Preparing For Winter

We had a very dry summer, followed by a somewhat dry autumn; the leaves lacked their usual brilliant color, but under the circumstances, they did exactly what they were supposed to do – warn us that “it” was coming again.

“It” is the cold and the snow and all the little things which hurry along under their skirts, and these have to do mainly with warmth and safety. If you’ve lived here long enough, you don’t think that much about doing: A day arrives, there is the barely audible “click” in your brain, and everything changes.

The garage is organized so that an automobile will actually be able to fit inside it. This is made possible by moving herbicides to the warm basement of the house so that they will be “safe,” and useable again next Spring when you move them back to the garage so that you can find them again in the autumn to put back in the basement. Unless they have reached their “use by date,” in which case you throw them out recycle them appropriately.

Back in the corner of the garage, the snow tires have sat since the Spring. Now is the time to get them into the back of the car to take them to the tire place where a husky lad will put them on the car and place the “summer tires” in the back of the car. This gives you an early season opportunity to hurt your back or at least say that you hurt your back. What brings relief to your back is to find someone else to do the snow blowing or shoveling. Money is likely involved, but this is a good investment – in fact, among the best.

The same goes for removing the fallen leaves from the yard. Find somebody who will do it for you. Write the check. Complain for no more than three days about the cost, and give daily thanks for the fact that you have chosen to provide employment in our difficult economy and no longer choose to do it yourself.

I have some driveway markers, basically green poles on a spring which help keep people on the driveway. They are an attractive dark green color until you try to find the base in the grassy ground – also dark green. If you wait until the grass is no longer dark green, the ground may be too hard to dig the hole for any new markers. There will come a point when you leave the markers in the garage next to the tires and await perfect installation conditions which never seem to arrive.

The winter clothes which may have been properly stored in the basement (or may not have if summer cold weather arrived as the clothes were finding their own way down a couple of floors). If the latter situation applies, be sure to check the laundry and other nearby locations. Once the clothes are returned to their winter locations, check them for wear, newly observed design and styling flaws, and then put them in the place where they probably should be all the time anyway.

Shovels, ice chippers, bags of sand, and similar tools of the season need to be placed by the front door, and when this happens you are reminded to turn off the outside faucets. In order to do this, one frequently has to step over the winter clothes which were not put away, so one must be careful.

Winter requires an array of footwear for warmth and safety. When I was a kid, we had black galoshes with metal buckles. Ugly and cold, but at least they kept your feet dry. Nowadays you can choose between ugly insulated boots, boots with felt insulation, so big you have to walk like a giant in them, slip-on boots with hearty soles, thingies with sharp points that slip over boots for walking on ice. Beyond that, there are walking sleds (“Sparks, as they call them in Scandinavia), walking poles, cross country skiis, snow shoes.

Others who live here believe that engines are essential in the winter – snowmobiles and similar contrivances. Many of us believe that these provide too much pleasure in the winter and are creatures of the devil, environmentally wasteful, and so, in a word, purposeless. I’m sorry to report that these machines and their brethren seem to be a very popular way of dealing with early darkness and perennial cold and snow – there is almost always the so.

The furnace needs to be checked and tuned, supplies of cocoa and whisky to be aggregated (part of blizzard prevention), extra blankets put on or near the beds, the battery powered radio located in case of power failure), the safety supplies for the car (blankets, ice scrapers (several for different kinds of ice and as back-up), sleeping bag, small shovel, bag of sand, coffee can for individual relief. Inside the house those of us without a lot of hair look around the nightcap to be found, second only in importance to blankets and duvets. Hot water bottles are also a good investment. Not only are they warm, but if you are surprised by them, you can learn the difference between first and second degree burns.

Lastly, the winter vocabulary returns to active use. This is aided by a lot of preparatory discussion having to do changes in the weather – looks like snow, could be unpleasant tomorrow, have to change the oil in the car, better tell the cat, bring in the brass monkeys – all that discussion which is really the way we warn each other and assure each other that we are prepared and prepared to endure it together.

Our vocabularies change, too, so that windchill, black ice, turning into a skid, braking distance, blue wax, kitty litter (a sand substitute), and a whole host of curse words not required the rest of the year arrive as though freshly minted. Other words used during this time are Florida, Mexico, Vegas, California, the Caribbean, Hawaii, even Iowa.

But of course, we never are completely prepared for winter, not even for the gray day when the first white flakes descend from the sky, land, linger for just an instant before the last heat of the ground melts them. That experience is as old as we are, but new and simple and beautiful each autumn.

And then, alas, experience starts to accumulate and linger on our roads and sidewalks, and steps. Outwardly we continue to complain, but secretly we just look forward to crawling into our beds, snuggling under the covers with a good book, surrounded by the quiet of a winter’s night and being grateful just for being warm.

How I Found Courage

A couple of days before Thanksgiving, I sat down and wrote a screed, and I am thankful I didn’t put it up on the site. It was off the mark, a bit sour, and not what I intended. What follows comes closer to the mark.

