CB in an Auto-Rickshaw

I came across this picture the other day and decided to post it for a couple reasons. For off, it's off my most excellent friend, and titular little sister, Cyndi. She's had her own physical problems lately, and it made me smile to see her so happy. I've been whipping up meals every week and then driving out to the wilds of the country where she lives to drop them off after the Food Shelf on Saturday morning. Happily, she's on the mend, although she's facing six months recovery. Secondly, what impressed me about this picture is that I'm not certain where it was taken, which is quite the indictment of the fact that I've clearly travelled too much. Seriously, how can you have a picture of a dear friend in an auto-rickshaw and not know the location? The two most obvious answers are either India, when we drove off like lunatics to try and find an ATM, or Sri Lanka, when we were maneuvering up a hill to a temple.

Upon more mature reflection I'm leaning towards India, because it simply doesn't seem as overpoweringly green as it was in Sri Lanka. Eventually I'll stumble across the original files, hopefully (I just had to swap off computers and there's always the danger material will be lost), and I'll be able to answer this question definitively.

ZuZu's Petals

 My son sent along this picture recently of him and his new cat, ZuZu, which I guess means it is a wonderful life.

At first glance it looked like Alex the Droog, a cat that we had when Gary was a baby and we lived in Cincinnati, except that ZuZu isn't completely black and is very sweet and didn't try and kill me (unlike its predecessor). As always, the Boy is more handsome, funny, and smart than his father, although none of these bars are particularly difficult to clear.

Not a Mockumentary

 Lately I've posted several times about my physical struggles (when exactly does self-reflection simply turn into whining?; I think the answer can be found on this blog). Last week I went in for an epidural, which was not pleasant but hardly horrible. When I sat down to talk to the spinal specialist I told her I had a few questions, the first, and main, one being, "Why are we doing this?" When she and I had talked earlier she told me that she didn't think my spinal canal stenosis was bad enough to explain my mystery symptoms, essentially meaning that my problems were in the nervous system itself as compared to being more purely structural. If they were structural, then the epidural made more sense, but if it was located in the nervous system then they would treat it with an anti-convulsive med (which they are, and which is making me more than a tad loopy). So, I was surprised when I got the call from her office scheduling an epidural, which is what prompted my question. She told me that she wasn't really sure the epidural would help, and thus we didn't have to do it if I didn't want, but that she had talked to the pain doctor down in Middlebury (the mad scientist who gave me the EMG) and trusted his opinion that the epidural would still help. I appreciated two things: her honesty, and the fact that my doctors are actually conversing. My only concern at that point was that in the rush to treat my symptoms we weren't ignoring the bigger (at least in my mind) issue of trying to actually figure out what the hell is wrong with me; I thought, and they agreed, that there was the real danger that the med and the epidural would mask each other, providing relief, but also hiding which one was actually helping, which, in turn, would give us a sense of why this whole mess ever started. My doctors just speak of "mysterious condition," which makes me feel like Marcel in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, except that my nervous condition is physical as compared to emotional, or at least it almost certainly is.  It's frustrating, naturally, and has left me pretty down, not aided by being recently kicked to the curb (again). I guess if we knew what is causing these problems I'd feel better about the whole thing, even if the answer is not a particularly good one. Maybe I'm just egotistical enough to believe that if I just know what the problem is I can figure out a way to overcome it, but if it's a mystery then I'm stuck in a more reactive stage. Oh well, at least we're trying.

I guess every woman I've ever dated was wrong, I do have a spine. 

Gary Beatrice Discography #3

It's been a tough couple months for several members of the Discography crew: Kathy (knee), Cyndi (hamstring), GS (well, everything), Alice (skunk madness), etc. Happily, the Discography provides a joyous break from the challenges of life. I like the selections this week, typically eclectic, especially those of our newest contributors, Lynette and Bill, who are clearly feeling a cool, happy, spring-like vibe that we aren't in the #YankeeHellhole (TM pending), while we await 3-5 inches of snow on 1 April (UTKR).

