- Last week, Sis and I went to a compass class with some of our GS friends. And it was taught by a friend we had made at Hog Island last year! So great to see her again. I learned so much. I did not know how to read a compass. Hold the compass flat in your hand, with the curved part at your wrist and the printed red "travel arrow" pointing out from your palm. "Turn on the compass"--I know, it's not electronic--means to put the "red in the shed," i.e. move the "compass housing" so that the red part of the needle that always faces magnetic north moves into the outlined arrow or orienting lines/arrow. Now you can tell what direction you are pointing by whatever direction and degree lines up with the travel arrow. You reverse it to go in a particular direction. Want to go Northwest? Move the compass housing to put NW at the end of the travel arrow, move yourself to put the "red in the shed", and walk in the direction of the arrow. At least I think that's right. Sis was much better than I was. I know there is so much more to orienteering but it was a great start. I'll practice at Hog Island again this summer.
- We went to three orchestra concerts last week, one for our school and two where the kids from our orchestra were invited to play at other concerts to help round out the sound. They played "Vida La Viva," a bit from "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," "Shadows," and . . . something else. I love hearing my kids play . . . and it was even bittersweet to hear the little ones play "Hot Cross Buns." Sis and Bud have come a long way. And they'll both be playing in the orchestra again next year.
- Piano duet. Yep, Bud and I are finally playing a piano duet. I had stopped taking piano during CPE but am starting up again for the summer. And so we actually did some planning during Monday's lesson. I'm dusting off "Finlandia" and "The Entertainer" (both easy piano) and then learning my part of "Vida La Viva." Yes, the Coldplay song. Just like Bud played in orchestra. I know it. He likes it. And one of the parts is just my speed. Only challenge is that I don't really count when I play, just play by ear to the tune I know, which makes it almost impossible to play in the right spot with a duet partner so I'm practicing counting. Whew. But the playing has rejuvenated Bud, who spent last night playing "Phantom of the Opera," "Prince Sidon," and other songs. One of my favorite sounds in the world.
- Bud has had a few kung fu performance in the last few weeks, which is not our usual performance time (May and October are the big competition times; January/February are the big Lunar New Year performance times.) He performed at Quassy Amusement Park, a small, old local park with rides and games next to a lake. The performance went well, but the team had even more fun wandering around together and going on all the rides--swings, tilt-a-whirl, this big boat that swings like a pendulum, tea cups, another ride that flips and holds you upside down. I enjoyed the lovely weather and riding the carousel. Oh how I love a carousel! Bud even rode with me towards the end of the day.
- And he earned his Black Belt right before we left for Italy. The school hadn't been doing belts for the team (it's more of a karate thing than a kung fu thing anyway) and so their Master gave the team the chance to earn their belts. Bud practiced for weeks, on top of his years of kung fu, and he earned the black belt, embroidered with his school, and a beautiful plaque to go with it. We're so proud of him!
- INDIGO GIRLS! Last week, we all went to hear the Girls in concert in New London. We arrived early enough for dinner (mac and cheese pizza, chix and broccoli and bacon pizza, pasta pomodoro, great salad and yummy cakes) at this great local pizza place, Two Wives--and the only men in the building were Bud and those on the staff! Everyone was there for the concert, which always draws about 95% women. Most of them were our age or older--and not even all of them were dykes! Of the five others I knew there that night, only 2 were lesbians. But they were moms of twins, just like us. Gotta introduce the kiddos to the culture, you know? It was great--they played most of our favorites. We got home really late, but we didn't care. Besides, it was Mother's Day weekend and there's not much these two moms like more than a Girls concert.
