Remembering the date

My parents were married on August 10, 1944; they celebrated 53 anniversaries before my Dad died early in 1998. Ransom’s dad and step-mom just celebrated their 45^th anniversary on January 21. As for us, we mark April 8 as the day I moved to New York; October 5 as our wedding; January 3, the date of our Civil Union ceremony, and June 20, our legal wedding.

I  note other events annually: January 10, the day my first boyfriend and I started out – and years later, the day my friend Malette’s son, and my Dad, died; Jan 19 the was when Jan Palach died; March 27, when I reported to Chicago to begin VISTA training; May 4, the shootings at Kent State; June 14, the day we sailed away from Japan; November 21 when my mom passed away. And of course there are lots of birthdays that populate my calendar, from Ransom’s (October 25) to mine (September 19) to my oldest friend’s Don’s (September 11) to the birthdates of the five dogs buried on our property and the three still romping though it.

Now, today, I have another anniversary to mark, if not quite celebrate. A year ago today I had my right knee replaced.

It’s been a very tough year and things are still not right. The knee still collects fluid, still hurts and is still swollen. Perhaps when this day rolls around next year I’ll have better news, but we’re not there yet.

I’m sixty-three years old and suffering from many of the maladies that overfed, under-exercised Americans experience. Over the last two days I gave seventeen (17!) vials of blood to the lab at Yale Health to try to sort out some things. I also had x-rays taken of my left hand and left foot, looking for arthritis. I have an upcoming appointment with a hematologist and another with a rheumatologist. I take drugs for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I walk much slower than I used to, sleep worse that I used to, have sex less often than I used to and ache whenever I walk, work or play too hard. Even going into New York for an evening event – something I used to do at the drop of a hat – takes a day from which to recover.

My mom often said to me: “Don’t get old.” She never told me how though. I’ve drunk both Pepsi (“for those who think young:)” and Coke (“for people on the go”) but I still ache and moan.

Mentally, I still feel young – okay, make that youngish. I still crank the Stones or the Who and sing along. I stay in touch with developments in the worlds of classical music, opera, theatre and film. I may go to New York less, but I still go more than most people I know. I walk three dogs everyday, often several times a day. (I clean up puppy poop most days too!)

So it’s a balancing act. I try to believe that if I think good, I feel good. Works some days; others, not so much.

Today, we’ll see; it’s early yet.

Remembering That Night

(Note: this post began life as an email to my friend Don)

The other night I went to sleep thinking about what it must have been like onboard Concordia. Perhaps this kind of story has appeared on TV, but I don't watch much, so I haven't seen it.

Had Ransom and I been there, we would have been in the dining room when the ship hit the rocks, as we always eat late sitting. Dining rooms tend to be low on the ship; on the Concordia they were on decks three and four, I believe. Had we felt the collision and agreed to leave immediately, we would have climbed to perhaps deck 10 or 11, or higher, our usual cabin location. We try not to ride elevators on ship, just to get some exercise; maybe, feeling some urgency, we would have this time, or maybe the power was already down and the lifts weren't running.

We'd get to our cabin, grab coats and warm clothes, our passports and phones -- though in October, when we boarded the Celebrity Silhouette in Civitavecchia, our passports were taken from us and we didn't see them again for four days. We'd climb back down to deck 4 or 5 to our muster station. When we got there there'd be no one in charge; in fact there'd be no officer whatsoever because, remember, no emergency has been declared. So what would we do?

We'd wander, looking for someone to tell us what's going on, but no one would know anything. All we'd hear is, "everything will be ok" or "please return to your cabin."

After a while the ship would be listing noticeably. If the power hadn't already been off, it would be now. Still no emergency had been called. Just a "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by" kind of message -- in this case, an electrical blackout.

I would be trying not to panic, but what the hell is going on? Who's in charge? What do we do?

This, I imagine, is how it was for even the savviest of passengers. And once the listing got really pronounced everything just got worse. By the time the emergency was acknowledged it was hard to maneuver through the ship. Bedlam overran the muster stations; attempts to get to the lifeboats were thwarted by out-of-the-loop crew and by the physical challenge of walking. The lifeboats couldn't be launched because of the severe list of the ship.

Eventually we might have to decide whether to swim for it or fight our way to the port side of the ship, away from the water. Or maybe we'd find crew members loading people into lifeboats and all would work like it is supposed to.

Scary. Very scary. We would try to keep our heads and get off this damned -- literally -- ship. We're tough; we're pushy Americans. We'd survive.

I think.

I took this of my friend Sergio aboard the QE2 in 2002.

The drill had just ended and we had paid close attention I'm sure.