Each year I find I am thankful for yet another “something” which has come into my life, and this year what tops the list is a place called “Courage Center.”

For the last several years my right hip has started to deteriorate, and the discomfort has moved from sporadic to continual to continuous, and the situation finally got to the point where I’m scheduled for a replacement hip early in the New Year.

I tried everything I could think of to delay the surgery – glucosamine/chondroitin, riding a bike followed by riding a semi-recumbent bike, active stretching and strengthening, physical therapy, anti-inflammatories – including the now infamous VIOXX.

On the recommendation of a physical therapist from Baltimore whom I met by chance on a walk in London (a story for another time), I bought some meditation tapes and found them far more helpful than I ever would have imagined..new age music and all.

Then one day, I was talking to my stockbroker, and she listened to the hip update and then recommended I go out to a place called Courage Center for some work in their therapy pool. I figured it beat slaughtering a chicken and slathering the warm fat on my hip, so in a “what the hell” mood which failed to disguise the true level of my desperation, I made an appointment for an evaluation.

I met one of their physical therapists in the reception area, and on the hike down to the room where she was going to assess my state of hip, I felt like carrion being watched by a hungry eagle. By the time we arrived, she had it pretty well sorted out but confirmed it with the usual pushing and pulling and aches and pains.

Then we got in the pool, and I learned about the advantages of 91 degree (Fahrenheit) water, of working out in an environment of nearly zero gravity, and discovering exercises which would help my hip and prepare me for the day when I would have a new hip which would be an improvement over what I’ve got now.

Truth to tell, I got in my car after that first session, and I didn’t know whether to laugh - almost angrily - at my not having learned about the place far earlier than I did or to cry at my never having felt so good after a workout with the hip in its sad state.

I had always thought that the Courage Center was for people with disabilities, serious physical problems; yes, and, it turned out, I was one of them. My disability was pretty modest compared to some of the people helped by the staff at Courage Center, but that didn’t matter.

So for several weeks Kathy trained me to do a water program which would help me, and then I was allowed to come work out on my own. Every morning when I get up and head for the pool, I have exactly the same set of feelings I had when I was a hockey playing kid and it was time to go to the rink – anticipation bordering on excitement, and the urge to tear out of the house and go get in the pool.

As a result of our efforts, I shall probably be better prepared to cope with the surgery and the period immediately thereafter, and I know I’ll count the days until I can get back in the pool.

In the meantime, I’m getting to know some of the others working out in the pool, to appreciate what they’ve overcome with assistance and hard work, and to ease myself into the ad hoc community which ebbs and flows in the pool each workout.

I may be a latecomer to this remarkable place, but I shall always be deeply thankful for the facilities, services, and staff of Courage Center, yet another reason why I'm glad I live in Minnesota.

Thanksgiving....again

Thanksgiving here in the north country give us a chance to pause just before the fear of “the great blizzard” gets to full force. I look out my window at the oaks between me and the lake, and while most have shed their leaves and been picked up and composted, a few trees resist gravity and hold on to what they’ve got left.

Each gray day without snow give us time to pause and to consider the stark beauty of the changing of the seasons and to anticipated the back pain from shoveling, the potential slip on the ice, or the nasty skid around a curve which once seemed so familiar.

The grass is somewhere between wakefulness and sleep; the markers have been placed along the edge of the drive; shovels and scrapers are next to the front door; water to the outdoor faucets has been turned off; and the storms windows are in their full down and locked position.

The snow tires are now on the trusty old Volvo; the oil has been changed, and the window washer fluid brought up to full strength.

Winter clothes, hats, gloves, scarves, along with nightcaps (yes, I do), heavy comforters, and long underwear have arrived from the basement, and some have even been put where they belong.

Intuitively, we practice the “well balanced walk” which one can observe anywhere in the country by going to the ward in a local hospital where the patients with hemorrhoids are recovering. It is that walk, combined with layer upon layer of warm clothes which gets us through the winter.

Well, that, along with coffee and whisky, and perhaps a warm dog or three.

So for us, Thanksgiving marks the end of the preparations for winter. With winter waiting in the wings, it is good to be hopeful at Thanksgiving, and this year, I’m inclined to the view that our hopes are somewhat limited – by the world situation, by the dismaying performance of politicians, by the daily reminders of man’s inhumanity to man in both word and deed, and by the persistent focus of the media on things that don’t matter.

So let’s be grateful for friends and family, the food we eat, the roof over our head, and the work we do to make it possible. Anything else is a bonus.

Driving Through What & To Where

Last Sunday K’s family had a reunion in a park to the west of the Twin Cities. We occupied an open shed, and before the food, we prayed and sang, and after the food we chatted. It was a pleasantly informal gathering and had the feel of people who don’t see each other very often getting better acquainted.

I’ve been around K’s family for decades but am not part of it, so no one knows quite what to do with me, and, I must admit, the converse is equally true. But lots of smiles and chatter about ancestors made it all quite tolerable.