- Mama and I gave ourselves our big Mother's Day present: we went to the Met museum all by ourselves, leaving the kids at home on Saturday. I had wanted to see the Thomas Cole exhibition and it was closing on Sunday, but the kids didn't want to go. And after three orchestra concerts, the Indigo Girls, the compass class, and a kung fu show, we decided they would probably enjoy a day at home much more . . . and we might enjoy the moms' night out all by ourselves. And we did! There was some traffic heading into the city on Saturday afternoon, but we talked all the way there. The Cole show had some great pieces--Course of Empire, Oxbow River, a little trompe l'oeil with an oil sketch of a landscape, a view of Florence in front of which I no longer needed to say "I'd love to take you to Italy!" There were also paintings by Claude Lorraine, de Loutherbourg, Turner, Constable, including cloud studies and Hadleigh Castle. The concept of the show--Cole was influenced by European art and travels--was nothing new, but it was pretty. We also liked the parallel show about Americans in Italy--with sketches and drawings and watercolors by Sargent, Elihu Vedder, and Maurice Prendergast. We especially liked the Venetian views. We enjoyed a ham sandwich on a baguette, rich chocolate cupcake, and a cup of coffee in the American courtyard, treating this trip into the city like we did Italy by taking it easy and enjoying ourselves, slowly. The last show on our list was the French gardens show, tracing the rise of public gardens and private gardening as a hobby after the Revolution and through the 19th century. There were still lifes by Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, Mary Cassatt--I loved her lilacs--and Caillebotte's chrysanthemums. There were also many women-in-the-garden scenes by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cassatt, and Morisot, though little discussion of the trope. There were watering cans, hand rakes and trowels, and maps of gardens, including a great panorama postcard of the Tuileries with all these wonderful snippets of people. It was a lovely show. I think I might be getting excited about going back to Paris someday, with the kids, once they've had more French. As we perused the shop--I got the gardens catalogue but not the Cole (I have the one from the very-similar Wadsworth show I saw when I came back to NYC in fall 1994 to see Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard--when I stayed with Mama in her dorm, actually. Full circle.)--I saw mention of a Visitors to Versailles show and so Mama and I trekked up to it. Great 18th-century court costumes, dec arts, and even a room devoted to an early 18th-century visit by Siamese ambassadors from the court of Ayyuthaya who brought gifts and wore special hats. Yep, Thailand. Circle again. We absolutely skipped the Heavenly Creatures and the Catholic Imagination show; well, sort of. It was spread out through the Medieval court on the first floor so we passed by the overdone fashions and big crowds on our way to other exhibitions. It was a dramatic place to stage the show, with all the Catholic art of the Middle Ages, but I am completely uninterested in modern fashion. Give me those 18th-century court gowns any day.
- We saw Avengers: Infinity War. Loved it. It's past the point where I worry about spoilers; by now the details are well known. Of course, it's the deaths that got everyone. And we all seem to have the idea that most won't stick. But I'm guessing they'll surprise us--it's too easy if Scarlet Witch somehow breaks the Soul Stone from the inside or Cap sacrifices himself for Bucky (and them all) and switches places with everyone in the Soul Stone. I don't think he'll survive the next one, Cap. And I think Black Panther, sweet Spidey, and all of those who disintegrated will be back. Doctor Strange knows exactly how it will all pan out. No resurrection for mischievous Loki, though. He was one of my favorites. And I think Gamorrah will get, who I think entered the Stone as Thanos's sacrifice, will get out, too. And all of that in time for the new Guardians, Spiderman, and Black Panther movies!
- Sis got her braces off! She was so excited that she took a bag of popcorn with her to the appointment and had been planning her candy consumption for months. Mama brought her a bag of jelly beans, gummy bears, Star Bursts, Carmellos, jar of caramel sauce, two bags of popcorn from Trader Joe's, and I don't know what else. She now has a clear retainer. And says her mouth is "soft!" Bud will get his braces in a month (he lost his lost baby teeth later than she did)--I teased the orthodontist that he could just recycle the brackets and give us a discount.
