldn’t see his face from where I was seated, but he
spoke haltingly, unsure as we all seemed to be, of how to process what had
happened and of how to address it with the audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“I'd just like to say one thing...and it's a hard night to
come out and play tonight when so much's been lost....the first record...the
first record that I ever learned was a record called 'Twist and Shout')......and
if it wasn't for John Lennon, we'd all be in some place very different tonight.”
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Interrupted once or twice by cheers that were as probably much
about moral support as about the Beatles reference, he continued. “It's...it's
an unreasonable...world and you have to live with a lot of things that are just
unlivable .... and....it's a hard thing to come out and play but there's just
nothing else you can do...” And with that, he counted off for “Born to Run.” Three-odd
hours later, the show ended in true James Brown fashion with an exhausted Bruce
being semi-dragged back out to the mic one final time by his onstage foils, Steve
Van Zandt and Clarence Clemons. They played “Twist and Shout.” Most nights, the
exhaustion was mostly an act, and the Isley Brothers cover was the regular
set-closer. But on this particular evening, nothing seemed simple or
clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When I left that The Spectrum that night, so many questions still
burned in my brain; the rollercoaster ride of the last several hours had not
done much to resolve a lingering fear that some deep and profound change was
afoot in the land. But for that one night, it seemed that maybe we could all
share those fears and all that sadness and still dance with unbridled joy and
raise fists in triumph and maybe the horror of the previous night’s events
would be just a dream. Each song played that night had spoken some deep
emotional truth beyond anything we could have imagined. The pace of life was so
much slower then, and it seemed weeks before I learned all that had happened in
those days in early December, 1980. Mourning a public figure was, even for a
person of John Lennon’s stature, a far more understated affair. But for that
one night in Philadelphia, it was all we could do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And so, on another winter’s night some 35 years later, I was
back in the same city to celebrate the same album with (mostly) the same cast
of characters. I had had my doubts about Bruce’s artistic trajectory, about
what this tour even meant. But it had all dovetailed too perfectly; I had the
chance to revisit that long ago night when everything changed. What would those
songs mean to me now, and what did they mean to Bruce and the band?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the Wells Fargo Center in 2016, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The River</i> was played with a lifetime of skill, but with less pure
adrenaline. The songs didn’t drive forward so much as pause and breathe. But afterward,
what I was struck by more than anything was that once again, each song seemed
imbued with meaning above and beyond the immediate. Like they had on that
long-ago night at The Spectrum, particular lines and turns of phrase hit me
like a sucker punch to the gut, seemingly written for just this moment in my
life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A handful years after the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">River</i> tour, Springsteen had said of the record:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Rock and roll has always been this joy,
this certain happiness that is in its way the most beautiful thing in life. But
rock is also about hardness and coldness and being alone ... I finally got to
the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to
live with them.” At the midpoint of his life, the record was about finding your
place in the world and then reckoning with the ramifications.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For the 2016 resurrection of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The River</i>, something else was on his
mind. During the performance of the album in Philadelphia, Bruce told us that
the record was, to him, about time: how it seems limitless in our youth and increasingly
finite as we age. How you’d better reach out and grab the things in life that
are important to you before they slip away:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You can run through all
the nights and all the days</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But just across the
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through put up a sign</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That counts the men
fallen away to the price you pay</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And girl before the end
of the day</span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m gonna tear it down
and throw it away</span></i></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I had dreaded this show, wondered whether it would tarnish
my treasured memories of youth, if Bruce and the band were up to the challenge
of this demanding material. In truth, I wasn’t even sure I should be there.
What was the purpose of reaching back for a moment that had long gone? But part
of the lesson of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The River</i> is
understanding and acceptance of the passage of time; it’s a reckoning with its
relentless, unforgiving, ever-quickening pace. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As time passes, you gain more understanding of yourself and
your place in the world. Getting older also means accepting inevitable loss –
of friends and family, of places you loved, of memory itself. The passage of
time is also transformational; as you let go of the past, you are freed of it.
And no one is exempted from these truths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Certainly Bruce and the band have been changed by the
passage of time. They once played each show as if their very lives depended on
it. Now, all these years later, priorities are dramatically different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the short time they have left is spent
with loved ones, in pursuit of other interests. But the time they have together
as a band is surely more precious than ever to them now because its end is within sight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And so it was that an older, wiser and perhaps more cynical version
of myself attended that Friday night show in Philly; no longer able to dance
and sing and clap to song after song as I once had, I mostly stood still,
taking in the music and the crowd and pondering the long road that had led me
back to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The River. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And I was reminded of what Bruce’s music has always been
about: being alive and present every single moment of your life. It’s the
things that are right in front of you – your life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right now </i>— that matters. And you had better deal with it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 35 years, I had traveled so long and so far only to end
up back where I had started, with this band and this music, in this city. But driving
home, as the last echoes of a different Isley Brothers classic rang in my ears,
it all seemed just about right. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvZSggXDWZOogWZIbQpvFrpJwU73B0v0H_GnffG_HuVsZnrhV7wXDWZCn1ygtigOyPRpJgIQbyGcbvBWfwiz730iHDCEELEU5cSLf5nLavho3l59BKWN7hv1icXFdLPZnyhaWhFA/s1600/tray-out.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvZSggXDWZOogWZIbQpvFrpJwU73B0v0H_GnffG_HuVsZnrhV7wXDWZCn1ygtigOyPRpJgIQbyGcbvBWfwiz730iHDCEELEU5cSLf5nLavho3l59BKWN7hv1icXFdLPZnyhaWhFA/s320/tray-out.jpg" width="312" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-62332473553969566152012-12-28T14:35:00.001-05:002012-12-28T14:35:59.568-05:00Forbidden Words 2012<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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In the glorious tradition of Matt Groening and without
further ado, my brief and to-the-point list of Forbidden Words for 2012. Feel
free to contribute your own.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Skill set</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Double down</div>
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<br /></div>
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Let’s do this. <i>No, let’s not and say we did.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Game changer. <i>Not every situation requires a sports metaphor. Really.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Wait, what?</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fiscal cliff</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Epic – <i>The overuse and misuse of this word drives me
absolutely bonkers as it’s usually performed by semi-literate folks trying to
sound educated and actually doing the opposite.</i></div>
LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-62766255061702642102012-11-28T15:23:00.001-05:002016-02-27T11:32:19.105-05:00On Twitter<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Since I first became aware of this thing called Twitter back
in 2008, I have questioned its value, just as I would with any new gadget or
any trend in our cultural zeitgeist. I am by nature a contrarian, one who is not
inclined to go along with something new just because it’s “the latest thing.”
It’s not that I won’t come around eventually—I often do—but I require
demonstrable proof of worth before jumping on the proverbial bandwagon. That’s
because I really don’t believe in bandwagon-jumping in general. Performing an
action because it’s being marketed to you, because someone is spending a great
deal of time and effort to get you to buy into it, just doesn’t seem logical to
me, and never has. I guess part of this mentality was formed by my own personal
circumstances, and by growing up in Washington DC in the 70s, a period of
intense cynicism and self-interest. My father was a lawyer, and I learned
fairly early on that I had better have my facts down if I wanted to hold my own
with him. Dealing with him was often difficult because he had a brilliant mind
and rarely lost an argument, legally or otherwise. He would hold forth on and
we would all be forced to listen whether we wanted to or not. It got so that I
would take the opposite point of view whenever I talked to him just to
antagonize him, just to get his attention at all. It became a defense
mechanism, one that did no good for our father-daughter relationship and which
made forming any sort of personal relationship very tricky. I spent years
keeping people at arm’s length because of my argumentative nature, because of
habits formed around the dinner table. But I gained a great deal of respect for
facts in the process.<br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
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At a certain point in your life, you are able to look back
on decisions you’ve made and see them in some sort of perspective. You may not
ever be completely settled, completely satisfied with where you are in the
world, but you at least come to terms with your mistakes, accept your personal
weaknesses for what they really are: part of what makes you human. I’ve come a
long way from what I was in my youth, and I think I have learned a lot about
myself. I’ve spent countless hours studying for not one but two advanced
degrees, and I think my critical thinking skills are pretty good. So why not use
them? I didn’t come all this way to do what everyone else does, to become just another
dollar sign in someone else’s income stream.</div>
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The information overload from which we all suffer is not the
result of technological gadgets, but of our failure to use them properly. We
accept what technology hands us instead of making it work for us. Technology gives
us tools that, if used intelligently, can make our lives so much better, yet so
many of us let it dictate our every move. The communications value of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter has been demonstrated time and again when
major world events happen, when disaster strikes and people need to share information
quickly. The problem I have with social media is not its abundance of information but its relevance and reliability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t need to read hundreds of tweets from people I don’t know about a
subject about which they may not know anything more than I do in order to form
an opinion about it. I am capable of garnering the facts from reliable sources
and formulating my own opinion. To me, the danger of Facebook and Twitter is
this echo chamber effect—people who already share common interests bouncing the
same ideas back and forth without critical analysis, without concern for
whether or not there is any truth or validity involved. What’s that cliché
about opinions and assholes? Everyone has one. Indeed, we are all entitled to
our own opinions about anything and everything—it’s one of the values our country
was founded on. That’s great, but I don’t need to waste precious hours of my
day hearing them all. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/tina-brown-2012-11/">In a recent interview in NewYork magazine</a>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Newsweek</i>
editor-in-chief Tina Brown discusses the future of media and the changes
wrought by the Internet, and she has some remarkable things to say about social
media. I don’t always agree with her, but I have to give her credit for voicing
an opinion that won’t be popular with readers. When asked about Twitter, she
responds, “…it always feels so self-admiring to tweet. As if you sort of expect
people to find you interesting whatever you have to say…. I kind of think it
feels very narcissistic to tweet.”</div>
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Exactly. Twitter doesn’t make you smarter or more
interesting—it only makes you a person with an opinion and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">a </span>Smartphone (or laptop or tablet or whatever
you use to get on the web). People who are funny or insightful or knowledgeable
are just as much so on Twitter and Facebook, and those who aren’t, well,
posting your every waking thought or describing every single you do in the
course of a day on a social media app doesn’t make you someone that’s
necessarily worth listening to. As a matter of fact, I would argue that most
people aren’t all that interesting anyway, and I’m not following them on
Twitter or "friending" them on Facebook just because it’s the thing
to do. These social media tools are capable of so much more. At last I not only can go
directly to the source for my news, but I can get it immediately all in one place. So why should I
care what the Snookis of the world have to say about Sandy?</div>
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So yes, I’m finally on Twitter, but if you think I’m going
to be on there spouting everything that pops into my head, you’re mistaken. And
if I don’t follow you, don’t take offense. I’m using Twitter as a news feed and
nothing more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you want my opinions—and
I’m guessing if you’re reading this you do—this blog is where you come to find them.