Bill Farrington

I stumbled on to a HBO music series called Sonic Highways.  It was hosted by Dave Grohl, and I watched the first episode on a flight to Seattle on a 7 inch screen on the seat back in front of my seat.  I binged the rest of the series soon after.  It is very much worth a look - if you have not seen it.

 

The episode, centered around Washington DC, introduced Go Go music.  It mentioned a number of artists, but focused on Chuck Brown (and the Soul Searchers).  I was not familiar with Go Go prior to this.  I built a pandora channel around Chuck Brown.  Pandora suggested funk, motown, and soul as comps.

 

I am offering 2 Chuck Brown songs for this installment of the discography.  If this is against the rules, I will endure, without complaint, the duration of my double secret probation.

 

Bustin' Loose is Chuck Brown's most commercially successful single (circa the late 70's).  

 

It don't mean a thing - if it don't have the go go swing is the default example of go go music.

 

If you are still interested check out Run Joe live - it has a strong call and response aspect which is characteristic of go go music (did I just go to 3?).

Dave Kelley

"By the end of the set, we leave no one alive."

 

Well, the damn blog is named after my dear departed brother in arms Gary Beatrice, so I guess it only makes sense for me to make my choice this month a song inspired by his memory and dedicated to him.  Of course, if I was a real friend I would make my selection a Bob Dylan or Lou Reed song ( his two favorite artists), but since Gary isn't here to give me shit, I will roll a different way.

 

Much of Springsteen's excellent 2020 release "Letter to You" was inspired by the death of his last surviving bandmate from his teenage band.  This song "Ghosts" very much is.   The echoes of the dearly departed are with us constantly.  Sometimes in dreams, sometimes in memory, oftentimes inspired by something totally random that happens during our day.  Every interesting baseball trade, musical release, or movie makes me think of him and want to discuss it to get his take.  I ran into his Dad at the grocery store recently, and we got misty eyed in the frozen food section discussing what Gary would make of the Reds' offseason and chances in the coming year.

 

Inevitably we will all be someone else's fond memory someday.  We all make our vows to the ones who came before in one way or another even if it is not as romantic as taking the stage to play before thousands of people.  I sometimes imagine death as being the past, the present, and the future all combining into a point of singularity.  In any event, when I have the chance to see the E Street Band on the other side of the pandemic, I know I will have a smile on my face and tears rolling out of my eyes when they play this one.  I am confident that when he sings "I'm Alive" during this song, the houselights will come up and there will be a communal moment of knowing that everyone there lived through this calamity.

 

I also included "House of A Thousand Guitars" for no reason other than I love it.

Lynette Vought

Bein' Green

Mark Murphy

 

   Apparently, just about every vocal artist around has covered this song. There are all kinds of versions, from Frank Sinatra’s smooth and uneventful cruise to Lena Horne’s exaggerated theatricality. One of my favorites is Ray Charles’ exhibition as a master of soul at work.

 

    In this performance, the late, great Mark Murphy, backed by a fine ensemble and featuring a notable solo during the bridge by trumpeter Till Bronner, adds another element. It is one that allows us to feel the wistfulness, struggle and joy that comes with understanding oneself. 

    

    Murphy adds a special dimension to this version through his expressive improvisation. The lyrics tell us about how green can be found in the oceans and the mountains, and Murphy paints the image for us as he scales the peaks and dives the seas with his voice.  He creates a vivid tone poem of these grand green elements, and manages to communicate the effort it takes to grasp their scope and the desire to contribute to their success. There is a struggle in his vocalizations, like he is working hard to explain how wonderful and monumental these things are and how difficult it is to bring them to life. Kind of like everything around us in spring time.

 

Please enjoy it, and Happy Spring.

Alice Neiley

Oh would you calm down, Scudder. It's right here. ;) I think 7:42 still counts as MORNING. And yes I will blame skunks. I will blame all the skunks. 

