Summer in Paris. Some're not. Somme isn't.

Well, gardening apparently didn't float anyone's boat, at least enough to write a response.  If it's angst and controversy you're wantin', you'll be left wantin' this week, too.  I am apparently riding a wave of contentment and Wellbutrin--er, wellbeing-- right now.

Two events in the coming week have my attention and a share of my show: Bob Dylan's 71st(!) birthday on May 28, and Mariah Edson's trip to France on June 3.  I'll start with Mariah.

Mariah has always had an interest in other cultures and languages, perhaps since she is multicultural herself.  She taught herself Japanese at a ridiculously young age, took 3 languages in high school and 2 others in college, and did the Middlebury/Monterrey intensive 4 week course in French at 15, before she'd ever set foot in a French classroom.  She's been looking for another intensive immersion experience, and we were lucky enough to find one.  Through a former colleague at UNH (Sandell Morse if you're wondering, Brock and Becky R.), we found a couple whose son has just gotten married and moved out.  They live in Vincennes, a 15-minute Metro ride from Paris.  Valerie, the nascent host-mom, does some sort of translation work, but wants to improve her English; so, with method, means and motive in place, Mariah will spend June, July and August in France, room-and-board-free, improving her French and Valerie's English.  C'est tres bon ("It's wicked good!")!

And before this goes further into holiday newsletter territory, on to Zimmy.  I don't know about you, but I still tend to think of people as being in the same age range as they were when I first came to know or know of them.  Since I haven't aged, why would they?  So it's a little staggering to realize that Dylan's that old.  As I've always had the body of a sixty-year old and have finally aged into it, Dylan's chronological age has caught up to his voice.  I've always actually liked Dylan's "singing,"  but I know that probably most of you reading this don't share that view.  Since I just got a Dylan covers album by Bryan Ferry (of Roxy Music) and since Maria Muldaur and Dave's True Story (at least) have done entire albums of  Dylan covers, I thought I'd do a show of 'em, and not just from those three artists.

So this week, one hour of songs about French, France, et Paris, and one hour of folks doing covers of Dylan songs.  Hope you can join me, noon till two, eastern, or wool.fm intergalactically.  See you then.

"You're gonna make me lonesome when you go...."

Call Any Vegetable...

 I first saw Dave Mallett perform in 1978 in a club below street level on Fore St. in The Old Port area of Portland, ME., below my favorite record store (whuzzat?)  How good could someone from Dover-Foxcroft be, anyway?  The answer was "Pretty damn."  Since then I've seen him a number of times, though not for a while--when I lived in CT, at the Folkway in Peterborough, and one time I even ran into him in Cap'n Bullfrog's, a fabulous record store (a what, now?) in Brattleboro; the first bin I saw him check out was his own, which I found amusing.  He was pretty interested in the John Prine album I was getting, though, when we chatted.

Once when we saw him at the Folkway, we got even closer than chatting.  That was a great club, the Folkway--good food, great music, intimate atmosphere, which of course guaranteed that it couldn't last.  The prime table was right in front of the center of the stage; Alice and I had gotten there early to have dinner before the show, and we snagged that table.  When Mallett started his set, Alice had her feet up on the chair opposite her, which apparently happened to be touching the mike stand (I refuse to use the current vogue spelling "mic," which to me is pronounced "mick.").  Each time she moved her foot in time to the song, it moved the stand, which was disconcerting to Mr. Mallett.  More disconcerting was when the mike bonked him in the nose, at which point each realized what was happening, to her great embarrassment and his great relief when we moved the chair away.

But I didn't come here, as Arlo would say, to talk about Dave Mallett, specifically, or mikes, or any of that: I came to talk about gardens.  I'm taking suggestions (sort of) from Fran and Antonia's replies to my last post.  At first I thought "animals," from Antonia, which I like and will use in the future.  But with Memorial Day weekend upcoming, and that being the traditional date in these parts to safely put the bulk of the garden in, I'm going with that.