I’m not going to filter complex issues down to 140 characters just so they’ll
have an audience. The world is a complicated place, and things happen that
deserve detailed analysis and critical thought. It takes time to see the big
picture, and that’s not what social media is good at. The web judges things immediately
and in extremes—it tends to attract people with the most polarized viewpoints;
it’s loaded with knee-jerk reaction, with folks who have very strong opinions
that don’t fall in the middle of the spectrum but at the ends. Social media
doesn’t deal in shades of grey. Twitter cannot and should not be source of
information in and of itself or a forum for critical discussion but instead
should be the catalyst, the engine that drives us there. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Twitter is not the be-all end-all, but is only a technological
tool, and as such is only what we make of it; instead of tweeting our every
waking thought, we should all probably just shut up and listen because, as Tina
said, most of us are just not that interesting.</div>
LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-14133581806875416822012-11-23T10:52:00.000-05:002016-02-27T11:33:10.714-05:00Thanksgiving 2012, or What I Learned From Sandy<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUN_oFZA_WRCH36CRNPO6CPqjlnTcruK4gzrvD266PjShzuN-mJjiG5COogQmq3u5bNX3yH3Num7QbpdqepaattIQTT8Z_H4NjAG_BQ_FMnIv7elQOpUGvhzKExfAVEPHAW9S_ag/s1600/DSC00274.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUN_oFZA_WRCH36CRNPO6CPqjlnTcruK4gzrvD266PjShzuN-mJjiG5COogQmq3u5bNX3yH3Num7QbpdqepaattIQTT8Z_H4NjAG_BQ_FMnIv7elQOpUGvhzKExfAVEPHAW9S_ag/s320/DSC00274.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
1) Backup generators don’t necessarily go to those who need them most, and sometimes they don’t work.
Several hospitals lost generator power due to being flooded. How is it possible no one thought this would happen, especially at the Shore? Also, it is not mandatory for gas stations, grocery stores and cellular towers to have backup generators. How is this not a security issue? And then there are the people with generators in their vacation homes while entire buildings were in the dark.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2IIUIyc7CXOrsbwMrPU_qZ53V6OsYTekQ-GSHEUgg47U0t41lnYRVlM6pVVUA7ZFbutJtPMUscrSW3mismTJNnTue_dYLoicTP0XrL8VPVODoSL7kKhIZlkA-Jxoyx_sEmRnU0g/s1600/DSC00293.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2IIUIyc7CXOrsbwMrPU_qZ53V6OsYTekQ-GSHEUgg47U0t41lnYRVlM6pVVUA7ZFbutJtPMUscrSW3mismTJNnTue_dYLoicTP0XrL8VPVODoSL7kKhIZlkA-Jxoyx_sEmRnU0g/s320/DSC00293.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
2) Greed and desperation don’t take a holiday.
At least three shooting incidents occurred in Asbury Park immediately after the storm, and several more in the weeks that followed. Then there were the handymen and repair businesses—some more legitimate than others--who descended within hours of the storm. And let’s not forget the many examples of price gouging, from gas to water to batteries.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8whGMMrXqVN_4Gzc8WEhiXqDO52FoWTJqmpoAb2OvDI3MUCzmjFL4y3VShB7OqljPIydwabtj6FPDA6isCxHmHk4n_iRy5MPQkbVGHaj1VN688ziVeR8_HVodncoBvR5R4eICaA/s1600/DSC00288.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8whGMMrXqVN_4Gzc8WEhiXqDO52FoWTJqmpoAb2OvDI3MUCzmjFL4y3VShB7OqljPIydwabtj6FPDA6isCxHmHk4n_iRy5MPQkbVGHaj1VN688ziVeR8_HVodncoBvR5R4eICaA/s320/DSC00288.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
3) Neither does entitlement.
The melee at Wegman’s and other grocery stores on the day following the storm was downright shocking, especially considering many folks can’t afford or didn’t have access to a vehicle to even get there. Then there were the fights and cutting in line both there and at gas stations, which speak for themselves.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWnwB7MbGcc8ZCUlxhWYSQEtW6aHHDlyndgQgSlG3Zu9-qVYjHzpMwlXx8yfEpJyQNcePHNa2YnqOiancOtLRV7vBQB07Xeb9GYiPkRVhHf1BKZ3oZmSF2xDsUl7m8OLmUeAwgmg/s1600/DSC00305.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWnwB7MbGcc8ZCUlxhWYSQEtW6aHHDlyndgQgSlG3Zu9-qVYjHzpMwlXx8yfEpJyQNcePHNa2YnqOiancOtLRV7vBQB07Xeb9GYiPkRVhHf1BKZ3oZmSF2xDsUl7m8OLmUeAwgmg/s320/DSC00305.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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4) Not everyone pays attention to pre-storm instructions.
The number of people who didn’t plan ahead and fill gas tanks, bathtubs and water bottles, empty refrigerators of perishables and buy ice, candles, matches and batteries is pretty amazing. It’s not like we didn’t get any warning. And everyone should have a disaster plan for his or her household, so if they’re forced to leave quickly, they have what they need. In this age of information, people really should take care of these details. Then there are those who didn’t make any sort of plans for their animal friends and left them behind with no food and water to fend for themselves. Your pets give you everything and they ask nothing in return, and you repay them by leaving them alone and terrified? There are all sorts of pet-friendly resources out there, especially after Katrina. It’s a shame more weren’t able to take advantage.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4M875DRKY8yiU462lGlxWUm9th4ieahZZWNTrw8xmMEyZ31MlAAZf5Birt6QcSNhvMSxGds9u891orQZvueg7kw641M_v2Nj8rA1aFGqZsKUFmNuVY_uNZGgtPZXN5sGSjSHew/s1600/DSC00249.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_4M875DRKY8yiU462lGlxWUm9th4ieahZZWNTrw8xmMEyZ31MlAAZf5Birt6QcSNhvMSxGds9u891orQZvueg7kw641M_v2Nj8rA1aFGqZsKUFmNuVY_uNZGgtPZXN5sGSjSHew/s320/DSC00249.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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5) People can be incredibly generous and selfless.
The outpouring of support—financial and otherwise—after the storm was heartwarming. Countless opened their doors and their hearts to others in need in countless ways. The local SPCA went door to door in storm-ravaged areas to make sure people—many of whom were trapped in their neighborhoods because their vehicles were destroyed—had enough food and other supplies for their pets. Many of these folks stayed behind—putting themselves at risk--because they didn’t want to leave their companion animals behind.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiU9nYYSXsrdgJVQy6KOnHpfraA6mtkevjmUHbN5IKGZao5bbVTvZPDCBXatAEGmlrXGyKEPU_FqCQQpFWy4mgnLieJZItITcU3jKJDFvbUIe1W5TlKwOt1wJ9TamVAoSyZ_Ef_A/s1600/DSC00254.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiU9nYYSXsrdgJVQy6KOnHpfraA6mtkevjmUHbN5IKGZao5bbVTvZPDCBXatAEGmlrXGyKEPU_FqCQQpFWy4mgnLieJZItITcU3jKJDFvbUIe1W5TlKwOt1wJ9TamVAoSyZ_Ef_A/s320/DSC00254.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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6) They can also be insensitive assholes.
How much of a jerk do you have to be to put up a tent outside Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. so you can be first in line to buy stuff you don’t really need when there are actually people living in tents because they lost their homes?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyoERqVNMCv47e8hSaRGdvCYaF3t-rSFXuKgM8xm-S86vgHYZeTpcQWJ8MTbirXPLCyKtJS8MB0nW1byoqqOwaYck_wdEXzCLB5RumJQWQU4zfyDOtHKFmvRn9hp4G4dCZCmqTDA/s1600/DSC00275.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyoERqVNMCv47e8hSaRGdvCYaF3t-rSFXuKgM8xm-S86vgHYZeTpcQWJ8MTbirXPLCyKtJS8MB0nW1byoqqOwaYck_wdEXzCLB5RumJQWQU4zfyDOtHKFmvRn9hp4G4dCZCmqTDA/s320/DSC00275.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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7) Scarlett O’Hara lives. Sort of.
“I’m never going without electricity again.” Demand for generators—both before and after Sandy—was unprecedented. Except that not everyone can afford to buy a generator, let alone keep filling it with gas (natural or otherwise). And don’t you feel the least bit sheepish about not inviting any of your less fortunate neighbors in to share the wealth? Then there were those with solar panels who also had no power because most can’t afford the expense of battery backup to store the excess juice. So much for going green.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS-PNQ1c2rTSFTFjhk6cogVoUi0BLHZ3sQTSWDkLAwyh9xpBvKEqxB36Uar21KFOKZ_JuXQxd_3jdv4VrvtJIbG3VFdYl8XBtbIhelApytQl6HKiBe4YywAakpsd8iyTq81Dt0mQ/s1600/DSC00256.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS-PNQ1c2rTSFTFjhk6cogVoUi0BLHZ3sQTSWDkLAwyh9xpBvKEqxB36Uar21KFOKZ_JuXQxd_3jdv4VrvtJIbG3VFdYl8XBtbIhelApytQl6HKiBe4YywAakpsd8iyTq81Dt0mQ/s320/DSC00256.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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8) You can live without television and the Internet.
I did, for five whole days. And you know what? The silence was kind of refreshing. And it makes people get outside, where there are all sorts of things to do that don’t involve pointless gossip. Technology can make your life so much better, but it can’t save you from yourself.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj61ihZmBxpSnWBdEqDc-nqUDRevni54E5jJCle6jrDToS4VOTThwWMAQ0GQXxlhruUCJlhS1k-Bl1vJ65vLs-kodJ73ae05MfBfGmXzLTyt-D3TfJZLAIEuOY1mK2SsNyxIhS7Nw/s1600/DSC00269.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj61ihZmBxpSnWBdEqDc-nqUDRevni54E5jJCle6jrDToS4VOTThwWMAQ0GQXxlhruUCJlhS1k-Bl1vJ65vLs-kodJ73ae05MfBfGmXzLTyt-D3TfJZLAIEuOY1mK2SsNyxIhS7Nw/s320/DSC00269.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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9) You can also live without the microwave.