 

My choice for this week was not difficult at all, for a change, as I haven't been able to stop listening to the Wailin Jennys for a month, and somehow Spotify just decided to include their cover of Dolly Parton's Light of a Clear Blue Morning. I confess, as much as I love Dolly Parton, I haven't even listened to the original. I just knew somehow that the Wailin Jennys hadn't written it -- the lyrics aren't quite like them, mainly -- in fact, I thought they might have been covering a slave spiritual, in which case I was going to have to discuss in this post whether it was appropriation or not. I'm glad I don't have to head that direction at the moment, as covering a Dolly Parton tune is completely within bounds. Anyway, I digress. The most notable thing about this song is the lack of instruments -- it's entirely acapella, which serves as the first of many calming elements in this arrangement. It begins beautifully enough, with a low background of voices and one soloist, but where I actually started crying was 0:46-0:48. Holy harmony Batman -- and the arrangement just continues its perfection from there. The lyrics are nothing to sneeze at either, and though Parton wrote them long before the pandemic arrived, after feeling restricted--whether by peers, or society, or illness, or family, or age--the feeling of freedom can come in many packages, all equally welcome and sweet. 

Cindy Morgan

OK FINE.

 

I have to admit that during the last year of Covid music has not really been my go-to medium for solace, strength, or esacpe. My go-to cultural artifacts have been podcasts, Netflix dramas (give me ALL the foreign crime series you can please! I will watch them all), and books. So when the senior faculty who runs this blog kept nagging me about writing about music, I felt terrible because I just haven't listened to much other than some classical and a lot of "Bohemian Rhapsody" when I used it for class back in October. 

 

But the other morning I had VPR on (as one does) and heard an ad for a new show called "It's a Sin." (HBOMAX) What caught my ear wasn't anything about the show at all but that they lifted the Pet Shop Boys' song for the theme. I likely won't watch the show because: HBOMAX, so I don't know if this is a good use of the song. Frankly I was pretty horrified when Mrs. America used Beethoven's 5th but turned it into. . .well whatever they turned it into. Like there aren't plenty of good songs about. . .women? But I digress.

 

A few things to remember about my highly idiosyncratic taste in music:

1) I have a real thing for Brit pop from the mid-80s through the early 90s. Depeche Mode, Erasure, ABC, New Order ..I am there for ALL. OF. IT. I'm STILL PISSED a year later that Phil Seiler CRUSHED Valentine's Day discography 2020 with ABC's "Valentine's Day." IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! HOW DID I MISS THAT???

2) My ideal male vocalist usually sings in the tenor range--I'm a Martin Gore not a Dave Gahan

3) I love good lyrics as much as the next person, but they aren't strictly required

4) Synthesizers do not bother me AT ALL. Sure, I enjoy a more traditional guitar/bass/drums arrangement, I LOVE a full classical orchestra, but I'm also ok with digital sounds (as long as there are discernable vocals)

 

Pet Shop Boys "It's a Sin" (1987) checks all these boxes. I couldn't NOT like it. While the lyrics aren't super profound, I think they speak really powerfully to shame culture, and how so many of us carry baggage because of cultural/religious ideas that were imposed on us. Tennant didn't come out as gay until 1997 but it's hard not to read conservative sexual mores as the underlying theme of the song. It reminds me a bit of Bronsky Beat's "Smalltown Boy" (1984), and also Erasure's "Chains of Love" (1988) which were more obviously about the shaming of homosexuality in the 80s.