Now I can confess that the part of the day which made me truly glad was the hour and some drive away from the city and through countryside, which when I traversed it on occasion as a child, was rural. Nothing but farm houses, fields, silos and the usual accoutrements of the agricultural trade.

That was several decades ago, and the intrusion of national enterprises, from gas stations to restaurant chains to big box retailers, has changed all that.

Even so, there are stretches where one sees nothing but corn and soybeans, growing quickly towards the harvest, and behind the fields or next to the road were family farms, one after another. Occasionally, there would be an informal sign about the “Fresh Corn” for sale, and one could see members of the family gathered around a table under a shade tree, drinking coffee and chatting, while they waited for customers to stop by.

The day was pleasant, full to the brim with sun and blue sky, and the hum of the car lulled me so that I felt I was floating along, in a time not quite the past and not the present either, and that my trip had some meaning beyond a drive to and from a family reunion.

I do not know what great significance there might be in several members of a family, sitting around a table drinking coffee, eating home baked muffins, and talking to each other, whether they are at a reunion or just waiting for somebody to buy a dozen ears of corn.

In a world of frequently fetid monologues, demagogues, and spinning of the truth, a family conversation may be both rare and undervalued, as much for what is not said as what is.

And in the silence between the words, one can be struck by the sounds of the wind through the trees, songs of the birds, and even the sound of the traveler in the car passing by, headed for a conversation down the road.

No radio, no tv, no game boy, no cell phone, no PDA…what could be better on a fine clear August morning than the songs sung by families along the open road?

Remembering Julia Child

One of the first cookbooks I ever bought was “Mastering The Art of French Cooking,” by Julia Child and Simone Beck, and to this day, I am unable to explain why I did. As a bachelor in his first teaching position, my idea of cooking was cubed steak, chipped beef, hot dogs, and hamburgers. There was the occasional tuna salad, but rarely any fish, and nothing ever very complicated.

The core of my my bachelor cuisine was the hamburger, and it was clear that this apple had not rolled very far from the tree.

My parents’ idea of dinner was meat, potatoes, sometimes accompanied by soup or a salad, and dessert, and my mother was happiest if someone else would prepare it, and any bipedal mammal met her minimum qualifications. When she found herself desperate on Tuesday…nearly every Tuesday, she would prepare cheese soufflé, and in the summer this would be accompanied by petit pan squash. I learned early on to get on the phone Tuesday morning to see whether I could cadge a dinner in a non-cheese soufflé home, and to my good fortune, there were many such households.

About two years after I had been cooking for myself, I realized that I was in a rut which was beginning to resemble an abyss, so it was Julia Child who helped me climb out. Most of the recipes were far too complex for me, especially the one for making French bread which took more than a dozen pages, and I will confess that I didn’t prepare many of her dishes.

What Julia Child did for me was to show me that cooking could be serious and fun, and that the journey could be fascinating and very tasty, and the easiest way for me to learn was to read cookbooks. So I have for the last several decades, and they have led me in interesting directions, just not as far as I once might have hoped.

It’s taken me a long time to be comfortable in the kitchen, and over the years I’ve subjected lots of guests to some good food and some flaming failures, and invariably the failures are more interesting than the successes.

These days, I keep things simple – having a bad hip tends to limit my time standing at much of anything, but come the autumn, I’ll be back making bagels (I never have had the courage to return to that French bread recipe.)

With Julia Child’s passing, an era in cooking, cookbooks, and cooking on television has drawn to a close, but it was Julia who led us down the path of discovery. As she said once, if it hadn’t been she, it would have been someone else, but someone else might not have been as warm, as self-effacing, as natural as Julia was.

She was not only a cook; she was one of the great teachers in our lives, and we were oh so lucky to have been able to come along on part of her long and wonderful life.

Bon appetit!

Not A Headache But A "Conceptual Emergency"

On my recent holiday, I was on staying on one of my favorite islands off the West coast of Scotland. Not many people live on the island, and the ones who do appear to breathe life in deeply, push their lives forward without much strain, and always say hello or make a friendly wave when one car passes by another on one of the island’s narrow roads. Over the years, I have returned again and again to the island to be reminded of how much more important mono-tasking is for the soul than multi-tasking ever will be.

In one of the towns on the island, there is a combined gift shop and book store, and we were meandering around, trying to look hard enough so that we could take in what we liked visually and thereby avoid buying it and lugging it home to have another "objet" to dust.

My habits took me into the book part of the shop, and one section – the one emphasizing Scotland, and especially its islands, is very small, U shaped, with one chair squeezed into it, so I sat down and had lots of books within arm’s reach.

My eyes fell on one, a little (they would say “wee”) paperback titled, “Ten Things To Do In A Conceptual Emergency,” and when the bells ringing in my head slowed down, I picked it up, read a few pages (of its fewer than forty), and decided that this was definitely worth taking home.