Cooking with gas and using only non-perishables was a challenge that required creativity and ingenuity; I actually kind of enjoyed it—and was grateful to have both gas and water to cook with when so many didn’t.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiud84IukK0swLOb77X1X_KQRG8MvEVPAyaiofZEcxfCcnJIYWOqUzjjsPn01PKbNc3qFBaalN0kTg-bSuyMIjAWlKks6cEY3eN1lRHqjTITTc03Xop2Mne4mOFmPfrDYqcF2TpwQ/s1600/DSC00297.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiud84IukK0swLOb77X1X_KQRG8MvEVPAyaiofZEcxfCcnJIYWOqUzjjsPn01PKbNc3qFBaalN0kTg-bSuyMIjAWlKks6cEY3eN1lRHqjTITTc03Xop2Mne4mOFmPfrDYqcF2TpwQ/s320/DSC00297.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
10) Everyone has his or her own storm story, and they will tell anyone who will listen. And keep telling it. And telling it. And telling it.<br />
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Everyone was affected but not in equal measure, and everyone wants—and needs—to talk about it, and that’s fine. But enough already. So you had no light for one day—it’s not really a tragedy. In fact, it’s kind of good for people to be jolted out of their routines once in a while. Stop telling me how it sucked to brew coffee the old-fashioned way, and be glad you had coffee to brew.<br />
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In the aftermath of the storm, we have all heard—and said—all the clichés. We are all lucky. It could have been so much worse. Others have it worse than I do. There is that cliché that disasters bring out the best and worst in people, and for the most part that’s true. I just wish we’d learn a little more from all this, and that we wouldn’t lose the best of ourselves so easily or so quickly.<br />
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LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-17898336712587331842010-08-19T16:30:00.000-05:002016-02-27T11:33:22.643-05:00Ignorance is BlissI guess I haven’t done one of these in a while. The reasons why are too many and too complicated to get into, and maybe you’ll hear about them at some future time. Today, however, I’m just interested in getting a few things off my chest, so to speak. I apologize in advance for sounding a bit whiny, but it has been a long, hot summer down here on the Jersey Shore. So without further ado, some random observations:<br />
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Re “Snooki” , “The Situation,” etc. WTF? Go back to Staten Island or Long Island or whatever planet you’re from and leave the Garden State the f*ck alone. ‘Nuff said.<br />
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When did people forget how to parallel park? Every day in my neighborhood I see people needlessly taking up two perfectly good parking spots with one car because for some unknown reason they don’t pull up close to the car in front of them. What, do you think because you’ve left space that some dumbass isn’t going to hit your car? Please. I’m more likely to hit it now than I was before because you have just taken two parking spots with one ugly ass car.<br />
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And while I’m on the subject of automobile-related annoyances, who was the total moron who invented the automatic door lock that honks the horn when you use it? Yeah, like we need another random car noise. And what is it with people inflicting their (usually godawful) musical taste on entire neighborhoods when they drive by playing their car stereos at 11? Do you need attention that badly? Grow up already; we’re not impressed with your gas-guzzling Hummer.<br />
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Why do people insist on mispronouncing ethnic names? Is there something wrong with at least making some attempt to respect one’s ancestry? If I hear one more person in my family pronounce our last name “Eye-annucci” I am going to go postal. As far as I can tell, the letter “I” is never pronounced that way in either English or Italian, so I am baffled as to where this even comes from. All I know is, it needs to stop.<br />
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Which brings me to my pet peeve of the day—the idiotic way many Americans pronounce the names of foreign countries. This is nothing new, of course; I clearly remember hearing people pronounce “Vietnam” as though it rhymed with “ham.” But really, where does this “Eyeraq” and “Eyeran” thing come from? Again, there is no such pronounciaion of the letter “I” in the English language. And then there’s the way they pronounce the “a” sound; saying “rack” instead of “rock” just sounds, well, unsophisticated. Mainly because it’s incorrect. <br />
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You wanna know why they mock Americans so much in other countries? Because we constantly disrespect their language, their history, their culture. Couldn’t be bothered to learn anything about anything that goes on outside of the bubbles in which we live our lives here in the “Good ol’ U.S. of A.” Why are Americans permitted, even encouraged, to sound so ignorant without some sort of repercussion? And why do we insist upon responding to their derision by mocking the “furriners” for actually having an education? Did it ever occur to anyone that the reason we are so distrusted and detested abroad is that so many of us are such total rubes?<br />
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Newsflash: we didn’t invent the world singlehandedly, and we’re certainly not going to save it that way. I think it’s time we opened our eyes to the fact that modern society is complex, and we’re no longer the global power we once (thought we) were. We live in a complicated world, one that requires a little introspection now and then here in America. To pretend otherwise is, well, just plain ignorant.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-30674396450609039752010-02-10T18:11:00.002-05:002016-02-27T11:33:37.615-05:00Only the Strong SurviveYeah it is not pleasant being buried in the white stuff not once but twice in a week. It’s no fun walking in snow up to your thighs, having the current indoor temperature be lower than it will be in a couple months outside. Yeah, life in the Garden State is far from perfect, and, as a transplant from elsewhere, I'll be the first to say so. People love dumping on New Jersey, and there are lots of things to complain about. But there must be a reason why it’s the most densely populated state in the country. Here are a few that spring to mind:<br />
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Mountains, beaches and forests.<br />
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Boardwalks, fields and marshes.<br />
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Cranberry bogs and pine woods.<br />
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Ethnic and cultural diversity<br />
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Pharmaceutical and insurance industries<br />
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Princeton, Rutgers and an excellent network of community colleges<br />
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Legalized gambling<br />
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Liberty State Park and Liberty Science Center<br />
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Some of the best regional theater in the country<br />
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Live original music from Southside Johnny to the Swingin’ Neckbreakers. Other famous names include Bruce Springsteen, Lesley Gore, The Smithereens, Dramarama, Bon Jovi, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, The Gaslight Anthem, Connie Francis, The Misfits, Kool and the Gang, Frankie Valli and George Clinton.<br />
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Revolutionary war historical sites<br />
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Proximity to New York City and Philadelphia and their fabulousness<br />
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Films made in NJ include “Clerks”, “The Wrestler”, “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Return of the Secaucus 7”, “The Purple Rose of Cairo”, “On the Waterfront”, “Broadway Danny Rose”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Big Night”, “Chasing Amy”, “Atlantic City” and “Baby, It’s You.” <br />
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“The Sopranos” <br />
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Hundreds of amazing restaurants featuring cuisines from throughout the world<br />
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Only the strong survive, baby…<br />
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So to sum up, yeah, New Jersey ain’t for everybody. But those of us who call it home wouldn’t live anywhere else. And perhaps that’s the way it should be.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-28656237090901696952010-01-24T14:43:00.002-05:002016-02-27T11:33:47.376-05:00You Know What They Say About AssumingSee here’s the thing. I was born and raised in Washington DC. Dunno if you know this, but it’s a majority African American city. By like 65 to 35 percent. There is also great ethnic diversity there, being as we host the diplomatic missions of the countries with which the U.S. does foreign relations business, and being as there’s a significant immigrant community from Africa, Asia and South and Central America. And DC is only sixty square miles. That’s not much land when you consider a good deal of it is federal property and/or national parkland. Translation: we all get along not because it’s politically correct but because we have to. And we’ve done a pretty good job of it most of the time (or at least no worse than several other major cities I could name).<br />
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Then there’s how I was raised. Which was to judge people not by their appearance but by the content of their character. That’s not open for debate in my household. (And I would argue that it’s neither liberal nor conservative to hold such values—it’s <i>human</i>.) Oh, and I’m Italian American and Catholic too, a background that has historically been treated less than kindly by the white Protestant majority. Just sayin’…<br />
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So here’s the thing—why do you continue to say hateful racist crap right in front of me and act like I’m supposed to agree with you? Why do you do it when I’m at work where you know I can’t answer or even acknowledge such comments because I’ll be fired, where my silence looks like assent but is anything but? Come on; don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. <br />
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I don’t know if you have gotten the memo, folks, but there’s a man of mixed racial background in the White House. A man duly elected by a majority of the people who bothered to vote. I don’t care if you agree with him. I don’t care if you like him. I don’t necessarily like or agree with every policy coming out of the Obama White House either. But here’s the thing—I respect the office, and I respect that the will of the American people put him there. And further, I form opinions about him based on fact, on reading different points of view, applying my own life experience and insight, and <i>coming to my own conclusions</i>. I know you probably will just accuse me of being a “socialist” or whatever because I say such things (whether or not you understand what such labels really mean is a whole other question). I don’t expect that you’ll see me in any way except the way you’ve been taught to see me, to judge me as you seem to be judging our president and people of color in general--solely on appearance. <br />
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But here’s the thing, and it’s the only thing I’ll ask of you: don’t put words in my mouth, and don't assume. Don’t assume you know jack about me or who I am or where I’m coming from or what I believe based on what I look like, where I work, how I’m dressed or anything else. Don't assume that you speak for me just because I am silent. Got me? <i>Don’t assume</i>. Because I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a saying about assuming things, and frankly it doesn’t reflect upon you very kindly. So the next time you see me, kindly think twice before you open your mouth. <br />
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That is all.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-44313904589255554422010-01-21T17:47:00.005-05:002016-02-27T11:34:32.937-05:00Tempus FugitAnother January gone by, another birthday approaches. I don’t feel any different, and yet as the last few years have passed I am starting to feel irrelevant. That the world as it is now is not one in which I am valued as a customer, a client, a participant. That there has been a fundamental shift in values, that everything has sped up, that we have lost so much in our race to have the latest technology, to have it all now now <i>now</i>. I feel this way because most of my friends have Blackberries, iPhones, and Twitter accounts while I remain thus unencumbered, and while I once would have felt left out, I now just regard it all with a sort of bemused detachment. It’s not that I don’t care about or want to know about all this stuff, it’s that my life doesn’t move at that pace anymore and more importantly, I don’t <i>care</i> that it doesn’t. Who knows, maybe it never did to begin with.<br />
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Brian Wilson once wrote a song called “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.” Like me, he always felt like he was on the outside looking in, that he belonged to another time, another place than the one into which he had been born. That the things he thought were important were lost on others, that they valued things he found abhorrent or worse, irrelevant. I too, have felt that way most of my life. Have always been a step or two behind my contemporaries. Have always felt like I didn’t belong to their world in some indefinable way. Because of this, and because I don’t really look my age, I have always tended to fall in with people younger than myself. And yet because of this age discrepancy my friends and I lack a shared frame of reference. Which ends up making me feel even <i>further</i> removed from it all. There often seem to be not just distances but <i>chasms</i> between us.<br />