As I've said and you've noticed, I like to be topical and provocative, and I wondered how I'd do that about something as seemingly innocuous and uncontroversial as gardening, but of course everything is political.  Where we get our food, how it is grown, whether it is genetically modified, how far it has traveled, whether we should eat foods out of season--all of these are complicated and potentially controversial issues.  Even the question of when to plant ought to make us think:  we really don't need to wait till Memorial Day anymore.  We've warmed the planet so much by our activities (an arguable assumption for some) that we can plant earlier with less chance of a killing frost than ever before, and we can grow some things that didn't used to be grown around here 'cause the season was too short.  Plants too are moving north and up (in elevation) at a shocking rate.  Turns out that Ents aren't the only movable flora.

It's heartening that the above issues are being considered and discussed and are leading to action.  More people are eating organic and local, so more people are growing organic;  groceries and restaurants (like Popolo) are buying and serving locally produced foods as much as possible.  Young people, like Jake's friends Connor and Brenna are starting organic facilities, though the effort required is much greater than on enormous Califlorida tractory farms.  Even cities are getting into the act; Detroit, of all places, is in the forefront of the Urban Gardening movement.  Abandoned buildings are being replaced by community and even commercial gardens.  Sometimes good things come from hardship and human folly.  Can it be that I'm writing a post about something positive?  'Twould seem so.

So this week, "garden" songs, like ( we've just been waiting for it to come around on the blog again...here it comes)  David Mallett's "Garden Song," "In the Garden" (various versions), "Johnny's Garden," "Royal Garden Blues," (Duke and The Count), "Thorn Tree In the Garden," and the like.  But NOT, definitely not, oh no, NEVER "Octopus's Garden," even though I'm wearing my Abbey Road tee shirt as I write this.  Oh yeah--and the Beach Boys' "My Favorite Vegetable" and "Call Any Vegetable."  C'mon along: Tuesday, noon till two eastern on 100.1 FM or www.wool.fm on the webs.

...Call it by name.

Markness Risible

No, that doesn't mean what you think, especially at this age.  Just Google the definition.

It appears that many of you faithful postees are the sort who bring gifts to events that specify "No gifts, please" on the invitations.

My dear, dear friends and loved ones--and, really, what is the difference between those terms?  If you are my friend, you are my loved one; if you are my loved one, you are my friend.  I am an extremely fortunate man--thank you all so much for the posts, emails, phone calls.  Although, as I said in Sunday's missive, I was not seeking same, humans are generally quite empathic, especially to those they care about, and you have proved this.

My intent was  threefold: to explain ways I'd been being that some of you might have noticed and wondered about;  in my usual overblown sense of self-importance, maybe, (to use some therapspeak,) to "model a behavior."  This is tough stuff, this coping, this dealing with the psyche and  all of the slings and arrows; perhaps, I thought, if I relate my experiences, others may feel okay-er about theirs.  Finally, I was pretty sure the topic would provide me with enough songs for a show, which it did.

Whatever the intent, I just want to make sure that you all know that, in the larger sense, I am fine.  I'm just going through some stuff, stuff lots of you have gone through or are going through, and that this, too, shall pass.  I'm just waiting for the drugs to kick in.  Life throws us all shit to deal with, and we deal as best we can, sometimes more easily than others.  And while I really appreciate being called brave, it's really just irrepressible self-exposure.  "...I can't help myself...."

I'll try to find something topical, upbeat or fun for next week, just to shake things up. Any suggestions?

Markness Visible Redux

While I don’t wish to make a prophet of Alice's friend who asked not to be bothered by “self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness musings” in her in-box, this week’s post may meet those criteria. And it’s long. Nevertheless, I hope you’ll read it; it’s even a little amusing at the end, I think.