One thing about traveling to another country is that it allows more time for rumination about the country you’re from; one is not surrounded by the amazingly syncopated drumbeats from the mass media, the distance is not just geographical, it is emotional and psychological. Things…life…your own personality seem clearer or at least outlined in a way which never happens at home. ( Unless you’re in middle of a long, hot, contemplative shower, and that’s a topic for another time. )

I guess I reacted to the title because for a long time I have felt that we Americans are trying to deal with or are trying not to deal with some sort of continuing emergency in our lives. It might be governmental, attitudinal, diplomatic, societal, or all of them, if one has to start thinking about it, maybe conceptual is a good place to start.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the book’s introduction so that you get a flavor of it:

This is a new world. It is raising fundamental questions about our competence in key areas of governance, economy, sustainability and consciousness. We are struggling as professionals and in our private lives to meet the demands it is placing on traditional models of organization, understanding and action. We are losing our bearings. This is a conceptual emergency.

One very human reaction is to give up the struggle to make sense of what is going on and to lapse into short term hedonism or longer term despair. Another is to strive mightily to regain the comfort of control by reasserting old truths with more conviction, stressing fundamentals, interpreting complexity in simple terms. [Page 5]

Issues we need to consider include...

Design For Transition To A New World
Give Up On The Myth of Control
Trust Subjective Experience
Take The Long View
Form And Nurture Integrities
Practise Social Acupuncture
Sutain Networks of Hope
Converge Ideas and Action

If you are tantalized by some of this, then you should visit the source for the book, The International Futures Forum by clicking here. (The Forum is located in St. Andrews, Scotland, and is associated with St Andrews University.)

This is the sort of book which can be read in a single sitting and would make for good discussion in homes, and schools, and other informal communities. And it might help. Us. Now.

Medicare Is Just Around The Corner

Recently I’ve been giving some thought to the subject of birthdays; the primary reason was that I was approaching the birthday where you hear from our government about your new health coverage and the direct monthly deposit of S***** S******* checks. I knew I was about to arrive at that station in life’s journey – I’d begun to laminate membership cards and the like and realized that an interest in lamination is an indication of some Impending significant shift.

This was not a birthday to look forward to, either for chronological or attitudinal reasons: I don’t like getting old, at least by other people’s definition, and I think age depends much more on attitude than mere counting like growth rings on a tree.

In my youth, there were birthday parties, or so I have been told. They were fun, full of candles and cake, and I have learned that I enjoyed myself at these events. It may be true, but I don’t remember, to be honest about it.

On my 21st birthday, after I had righted myself following an academic misadventure, my mother presented me with an envelope, more in it than a card….cash, perhaps?

No, it was nothing that trivial. Inside were a pair of apron strings – honest to God, cut apron strings. I was on my own, trembling but - at last.

The next birthday I remember was my 50th, when Karen persuaded me to go on a breakfast picnic, followed by, perhaps a dog show in Saint Paul, and a visit to her Mother who was in the hospital after hip surgery.

Controlling person that I am, I had invited a small group to the house, cooked the chicken in advance, and by mid-afternoon, I had to get home. Running so late, that I didn’t have time to get ice to keep the beer cold, I came down the road vexed, no, frustrated.

When we turned into the driveway, there were all kinds of friends from the worlds I’ve inhabited, meandering about, a tent had been erected, a whole pig was being roasted, musicians were playing Swedish music, and I was embarrassed at how easily fooled I had been, angry at the same thing, and amazed that such a conspiracy had been cooked up by several friends months in advance, and I hadn’t gotten wind of it, not even a slight rustling of the leaves. In spite of all, to be cosseted in that way was, ulitimately, a delight.

And with that birthday, I declared an end to such celebrations – please. OK, send me the cards with really old guys in wheelchairs, with walking sticks, no teeth…even the one I got this year with a man in his hospital gown lying face down on a gurney in the company of a nurse and doctor who are looking at the patient’s fanny from which is…well, let me paraphrase the punch line by the nurse, “He says the instructions on the tube are to squeeze from the bottom.” I laughed and laughed, until I opened the next card which was identical to the first. Then I began to wonder, not about my friends and relations, but about me.

This year I wiggled and feinted and managed to have my birthday at home with Karen; we explored some of the finest from my favorite Scottish distillery, and it made for a fine celebration.

I still don’t like, in the words of Curt Gowdy, once a broadcaster of The Boston Red Sox, to be thought of as “rounding third and heading for home,” in spite of the stark reality which the obituary pages display every day.

There is a business to run, a house to be managed, remodeling projects to be worked on, trips to be taken, genealogies to be updated, a basement to be organized.

No more birthday celebrations, no retirement in view, just a modest change in gears.

If I’m careening toward the abyss, I would like to be driving a clown car, with a bunch of my pals jammed in along side me, telling wonderfully raunchy stories as we go – good friends and good fun, that’s the gear for m

The Tale Of The Toto Toilet

Last week my older sister sent me a column from the Washington Post…it was about a toilet, and after reading it, I thought, “Darn, that writer beat me to it!” So, here I am with the same topic but a different approach….