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I have never been a trailblazer or an innovator, either, a trait that just seems to add to that sense of detachment, that remove I’ve always felt. I have always been a step behind in most everything, it seems—in discovering the music that’s so important to me, the bands, the atmosphere, the fashions, the scene. I’ve always found offbeat things long after they’ve become acceptable and safe. I have no avant-garde spirit, I guess. Have always been unwilling or unable to take risks others have found necessary for their very survival. I guess it’s because my sense of self has always been shaky; after all, you can’t blaze trails without an idea of where you’re going and why. I don’t know. All I know is things are moving too fast for me and people don’t seem to pay attention to much anymore except making sure they’re keeping up.<br />
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It seems to me lately that it’s not the message that’s important anymore, it’s the medium. But that’s not the technology’s fault—it never was. After all, you can’t blame television or the telephone or the fax machine for how we have chosen to conduct our lives. No, things have changed because we have <i>allowed</i> them to; we failed to see the danger, and have thus become slaves to the very technological advancements that were supposed to make our lives simpler and easier. And of course most of us didn’t even realize what we’d lost until it was too late: things like sit-down dinner with the family, Sunday gatherings with the relatives, lingering over a well-cooked meal and a bottle of wine and some good conversation. Tasting the food, appreciating the labor involved in growing and harvesting it, the time and effort involved in its preparation, the satisfaction derived from having time to truly enjoy the smell, taste and texture of what we’re eating. Taking pleasure in good company while sharing these blessings. The slower pace of life, the satisfaction of simple things. We’ve lost that and we’re not getting it back. Paying attention to the small things in life seems so, well, <i>archaic</i> in these days of instant messaging and keeping up with the tweets.<br />
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I don’t know where all of this is leading, only that it has passed me by and I no longer have the energy to keep up with it all even if I wanted to. I guess in the end a large part of getting older is simply acceptance. Accepting my own faults and frailties, accepting myself for who and what I am. Accepting that events happen over which I have no control. Accepting there is nothing I can do about this. And most important of all, not wasting time and energy worrying about <i>any</i> of it. <br />
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So next week I draw nearer to the dreaded half-century mark. And as I do so, I become increasingly irrelevant to the world at large—or so it seems. (Assuming I was ever really relevant to begin with, which is an entirely different matter for another time.) I should be upset about this, I guess, and at one time in my life I suppose I would have been. But at my age, that’s just too much work.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-54345308233346377442010-01-03T11:02:00.002-05:002016-02-27T11:34:46.709-05:00New Year's ManifestoJust stop it.<br />
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Put down the digital camera, iPod, the iPhone, the Blackberry, the Sony Reader, the Kindle, the Wii. Stop playing with it. Turn it off, put it down and fucking pay attention.<br />
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Pay attention to the world, to your friends, to the birds perched on your windowsill. To the sound the wind makes when it blows through the trees. To the feeling of cold air on your face and inside your lungs.<br />
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Just. Stop.<br />
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Stop spending. What are you buying all that stuff for? <br />
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Relax. Why are you working so hard? <br />
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Slow down. Pay attention. Look people in the eye. Smile at them. Say “please” and “thank you” and hold doors open for people. <br />
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Stop tailgating. Don’t honk your horn. Stop cutting people off. Use your turn signal. <br />
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Don’t yell. Stop talking. Just listen.<br />
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Turn off your goddamn cell phone ringer when you are in a public place, and don’t answer it unless you are alone or you have a real good fucking reason. Call people back when you have time to give them your full attention. Turn off your phone when you are in the checkout line, at a restaurant, a movie, a concert. Turn. It. Off.<br />
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Stop texting when you are at a concert, a movie, in the car, when you’re talking to people. <br />
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Treat people with courtesy and respect. Be kind to those who serve you.<br />
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Be patient with the sick, the weak, the elderly. Smile at them and offer to help. <br />
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Pay attention to your kids. Teach them manners, teach them respect, teach them love. <br />
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Set a good example. <br />
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If you have to think about it twice, don’t do it.<br />
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Don’t buy it if you don’t need it. <br />
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Turn it off. Slow down. Watch. Listen.<br />
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Pay attention. <br />
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Love each other.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-30183351364627988272009-12-27T13:01:00.006-05:002016-02-27T11:35:23.347-05:00Darkness RevisitedLately I have been listening to Bruce Springsteen’s <i>Darkness on the Edge of Town</i> album a lot, partially because I haven’t in a long time, and partially in preparation for its upcoming re-issue. These are songs that have never left his live sets since Bruce first played them over thirty years ago. They have stuck around because they are songs that continue to resonate not only in his own life, but in the lives of his audience. After all, he continues to play them night after night not only because he particularly favors them but because they garner a certain audience response. And rock’n’roll <i>is</i> show business, after all. <br />
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<i>Darkness</i> is a unique album in the Springsteen canon, as it is one of only two albums (<i>Nebraska</i> being the other) that have gained some acceptance not only by his own fans, but by the far less mainstream world of punk rock as well. And it’s not just about the anger, the frustration, the aggression that are common to both worlds. It’s that the stark rawness both of the <i>Darkness</i> album and of the punk rock movement are both rooted in the music of Williams and Cash, of Presley and Cochran, artists whose own music was born of the old time country and blues of the rural south. It’s no accident that both Bruce and The Clash have gravitated to Bobby Fuller, that both Springsteen and Social Distortion have covered Johnny Cash.<br />
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Why then is Bruce still such a hard sell to the next couple generations of punk rockers? Why do they embrace Mike Ness and Joey Ramone and not see that Springsteen and those punk artists exist on different branches of the same tree? <br />
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I have a thirty-something friend who plays in a couple pop-punk bands in his home state of New Jersey. I met him at a New York Dolls show and we talked for hours about that scene, about The Ramones and The Heartbreakers and all that came after. Yet he was surprised to learn that I wrote for a Springsteen fan magazine. Considered Bruce's work kind of hokey, far too broad and mainstream to be considered outsider music in the punk vein. I tried to tell him how outside Springsteen once was, what a difficult sell the <i>Darkness</i> album was in its time. How Bruce used to hang out with Patti Smith and Robert Gordon and Joey Ramone, how they would come to see him play. But in his mind Bruce is just that guy waving the flag, the guy his parents listened to. <br />
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I don’t know if Bruce will ever completely come to terms with the wealth and notoriety that accompany mainstream success. As though music weren’t a job, as though being both well-known and commercially successful weren’t much of the reason that musicians do what they do. In addition, I have never been altogether sure that Bruce himself has been completely comfortable with some of the compromises he has had to make in his life as a result of that mainstream success: the loss of privacy and of some of the artistic freedom that comes from not having to appeal to a mass audience. I think he has, in some sense, felt trapped by that lack of freedom, and has only recently begun to understand that it has <i>always</i> been within his power to reclaim it.<br />
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As for me, well, I’m going to buy two copies of that <i>Darkness</i> reissue next year: one for me, and one for my punk rock friend. Because I think it’s time to listen to those songs again; to give them the freedom to speak for themselves that Bruce himself finally seems to have rediscovered. And, well, that punk needs to learn a thing or two about the record that Pete Townshend himself once called "fuckin' triumph, man."LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-49753082256651332462009-12-06T19:14:00.005-05:002016-02-27T11:36:31.865-05:00What Lies BeneathI know my grandfather’s name was John Edward Peters and my grandmother married him because he was a good dancer. He liked to party, but he had a dark side too, a side that remains a mystery. He, like many, lost a large fortune after the stock market crash of ’29; he married my grandmother not long after. My grandfather never recovered from the loss, and his black moods and drinking increased until finally my grandmother threw him out; she eventually divorced him when my mother was five or six years old.<br />
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She married her second husband in 1941, and he went off to the war in Europe. My grandfather served in Europe as well. We don’t know much about his service except that he saw action in Germany and returned with “combat fatigue” for which he received no treatment; it was his second major breakdown. There may have been more, I’m not sure. I'm also not sure why they let him in the service in the first place with his history of mental trouble. <br />
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He returned to Baltimore after the war, and though my mother and her older brother rarely saw him, he did send her spending money--$10 a month or so—while she attended the University of Maryland, from which she graduated in 1955. My mother tells me that he would occasionally turn up in her neighborhood around this time, that he followed her and tried to catch glimpses of her. These days you would call it stalking, I guess, but back then it was just considered creepy. My mom says he once made some inappropriate comments to her, and that she doesn’t remember seeing him after that. He died some years later.<br />
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Is this where the darkness and despair come from? Do my own mood swings and depression and self-destructive behavior come from the Peters side? And what if they do? Does this change anything, or is it just an excuse? I don’t know. I just know that I need to know more about this mysterious, malevolent figure whom his own children rarely saw. I don’t know if I believe in the concept of closure or not; I just know that there’s a part of me that belongs to him, and I cannot rest without knowing more.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-73188780255143121282009-11-26T11:28:00.002-05:002016-02-27T11:38:35.148-05:00Giving ThanksWell, it’s another Thanksgiving and today we are all spending time with friends and family, eating and drinking far too much and reflecting on our many blessings. For me, it’s been a strange, disturbing year for many reasons, and yet I still feel fortunate.<br />
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Fortunate to still be here, for one thing. Several people from the music world that has obsessed me lo these many years have died this year: John Luraschi and Larry Blasco from the Jersey Shore scene. Ellie Greenwich and Larry Knechtel from Phil Spector’s family of geniuses. Lifelong heroes like Ted Kennedy. Friends of friends whom I only hear about weeks later. But they are gone just the same, and that is always hard.<br />
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I visited Arlington National Cemetery earlier this year and witnessed the results of the savagery and relentlessness of man’s wartime folly. As rifle shots from a funeral echoed in the distance, it was brought home to me again how precious an individual life is to those who mourn; how tragic the loss of so many young, vital people. Each death leaves a gaping hole in our lives that only time can fill.<br />