What I Did For Love and Are New Yorkers Healthier than Most Americans?

Conducting members of Le Train Bleu at Galapagos Art Space, Friday, 20 Jan 2012

Ransom led his ensemble Le Train Bleu in another brilliant concert at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn last night. He began with fellow Yale faculty member Martin Bresnick's Der Signál, a short 1982 opera that was presented with video featuring imaginative puppetry by New York's Puppetsweat. Bresnick was there, adding to the piece's charm by telling us the backstory: he had recorded his grandmother reading her daughter's (Bresnick's mother) favorite story and then set her words to music. It was both dramatic and sweet and the whole package was fascinating.

Next up was a piece I consider a twentieth century masterpiece, Steve Reich's Different Trains. The on-stage string quartet was backed up by recorded train whistles and voices as well as by the Kronos Quartet. As a child Reich rode the train from New York to Los Angeles during the war years; as an adult he pondered what kind of trains he might have ridden as a Jew had he grown up in Europe. The piece that has all the energy, drive and emotion of those charging trains, both the transcontinental variety and the Polish death trains.

The evening ended with Judd Greenstein's Change for flute, clarinet, electric guitar, bass and piano. I loved this piece; it felt at times like straight-out jazz, at other times like classical chamber music. It fit the evening, and this wonderful venue, perfectly.

To get to this fantastic concert I left my house at 4:30, caught the 5:06 in Stratford and arrived at Grand Central ten minutes late at 6:56. The subway was particularly slow; I waited a long time for the 4 express; it took me to Fulton Street where I took the A train (yes, THAT A train) for the trip under the river and into Brooklyn. From there it's a ten-minute walk to Galapagos. Coming back I made it to Grand Central with enough time to pick up a sautéed chicken dinner from my favorite Middle-Eastern food cart on Lexington Avenue before boarding the 11:22 to Stratford. I walked into the house at approximately 1:20, almost nine hours after I left.

After feeding the dogs and waiting for a while to take them out I watched a bit of TV and made it to bed at 3am. Quite an effort! Worth every bit of it, though I still wish it were easier.

Oh, and about the healthy New Yorkers? Well, all this travel entails a good bit of walking -- and stair-climbing too. Changing trains at Fulton Street involves almost a ten-minute walk and 91 stairs! Like everyone around me, I did it. Twice. Unlike them, I don't do it every day. I likely would be healthier if I did.

Today?

My feet are killing me.

Cruising

Costa Concordia in better days, before you had ever heard of her

You likely know that I am a veteran cruiser. Ransom and I just sailed in October, leaving, in fact, from Civitavecchia, the same port of departure of the doomed Costa Concordia. Our route took us in a different direction, but both cruises were to stop at some of the same ports, including Cagliari and Palma de Mallorca. We did. She, obviously, did not.

As I've read the news stories and watched the videos for a week now I've thought many things and felt many emotions. Was this mainly the fault of an arrogant and careless captain? Does the company share the blame for poor choices and training? Does the ridiculous size and top-heavy structure of modern cruise ships invite this kind of calamity?

There have been so many contradictory stories that it's impossible as yet to parse it all. It seems obvious the captain waited too long to call "Abandon ship," but isn't it likely that he thought, at least at first, that he could get the situation under control? Could he have imagined such an outcome from a passage he had safely made repeatedly?

Of course the saying is "better safe than sorry," and that takes me to the passengers. One intriguing video showed well bundled-up passengers next to others lightly clad in evening wear. Who were these people? Were the ones wearing coats experienced cruisers who knew the drill and took immediate action, while the others were new to cruising and couldn't fathom there could be danger? Was one group given good advice by their steward, the other bad?

What would we have done had we been in the dining room and felt the collision? Knowing us, I would have argued for going immediately to the cabin while Ransom might have wanted to wait. Who won the point might have been life determining.

If there's a lesson here it might well be that we cannot put our fate totally in another's hands. We need to take responsibility for our lives, follow good advice and ignore bad. The trick, of course, is to know which is which, but from my years of sailing I'm pretty confident in believing that if you hear a crash and the ship starts to list, it's time to get on some warm clothes, grab your passport and phone and head to the life boats.

As tragic as the loss of perhaps thirty-some people is, it is remarkable to look at the Concordia lying on her side and realize that over 4000 people got off safely. This could have been far, far worse.

Costa Concordia in an image you know far too well

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle." - Dr. Martin Luther King

King statue at the MLK National Memorial, Washington, DC

On March 27, 1968, I reported to the downtown Chicago YMCA for the start of six weeks of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) training. After seven days at the Y, we were sent into the field for five weeks of on-site training before our final placement for the rest of the year. I drew an assignment at an agency on the West Side of Chicago.