I have a new toilet, and I’m only slightly afraid to confess that I really like it, and I do mean really. You might think of a toilet as not much more than necessary (which is what I think they used to call it, a necessary), or a device to facilitate contemplation, meditation, retreat – or just a fine place to read. But some would say it’s just a toilet, and, speaking friend to friend, not a topic for social conversation.

But it is. And having just looked at the preceding sentences, part of me cannot believe that I am going to sail on and explain to you why this is so. I promise I shall do it as nicely and tidely as I can, and with respect.

When I remodeled the guest bathroom downstairs in my old farmhouse, the building code had changed, and I was required to put in one of the new 1.6 gallons per flush devices, rather than the previous “Controlled But Extremely Satisfying Maelstrom” model.

After construction and during a party, one of our guests who, no doubt, dines strictly on substantial quantities of whole grains, beans, rice, and extremely dense vegetables, reported that the then device had not been able to perform to a minimum acceptable standard, in spite of several successive flushes.

With my minimal plumbing skills, I was able to solve the problem and decided to equip the bathroom with heavy duty rubber gloves, a couple of plungers, very thin “bathroom tissue,” and the fervent hope that other guests would not find themselves in a situation which might require my intervention. This strategy, I thought would eliminate the middle man (me) and encourage the kind of self-reliance which Ralph Waldo Emerson admired.

When the unsolvable happened a second time at another party and Emerson didn’t appear, I joined the cadre of those who believe that 1.6 gallon per flush toilets are an invention of the devil, an unnecessary governmental requirement, and besides they just don’t work worth a, well, darn. Two of the 1.6 gallon flushes comes quite close to the 3.5 gallon flush versions of yore, so if your loo doesn’t work virtually all of the time, well that’s money down the drain and sometimes not much else.

Then I had the good luck to come down with a knee problem, such that sitting down on and getting up from the aforementioned device became quite painful, and I thought myself too young for the plastic lifter devices you see from time to time.

One day, in the midst of my wrestling with this quandary and trying to understand the advantages of the double roll of bathroom tissue, the one that doesn’t unroll without it and me fighting and cursing, I had a conversation with my older sister and explained my dilemma.

“Toto,” she said.

“Toto? What on earth are you talking about, and I know I’m not in Kansas anymore.”

“Toto toilets,” she said.They’re Japanese, come in a taller model, and will accept any offering without difficulty. I have a couple of them, and they are terrific.”

So, I began to do my research; I went to the company web-site, visited a local dealer and just spend some time “sitting around,” and decided that a Toto might just be the answer.

The plumber had never installed one, but he did a fine job, and the ten year old toilet went out to the garage (after pausing in the back yard for two days to create a little neighborly excitement at the sight of a substantial piece of white porcelain post-conceptual, post-industrial and altogether tasteless yard art.

Testing of the Toto has continued on a regular basis ever since. Not once has it failed to perform at a very high level with its friendly gurgle – not once has it required multiple flushes It uses the same 1.6 gallons as its predecessor, but there is something about the design which makes it work perfectly. And my knees don’t hurt the way they used to.

A month ago, the former tea room proprietress in the building where our offices are called to catch up on things. For some reason I decided to talk about my new Toto. When she started to giggle, I overlooked it. But she kept on giggling, until I asked, “Is it that funny?”

“You sound like my husband. We got a Toto a year or two ago, and he just can’t stop talking about it…we just love it.”

Then I knew I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t just my sister and I who had affection for our Totos…there were others, quietly talking up their Totos and recommending them. One friend of mine dropped by just to “test sit the Toto,” and now he’s getting one. In the meantime, my sister has Totoed her place in Maine.

Now, I know, gentle reader, how silly you must think all this fuss is over a toilet…a device we all use and rarely think about.

But if you owned a Toto – well, first you would understand, and second, you would find yourself talking about it to a friend, a neighbor, or a relative, and talking about relief – that is, the relief of having all the confidence in the world that your toilet problems were behind you (sorry, I just can’t help myself….)

I must say that I didn’t know how satisfying it would be just to be able to talk about toilets without flushing.

But I’ve moved on, and I’m presently working on understanding how geometric patterns in loo paper allow the paper companies to use less cellulose which increases profits. And you probably thought it was just an attractive design…

We Could Learn A Little From The Baboons

On April 13th, the New York Times published an article about some research into the behavior of a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya. Now, normally, baboons are not high in my reading priorities, no matter whether they’re overpaid corporate executivess, full-of-hot-air politicians, or celebrities enjoying their fifteen minutes, but the headline persuaded me to read on.

“No Time For Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture,” it said.

It seems that researchers have been studying one particular troop of baboons for a couple of decades. At the outset, this troop was dominated by a small group of truculent – no, downright aggressive – males. They were in a tussle with a neighboring troop of baboons over the rights to a the spoils – literary – at garbage dump not far from a nearby lodge.

Unfortunately, the meat in the dump was tainted, and the dominant males all died.

The males who survived were of the non-dominant kind, along with the females and the young. With the disappearance of the aggressive males there was, in the words of the Times’ article “a cultural swing toward pacificism, a relaxing of the usual baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes, and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.” And there was less stress throughout the troop.