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This year I have lost my precious tabby cat Suzie, who was my companion and best friend. She knew all my secrets and listened without judgment. She comforted me when I was sad and alone, and I told her things no one else would understand. She was spoiled and overweight, but she was kind and affectionate and I will miss her terribly. <br />
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There have been other changes this year. I have taken some steps in my personal life that have left me with a somewhat uncertain future, but they were changes that needed to happen and I feel certain that despite the difficult circumstances at present, things will eventually work out. My sister has finally begun to receive the medical treatment she so desperately needs, and has begun addressing some of her own personal difficulties. <br />
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But there have also been several things that have happened to me that have been nothing short of amazing. I have renewed my friendships with several people whom I haven’t seen in years. I have appeared on the radio with Dave Marsh, an old friend and mentor who always seems to be there at the right time. I have seen Bruce Springsteen perform in a small venue right in my own backyard. I have discovered another band to chase around the country, and have found several new friends along the way, a couple of whom have completely and utterly changed my life. They continue to make me feel wanted and needed when I am at my lowest, and constantly remind me that the best things in life are often so simple: a glance, a smile, a kiss. A touch, a long, warm embrace that lets you know everything’s going to be all right. These are gifts whose value has no measure, and I cannot begin to thank them enough.<br />
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There are so many things to be thankful for despite all the heartache and despair of the past year. I have a job and money in the bank. I have a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I have my friends and my family, no matter how fractured and dysfunctional it may be. I have my head and my heart and my body and my brain. I have my health—for the most part. I have a car and clothes to wear and music to listen to. Books to read, films and television to watch, culinary marvels to indulge in. I have the smell that hangs in the air just before it snows, the aura of anticipation just before a band that I love starts to play. I have the memory of the way my cat used to look at me when I’d scratch her chin, the warmth of her body in my lap. The way the sunlight glints off the breaking ocean waves and dapples its surface. The way my friends make me laugh, the taste of warm red wine and the soft buzz it gives me. The charge I still get from seeing a great movie or reading a great book or hearing great music. From discovering a new band, from those three chords and that backbeat. From Paul McCartney’s winsome smile and pure, true voice and unforgettable melodies, from Paul Westerberg’s heart and soul and wit, from Beethoven’s passion and Forster’s intelligence and Coppola’s epic grandeur and Winslet’s perfect skin and intense blue eyes and Newman’s self-deprecating grin.<br />
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I have the smell of wet grass, the light in a certain someone’s eyes and that naughty suggestive smile he sometimes gives me that always makes me melt. I have The Ramones and The Beatles, the sound of a cat’s purr, the contended snorts and munches of horses and cows when they’re fed, the gurgling of a hidden stream in the woods on a brisk fall day, the sound of the wind in the trees, the stillness of solitude in the outdoors, the awesome magnitude of a mountain range in the distance. The perfect refreshment of cold orange juice when I have awakened with a hangover; the greasy, salty warmth of Burger King french fries and the perfect tang of garlic and oregano and tomato and cheese that flavors a slice of pizza on the street in New York City. The total comfort of egg drop soup, of having a place to come home to at the end of the day when I’m tired and hungry and just need to sit down and do nothing for awhile. The way the sound of loud guitars hits me right in the chest, the way the drums pound through my head, the way the bass can be something I hear but can also be that frequency that vibrates through my entire body. The way it feels when you’re alone with someone and they take you in their arms and hold you and touch you and make the entire world disappear. The way my nephews talk to each other when they think no one else is listening, how their voices echo throughout the house, the sound of their feet running back and forth as they chase each other around at play. The soft, cool glow of moonlight that hangs above a still night meadow, the twinkling of the Brooklyn Bridge, the green torch of the Statue of Liberty in the distance. The Lincoln Memorial at night, the chirping of birds outside my window.<br />
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Yes, I am blessed by these things and many more. I am still here despite everything, and for that I am truly grateful.<br />
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Happy Thanksgiving everyone.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-60085188845290285302009-11-05T09:56:00.001-05:002016-02-27T11:38:58.480-05:00Mental Health Will Drive You MadThe latest <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/04/lindsay-lohans-sobbing-vo_n_345534.html">news concerning Lindsay Lohan</a>—that her father is using voice mails she left for him as proof that he needs to forcibly commit her—is evidence of many things, not the least of which is that for the mass audience that consumes this sort of drivel, mental health issues are nothing more than entertainment fodder, something to be vaguely amused by as they peruse their daily doses of Twitter, Facebook and whatever other passing fancies that are nothing more than a momentary distraction in their humdrum lives.<br />
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Well in my family and thousands of others like it, mental health is no joke. Depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety attacks, breakdowns, drug abuse—these are daily facts of life for us. It deeply disturbs me that in this age in which we are supposedly enlightened about so many things, mental health is not treated as a serious public health issue but as some sort of joke, a self-indulgent behavior pattern that will “go away” if those who are afflicted by it would just make an effort to “get over it.” While we have made some progress with public perception—we no longer sweep such things under the proverbial rug—I find it deeply troubling that the mass media (and the great unwashed masses who consume it) continue to treat mental health concerns of public figures with such casual cynicism.<br />
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Someone near and dear to me is going through a terrible time right now and it has been a horrible strain on everyone in the family, not the least of which are her two young boys who don’t really understand what’s going on except that their mommy who adores them is a shadow of her former self, sad and lethargic and hopeless. She is in serious trouble, in danger of doing great damage not just to herself but to those who care about her. Like poor troubled Lindsay, she struggles each day with a myriad of issues that sometimes get the best of her. She is fortunate that, unlike Lohan, she has a support system in place that continues to look out for her, but like Lindsay, she still feels sometimes as if there is no one who really understands what she’s going through, no one she can completely trust. <br />
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Having suffered from crippling depression myself, I understand the frustration of trying to convey what it is I’m experiencing to someone who has never had mental health issues. When I describe the medication and treatment program that I have undergone, for example, the response is often skepticism instead of empathy. They don’t understand why the drugs are necessary, a fundamental aspect of the course of treatment, instead seeing them as a sign of weakness, as some sort of crutch we choose to lean on instead of just dealing with the disease. To those who haven’t experienced it, depression is not a disease at all, is no more than a bad mood that will soon pass. How many times have you heard someone who is perfectly ok say something like “I’m so depressed” and then go on to cheerily describe the latest travails with their current job, boyfriend, etc.? That, my friends, is not depression at all, and it’s about time we started delineating the difference.<br />
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It’s time for people to wake up and realize that depression is real, bipolar disorder, anxiety, breakdowns—these things are not some trumped up behavior indulged in by rock stars and actors to get their names in the headlines. Counseling, drug therapy, hospitalization—these are not extreme measures or a sign of laziness, but fundamental aspects of a treatment regiment designed to help the mental health patient get better. Lindsay Lohan is in a lot of trouble right now, and instead of mocking her, we should be hoping and praying that there is someone out there who can help her before it’s too late. Because, you see, I’ve seen that look that she has on her face, and I am all too familiar with what might come next.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-61278212021317350712009-11-01T08:53:00.001-05:002016-02-27T11:39:22.239-05:00Just Another Saturday NightI have never really had much imagination when it comes to Halloween costumes. Mostly just bought a cheapie mask at Sears or some such. Nor have I ever really had much enthusiasm for the holiday beyond the obvious candy windfall. These days, like many things in our Modern World, Halloween has become competitive to the point of ridiculousness. As in, how obscure/trendy/ironic can you be and still have people know who you are? Just having a well made costume and a well thought out idea isn’t enough anymore. And if you’re in a major city and are of the female persuasion, there is, of course, the mandatory (and completely unimaginative) sexy fill-in-the-blank costume outfitted by your favorite lingerie store. If you’re in the ‘burbs, however, it’s all about documenting said event by taking endless photos of your adorable kids that no one else really wants to see and then following behind them while they’re out collecting treats with a cooler of cheap beer (my guess—Coors Light). If you’re somewhere in the middle, having a Halloween party is the way to go, which is cool except for usually I have to work on Halloween night and am too old and tired to want to do anything afterward. So this year, like most, I busied myself with a classic movie on TCM, a strong drink and some wonderful scented candles while my more creative and talented friends lit the night with their imaginations.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-17947945349561820192009-10-22T22:33:00.003-05:002016-02-27T11:39:39.347-05:00Sense and Colonel BrandonI somehow got away with not reading any Jane Austen until I was out of college. Don’t really know why; I guess she didn’t appeal to me until I was old enough to have had some of the life experiences she dealt with in her amazing novels. In the last ten years or so, however, I have grown fond of Ms. Austen and her cavalcade of characters: the righteous Mr. Darcy, well-meaning Emma Woodhouse, mischievous ne’er do wells like Wickham and Willoughby. But lately I am especially enamored of the saintly Col. Brandon of <i>Sense and Sensibility</i> fame. <br />
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For those not familiar, Col. Brandon is pretty much the perfect man. He’s wealthy, steadfast, reliable, good-natured and though he is not conventionally handsome, he is not unpleasant to look at. He’s a good friend: kind, generous, brave. He’s modest, soft-spoken and self-assured. But what’s best about the Saintly Colonel is his uncanny ability to be at the right place at the right time, to offer hope and salvation to the hopeless. He’s a Knight in Shining Armor come to life for Marianne Dashwood, that’s for sure. Heartbroken and defeated after a traumatic and doomed love affair, she goes for an ill-advised walk in a rainstorm and passes out. Things look grim for the luckless Miss Dashwood. Grim, that is, until the ubiquitous Col. Brandon—who has, true to form, kindly volunteered to brave the storm in search of the beleaguered young lady—comes upon her limp form lying in the sodden grass and proceeds to carry her a not insignificant distance back to shelter, whereupon the unfortunate Marianne comes down with an infectious fever of some sort (aka “heroine disease”) and becomes gravely ill. Her sister Elinor, who has been nursing her, encounters the good Colonel roaming the halls outside her sickroom (what <i>else</i> would he be doing?) and when he asks what he can do to help, she instructs him to go fetch their mother as the younger Miss Dashwood may not last the night. This being Jane Austen, you just <i>know</i> what’s going to happen next, don’t you? Why of course—the saintly Colonel returns with Mother Dashwood post-haste, Marianne recovers, Willoughby (the cad who dumped Marianne in the first place) gets his comeuppance, Brandon marries Marianne, and all’s well that ends well. Sigh. If only…<br />
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I was thinking about Col. Brandon last night driving home from a visit with my sister. It seems life has never been easy for Nicole—poor decisions, depression, a host of physical ailments, career setbacks. She has had a couple close calls along the way, but she has never given up. I don’t know how she does it sometimes, because for my sister, the good luck that usually follows bad for the rest of us never seems to come to her. She’s not a weak person, but she is a lot more fragile than she’d care to admit, and I often become frustrated and angry at the world for all the things it keeps doing to her. She’s made mistakes—we all have—but does she have keep paying for them her whole life? <br />
