A December Letter to Friends

Now that it’s December, the still winter nights are inspiring me to look inward, quietly. I’m hitting pause to acknowledge a few special moments from this year. While snippets of songs and important conversations have paved the way for the muse on this blog for years, the tones are more muted under the influence of winter's hush.

I want to remember:

Realizing I could play the song about the gypsy on my guitar.

Pulling over just to admire a Virginia stream and spotting Tristan’s twig.

Seeing those Blue Ridge Mountains and wondering how the family ever left them for Kentucky.

Rocking on the porch of the inn while trucks and sedans breezed past on the Appalachian Trail.

Turning down that rock road and taking it real slow.

Marking my nearness to the show by the lights on the Austin capitol.

Smiling from overwhelming joy and catching a friend’s wink.

Opening the shade of a westerly window in my boudoir to find a round, morning moon there to greet me.

Watching the sun rise in the east at the breakfast table, sensing all the activity in neighboring Philly and feeling glad to be tucked into a quiet residential enclave.

Acknowledging that even severe pain is fleeting in the grand scheme of things.

Looking at my buzzing cell phone on a Friday night at nine o’clock and knowing that it has to be that gal in the bayou calling just to ask me how life is.

Padding around wooden floors in fringe moccasins, checking on nothing in particular in each room while my family sleeps.

Figuring out it's best to lie in bed at night with an earbud loaded into one ear and a pillow under the other so when the sound gives way to dreamscape I don’t wake with an earbud ache.

Sitting up in bed one night because I finally heard what the music was saying.

Hearing a song and knowing I’m not alone.

The month is waning and I fear the cards will never get sent. I wish you sweet dreams for the long winter’s nap, and some quiet in your December.

-HH

James McMurtry and Walter Benjamin at Threadgill's

The point at which my daughter realizes he is the son of the man who wrote Lonesome Dove came much later than I thought. Her eureka moment occurs while white clouds sail past a gibbous moon that’s casting a light on a gray Texas sky that doesn’t promise not to drench my leather jacket or my daughter’s silken dress. And thank God the truth didn’t crash like a lightning bolt because we were sitting on metal bleachers at Threadgill’s.

An hour had passed since my drummer friend patiently flipped through the pages of the Austin Chronicle with us at the bar in the Saxon Pub, looking at all the shows for the night and making important commentary about their relevance. Jazz at the Elephant Room or authentic Texas songwriter stuff at Threadgill's: Those were our final choices in Don’s opinion, but in my mind there really was no choice.

I was hell-bent on taking my daughter to hear James McMurtry. I even explained to her that he was Larry’s son, but there must have been too much neon shining in her eyes for the message to take seed.

I wasted no time on the ride to Threadgill's. I launched right into my first Janis Joplin song in preparation for all the photos of Janis I knew we’d see at the venue. My daughter didn’t recognize “Bobby McGee.” And not because I don’t sound like Janis, because I do, er, can, with minimal effort, (unfortunately) croon just like her. But it turns out it was “Mercedes Benz” that my daughter recognized. Or maybe she said she did only to keep me from singing more Janis. We’d already passed Peter Pan Golf, and she probably had no idea how much longer she might have to ride in the car with a woman intent on singing Janis until the cows come home.

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz/My friends all drive Porches I must make amends.”

We pull into the parking lot at Threadgill's, and even though the show was on the lawn, I direct my daughter inside to do some sightseeing. And there was Janis, on the wall,singing from about a dozen photos. My daughter takes one look and says, “Oh, she looks as obnoxious as she sounds.” And that just singes a wee bit because I did look up to Janis once upon a time. But as I told this story the next day, my brother-in-law offered that Janis was voted ugliest man at UT. So my daughter’s opinion is not an outlier.

We make a stop in the loo because that’s what girls do, and on the way I point out to my daughter that the man sitting at the bar wearing a black hat is none other than James himself.

Outside there are only a couple spots open on the bleachers. I lead us to a group of men, closer to my age than my daughter’s, that are seated just far enough apart to make it obvious they did not come together. I see no reason for homophobia to keep us from sitting for the show so I ask if we can sit next to one of men, and wouldn’t you know, he scoots a little closer to the nearest man to accommodate some female companionship.

When the band begins to play, I have the unexpected delight of seeing Cornbread on bass. And just as this realization sets in, my daughter reacts to the music by leaning into my ear and saying, “Now I feel like I’m really in Austin!”

James is in the mood to tell stories, and he relates a border crossing story that casts the Canadian border patrol officers in a bad light.