- CPE is wrapping up. I have 62 hours left, a final evaluation paper (already at 10 pages), and three more essays. Whew. I witnessed a funny moment last week. The priest startled a sleeping patient who then tried to get out of bed. I fetched a nurse. The patient kept saying, "I need to get to my business." (You could tell he meant work.) The nurse said, "You can do your business here in bed." "It isn't funny business!" he replied. We all started to giggle. The nurse said, "I can't believe you said that in front of the priest!" The priest was laughing harder than all of us. More on CPE later. It's my day off! Which means some Zentangle, crocheting, blogging, and watching reruns of "Arrow."
Showing posts with label Indigo Girls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indigo Girls. Show all posts
Friday, May 18, 2018
Kidbits and Updates
Each is not a whole post, but together it's a lot of catching up:
Monday, November 9, 2015
Indigo Children
Thursday night was a momentous occasion for us: we took the kids to their first major concert. Even better, it was the Indigo Girls!!!
Mama and I have seen the Girls in concert 6 or so times together:
The Indigo Girls provide the soundtrack of our romance, from early mix tapes with "Love Will Come to You" and those first concerts, always the songs on the tape player then CD player then MP3 player now Sonos wifi. We've been listening for roughly twenty years (Mama more, me a bit less.) Mama knows the lyrics; I don't as much, but I will make them up, and I can never name a song until its chorus. There are lines in several of their songs that always make us stop and look at each other in that special way, hold hands, kiss, chuckle--"beautiful women walk on by; you know I never know what to say" from "Shame on You," "I took you for better and took you for worse; don't you ever forget it" from "Power of Two," and "Every lesson learned a line on your beautiful face" from "Get Out the Map," to name a few (I bet I didn't get all of those lyrics correct, either.) So many memories wrapped up in their music. And we have just begun sharing the songs with the kiddos.
We would have laughed had you told us back at one of those early concerts that we'd be taking our own kids to an IG show. In fact, we tried to do it about a year and a half ago, only to realize we were going to be in England! So when tickets came available for this show, we got four. And we started to play the music everyday to familiarize them with more of the IG repertoire. Sis liked "Galileo" and Bud liked "Get out the Map."
With the show starting at 8 and the Girls not going on until 9, we waited til after rush hour to head to the city, listening to the music all the way. The kids are more used to Broadway and so couldn't understand why we arrived late (really, on time) and skipped the opening band. We had told them they could sing, dance, even talk, that people would drink and move about, nothing like Broadway.
Then there they were, Amy on our left and Emily on our right, playing our favorite "Get Out the Map." What a fantastic show it was! So many of our favorites-- (I'll drop the quotes for simplicity) Get Out the Map, Power of Two, Shame on You, Go, Love Will Come to You, Galileo, Oziline, and of course Closer to Fine, plus Mama loves Land of Canaan--and several of the new songs. The kids clapped and sang along and swayed to the music, but also closed their eyes "just to rest" part way through during some of the slow songs. Mama and I gave that look and, several times, I got all teary. I felt so young again, but also in a time warp with two ten-year-old kids with us.
It was fun to explain aspects of their concerts to the kids--how they always stand on the same side of the stage, how they switched guitars every song, how Sully was the one who had been tuning their guitars for decades, how they always encouraged new or young talent and frequently brought them and other friends on stage for a song (often "Closer to Fine"), how they often had the audience sing parts of their songs, how we think they never sing out the "F" word in "Shame on You," how Amy doesn't usually sing the line about "it's only life after all," even how my friend Miss M once sat with them on the curb after a concert at our university some 25+ years ago. And now, in the age of FB, how they put their set lists on line:
Mama and I have seen the Girls in concert 6 or so times together:
- Suffragette Sessions (but so few IG songs), Aug. 1998
- Chicago Theater, Dec. 1999
- Ravinia, June 2000
- Honor the Earth concert, Oct. 2000
- Radio City (this date, perhaps), June 2002
- Ridgefield (link to set list here), July 2008
- plus Mama saw them at Earth Jam and Radio City Music Hall (April and June 1994)
The Indigo Girls provide the soundtrack of our romance, from early mix tapes with "Love Will Come to You" and those first concerts, always the songs on the tape player then CD player then MP3 player now Sonos wifi. We've been listening for roughly twenty years (Mama more, me a bit less.) Mama knows the lyrics; I don't as much, but I will make them up, and I can never name a song until its chorus. There are lines in several of their songs that always make us stop and look at each other in that special way, hold hands, kiss, chuckle--"beautiful women walk on by; you know I never know what to say" from "Shame on You," "I took you for better and took you for worse; don't you ever forget it" from "Power of Two," and "Every lesson learned a line on your beautiful face" from "Get Out the Map," to name a few (I bet I didn't get all of those lyrics correct, either.) So many memories wrapped up in their music. And we have just begun sharing the songs with the kiddos.