 

Listening to "It's a Sin" in the time of Covid restrictions felt very appropriate. It feels like every damn thing right now is a sin. I just saw two Core adjuncts for an outdoor distanced gathering and when they left they both double-masked. And now I'm feeling like, "Shit. Am I a bad Vermonter if I don't also double mask?" Scudder and I met for coffee recently and when we discovered Klingers had taken away the few indoor seats they had, we ended up sipping lattes in his car and it felt so..  .ILLICIT. I ate an avocado toast eighteen inches from another human and the WORST part of that wasn't that the girl who grew up in California was reinforcing EVERY cliche about Californians, but the eighteen inches apart with no mask part. Like we were definitely committing some grave sins. It's not that anyone knows that we are breaking rules. It's that the culture around us has set up these rules and we are all such good rule followers that it feels shameful when we deviate the tiniest bit.

 

Back to the song: it's just everything I want in a Brit-pop song. Upbeat, synth loaded, Neil Tennant with a voice that no one ever is going to describe as great, but squeezing every bit of pathos out of it that he can--in a song you can still dance to. This is no mean feat and is the real  accomplishment of good Brit-pop.

 

The video is so... .awful I cringe to put it in here. It is everything a bad 80s video should be. Monks in hooded robes, dungeons, an incense boat, seven deadly sins, they left NOTHING to imagination. So maybe just listen to it. Someone who has HBOMAX can tell me if the show deserves the song or not. Somehow I doubt it.

 

Gary Scudder

girl in red, 4 am

I chose this song mainly for Cyndi Brandenburg. CB is infamous for waking up in the middle of the night and fretting for hours, until her mind slows down - and it's time to get up. Now that she's recovering from her own dreadful surgery I'm sure it's not any better. I discovered this song after going down a BBC rabbit hole, which started out as a review of girl in red's song serotonin and her upcoming album. girl in red is Norwegian singer-songwriter and record produce Marie Ulven, who has become a queer icon, and with songs like i wanna be your girlfriend and two queens in a king size bed, you probably wouldn't find that surprising (apparently the line "So, do you listen to girl in red?" is an appropriate pickup line). I think my favorite is i'll die anyway. Now, Cyndi, get some sleep!

Amber Fort Redux

 I know I've posted this picture before, but I cropped it to give it a better framing. It was taken at the Amber Fort on the last trip.

If not for the endless crush of tourists this would have been the best picture I ever took. Or, maybe having the jarring crash between the traditional, as much as anything is traditional, and the invasive actually makes it a better picture. Either way, I think I'm going to print it off and frame it.

Various and Sundry GSs

 I just came across this picture the other day and I wanted to post it. It's my father and my son, when we were living in Franklin, Indiana, and I was teaching at Franklin College and finishing my dissertation.

I think the address was 60 Martin Place. And, no, that's not me on the left.

Flex Hybrid

 As you know, I'm on sabbatical. I don't think I've gotten as much work done as I hoped, but then anyone who knows me would tell you that's my world everyday. The reality is that I've written every day since the end of last semester, and that includes Christmas and New Year's Day. Still, one can always write more hours in a day, and that one is definitely me. I was supposed to be in Palestine this semester, teaching at Bethlehem University and helping them out with some curricular redesign (sort of what I did at Zayed University during the last sabbatical). So, an obvious question is: why didn't I just postpone my sabbatical until next fall, when there was at least the possibility of travel? There are several possible answers. First off, even in the fall there is no guarantee that travel will be possible. Secondly, considering the financial challenges that Champlain (and all small colleges) is facing, who is to say that sabbatical will even be a thing in the fall? So, I might as well take it while it exists. Finally, teaching in the Flex Hybrid model was such a joyless experience - and no one loves teaching more than me - that teaching in this model for the spring just seemed too painful, especially when I had this option. There were students onsite - initially they made up two-thirds of the number - and online; I designed the class based on those numbers. During class I would talk to the onsite students while carrying on a parallel discussion with the online students streaming on my laptop - it ended up being much like an episode of Fleabag where I stole glances at the screen. This also required running the same Powerpoint, simultaneously, on the overhead and in Google Meet format. The students began to dwindle away until by the end the two-thirds onsite were more like about a quarter onsite - and one or two - or even none.