The music continues and James winds the crowd up with “Choctaw Bingo:”

“Strap them kids in and give ‘em a little bit of Vicodin ‘n cherry Coke/We’re going to Oklahoma to see the family reunion for the first time in years/It’s up at Uncle Slaton's cause he’s getting on in years.”

James has got a blonde with her arm in a sling dancing so wildly that you just know she used to strip or the doc has her on Vicodin for the arm.

“He’s got a Airstream trailer and a Holstein cow/ Still makes whiskey cause he still knows how/He plays at Choctaw bingo every Friday night /You know he had to leave Texas but he won’t say why.”

The men sitting around us begin to critique the dancer's technique, and my daughter shoots a movie of the gyrations with her new camera.

“He cooks that crystal meth because the shine won’t sell.”

I look back at the crowd to see all eyes are on the dancer, none on the band. James doesn’t seem to mind cause he’s watching her, too. He just keeps playing his guitar and spinning the yarn.

Back home in Pennsylvania, I have a couple books on my shelf  written by James’s dad that are memoirs of sorts. On the first page of one book, Larry states that he is sitting in the Dairy Queen in Archer City, reading an essay by Walter Benjamin on the “examination . . . of the growing obsolescence of what might be called practical memory and the consequent diminution of the power of oral narrative in our lives.” But as I sit and listen to James, it strikes me that his songs are living proof storytelling will not die in the hands of our generation of Texas songwriters.

I comment to my daughter that the songs are not just hooks, but real craft, and mention the McMurtry family proclivity for storytelling. Her eyes get real big and she says, “You mean this is Larry McMurtry’s son?”

I suppress a giggle.

James starts another song, and I look over at my daughter. She’s intently listening to James sing his tribute to “Levelland.” Levelland sounds a lot like Archer City, Larry's town. Archer City is the place my daughter calls “that godforesaken, cricket-infested town” because she does remember the day her mama drove her two hours off course from Amarillo to Fort Worth just to have Larry sign a copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, only that day my she was a little girl in ponytails. But on this night of acoustic memories with Larry's son, my daughter shines brighter than the neon light.

Never on a Sunday?

Two Sundays of great music have left me as giddy as a schoolgirl. Last Sunday I hit the jackpot at the Saxon Pub in Austin, slipping into a Resentments show on a Sunday when Scrappy Jud Newcomb was in Austin and Malford Milligan was sitting in with the band. Scrappy played my favorite song, “Damaged Goods,” first song, and the show only got better as the band (Bruce Hughes, Jeff Plankenhorn and Jon Greene) drove us down a “misty avenue” of bluesy rock enchantment.

Yesterday in an Amish furniture store, not a record store, I saw a posting for Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison’s Sunday night show. Tonight, in Long's Park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Kelly and Bruce took me back to my Mucky Duck days with songs like “Wrapped” and “Heaven's Just a Sin Away.” The best part of the show: The feeling that I had to buy new music after hearing new songs. (That’s a feeling that I don’t have too often anymore.) Their songs also brought back a few acoustic memories.

-Bruce once told my daughter, Ella, in Cactus Records, that she was the prettiest little girl in Houston.

-Ella thought Kelly was singing about some kind of cinnamon pastry in “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away.” ("Mom, what's a cinnaway?")

-When Kelly played her song about an old boyfriend tonight, I recalled she once sympathized with me during the early show at the Duck and played a song for my old boyfriend during her second show that same night when he was there and I had vacated the premises for the nuclear winter of a relationship gone sour.

Now I have Bruce's new CD, You and Me, that I'll be listening to for a long time, along with the acoustic memories of two consecutive Sunday nights of musical bliss.

What’s it going to take to get you off my mind?/

Summer, summer’s almost over/

Taking you right back to the world you left behind/

I’m still hanging on hoping you might show/

I don’t wanna stop and I can’t let go.

-Bruce Robison and Miles Zuniga, “Dreamin”

It's a Cinderella Story

Around the time the tales of the brothers Grimm came into my life, a song by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane began to enchant me.

Over Bridge of Sighs/To rest my eyes in shades of green/
Under Dreaming Spires/
To Itchycoo Park that’s where I’ve been

The only spires in my world were near the horses at Churchill Downs, and I didn’t get the reference to Oxford. Each day in ’68 I set foot in Mercy Kindergarten, and even first grade loomed far away in the distance. Before my mother drove me to school, she would hold me on her lap and scratch my back. We called those five minutes our “Itchycoo Park” in honor of the Small Faces song we often heard in the car.

Years ago when I met Ian McLagan (Mac) in Austin, I felt like a dream came true. And then several years later when he chose to record “Itchycoo Park” for Spiritual Boy, I was so pleased.