We would have laughed had you told us back at one of those early concerts that we'd be taking our own kids to an IG show. In fact, we tried to do it about a year and a half ago, only to realize we were going to be in England! So when tickets came available for this show, we got four. And we started to play the music everyday to familiarize them with more of the IG repertoire. Sis liked "Galileo" and Bud liked "Get out the Map."
With the show starting at 8 and the Girls not going on until 9, we waited til after rush hour to head to the city, listening to the music all the way. The kids are more used to Broadway and so couldn't understand why we arrived late (really, on time) and skipped the opening band. We had told them they could sing, dance, even talk, that people would drink and move about, nothing like Broadway.
Then there they were, Amy on our left and Emily on our right, playing our favorite "Get Out the Map." What a fantastic show it was! So many of our favorites-- (I'll drop the quotes for simplicity) Get Out the Map, Power of Two, Shame on You, Go, Love Will Come to You, Galileo, Oziline, and of course Closer to Fine, plus Mama loves Land of Canaan--and several of the new songs. The kids clapped and sang along and swayed to the music, but also closed their eyes "just to rest" part way through during some of the slow songs. Mama and I gave that look and, several times, I got all teary. I felt so young again, but also in a time warp with two ten-year-old kids with us.
It was fun to explain aspects of their concerts to the kids--how they always stand on the same side of the stage, how they switched guitars every song, how Sully was the one who had been tuning their guitars for decades, how they always encouraged new or young talent and frequently brought them and other friends on stage for a song (often "Closer to Fine"), how they often had the audience sing parts of their songs, how we think they never sing out the "F" word in "Shame on You," how Amy doesn't usually sing the line about "it's only life after all," even how my friend Miss M once sat with them on the curb after a concert at our university some 25+ years ago. And now, in the age of FB, how they put their set lists on line:
The concert ended with the usual encore of "Closer to Fine" and we were all up out of our seats singing, the kids getting their second wind. We left the theater singing and sang halfway home, until they fell asleep in the back. Mama and I shared all sorts of old memories--of concerts, of lyrics, of times we listened to their music (on any car trip in the late 1990s, especially from Chicago to NYC in 2001.) We hummed their songs all weekend in Block Island. If they didn't have uniforms, we would've gotten the kids concert t-shirts to wear just like we would have as teens on the day after. It's a sure beginning to their own great memories of the Indigo Girls, second-generation fans who are starting their own personal soundtracks.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Thank You: Closer to Fine
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
Indigo Girls, "Closer to Fine"
It's questions without answers, different paths on the same journey, a desire to seek and search and know. Except I now believe you can't know. And by not seeking, not believing I can know, I am enjoying the journey more.
At least, that's what it means to me now. Who knows what I will think 16 years from now.
Thanks, Mama, for sharing the music of the Indigo Girls (and the journey) with me all these years: "I took us for better and I took us for worse/And don't you ever forget it."