But here’s what’s really interesting: This change has lasted for twenty years – in spite of new males arriving to enliven the community (the males born in the troop leave the community and pursue their interests elsewhere).

Out of curiosity, I strolled through the report of the research, and amidst the usual tables graphs (you can too by searching online for the publication PLOS Biology and perusing the April issue).

(Other primates and some non-primates like birds and fish have elements of culture – they learn how to crack open nuts (chimpanzees) , how to get food (birds) , and how to communicate (whales and dolphins).)

But this example is different in that these baboons have maintained a kind of community which is markedly different from most baboon troops . The researchers observe in passing that “a number of investigators have emphasized how a tolerant and gregarious social setting facilitates social transmission….” Put much too simply, bullies create aggression, hierarchies, and stress, while collaborative communities create less stress and more peace.

Hmmm….maybe we should look around the world in which we primates forage to see how we’re fostering social transmission through tolerance and gregarious social settings.

Our families….well, maybe. Our schools….not nearly enough….Our government….are you kidding?

The troop of primates running our federal government has shown us very clearly that the creation of an intolerant and aggressive social setting is the way to go….to go to war, to damage our environment, to increase the national debt, to impair education, to maintain the increasing gulf between our rich and our poor, and - by the way - to run a presidential campaign.

Enough. We could use more humanity, less stress, more collaboration, less competition, less war and more concerted efforts at peace.

Ultimately we decide what kind of social milieu we want to have, and we get to make that decision – again - in November. Just be sure you vote for the baboon – sorry, fellow primate - who’s interested in helping construct the same kind of world you want.

Women's Basketball....Oh, and Men's, Too

Something odd happened in these parts Tuesday night. In the middle of the evening, there was a long, low rumble. I could hear it coming, waited for the house to stop vibrating, and listened to it move off across the lake into the distance.

This event happened at almost the same time the women’s basketball team of The University of Minnesota (the “Golden Gophers”) defeated the much higher ranked Duke University team in the “elite eight” of the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship tournament.

I sat in my chair watching the Minnesota players celebrate this almost universally unpredicted victory and realized that the odd sound which had affected our region was the sound of scales falling from men’s eyes…men who had felt in their heart of hearts that women’s athletics was a sop to equal rights, Title IX, women who wanted to be like men, women who wanted to destroy men’s athletics, women who really didn’t care, or something in that thematic area.

Several years ago I, too, might have had some sympathy for those perspectives, but one night I stuck around after a Minnesota men’s hockey game to watch the Harvard women play a game. Because few lingered, I was able to find a spot behind of the Harvard bench. (As a Harvard alumnus, I have maintained a certain and delicate loyalty through the years….) It was then that I saw how much these athletes cared about playing and about playing well, and there was a ripple of little clinks as the scales from my eyes shattered when they hit the floor. Better late than never, I suppose.

The University’s women’s program began with an incompetent coach, followed by one who gave us one year before moving to what she thought was a better program, and she was succeeded by one Pam Borton, an assistant coach at Boston College. Under Borton, the struggling program found its feet, and as public attention bloomed, we discovered the following differences between our men’s and women’s intercollegiate basketball teams:

The women play like a disciplined team.
The women listen to their coaches.
The women seem to care about each other.
The women keep their egos under control.
The women go to class.
The women get their degrees.
The women convey a sense of joy about every aspect of their basketball lives.
The women seem to understand that basketball is not life - just one element of it.
The women seem to know that for the generations of younger women behind them, they carry a special responsibility.
The women make free throws.

No doubt we are in what will soon be referred to as the halcyon days of women’s college basketball; I shudder to consider the prospect of recruiting scandals, academic infractions – the same problems which have impaired men's programs for the last eon. But while the golden glow still is with us, I intend to enjoy what these young women are doing for themselves and what delight they are giving to the rest of us.

Sunday evening, they’re up against the long-successful team from the University of Connecticut, and no doubt more men around here than ever before will be in front of the television cheering our bunch on. Win or lose, tears will be shed, and gender differences will have not a damn thing to do with it.

On The Death of Alistair Cooke

In American broacasting, one of the most interesting, elegant,and thoughtful voices was that of Alistair Cooke who died yesterday at the age of 95.

In America he was best remembered for his hosting of a program called “Omnibus,” which ran on Sunday afternoons. For a kid in the heartland, it was the chance to get to know the important things going on in the world, especially of the arts, and Cooke was a knowledgeable guide, and a remarkable example of what a liberal arts education might produce.

Subsequently, he became the host of Masterpiece Theatre on PBS and introduced us to the best realizations of English literature we'd ever seen. His words did more than just introduce the program - they gave us a context to help illuminate our viewing of it.

He was a graduate of Cambridge University but came to us early in life and decided to stay. He became an American citizen several decades ago, and settled in New York where he plied his trade as broadcast presenter, writer, aspiring jazz musician, and raconteur.

He was one of those guys who knew everybody but didn’t feel obliged to let you know that, he wore dark suits well, and his soft voice belied the intensity of his eyes.