Two Sundays ago I made my neighbor's day when I took her to Raleigh to meet Mac. She’d been to his shows in England in the 60s. Julie was a teenager when I was sitting on Mother’s lap when Mac was first cast into stardom.

And for our night together in the Pour House, he told us the story of walking away from a band with a faulty van and sitting down in the talent office where he was selected to play the organ for Small Faces for thirty pounds a week.

If that’s not Cinderella story enough for you, here’s the new chapter. Those of us who are Mac’s Facebook friends know he wears the silver bracelet a fan gave him years ago. He’s looking for the lady who gave him the gift. My friend Julie told Mac she was the one. He told her she has to know how it’s inscribed. She said, “I know what it says. It says, ‘Will you marry me, Ian?’” Evidently, the shoe didn’t fit.

Mac shared more about his life and gave us an intimate accounting of the stories behind songs like “Glad and Sorry” and “Debris.” He rocked my world with “I Will Follow.” When he talked of missing Austin before singing “Been a Long Time,” I felt a pang to be back in the Texas capital myself. The recent show at the Pour House in the capital of North Carolina was the first time I saw Mac without all his Bumps backing him like I’m used to seeing at the Lucky Lounge in Austin. I did enjoy meeting the newest Bump bass player, Jon Notarthomas.

Now I’m ready to order Mac’s book, All the Rage. Until then, I count myself lucky to know such a charming, genuinely nice (and need I say talented) man.

Got nothing in common with this crowd/
I feel like a spaceman on solid ground/
I’ll have another drink and then I’ll blow/
I left my heart here long ago.

“Been a Long Time”
-Ian McLagan

Two Dollar Rapture

The rapture never came but the Two Dollar Pistols were reincarnated last night. The alt-country group, who disbanded in ’08, played to a packed crowd at the Farmer’s Market in Saxapahaw, North Carolina. At the edge of the baptismal waters of the Haw River, I heard them for the first time.

I thought I had gone to sleep and awakened in the mid-90’s in Houston, Texas, where a band by the name of the Hollisters provided countless hours of listening pleasure, playing songs from their album Land of Rhythm and Pleasure. You may already be familiar with the bass stylings of Denny “Cletus” Blakely from the Hollisters if you have the Webb Wilder CD It Came from Nashville in your collection.

Despite their name, last night the Pistols provided a subdued form of showmanship, discharging a steady stream of rockabilly tunes while John Howie and Scott McCall shared the spotlight with vocals and electric guitar, respectively.

Their original tunes catalog scenes from lost loves, a theme which carried over into a Chuck Berry cover of “Nadine.”

As I listened to John Howie's vocals, I kept thinking how pretty he'd sound in a duet with the likes of Kelly Willis. After doing a little research this morning, I learned he's already teamed up with Tift Merritt.



Here’s hoping there’s a future for the resurrected Two Dollar Pistols in our post-apocalyptic world.

I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back/
And started walkin’ toward a coffee colored Cadillac /
I was pushin’ through the crowd tryna get to where she’s at/
And I was campaign shouting like a southern diplomat
Chuck Berry, “Nadine”

On the Last Day

Spent a dreamy Heather morning in the North Carolina Botanical Garden, just in case it is judgment day. I strolled among the southern lady ferns, where

I found my lost acoustic dreams

I found a reminder that it could be worse

I found inspiration in the Paul Green cabin

I found somebody to love

Finally, I came to rest on a wooden bench and listened to a song about one who flies to heaven only to choose to come back to Earth for a loved one.

“Drifting I turned on upstream/
Bound for my forgiver/
In the giving of my eyes to see your face/
Sound did silence me/
Leaving no trace/
I beg to leave to hear your wonderous stories/
Beg to hear your wonderous stories."

Jon Anderson, “Wonderous Stories”

Yes, I'll Take Mine with Cilantro

The band Yes seems to be just as polarizing among music lovers as cilantro is among foodies.

Of all the things my daughter learned to like her freshman year of college, I am happiest that she reports deepening feelings toward guacamole. Upon my arrival in Austin, I like to whip up a big bowl of guac. And now that bowl will need to be bigger.

But how do I turn her on to Yes? Is Yes a band you either like or don’t like, or is it a band you might grow to love due to circumstantial associations? Probably the former.

I fell in love with the band in the seventies because having an older sister meant easy access to all things Close to the Edge. The appeal for me was the steel guitar, the voice, and the magical lyrics, in that order. (I’ve always been a lyrics girl.)