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Nicole has always managed to get through it all somehow, but those of you who know her know that this year has been especially trying for her. I hadn’t seen her in a while, and when I visited with her yesterday, I was taken aback at how sad and defeated she looked. I hadn’t seen her look this bad in a long time. I know it’s bad, because she’s usually pretty stoic, and last night she confided to my mother and me that she was really struggling. We left her place very concerned for her safety and well-being, and I lay awake worrying about her much of last night. Well this morning I received the news that indeed, things had gotten worse after we left her, and the sinking feeling I had carried with me most of the year was drowned in waves of sadness and despair. We all have our ups and downs, but dammit, why can’t Nicole catch a break? What has she done to deserve this? <br />
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Today, needing the movie equivalent of comfort food to distract me a bit, I indulged in the umpteenth viewing of Ang Lee’s <i>Sense and Sensibility</i>, which, being a huge Kate Winslet fan, is my favorite film version of the masterpiece. But instead of taking my mind off my worries, today the movie only reminded me of them. Why, I thought, does my sister keep encountering the Willoughbys of the world when she so richly deserves a Col. Brandon?<br />
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Well truthfully, we <i>all</i>--male and female--deserve a Col. Brandon figure in our lives, don’t we? Even if we like to think of ourselves as strong, independent, capable, don’t we all secretly hope that if, heaven forbid, something terrible happened, there’s a Brandon waiting in the wings out there somewhere ready to Make it All Better? Don’t we all want to believe that the good guys win and the bad guys get punished, want to trust in the ultimate fairness of the universe?<br />
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I don’t know what’s going to happen to Nicole, I really don’t. She’s gotten through this type of thing before and gone on with her life, but for some reason she has never really been able to completely move past the trauma and get a solid foothold. I am not sure why; perhaps it’s because she really <i>does</i> need a Col. Brandon-like figure in her life. Not so much for the financial security he’d offer, or even for the romance. No, what Nicole really needs her Col. Brandon for is the simplest, most basic thing of all—something that sadly, she’s lacked most of her life. My sister needs someone who’ll be there when she needs him, who'll listen with compassion and without judgment, make her feel safe and secure, needed and most important, <i>loved</i>. In short, my sister needs Col. Brandon the <i>friend</i>. But really, don’t we all?LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-3635645945321456372009-10-21T23:53:00.003-05:002016-02-27T11:40:37.189-05:00God's Driftin' in HeavenAt one time missing a Springsteen show at The Spectrum would’ve been unthinkable to me, but lately it just hasn’t seemed to matter that much. Not even the fact that last night was the last time he’d be playing there—for <i>real</i> this time—made a difference to me. He could play my dream set list and I’d still feel there was something missing. <br />
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And there was. Yeah, despite the fact that he played not one but two of my handful of favorite (and obscure) songs—one of them hadn’t been played in <i>28 years</i>—I remain convinced that I would have, on some level, been disappointed by last night’s final performance at the venerated arena in South Philly had I been there. Convinced because even with superior song selection it was still a performance with no coherent set list, a show that relied on two major crutches—playing an entire album in proper sequence as part of the set, and having “stump the band time” (in which people wave signs with song requests at him). These things—coupled with shameless audience pandering, booty shaking to teenage girls younger than his own daughter, oversinging, sluggish arrangements—all this and more (poor fan behavior, for example) made the City of Brotherly Love a place I didn’t want to be last night. <br />
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So nope, though my first ever Springsteen show was at The Spectrum in December of 1980, I didn’t feel the need to be there for the swan song. I used to believe in poetic justice, in events aligning themselves just so; at one time, being at The Spectrum last night would have been a no brainer, missing it unimaginable. But listen to the songs—Bruce is always talking about living your life, finding your place in the world, connecting with people, taking care of each other. And I think, upon reflection, that I can honestly say that I’ve done those things—maybe not as much as I should have, but I’ve <i>tried</i>. I’ve tried to break out of my closed off shell of a personality, discard the self-hatred, attack the despondence and depression. I’ve gone out and <i>lived in the world</i>. And to me, that is far more important than any one show--even by The Boss himself.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-7795448081044681942009-10-19T17:06:00.005-05:002016-02-27T11:42:06.424-05:00Know ThyselfMy mom doesn’t know who her father was. Not literally; he did live in the same house with her and her mother and older brother for a brief time. But he was never there much, she was really young when he left, and he never really had much to do with her anyway. So though she knows his name and dimly recalls his appearance, she can’t really say that she ever really knew him.<br />
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When I was a little girl, everything surrounding my grandfather—her dad—was a big mystery. I knew the man my grandmother—we called her Nana—was married to at the time was not my mom’s dad and was curious about what the circumstances were that brought her to divorce my grandfather and marry him, but I knew better than to ask. Whatever had happened with my grandfather was not to be spoken of, and I somehow knew this without being told. Later on, as a pre-teen, I went through a box of old photos that had been in my grandmother’s attic, and noticed that a bunch of them had half the photo cut away. It had not even occurred to me that I might find a picture of my grandfather in there, but the mutilated photos were concrete evidence that whatever had precipitated my Nana’s divorce from my grandfather must’ve been pretty bad. Must’ve made her angry enough that she never wanted to see his face again, not even in old blurry black and white photos. Angry enough that she didn’t care if my sister and brother and I—her grandchildren—ever got to see what their grandfather looked like. She was pissed off that I had even found and pilfered the box of photos, I guess because she knew I might try to ask her a lot of difficult questions on a subject she did not wish to discuss. Of course the mere fact that she yelled at me for doing it was enough to keep my mouth shut, so I never worked up the courage to ask anyway.<br />
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My mom doesn’t know who her father was, so she can’t really describe him to us except for some vague memories—how he smelled, the sound he made coming in the front door from work each evening. But he must’ve been pretty good-looking because my Uncle Brooke—mom’s older brother—was quite a handsome young man, and my mom was a knockout in her day. She used to get mistaken for Ali McGraw all the time—and this was with wearing no makeup and already having two young children and a third on the way. I know my uncle was good-looking because Nana kept a photo of him from his days in the Coast Guard on a bureau in one of her spare bedrooms. I remember curly hair, a round smiling face, a devil-may-care grin and twinkle in the eyes that told me he must have been Trouble.<br />
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Indeed, my mom always spoke of Uncle Brooke—when she could be persuaded to speak of him at all—with palpable resentment, because Nana just adored him, and never tried to hide the fact that he was her favorite child. She always favored boy children (and grandchildren), and my uncle was the apple of her eye. Got away with murder, so my mom said. I never met him, though; despite the fact that Nana kept his photo around, Uncle Brooke was, like his father, persona non grata. We children didn’t know anything about him except that he was married and had some kids of his own who were our cousins. We didn’t know where he lived or what he did for a living or the names of his wife and children. Like my grandfather, he just wasn’t talked about. In fact, most of the time it was like we didn’t have an Uncle Brooke at all--that is, until the day when my mom got the phone call informing her that he had died. It was one of the only times I’ve ever seen my mom cry, and I still remember the look on her face when she hung up the phone. Seems our uncle—like his father before him—had drunk himself to death. Of course, we knew none of this till years later, and only then because we questioned my mom about it; she wasn’t giving up any information on the subject on her own, that was for sure.<br />
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I have a couple friends who were adopted, and who don’t know who their birth parents are. Matter of fact, one of my best friends in high school was adopted. She was totally up front about it and didn’t really seem bothered by it. But just from my own experience with the mystery surrounding my grandfather, I know it’s got to sting. The insecurity, the not knowing. The fear that people are going to leave you, that you don’t really know yourself: why you do certain things, look a certain way. These feelings of loss and confusion can make dealing with adoptees a difficult proposition at times. Intimacy is difficult, complicated. In my own experience, it’s just so hard getting them to trust you as a friend, companion, lover. I want so much to tell them that I understand; that, as with them, there are things about myself I don’t yet know and may never discover. Want to look them in the eye and tell them that it’s ok; that I care about them for the people they are, not for who their parents might have been. That despite knowing my parents and most of my immediate family, I don’t really know myself that well either. <br />
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But there are times when I look in the mirror and think—did my grandpa have this nose, these eyes? This temper, this tendency toward self-loathing and despair? Did the black cloud of depression hang over his head, too? And I wonder—if I had known him, would it help me know myself?LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-32989519042348119252009-10-11T11:46:00.003-05:002016-02-27T11:43:41.671-05:00Like a BridgeA couple days ago they were handing out free promo CDs at work, which they still do on occasion (yeah, believe it or not there are still labels out there and they still manufacture actual CDs), and I came across <i>Live 1969</i> by none other than Simon & Garfunkel. I couldn’t believe a) that something of that magnitude had come out and I didn’t know about it (it was actually released in April) and b) that no one else had already absconded with it. I mean really, people, <i>Simon & Garfunkel</i>. I know it was a long time ago and all, but geezus, at one time they were as big as The Beatles here in the U.S.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/liannucc/4000859517/" title="51nEWeNtzzL._SS500_ by liannucc, on Flickr"><img alt="51nEWeNtzzL._SS500_" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2422/4000859517_51d24727d2.jpg" height="500" width="500" /></a><br />
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How time flies, and how tastes change. Funny thing is, theirs is the type of music that is so unique that they really were and are their own genre—to me, they exist out of time just like Dylan or the Fab Four or Beethoven—so in my mind, it’s not a question of being in or out of style. It’s about total frickin’ genius. And this particular CD—an assemblage of selections from various dates on their 1969 U.S. tour—is just stunning. They're at the height of their powers, their voices at their pristine best—the harmonies that are at once so complex and so intertwined it’s as though you’re listening to one voice instead of two; they know each other so well, complement each other so perfectly. And the material, which is culled from their first three albums as well as from their forthcoming masterpiece, <i>Bridge Over Troubled Water</i>, is just stellar. It’s all there, from the whimsical “At the Zoo” to the tuneful “59th St. Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” to the profoundly moving “Sound of Silence.” Listening to these songs and these voices again, I am instantly transported back in time to when I was five or six years old. All of this was brand new then, and in a time of chaos and bloodshed, of assassinations and unrest, riots and war, these songs, this music—so soothing, so literate, so biting and true—were just what we needed.<br />
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I listened, and the lyrics came back to me instantly, almost as if I had always known them, and in a way, I guess I had. After all, I grew up on this stuff—literally. My father was a huge fan and early supporter of the boys from Queens, and it was perhaps the only time that he and I were passionate about the exact same music, one of the few times we actually agreed on something. And it was gone all too soon. But for those few years, 1967 or so to the end of the decade, we shared something something ethereal and fleeting, a bond deep and unspoken. We didn’t really talk about it, but when my dad went out to the record store to buy <i>Bridge Over Troubled Water</i> the week it came out, I was right there with him. It was as if we both knew this would never happen again.<br />