My mother was a small woman, barely over 5 feet tall.  The top of her head came about to the middle of my chest.  During the summer of 1979, her last summer, when I was 26, every time I saw her, she would lean her head into me and say “Oh, Mark, I wish I was dead.”  These feelings were the culmination of years of depression, unhappiness, and inability to change her situation.  For a variety of reasons I won’t go into, she was unable to act on any of the suggestions I made to  try to change that feeling.  On September 6 of that year, she had a stroke.  It wasn’t a terribly bad one initially, and at the hospital, my father, sister and brother-in-law, aunt and I, along with her doctor, Dave Stewart, had already begun to discuss physical therapy regimens and what we would all do to help her recover, as we waited for the last family member to arrive at the hospital.  Mom couldn’t talk, but it was evident that she was embarrassed at her incapacitation—she was paralyzed on the left side, couldn’t talk or control her bodily functions—but she knew we were all there, and we kept encouraging her and telling her we were going to help her get back.

Within an hour or so of my sister Dorine’s arrival from Connecticut, Mom suddenly got very much worse.  Either an aftershock of the first stroke or a second, worse one unto itself, but she was basically brain dead, and at about 10 o’clock that night, when it became apparent that she could be kept alive but wasn’t going to improve, we made the decision to remove artificial supports, and she at last got her wish.  She was about a month shy of her 65th birthday.

It wasn’t until the next year that I read Katherine Ann Porter’s amazing story, “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.”   In it, Granny lies in her hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness,  apparently unresponsive to those around her, going over the details of her life, including the time she was left standing at the altar by her expected groom, which lent the piece its title.  Throughout the story there is a dim blue flame, her—what, soul? Life force?—flickering above her head.  At the end of her ruminations, with no sign of hope to continue holding on, "She stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light."  I’m as sure as I can be that that’s what my mother did.  She waited till we were gathered, had a chance to say goodbye to us all and then took the only way out of her depression that she could; she blew out the light.

My father, while only slightly larger-than-average in size, projected bigger. He had powerful muscles, a powerful drive to succeed, and powerful insecurities, although  he showed confidence in all situations (some might say overly so).  He taught Dale Carnegie ("I never had a hobby that didn't make me money," he was fond of saying.  I'm not sure I ever saw him cash any checks from all of those paint-by-number pictures he labored over on Sunday mornings, though.) classes on public speaking and preached that gospel at every opportunity.  Harold Lavalley, owner of the largest chain of independent lumberyards in the Northeast for 50 years now, was one of his earliest students.  Two of Dad’s most-repeated sayings were Dale Carnegie’s “Act enthusiastic and you’ll BE enthusiastic,"  which I can now grudgingly admit has some merit,  and  “On, on, our hero cried; I’ll find a way, or make one,” which is evidently based on a statement Hannibal made as he found his passage through the Alps blocked.  Dad started up and made quite successful a machine shop business, a construction business, became Chairman of the Board at Bellows Falls Trust Co. after his retirement.  He was the very model of up-from-the-bootstraps, can-do Americanism—confident and capable with no outward sign of self-doubt or self–questioning.

He also ate Tums by the handful and, not often but not rarely, either, spent large portions of a day in bed with, literally, a sheet pulled over his head, the world evidently “too much with him” at those times.  Attempts to engage him in conversation in his obvious times of distress would be met with a classic Yankee response:  “My troubles are my own, thank you.”  At the end of his life, in his dementia, he was the textbook embodiment of the “Sundowner,,” pleasant and cooperative during the day, violent and nearly unmanageable at night, but it seems obvious in retrospect that the shadows were never far from him during his life, even in his outwardly-sunniest moments.

And now that dark helical strand of my DNA has its hand on my shoulder, its cloak over my eyes.  It’s nothing new, as those who know me well will readily attest, although it is bigger and deeper and more consuming than anything I have ever experienced.  The world is "too much with me" (I have no desire to do anything, even read, which is unique in my life) and so are my genetic markers.  But somewhat  surprisingly I also feel, after nearly 60 years, ready to deal with it (Well, well: Wellbutrin.); as an aged mason I once fired for using a racist term to describe a type of stone he was using said, “You learn something every year.”  Maybe.