In the evenings I’d sit on my canopy bed in my second story room in Highview, hooked up to the turntable by headphones, and watch the sun set and the lights come on in downtown Louisville while listening to heady music like Pink Floyd and Yes.

Yes in the round in 1978 was my first concert. I was dating a football player, and he merely tolerated the band for my sake.

For reasons I can’t explain, years and decades went by that I didn’t listen to Yes anymore.

Yesterday, a friend posted a Yes video to his Facebook page for Rick Wakeman’s birthday. I started thinking about Yes again, and I had to find another video.

Watching a 2004 video of “Going for the One” from Lugano definitely got to me. The steel guitar intro still makes my heart race. As I heard the words again, I recalled that even my father liked the song because of the “thoroughbred racing chaser.”

In the 2004 video, Jon Anderson delivers the message so passionately, and Steve Howe is transported by the Fender steel. The appeal for me is still the steel guitar, the voice, and the magical lyrics.

And as I look at my novel manuscript to prepare it for an agent, I see the steel guitar, the voice, and the magical lyrics. Yes, I see it’s all still there.


Now the verses I’ve sang don’t add much weight/
To the story in my head so I’m thinking I should go write a punch line/
But they’re so hard to find in my cosmic mind so I think I’ll take a look outside the window/ When I think about you, I don’t feel low.
-Jon Anderson, “Going for the One”

Super Sunday at Shakori with Sarah Lee Guthrie and Tift Merritt

What a great day at Shakori Hills in Pittsboro, NC!

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion performed several times this weekend, and I caught up with them at 3:00 p.m. on the Meadow Stage where they played new material from their CD, Bright Examples.

My favorite song from that CD, “Butterflies,” reminds me of a day my daughter and I drove from Austin to San Antonio, when the butterflies had flown up from Mexico. "Butterflies in the road/I think we should go real slow" sounds like Victoria Williams in her Musings of a Creek Dipper days.

I noticed Zeke Hutchins was drumming for Sarah Lee and Johnny, and figured that was because Tift Merritt was playing at 5:00, but it turns out Zeke has toured with Johnnie and Sarah Lee, according to his bio on his wife's website.

Tift’s show featured Dave Wilson from Chatham County Line on guitar and a guest appearance by local Django Haskins for a cover of "Thirteen." I preferred her old reliables "Stray Paper" and "Good Hearted Man," along with the new song "Mixtape" I've played on my guitar all weekend.

So much rock and roll love in a plastic case/
Play it loud then see my face
Tift Merritt, "Mixtape"

Oops!

Oops. A word I expect from Britney Spears. A word that harks back to a song like nails on a chalkboard when it’s stuck in your head. A word I do not expect to come from the bullhorn of a major airline.

Earlier this week I received word from US Airways that they had gifted my account with 1,000 frequent flyer miles. Okay. Nice gesture.

This morning I awoke to find the following e-mail in my box with the subject line, you guessed it,

OOPS!

“Earlier this week, we inadvertently delivered an email message to many of our Dividend Miles members' email accounts. Unfortunately, one of those accounts was yours. Worse, this email incorrectly stated that we posted 1,000 Dividend Miles into your account. This was not accurate and the email message was sent in error. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you and appreciate your understanding.”

My action was to immediately unsubscribe from their mail. Next it was to write this blog. Now it is to make a mental note not to book my next trip to Austin through Charlotte on US Airways.

Bad, US Air! Very, very bad! I am not sure who deserves to be terminated more, the employee that accidentally gifted the miles or the PR person who must have consulted a teenybopper when crafting the unprofessional Grinch Who Stole Christmas e.

Maybe the company plans to streamline operations lingo so that whenever we think of US Airways, we think of the word oops:

“Oops! We lost your bag.”
“Oops! Your flight has been canceled.”
“This is your captain speaking--oops!”


Oops!
…You think I’m in love
That I’m sent from above…
I’m not that innocent.

“Oops, I Did It Again”
--Max Martin

Our House

Back in 1982 Jelly Helm taught me how to make lists in AP Biology at Trinity High School. Not lists of phyla, more like lists of reasons Ms. Herp’s hair was green or reasons it was going to be a great day. Somewhere along the way I think Jelly taught Dave Letterman how to make funny lists, and now everybody is doing it.

Without further ado, here are the Top 10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Move to Carrboro and Buy My House:


1.) You’re a Duke fan and the proximity to UNC would make you sprout Blue Devil horns.

2.) A town with a free transit system is too green for you.

3.) The neighborhood gang is too rough and tumble.

4.) The laughter emanating from Dirty South Improv would make you too joyful.

5.) The local independent music scene would be lost on you.