When he came through my town after publishing a book on America, I stood in line to have my copy autographed. Because of the length of the line, he just signed, not looking up or even saying hello. Disappointing yes, but sometimes just being in the presence, however briefly, of someone you’ve admired from afar is enough.

Later on, when I was in radio and trying to start the Christmas Eve broadcast of “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” from King’s College, Cambridge, I invited him to host the program. His reputation would help the broadcast, he was a graduate of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge, and he could make sense of it for Americans. He demurred, according to his secretary, because of his many obligations, and I was sorry not to have had the opportunity to work with him.

For nearly six decades, Cooke's weekly “Letters From America ” for BBC Radio helped Britain understand something about us, and for those few of us who listened to them on shortwave, they helped us understand us, too, in spite of the fact that he would not allow them to be heard here. That did not change until evolving broadcasting technologies trumped his will.

With the arrival of BBC’s World Service on many public radio stations in the USA and on satellite radio, more of us were able to appreciate his detached involvement – or was it involved detachment – as he made sense of what seemed to be happening here.

What I shall never forget is the image of a lanky Brit on a fuzzy black and white screen introducing ideas and people and performances which I had heard about from my father after his return from a trip to New York or London. Seeing “it,” and not just talking about “it” made a difference to me, and Alistair Cooke, no matter what the medium, was a companionable guide who opened new realms for me.

It is not just his departure which is sad; what is sadder is that in looking around America, there appears to be no one to take his place…at a time when we desperately need considerable help understanding ourselves.

A Wedding In The Family...Like Most, But Different

My niece Suzanne, got married last week.

She is one of my five nieces and nephews, and like the others, I have never gotten to know any of them very well. I like to think that it is mainly a question of geography - they all grew up in parts of the country far removed from where I was working; I would catch glimpses of them at weddings when they were younger, subsequently at family reunions, and more recently and regrettably at memorial services. We all lead busy and mobile lives, so our orbits do not always coincide.

Suzanne has always been her own person. Intelligent, knowledgeable, curious, and quick are adjectives which apply to her, and she has a wonderfully wicked sense of humor. After growing up mainly in Vermont, she went to college in Maine, and eventually moved to the West Coast and settled in northern California where she has lived for several years.

Her wedding was planned on quite short notice, aided and abetted by Suzanne's older sister, among others, and although not everyone in the families could be on hand for the ceremony and the festivities following, it was, by all reports, a memorable event. I expect that there were many tears of joy shed on scene and around the country by all who know and love the happy couple.

It's always good to have additions to the family - textures change, interactions encourage the exploration of new paths, and sometimes political discussions can rile the blood...much better than the same old same old at family gatherings. With families you always have to be
scraping away at the carapace of the same conversations too many times.

A lifetime commitment, solemnized formally, requires a significant kind of intellectual and emotional courage and so it is much to be both admired and appreciated; one can only hope this couple has as smooth a voyage as life's circumstances allow them.

And so I wish Suzanne and her mate Susannah all the joy and happiness and love of which humans are capable.

Some choices we make; some choices are made for us in other realms. What made us and what we have made of ourselves notwithstanding, love is love and love is blind -- characteristics for which we all should be grateful to the bottoms of our collective hearts, for reasons any spouse is happy to make clear to the other.

Bon voyage and my love to them both!

I'll String Along With Hilary Hahn...Anytime!

I listen to a lot of classical music, but – like many people – I never took that music appreciation course in college. It’s one of the many modest errors of my life, but a nagging one in a minor key (don’t ask-I can’t tell you).

But I like to think that I have a reasonably competent ears after hundreds and hundreds of performances, but experienced ears, absent substantive knowledge, is – well – just another pair of ears.

I have felt the pangs of my learning avoidance deeply on two occasions in the last year or two, both times at recitals. The first was a performance by the German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff who sang with such intelligence and grace that one felt genuinely privileged to be in the presence of such artistry.

The second was a recital last week by the young American violinist Hilary Hahn. A while ago I had heard her interviewed on NPR’s “Weekend Edition," followed by an excerpt from one of her recordings. Something about her personality and quite a lot about her playing jumped out at me. For example, when asked about why she made an effort to meet the audience after a recital, she said that the audience was an important element in her performance, no concert without them, in fact, and she enjoyed meeting people. She's just a kid, I thought, but she gets it....

The excerpt of her performing showed an artist who brought, at the age of twenty-three, not only immense physical skills but an musical intelligence which seemed extremely well developed. I sat in my car, in the parking lot outside the supermarket, early on a Sunday morning, until the end of the segment.

As a result of this introduction, I bought several of her recordings, each of which I now treasure, but particularly her recording of partitas and sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, made when she was 17. I have always enjoyed listening to Bach, although I must say that I have never liked his music very much (I’ve already admitted my ignorance, you know.).

Hahn’s recording brought me to a standstill; it was as though the clouds had parted and this immense beam of light surrounded her performance – I sat in my chair without coffee, without magazine or newpaper in aid of my limited musical appreciation and listened with new ears.