I reported for my first day of work on April 3. The next night, April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Chicago was relatively quiet that night; all hell was to break loose the next day.

I was young, white and stupid, and oblivious to the coming firestorm, so my new roommate and I went grocery shopping for the weekend. We were in the store when a brick crashed through the plate glass window; we left our corn flakes and Snickers  behind and ran back to the house where we staying. OEO Regional (Office of Economic Opportunity) was on the phone ordering us to get in a cab immediately and head back to the Y.

I spent the next several days watching the city burn while trying to quell the burning in my heart. I never returned to the West Side of Chicago, being sent instead to Aurora, IL. The assassination changed my life. Literally.

Several months later I rode one of three buses that left Aurora for Washington, DC, where I spent weeks in Resurrection City, the encampment of the Poor People’s Campaign on the national mall. It was easily the most intense and eye-opening experience of my life up to then. I met dozens of hard-working and dedicated people and volunteered in the kitchen, learning how to cook greens for hundreds at a time. I rapped politics til late in the night, participated in workshops and marched on federal buildings.

Dr. King’s spirit was everywhere, changing my life again.

Today I think of him and of how far we have come.

And of how far we have yet to go.

Sweet!

Before I was married the best roommate I ever have had was my friend Kathy. Aside from the fact that we were great friends, we also fit together well. She couldn’t stand dirt and dust – two things I can ignore for months on end – so she kept the apartment very clean. I, on the other hand, can’t stand clutter, so I was always picking up and straightening. It was a match made in heaven.

We shared a lot of musical tastes, though she was even more into show tunes than I: Pippin and Godspell are two albums that come to mind. She was also into a group about whom I knew enough to respect, but whose music I didn’t know: Sweet Honey in the Rock.

This a capella gathering of six women came together in 1973. Somehow I have managed to avoid them for thirty-eight years, but today I finally rectified that error. As part of Yale’s celebration of Martin Luther King’s legacy Sweet Honey performed a free concert to a near capacity crowd at Woolsey Hall.

It was, in a word, magical.

They are, in a word, incredible.

I was transfixed.

And transported back to a time when music was not just fun but also important, meaningful and purposeful. Although “We Shall Not Be Moved” was the only song they sang that I knew, every song grabbed me because of the strong delivery these incredible women gave each number. They had us up on our feet, or answering their call, or clapping along – and loving every minute of it.

The cynic in me melted through the cracks of the floor.

Damn powerful women!

And this happened two days after I read a piece on the NPR website, “When did Kumbaya become such a bad thing?” that makes the point “Rather than kumbaya representing strength and power in togetherness and harmony as it once did, the word has come to reflect weakness and wimpiness.”

I admit I have sneered at the thought of singing Kumbaya, but if Sweet Honey had added it to the program – or We Shall Overcome or Blowin’ in the Wind – I would have been singing along, smiling as if it were 1968.

Everybody has one

Today’s the day we learn whether Mitt Romney has the clout in New Hampshire that the polls have long indicated is his. We’ll see whether the homophobe Rick Santorum is just a flash in the pan of evangelical right-wingers or whether more sensible New Englanders also buy into his brand of hatred. We’ll get a better idea whether Ron Paul’s anti-government, isolationist creed has traction in more moderate America.

In other words, today’s the day that voters in New Hampshire express their opinions.

I wrote yesterday about the comical ineptitude of MSC Cruises as it tried to create an English-language web site. I said that the line had gotten some good press. Last night I spent some time reading some of that press, in the form of cruiser’s reviews of the MSC Poesia, posted to the Cruise Critic website. I was reminded again that, yes, everyone has an opinion.

And boy, do they run the gamut.

Lots of people commented that the ship was particularly beautiful, with gorgeous Italian design and less flash than a lot of cruise ships. That’s where the commonality ended. Regarding the food, the service, the entertainment and the management, opinions were all over the map. It was “the worst cruise ever” and “wonderful with many fantastic aspects.” Drinks were the “most inexpensive on any cruise line” according to one writer, while another said “the tours were not particularly good and were expensive, as were drinks on board.”

A passenger noted, “We loved the Italian based shows and the music and singing was wonderful.” Another said “Entertainment was awful, I have seen better at my daughter's junior high school play.”

What’s one to do with all this conflicting information? Hard to say; without knowing the back-story of the writers, it’s impossible to judge. As in New Hampshire, there are conflicting opinions everywhere. Or, as a crude friend of mine says, “opinions are like a**holes; everyone has one.”