Yes, American university education in the 21st century, and the inherent lie therein. Here is one of the days towards the end of the semester when no students shows up, keeping in mind that at the beginning over two-thirds of the students in every class were supposed to be onsite. I didn't have enough time to walk back to my office (especially with my physical ailments) so I sat at one of the desks and talked to the students online - wearing a mask because I was in a public space - or at least I talked to the rectangles as none of the students had their cameras on, and we were forbidden to require them to turn them on. Education as an incredibly stationary game of Tetras.

What Again?

 Yes, again. I'm just missing travel in general and Namibia in particular.

That extraordinary red sand of Namibia.

Mr and Mrs Robot Head

 Yes, another post about life during the pandemic - and my rapid spiral into the abyss. It's funny how we adapt to things, and what was once an odd inconvenience becomes a very normal and perfectly acceptable part of our day (unless you're one of those Trump-loving morons from Texas which considers wearing a mask for twenty minutes at the gas station to be a bridge too far). For example, where there a time when we didn't have our temperature taken when we entered a building? Actually, I don't think I ever truly had a problem with that, and it became an everyday part of my life beginning on the trip to India last spring. Truthfully, I find it sort of comforting to know that my temperature is 97.5; it's one of the advantages of going to the gym every day. Oh, and I assumed that the machine at the gym just ran low, but I had exactly the same reading at the dentist's office yesterday. They both told me that the new accepted normal is 97.5. Where did 98.6 go? Have we as a species suddenly grown more cold - feel free to submit the appropriate Trump follower joke here.

In much the same way I'm hoping to adapt to the latest dreadful sign of growing older: hearing aids. I'm on day three of hearing aids, and I'm hoping against hope that I'll adapt to them. Lord knows my friends are happy that I finally got over myself and picked some up. Much like my grandmother Maude I've gotten quite deaf, and, like her, I tried to hide it by becoming a pretty talented lip reader (which all went out the window because of mask-wearing during the pandemic) and appropriate laugh inserter. What made me get around my vanity was that it was simply becoming a major problem in class. Quite simply, I couldn't hear my students, especially the low talkers, which are probably exactly the ones I need to hear the most. Because I'm most deaf in the higher ranges the hearing aids are definitely turned up in that range, which is giving everything a pretty metallic sound now (including my own voice). Has water coming out of a faucet always sounded like someone crinkling aluminum foil? I'm sitting here typing and listening to the dishwasher running - and I've gotten up twice to see if there is actually water splashing out onto the floor. The Tech told me to leave the setting on default (my default, not a standard) for as long as possible and see if my brain simply adjusts. I can adjust them on the app (they're Bluetooth, which leaves too many options for me to mess with them, although it also allows me to talk on the phone with them, which just seems wrong). It's like when you walk down the street but you don't actually feel your clothes moving against you because your brain figures out that you simply don't need all the information (which always makes my first year students get nervous because they become convinced that their brain is working secretly against them - well, ok, so I do tell them that). Hopefully my brain will sort this out on its own, although it's done little to solve my problems over the last year.

Whenever I check in at the gym I have to lean over and allow the machine to take my temperature. At that point I always say, "Thank you, Mrs. Robot Head." The folks at the front desk, polite to a fault, always laugh at this dumb line.

And Mr. Robot Head. Sigh. That said, my friends will testify to how hard I hard to work to get over my vanity and get hearing aids. They seem pretty big, although part of that is having enough room for Bluetooth. I don't know if I'll use the Bluetooth (it eats up the batteries pretty quickly) but it seemed stupid to not have the option. Of course, in corporate America, insurance doesn't cover them.