To say that I was interested in hearing her play in person was an understatement, and I feared that I might not be as amazed by her playing in person. In truth, from the first notes of the opening Mozart sonata in her concert (with Natalie Zhu at the piano) I was a goner.

Unlike many violinists who get to the heart of a piece by boring in from the exterior, she seemed to start at the center and encouraged us to come along. It may have been one of the most interesting, if not amazing, experiences I've ever had in a concert hall. What I heard her saying in her performance was, “I have thought about this piece and responded to it, and this is where I am with it tonight, so let's explore it together." It was not the "I've played this three hundred times and frankly I'm a little bored with it" approach which I seem to have heard a bit too much of over the years.

The Bach partita she played was extraordinary, difficult runs seemed easy and in the cascade of notes, clarity was all. That performance really finished me off.

She didn’t showboat or add unnecessary flourishes. She stood there in an iridescent gown, shifting from foot to foot, and encouraged us to accept her offering. In rapt concentration for over two and a half hours, we followed, accepted, and celebrated our knowing that we were in the presence of the unassuming, almost shy, “real thing, “ a major artist.

Now at 24, she is in the midst of a burgeoning career, and it will be fascinating to hear how she develops her talent. In spite of my musical ignorance, I know this: Hilary Hahn is one of those artists who changes her world – the parameters of repertoire, the musical tastes of the audience, and unknowable aspects of classical music in the coming decades.

And if you read her online journals at http://www.hilaryhahn.com, you will no doubt find her a interesting diarist as well. As she explores her writing in the same way she explores the music she performs, somebody will eventually tumble to the idea of publishing them, and she will have "found" another career.

It’s good to get your internal carillon rung by someone like Hilary Hahn - young, bright, thoughtful, immensely talented - you tend to reconsider those easy shots about the deficiencies of the younger generation and, in the case of Hilary Hahn to appreciate the hope embedded in the music, in her performance, and in the artist herself.


Nick

P.S. Three of my faves from her recordings are Hilary Hahn Plays Bach (SONY), Brahms and Stravinsky Violin Concertos (SONY), and the Beethoven Violin Concerto, couples with Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade (SONY), all available from the usual sources.

Mother's Theory Of Entertaining

From my earliest days, I have vivid memories of my parents leaving our house for a party, with a swoosh of perfume and aftershave in their wakes, as they put on their hats and coats (yes, they did), and closed the door, leaving us urchins behind while they had a really good time somewhere else. We were asleep when they returned, and, in retrospect, that was probably just as well.

I also remember the activity in the house when they entertained, and that was often. We children were discouraged from being underfoot, but invariably, when the party had begun and the first round of drinks served, we would be “invited” in to meet the guests…probably about as much fun for them as it was for us.

“Shake the other person’s hand firmly and look them in the eye,” was my mother’s eleventh commandment. My father’s advice was somewhat more self-serving. When we were about to attend an afternoon wedding and reception thereafter, he always said, “Get through the receiving line and then look for the shrimp – there won’t be any dinner here tonight.”

My mother loved to entertain, and my father loved to tell stories. It was a grand combination, and they had wonderful parties….sometimes cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, sometimes a small dinner party, and sometimes something a bit larger. Good food, good drink, and in those days, lots of tobacco smoke throughout. The chatter was fast and loud and never about the Hegelian dialectic or strategies to achieve world peace, and there were jokes, lots and lots of jokes.

Mother believed that one should never have a quantity of chairs equal to the number of guests, except at dinner when she admitted it was a convenience. More importantly, she believed that having the same group time after time became boring, so she was always on the lookout for a new person or couple to help change the rhythm of the evening.

My father insisted that there was always something playing on the phonograph – Bobby Short, Lotte Lenya, the latest Broadway or West End smash hit or anything by Cole Porter.

Having been around those parties – or to be somewhat more accurate – being in bed above those parties, whatever I learned about entertaining was by osmosis.

This holiday season I gave a few parties and attended several, and the cumulative result of those experiences, compressed into a few weeks, was that I thought it was time to reflect and to redefine my notion of a good social gathering. I have peaked out on the “hi how are ya – gee it’s nice to see ya – we gotta get together soon” events” and have recommitted myself to small groups not exceeding six total.

That way, you have a conversation which involves every one, so it’s a real conversation, not the string of party clichés you dig out of the closet regularly. And as host, I don’t have to tear around the kitchen in a rush – in fact, nothing is as intense as it seems to be when you have a real crowd on hand.

We’re starting this revisionist strategy slowly, with a small group on the occasional Sunday afternoon – tea at four, sherry about 5:30, and a bowl of soup and dessert a bit later on. The first attempt went very well – I learned new things from and about people I’d known for years and years – it was both relaxing and energizing. I had a great time, and I think others were pleased by the experience.

On the other hand, I’m not sure my parents would have liked it very much. No, I know they wouldn’t have.

Not their kind of conversation or the preferred kind of music, but more importantly... no shrimp!

Happy entertaining!