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And the audiences at these shows had to know that they were experiencing something that happens only once in a lifetime, too—you can hear it in the profound silence of their complete attention, in their enthusiastic response to the performances. It’s totally mesmerizing, and totally unforgettable, that old cliché about genius—you can’t really define it, but you know it when you experience it. But the <i>real</i> jaw dropping moment on this CD is one that the audience is completely unprepared for. But really, though you know it’s coming, nothing can prepare <i>you</i> for it either—how does one prepare for a watershed moment? You hear Larry Knechtel (yes, <i>that</i> Larry Knechtel—S&G were touring with their studio band, which just happened to include three members of Phil Spector’s famed Wrecking Crew) play the opening arpeggios that are so familiar to you, and you think to yourself that this audience has no idea that after hearing this song, they will be forever changed. That’s right, they are going to hear “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for the very first time (can you <i>imagine</i>?)—no studio arrangement, no lush instrumentation, just Larry on the piano and Artie’s unearthly tenor. You can picture him standing at the mike, a single white spotlight, hands in pockets, eyes closed—even on CD it’s breathtaking, one of those indelible moments you never forget. He finishes, the final chords fade, and there is a stunned silence, a pregnant pause followed by long, loud ovation. It’s truly a cathartic moment on an album filled with them, and I just wish I could have been there one on of those nights to witness it in person.<br />
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Night after night (so the liner notes indicate) in that turbulent fall of 1969, audiences had the exact same reaction—in packed concert halls across the country, people felt the power of Simon’s profoundly moving lyrics, Garfunkel’s crystalline harmonies, and for a moment, the real world was forgotten; the turmoil and despair a distant memory drowned in waves of sound.<br />
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We needed Simon & Garfunkel then, and didn’t realize how much we’d miss them when they were gone. But (as Bud Scoppa so aptly states in his excellent liner notes), history is cyclical, and everything comes back again. In this era of unrest and uncertainty, we need them again, perhaps more than we ever did. Well, with this essential release, Simon & Garfunkel are back and in their prime, as if they’d never been away. I just wonder if anyone’s listening.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-83224464327875089642009-10-10T13:42:00.006-05:002016-02-27T11:45:56.048-05:00Au Revoir, Les GiantsSo that’s it for Giants Stadium, and for the epic event known as “Bruce at The Meadowlands.” Over. Done. No more. And not only was I not there, I wasn’t in contact—The Twitter, The Facebook, The Blackberry—with anyone who was. And you know what—that's just fine with me.<br />
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Now, if you know me at all, you know I’m not a big fan of these technologies, but that wasn’t the reason. Nope, the reason was I simply didn’t care. That’s right, Didn’t Care. To me, Giants Stadium is not hallowed ground, a place in which everything of significance in my entire life has taken place. It holds no special piece of my heart, no acreage in my memory bank. Nope, to me, Giants is merely a place where New Jersey’s masses go to Party in the Parking Lot and Maybe Hear Some Music Later. You know, pay way too much to park (take up two or three spots—one is needed for car, the others for grill and/or tent, chairs, etc.), get really drunk on (mostly cheap) beer, play with fire/grill, toss a football (or some other available object), play whatever new conglomeration of game—hacky sack, etc.—that passes the time and you can play whilst inebriated, pee in really disgusting porta-potties, eat way too much, talk really loudly about yourself and where you’re sitting tonight, blast some random bootleg that everyone’s heard a million times, ogle that hot girl/guy that just walked by and generally annoy everyone in the immediate vicinity in whatever way you can. Giants Stadium is New Jersey’s Main Street, The Parking Lot to that great big outdoor shopping mall known as The Garden State. Never wanted to be anything else, never tried. And to me, that’s exactly as it should be.<br />
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But not being from New Jersey, I have never understood parking lots or tailgating. You might get to an event a bit early to scope out the place, but in Washington DC in the ‘70s there was no such thing as hanging out in the parking lot. You got your ass inside and into your seat, and that was that. After all, there was a game to be watched. My parents were Washington Redskins season ticket holders back in the day, so I know from game day activities. On Sundays (and later Monday nights too) you’d get up and get down to the stadium no later than 11:30 am--just in time for pre-game warm-ups (except every once in a while you’d maybe grab a hot dog along the way if Mom hadn’t had time the night before to make sandwiches). It was well nigh impossible to get into RFK Stadium in those days, and by god you were there to pay attention. There was no thought of doing anything else. And to this day, the smell of peanuts and spilled beer makes me nostalgic for that simpler time when football was just football, when it had the power to miraculously unite one of the most diverse, divided cities in America around a single cause for just those three hours or so on those long ago fall afternoons of my youth.<br />
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So tailgating, not so much. And beyond that, well, I have already discussed my feelings about Bruce, about this tour. I felt at the beginning—and this opinion hasn’t changed—that the latest record was rushed, poorly thought out, mediocre. Bruce didn’t seem to have anything of any great import to say on <i>Working on a Dream</i>, and the live shows were just concrete evidence of this. I don’t know whether it’s getting older, being distracted by parenthood, or maybe just life getting in the way—realizing that there was more than just The Music—I don’t know, and maybe he doesn’t either. But I do know uninspired material when I hear it.<br />
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And then there were the performances, which to me reeked of desperation, of trying too hard. And for someone like Bruce, for whom it was once all so effortless—the danger, drama, excitement, pathos, despair, resurrection—to have fallen to the ranks of the mere mortal, well, I just couldn’t bear to watch. He once spent hours carefully plotting out set lists, orchestrating each moment of his nightly marathons, and this laser-like focus resulted in some of the best live performances on record. But the shows he does now have no direction, no <i>purpose</i>. And sadly, though he has recognized that there is something drastically out of whack, Bruce seems to have absolutely no idea what’s wrong or how to fix it. So he’s resorted to the old throw-it-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks method: light shows, giant graphics or crawling lyrics on a giant screen behind the stage, backup singers, stage dives, endless audience participation schtick and most heinous of all, request time. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that the shows are so lackluster that Bruce needs to do these things, or the fact that he’s up there doing shows at all. All I know is that the whole thing made me cringe, made me embarrassed for him, made me want to get up and shake him to his senses. At one point in my life I would have been so distraught that I would have written him a letter or something, but now I just can’t be bothered. Because to me, though he spends hours in the gym, rehearsing the band, etc., Bruce just doesn’t seem to have a real good reason to be there, and if he doesn’t care, why should I? What once meant Everything to him now seems like something he’s doing just because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that he felt like he needed to get out of the house for a while. But for god's sake, do I have to pay over a hundred dollars to see it?<br />
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I know some of this is just me (and Bruce) getting older, having different priorities. But dammit, I know in my heart that he’s still got it in him; the Seeger Sessions Tour was proof of that. I know the old, risk-taking Bruce is in there still, but it seems that something has made him sad and desperate, has sapped all of the old desire and longing and purpose from his music, from his life. He thought he was falling into the bottomless pit of aimlessness known as Midlife Crisis, and so he grabbed at the one thing he knew he could always count on: The E Street Band. I wish I could tell him that he doesn’t need them anymore, that he has all he needs within himself if he would only dig a little deeper. I want to take him and shake him and tell him those old things don’t matter anymore. I wonder if he’d even listen.<br />
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But All Things Must Pass, or so they say. To me, The E Street Band’s finest hour, its apex, was the 2004 Vote For Change Tour. I really hoped Bruce would see that, too, and would call it quits. But his myopia is such that he can no longer see what’s right in front of him, no longer sense what used to be second nature. And that just makes me sad.<br />
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So no Giants Stadium for me, and maybe even no Spectrum, too. I don’t know if I’m going to any more Springsteen shows this year at all, and I can’t really say that I’m too upset about it. Life goes on and all that. Besides, there’s this band from Liverpool that has a new box set out…LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-72012581276822066112009-10-06T21:41:00.000-05:002016-02-27T11:47:31.524-05:00In MemoriamArlington Memorial Cemetery is one of my favorite places to visit in my beloved hometown. Today, for the first time in a very long time, I visited the cemetery grounds with my mom. She doesn’t go often; it’s always very emotional for her, and so we try to make it a special occasion, to really give it our full attention when we go. It was a typical fall day in DC—warmer than you dressed for, but not as humid as it has been only a few weeks before. We like to walk rather than taking the ever-present Tourmobiles; you see more that way, and anyway we were stiff from being in the car for a while. But everything in Arlington is uphill, so it takes a while to get to the spot we like best: the front lawn of the Lee Mansion and the JFK gravesite just below.<br />
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Arlington is a favorite destination of mine because it’s quiet and peaceful, demands solicitude and respect from all who enter; it seems to be one of the few places left in this country in which people actually show some degree of decorum without being browbeaten. (Sad that it takes the sight of literally thousands of gravestones to evoke this reaction.) So it’s quiet when we reach the grounds of the Mansion on top of the hill and look back across the glistening Potomac to the broad vista of the Nation’s Capital. It’s miraculous to me that so much riverfront acreage has remained undeveloped; if you concentrate (and if no planes fly overhead) you can see pretty much the same view they saw from that very same hilltop 45 years ago.<br />
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It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since the JFK funeral. My parents, like hundreds of others, felt they had to be there, and I am told that I was there too—I was almost two years old and my mom brought me in a stroller. Time has gone by outside the cemetery gates, but it seems to have stood still within them. Not much really changes here: grass is mowed, leaves raked and bagged, graves manicured. And to my middle aged eyes, it looks the same as it did all the other times I was here—as a little girl not knowing what she was seeing, a teenager struggling to understand, a lost and confused adult still trying to figure things out. Looks the same, but really it’s not, because they’re having funerals again here.<br />
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I don’t remember there being funerals here when I was here before, though I’m sure there were. It’s just that the funerals were for older veterans of more distant wars; nowadays they’re burying people in Section 60, a new area designated for the service people from new conflicts in old places we still can’t quite pronounce. Today while we were walking up the hill we heard rifle salutes—three distinct shots—several times. It’s chilling and heartbreaking. You know what it means but you don’t want to know, don’t want to think about the fact that they’re probably burying someone young enough to be your son or daughter somewhere down that hill.<br />
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My mom likes to come here; she was (and is) a proud Kennedy supporter, and always makes a point of stopping off at the Eternal Flame and the small white cross a few feet to its right (RFK). Only now there’s another white cross farther down past it. It’s hard to imagine Ted Kennedy being buried there; hard to grasp that the huge, vital presence we were so used to seeing out and about on the streets of DC was here, forever stilled. It’s probably the last time my mom’s going to make it here, so I gave her a few moments to herself to take it all in.<br />