Jai Hanuman

 Considering all the good luck that we had getting to India and back I guess it is necessary to give credit where credit is due: not me nor Steve nor even Inder; yes, Hanuman. Ever since the famous India/Sri Lanka passport misadventure Hanuman has always been the go to good luck source for Inder and I, and obviously Steve was happy to jump in and join our devotional fan club. On all of our trips the students quickly figure out that they are supposed to say Hamduillah after every success, no matter how small, including simply counting off in airports (they initially roll their eyes at it, but by the end of the trip some of them get quite emotional about it). However, while in India Jai Hanuman sneaks in as well. I guess this all popped into my mind recently because in my research I've been hopping back and forth between the Ramayana and Journey to the West, so Hanuman/Monkey are constantly in my thoughts.

I'm really cheating here because we never had the chance to go into this Hanuman temple in New Delhi, but maybe just driving by it a couple times gave us all the luck we needed.

The Intervale

Here are a couple pictures that I've been meaning to post for some time. Over the last year I've posted several stories about the South Burlington Food Shelf, which is not surprising since it's become such a big part of my life. People go out of their way to praise me for the time I spend there, but I get more out of the experience than I ever contribute. It's definitely kept me sane during the madness/sadness of the last year. Health allowing, I usually volunteer three days a week, matching up with our open hours: Thursday 4:30-6:30 p.m.; Friday 8:00-10:00 a.m.; Saturday 8:00-10:00 a.m. Sometimes, however, I end up coming in more often (foolishly, they trust me with a key). For much of the summer I often popped in earlier in the week because I had donations from the good folks at Diggers Mirth at the Intervale. How did I end up with the connection? Classic Vermont, naturally. That old joke about the Kevin Bacon factor where everyone is only separated by six degrees doesn't apply in Vermont because it's usually at most two degrees of separation. A good friend and colleague knew that someone in her apartment building worked at Diggers Mirth and thus they might be a good fit for us, and thus the relationship was born. So, I'd often get a text midweek and then make my way down to the Intervale to pick up boxes of fresh produce from their walk-in fridge down in the Intervale. Often I'd called my friend Steve, another consistent volunteer at the FS, and off we'd go.

The fridge is massive and it was usually jampacked with boxes, so I definitely appreciated the little notes.

They inevitably had more produce than we could store at the Food Shelf, which led to Steve and I madly scrambling to come up with a plan - such as, we really weren't supposed to pick up more than four boxes, so it became a question of turning whatever we were given into four boxes. It was all great produce - and it's going to a wonderful cause - even if the veggies were scrunched a bit in our repacking.

A Year?

 Last Friday, 5 March, was, inexplicably, a year since we took off on our last student trip - and right as the world was ending. I remember 5 March, 2020 so clearly. We met at 8:00 a.m. as we always do, and, truthfully, I didn't see any way in hell that we were going on the trip. Mainly I used the class time to try and keep the spirits up before the official decision to cancel it. I had been in constant negotiations with students, parents, administrators, and my overseas contacts in the days leading up to that day - and there was nothing that led me to believe that we were going. Right after the meeting I had a meeting with our acting president and I assumed that was when the official no was coming down. In fact, it was my opinion that we should just go ahead and cancel it and give the students as much of their money back as possible (which, apparently, was not an option). Instead she asked if I could pull it off. I told her not to play to my vanity because of course I was sure I could pull it off, but even if I pulled it off that didn't mean the it was the right decision to go. So, as Champlain all too often does, the decision was dumped back in my lap, and so we decided to roll. Anyone who knows me know how much I love my students - and how, while claiming the opposite, I scrupulously plan everything in advance. It wasn't like we were winging it or taking any chances, but considering how little we knew about the pandemic at the time it was definitely stressful. By the time we got back on 15 March - having crossed the border from Canada into the US with eleven minutes to spare - the world had ended, and we never made it back to campus that semester.

Since that time my health has declined pretty dramatically, and right now it's difficult to imagine that I could run another trip - at least not like I'd like to run another trip. Well, I suppose that if this was my last trip it was a great crew to shut it all down. They were unfailingly upbeat and happy in the face of more stress than any group of young folks should have to deal with on an overseas adventure. It's funny to think that I ran ten trips, all of them different.