Monday, July 14, 2008
Give Me that Old-Time Religion
Now were talking about a difficult thing
And your eyes are getting wet
I took us for better and I took us for worse
Dont you ever forget it
Now the steel bars between me and a promise
Suddenly bend with ease
The closer Im bound in love to you
The closer I am to free
So were okayWere fine
Baby Im here to stop your crying
Chase all the ghosts from your head
Im stronger than the monster beneath your bed
Smarter than the tricks played on your heart
Well look at them together then well take them apart
Adding up the total of a love thats true
Multiply life by the power of two
Indigo Girls, "Power of Two"
The Indigo Girls' music provides the soundtrack of our relationship. Mama was listening to them long ago and introduced me to their folksy, activist music early on, before we were together. We listen to music differently, though, and I liked many of the tunes, while she focused on the lyrics. She once gave me a meaningul compilation tape of songs and I never realized until being told much later that they were all love songs. D'oh.
And "Power of Two" is one of our favorites, even though Miss Science Mama goes a bit nutsy that you can't multiply by the power of two. Not being a math person, that doesnt' really bother me. I like that the love discussed is not just easy and happy, but has tears. The two people support one another against the monsters. They're in it for better and for worse. This is us. The Girls have played this song at every concert we've ever been to: Suffragette Sessions, Honor the Earth, one at the Chicago Theater, at Ravinia (that place we had a picnic; it doesn't start with a "T" as I remembered), at Radio City Music Hall, and now at the Ridgefield Playhouse last Thursday (I might be missing one concert, I can't recall). And, this being the first time we've been to a Girls concert since the babes were born, several of the songs struck a different chord with me, including this one. Because "two" has a new meaning. Everything has a new meaning. The song opens:
Now the parking lot is empty
Everyones gone someplace
I pick you up and in the trunk Ive packed
A cooler and a 2-day suitcase
Cause theres a place we like to drive
Way out in the country
Five miles out of the city limit were singing
And your hands upon my knee
This used to mean our trip to Galena, IL for Mama's birthday years ago, or other trips we took in the Midwest, like our drive all the way around Lake Michigan to see the lighthouses (we saw something like 22 of them). And we'd play the Girls while we drove, and invariably this song would come on and we'd laugh and I'd put my hand on Mama's knee. Now, we drive around Connecticut not to get anywhere specific but the Land of Nod and we don't listen to the Girls because that would keep sleeping kiddos awake. Things have changed.
Going to the concert on Thursday was like attending an old-fashioned tent revival. For lesbians (because both of the Girls are, though not a couple), feminists, political liberals, environmentalists, social activists (though, here in CT, there seemed to be very few people of color--Mama might have been one of the only ones--and there were lots of straight couples. The dykes were the older, more settled type, I guess like us. This isn't NY or Chicago. The only young one I saw was outside singing her heart out with her guitar afterwards). I told Mama later it was like a big UU pep rally (though, there is no actual affiliation there that I know of, but some much of the sentiment is in line with the principles). The songs they chose to play this round were many of their social action songs like "Let it Be Me" ("Let it be me/If the world is night/Shine my life like a light") and "Hammer and a Nail" (I gotta get out of bed/Get a hammer and a nail/Learn how to use my hands/Not just my head), but also many ballads, including "Deconstruction" ("We talked up all night and came to no conclusion/We started a fight that ended in silent confusion"). So there was this wonderful confluence of the personal and the political that spoke to us, had special relevance to us these days. And on the drive home, finishing off the car picnic we purchased at a market on the way (dolmades, cheese--Wensleydale with honey and fig for me, Stilton and cheddar for Mama--and bread, Orangina--ah, memories of London--and buttery shortbread cookies), we had one of those conversations we don't have much these days because of time and frayed nerves. And it was healing and good.
And then the next day, we put the Girls in the CD player at home and Buddy played his new banjo to "Galileo" and Sis did a dance, while wearing her new adventure backpack. The Girls will make a great soundtrack for a childhood, too.