My last 3 posts, this one included, have alluded to what’s going on, by title (the play on William Styron’s account of his descent into the depths of depression and despair,  Darkness Visible: A Memoir Of Madness, the quote from Lindsey Buckingham’s “B’wana” (“We all have our demons…”) or by brevity and tone, but it feels time to address this thing head on. In the past, I didn’t want to acknowledge what I saw as a personal failing, an inability to get past an affliction that feels self-created, to overcome the blues, to "Act enthusiastic...."  But it’s no more self-created than breast cancer or MS or hundreds of other biological conditions. It is internal, not external, although that is certainly how it manifests, and it is inextricably intertwined, woven together, with all of the other strands which make me me.  I know that many people who receive these posts (and may even read them) are contending with the same issues and somehow manaage.  It's a wonder we can get out of bed in the morning.  Is this a condition of modern life?  Has it always been with us but hidden or ignored?  Dunno; it just seems that some people get some shit, other people get other shit, and some few lucky ones may be shitless—but I doubt it.

Please understand that I write this not as a solicitation for an outpouring of sympathy or concern.  I don’t want or need that, maybe can't even handle it now, but people will respond as they need to for themselves and we'll all deal.  It’s just that, again as those who know me will attest, I tend to err on the side of  too much info, too much self-revelation, and here we are.  But that too is me.

In acknowledgment of  all of this, then, appropriate music this week. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s all gonna be lugubrious minor-key stuff although, truth in advertising, it's not gonna be real up.  “I’m Down,” for instance, contains one of Paulie’s most rock-us vocals;  “Yer Blues” and “Manic Depression” are hardly the stuff of easy-listening, either.  Now, I’ll concede “Am I Blue” and “Most of Us Are Sad,” but  Tom Waits's "Emotional Weather Report" is just finger-poppin' hipster (the good kind) jive.  Hope you can join me, Tuesday, noon til two eastern, 100.1 FM,  or wool.fm.  Sorry I wasn’t there last week.  Work got in the way.  Gotta get Popolo up and running!

Well we all need someone we can lean on….

 --------------------------------------------------

Saw a fella down to the dump on Saturday (And it’ll always be “the dump,” won’t it, Becky Rule (mooseofhumor.com?  “Recyclin’ centah” is for folks from away) who had a sticker in the back window of his pickup that said “Liberal: the French word for Coward.”  I said to him “Actually, you know, “Liberal” means “open minded.”  He sort of shrugged behind his mirrored aviator sunglasses and said “Either way.”  And he pronounced it as “eyether,” which surprised me; I wondered if we were going to do the whole Satchmo and Ella thing.  Instead we called the whole thing off.  But I wondered: did he mean that both “liberal” and “open-minded” are synonyms for “coward,” or did he, for one brief and shining second, become a liberal?  I didn’t ask him.

"We All Have Our Demons...

I don't really think anyone comes here with heightened expectations, but if you do, this week you'll be especially disappointed.  Basically, I got nothin'.  Oh, I mean I had stuff in mind, but time and ennui--not really that, but some other emotional issue for which I don't even know the French word--got in the way.  That and current (Popolo--the most fabulous restaurant in the history of Bellows Falls, opening in late May, I think) and prospective work, that is: there're only so many hours in the day, after all, unless, like Gary Smith, you've apparently made a pact with Someone to freeze or extend time; mere mortals can only do so much.

So this mere (among the merest) mortal has only this:  the debut album by Alabama Shakes, and some recent obsessions of mine (that was gonna be the basic theme: Obsession, about which I know a little, mostly having to do with buying music) like John Hartford, Mose Allison, Osibisa, Mongo Santamaria, Lee Oskar, and Michael Nesmith (yes, that one).  I think the music'll be good even if the blog isn't.

I'm introducing a new feature this week, though: "Name that Title Inspiration."  In the '70s, when Todd Rundgren was a Wizard and a True Star, he included a response card in one of his albums whereby, simply for filling it out and sending it in to his record company, you would have your name listed in the liner notes of his next album.  The only person I know of who did so was John Neal, of Walpole, NH (then and still).  So if you can identify the source of a particular post's title, I'll be glad to let everyone know in the next post. How exciting, huh?

Hope to see you on the radio tomorrow, noon till two.

...And sometimes they escape."