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It’s always hard to go back home again, and I never leave DC without a pervading sense of melancholy. Doesn’t help that it’s fall, the season that always leaves me unsettled, homesick for a place or time I can’t quite pin down. I loved living in Washington, but am not sure I’ll ever live there again, and that saddens me. I had so many wonderful experiences there, too many to count. But though it’s still a great city, it’s not the city of my youth anymore, and I would want something from it that it was no longer able to give if I tried to live there now.<br />
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So we drove back to my mom’s place in Pennsylvania, the first beginnings of autumn color appearing on the fields and foliage we passed. I don’t know where I’m going to end up settling now; so much of my life has been unsettled, and I am not sure where home really is to me anymore. I’ve often heard that home is the place you go where they have to take you in (or some such thing, it’s a Robert Frost quote, I think), but I’m not so sure. I think maybe home is where you are most comfortable, where you are your <i>truest self.</i> I guess I’ll know when I find out who that self really is.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-69498526094048135712009-10-05T15:48:00.001-05:002016-02-27T11:49:05.916-05:00Slow Down, You Move too FastOk, I know I’m not Miss Cutting Edge. Never have been. As a matter of fact, I would say that if life were like a vacation getaway, I’d be not the young painfully hip trendies with the “Let’s Go” book under one arm and a backpack over the other, I’d be the person in sensible shoes and slightly unkempt but comfortable clothes perusing the Frommer’s guide whilst trying not to spill coffee on myself.<br />
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I know I’m not at the forefront of anything, which isn’t to say that I don’t discover great stuff—it’s just that I usually latch onto it relatively late in the game. Of course, I’ve always told myself—and I do believe this—that it doesn’t matter <i>when</i> you find something; the important thing is to <i>find</i> it. This doesn’t help, however, in this day and age of searchable files. These days, you can dig up info and stories on just about anything on those wacky Internets and drive yourself absolutely nuts finding cool stuff you weren’t a part of, fabulously rockin’ bands and hot clothes and dark, dangerous rock’n’roll bars and brilliant novels that you love passionately but that are long past their prime, that are not even yesterday’s news but last year’s. Go crazy wondering why you weren’t there, trying to figure out where you were instead, what you were doing, and what it was that kept you from whatever fabulous trend/movement/phenomenon you’ve discovered months and sometimes even years too late. As in, “why why why wasn’t I there when The Clash played Shea? When Bruce was at The Capitol Theater? When Joey got onstage with that great garage band at The Continental?” Answer: because I was a) 200 miles away from most of this and b) painfully unhip.<br />
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And though I have made some concessions to modernity, things haven’t really changed very much in my world over the years. I don’t have an iPhone or a Blackberry. The iPod I was given over five years ago sits on a shelf unused. I still haven’t really figured out the digital camera I was given several years back. Oh, I am not in the Dark Ages by any means—I text message, I have a Facebook account—but I don’t do the Twitter, don’t know what # or @ mean except “number” and “at.” That’s who I am, and it’s far too late to change.<br />
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But really, does it matter? I’m far past the age at which it’s reasonable to make massive changes in the way I do things. Little alterations, maybe, but not life-altering drama. Really, do I need to know that this or that FB post was “sent from a Blackberry” or “via MobileWeb”? How does this make my life better? What am I supposed to do with this information? Seriously, you’re already telling me what you’re eating for dinner; do I need to know you’re telling me whilst sitting on your ass clipping your toenails?<br />
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A month or two back I was feeling really exhausted mentally and physically, and took a mental health day off from work. Did nothing but play with the cat, eat my favorite food and walk on the beach. No computer, no phone, no technology of any kind. And you know what? I had more energy the next day than I had had in weeks. Lately I’m finding that keeping up with what’s what on Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, Google, etc. is an undue stressor in a life already crammed full with stressful stuff, and frankly at my age, who needs it? After all, it’s not the technology; it’s how you use it. It’s living each day to the best of your ability and being happy with what you have. Enjoying small things, like the way your cat looks at you when you rub her chin, the way the sun plays off the breaking waves of the Atlantic, the way a cold drink tastes when you’re thirsty.<br />
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Yeah, I’m a Frommer’s girl in a “Let’s Go” world, and for me, that’s just about right.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-91756760715813301452009-10-03T23:41:00.000-05:002016-02-27T11:49:34.697-05:00ApologiaOk, true confessions time. I know the previous post was more than a little self-pitying; so sue me, I’m in that sort of a mood. But I do believe in telling the whole truth—well as much as is relevant, anyway—and the whole truth in this case is that I haven’t been a terribly good friend to my Springsteen fan compatriots of late, either. So asking people to contact me out of the blue about a particular event when I haven’t written, called, emailed, or texted myself is perhaps a bit much.<br />
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I have been remiss, and for that I am sorry. And truthfully, it would’ve been a tossup as to whether I would’ve gone to the Costello taping anyway being as my bestest friends <a href="https://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.maybepete.com">Maybe Pete</a> were having their CD release party at the <i>exact same time</i>.<br />
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I guess what I’m trying to say is there are two sides to everything, and I’m constantly looking at the glass half empty side. Sorry ‘bout that.<br />
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[But really, were y’alls phones and ‘puters not workin’ last week or what? ;) ]LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9229127.post-20680955645884214792009-10-03T20:14:00.000-05:002016-02-27T11:51:22.989-05:00What's So Funny?I just finished watching the recent film version of the Edith Wharton classic <i>The House of Mirth</i> which, for those not familiar, is the story of a woman’s slow decline from the heights of Gilded Age New York society into poverty, addiction and eventually, death. It’s a story that might happen to anyone: a person who is industrious, intelligent and attractive endures a series of setbacks that, taken one at a time might be relatively insignificant, but experienced in rapid succession, they become so overwhelming that he or she loses heart. The courage and self-confidence required to rise above circumstance are gradually eroded as the person is swept downward by an inexorable tide of tragedy. In Wharton’s novel the woman—Lily Bart--is forced to repeatedly demean herself in order to survive, and the friends and relatives upon whom we all depend in times of trial grow fearful of the social repercussions of associating with a “tainted” woman and begin to distance themselves from her as she sinks lower and lower. At length she is offered assistance, but it is too little, too late.<br />
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The real tragedy of this tale, of course, is not Lily’s demise, but the failure of those closest to her to intervene on her behalf. In turn-of-the-century Manhattan, it’s every man (or woman) for himself. Unfortunately, here in the 21st century of iPhone and Internet, things don’t seem to be all that different, and I wonder what that means for the future. Technology that is supposed to bring us all closer has made us ever more self-absorbed, less conscious of each other, less cognizant of the simple joys of life, of the small miracles—a butterfly on a flower, a bird’s song, a phone call from a friend, the sun reflecting in a puddle—that make each day unique. But it’s not technology’s fault, really—it’s how people <i>use</i> it that has eroded our humanity.<br />
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Lately I have been thinking a great deal about why it is that I have not felt compelled to trek up to the lovely Garden State to partake of the current run of Springsteen shows at Giants Stadium, and I must say that a great deal of it has to do with how his fans have begun to treat each other these last few years. I remember a time when it was so difficult to get tickets that you pinched yourself when you walked into a venue because you couldn’t believe that he was actually going to be on that stage right in front of you later that evening. You didn’t care where you were sitting, or that your friends might have slightly better seats. You were all in the building, and you were going to share this magical experience together. And for less than twenty dollars, you got three-plus hours of pure adrenaline—an emotional rollercoaster ride that was elating and cathartic. It was such a high that all you could do was talk about it. Your unadulterated joy was such that you would develop an overwhelming desire to share it with others, to bring them to a show with you just so you could watch their reaction. You’d sit for hours in the rain and the cold overnight on the sidewalk just to make sure you’d get a ticket, and if you were short a dollar or two, someone else in line would lend you the money. You always knew you’d get it back—we were Springsteen fans, and there was a rare, unspoken level of trust amongst us unlike anything I had ever experienced.<br />
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But no more. Just last week, Bruce taped a segment of Elvis Costello’s “Spectacle” show for The Sundance Channel at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Tickets were difficult but not impossible, but I seriously thought that there was no way I would ever get into the event, so I didn’t really follow up on initial efforts to gain entrance. And I’ll admit, a great deal of this lack of effort also had to do with the increasingly privileged attitude taken by some of Bruce’s most ardent fans. What was once the most uplifting, unifying experience imaginable to any music fan has now become nothing more than an exercise in self-importance. It’s no longer enough just to be there—you now feel compelled to look around (I’ll admit I’ve done this myself) and see where everyone else you know is sitting, confirm that you have a better (or worse) seat than they do (how did that happen? Who do they know that I don’t?), make a mental checklist of who didn’t make it in at all and feel very smug and self-satisfied that you are well connected (it’s never luck, you see) enough to be there. And while this is by no means indicative of the behavior of every single attendee, it’s prevalent enough that, though I shouldn’t allow it to bother me, it detracts so much from my enjoyment that I can’t concentrate on the show. And yeah, some of that’s my fault, but dammit, whatever happened to being satisfied with what we’ve got? With feeling blessed by our good fortune, with wanting to share that good fortune with others? I knew perhaps a dozen people who ended up gaining entrance by one means or another, and not one of them—<i>not one</i>--contacted me either to find out if I were going or to perhaps offer assistance. Of course, it turns out that, like Dorothy in <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, I had the power to get in all along and didn’t even know it. But unlike Dorothy, there was no Glenda the Good Witch to point that out to me, so I spent the night of the taping elsewhere.<br />
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There’s a great bit by comedian Louis CK on a recent episode of Conan O’Brien in which he opines that people are never satisfied, that everyday life in the Modern World is nothing short of a miracle: high speed Internet on an airplane thousands of feet above the earth, telephones that beam signals back and forth like fireflies, a new technological marvel seemingly everyday, and yet people complain about the mechanical wonders that were unthinkable even ten years ago. “People bitch about stuff that, five minutes ago, they didn’t even know existed,” he cracks. So true, and so sad. What has happened to us?<br />
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So yeah, I didn’t go to the taping, which was, by all accounts, an amazing experience. And while I am sorry to have missed it, what has made me saddest of all is that, like Lily Bart, I was left to my own devices at a time when I needed help, and though I was in nowhere near the level of danger she experienced, I was nonetheless, for all intents and purposes, cast adrift. Not attending the show was bad enough, finding out I could have attended after all was worse. But what hurt most of all was being left to fend for myself by my friends and fellow Springsteen fans, when a simple phone call, email or even text message would have meant everything.<br />
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So the next time someone speaks of the Springsteen “community,” I will smile and shrug and turn on some Elvis Costello.LisaFhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14894614688984988007noreply@blogger.com0