And your eyes are getting wet
I took us for better and I took us for worse
Dont you ever forget it
Now the steel bars between me and a promise
Suddenly bend with ease
The closer Im bound in love to you
The closer I am to free
So were okayWere fine
Baby Im here to stop your crying
Chase all the ghosts from your head
Im stronger than the monster beneath your bed
Smarter than the tricks played on your heart
Well look at them together then well take them apart
Adding up the total of a love thats true
Multiply life by the power of two
Indigo Girls, "Power of Two"
The Indigo Girls' music provides the soundtrack of our relationship. Mama was listening to them long ago and introduced me to their folksy, activist music early on, before we were together. We listen to music differently, though, and I liked many of the tunes, while she focused on the lyrics. She once gave me a meaningul compilation tape of songs and I never realized until being told much later that they were all love songs. D'oh.
And "Power of Two" is one of our favorites, even though Miss Science Mama goes a bit nutsy that you can't multiply by the power of two. Not being a math person, that doesnt' really bother me. I like that the love discussed is not just easy and happy, but has tears. The two people support one another against the monsters. They're in it for better and for worse. This is us. The Girls have played this song at every concert we've ever been to: Suffragette Sessions, Honor the Earth, one at the Chicago Theater, at Ravinia (that place we had a picnic; it doesn't start with a "T" as I remembered), at Radio City Music Hall, and now at the Ridgefield Playhouse last Thursday (I might be missing one concert, I can't recall). And, this being the first time we've been to a Girls concert since the babes were born, several of the songs struck a different chord with me, including this one. Because "two" has a new meaning. Everything has a new meaning. The song opens:
Now the parking lot is empty
Everyones gone someplace
I pick you up and in the trunk Ive packed
A cooler and a 2-day suitcase
Cause theres a place we like to drive
Way out in the country
Five miles out of the city limit were singing
And your hands upon my knee
This used to mean our trip to Galena, IL for Mama's birthday years ago, or other trips we took in the Midwest, like our drive all the way around Lake Michigan to see the lighthouses (we saw something like 22 of them). And we'd play the Girls while we drove, and invariably this song would come on and we'd laugh and I'd put my hand on Mama's knee. Now, we drive around Connecticut not to get anywhere specific but the Land of Nod and we don't listen to the Girls because that would keep sleeping kiddos awake. Things have changed.
Going to the concert on Thursday was like attending an old-fashioned tent revival. For lesbians (because both of the Girls are, though not a couple), feminists, political liberals, environmentalists, social activists (though, here in CT, there seemed to be very few people of color--Mama might have been one of the only ones--and there were lots of straight couples. The dykes were the older, more settled type, I guess like us. This isn't NY or Chicago. The only young one I saw was outside singing her heart out with her guitar afterwards). I told Mama later it was like a big UU pep rally (though, there is no actual affiliation there that I know of, but some much of the sentiment is in line with the principles). The songs they chose to play this round were many of their social action songs like "Let it Be Me" ("Let it be me/If the world is night/Shine my life like a light") and "Hammer and a Nail" (I gotta get out of bed/Get a hammer and a nail/Learn how to use my hands/Not just my head), but also many ballads, including "Deconstruction" ("We talked up all night and came to no conclusion/We started a fight that ended in silent confusion"). So there was this wonderful confluence of the personal and the political that spoke to us, had special relevance to us these days. And on the drive home, finishing off the car picnic we purchased at a market on the way (dolmades, cheese--Wensleydale with honey and fig for me, Stilton and cheddar for Mama--and bread, Orangina--ah, memories of London--and buttery shortbread cookies), we had one of those conversations we don't have much these days because of time and frayed nerves. And it was healing and good.
And then the next day, we put the Girls in the CD player at home and Buddy played his new banjo to "Galileo" and Sis did a dance, while wearing her new adventure backpack. The Girls will make a great soundtrack for a childhood, too.
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