6.) The tennis bums at Chapel Hill Tennis Club and the canoes at University Lake might tempt you to quit your day job.

7.) Your mother-in-law in Topeka, Kansas, needs you there for dinner every Sunday night.

8.) You plan to home school and don’t need great public schools like Carrboro High School.

9.) You like box stores and the Carrboro Farmer’s Market would insult your sensibilities.

10.) The four seasons and fair weather would destroy all the pleasure of complaining about the weather.

What, you still want to buy my house? Okay, here is the link to the listing.


I remember way back then when everything was true and when/We would have such a very good time such a fine time/ Such a happy time/ And I remember how we’d play simply waste the day away/ Then we’d say nothing would come between us two dreamers
“Our House” by Madness

The Accidental Pilgrim

It’s April, whence the prologue of The Canterbury Tales (CT) sprang, and at the beginning of my trip to Pennsylvania, I considered myself more a traveler than a pilgrim. Enter unexpected magic.

Take this version of The Canterbury Tales, left as offering in a house in Pennsylvania that I trudged through as a potential buyer. I won’t be buying the sweet house, but have a look in case you would. The dear seller left this book among others on the dining table with a note, “Please, take one.” I immediately thought of my friend Susan because I seem to recall how much pleasure she derived from the Tales. Having packed hastily for my trip, I failed to add a book to my suitcase, and so I indulgently claimed this one for my own.

The night I opened the book and began to read these words, the timing was perfect:

Whan that Aprille, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims, I don’t often stay in a hostelrye, and now I realize my folly. At small inns there’s the pleasure of making the acquaintance of fellow travelers. Upon our arrival in Pennsylvania, we entered the Franklin & Marshall guest quarters and were greeted by a New Yorker, recumbent on a sofa, watching an NCAA game. He later shared that his family was giving a lecture on campus about the movie Defiance, which was based on his father’s story.

The next morning, when the person behind door number two rose, we learned that he had slept the whole previous afternoon because he had just arrived from Egypt. He was visiting the college for a high school academic advising office.

The greatest object of curiosity for me in the guest quarters was in the manager’s office—a Fender. I hadn’t brought a guitar with me, and though I was twitching to pick it up, I’ll never touch another man’s guitar without his permission. The morning I left the house, as I exited the door, who should share the doorstep with me but the manager. Our eyes locked as we did the dance of my walking forward while he waited for me to step past him. I saw a kindred spirit in this fellow guitar player. “Did you see how he looked at me?” I asked my husband as I took my place in the passenger seat. He told me he always notices.

The next day at an open house at a day school, the headmaster chatted with me about his hometown in Carolina, his university days at UNC, and his tip for the trip: Visit Wilbur Chocolates.

When we headed home at the end of the week, we averted interstate traffic by finding a road less traveled—29 South. Of all the pilgrimages I’ve ever wanted to take, it is to return to the Virginia home of my family, the Blankenbakers, originally known as the Blankenbuchers. To my astonishment, this trip down 29 South was that very pilgrimage. Our car passed through the county of Madison where the family settled in 1742, past the birthplace of the Revolutionary War soldier Nicholas Blankenbaker (likely a member of the Culpeper Minute Men Battalion), past many roads named Hebron this or Hebron that (the Hebron Register was the source of my genealogical study a couple decades back at the Filson Club in Louisville) and past the town of Nicholas’s muster, Culpeper. Finally 29 South became NC86, and then Old Fayetteville Road, which enters my neighborhood and changes names until it is my street. All these eight years in Carolina I have lived on a direct route to my ancestral homeland in Virginia without ever knowing.

My first week back from this accidental pilgramage, I accompanied my son to his art show. His class exhibited masks, and I took a shining to one and just may make it my new Facebook profile pic because spring has got a hold on me this April. Like the small fowls making melody in the prologue of the CT, I find myself at night with open eye, yet not sleeping as they somehow manage to do, because I’m down with a bad case of pollen fever.

But if this spring finds you “longen” to “goon on pilgramages,” I wish you pleasant company and magic along your way. Upon your return, offer up your acoustic memory, pilgrim.

Super Cake

Some things a Super Bowl hostess can’t control. Take the year I served wings and Janet served breast.

If Super Bowl XLV has you stepping outside your comfort zone to serve guests on a gluten-free diet, this cake won’t give you any unwanted surprises. Most of the legwork will be shopping for ingredients you might not keep in the cupboard. This three flour cake crosses the goal line like an old flourless favorite of mine that used to be served at a restaurant in Crescent Hill.

The source of the recipe is a book my husband gave me a couple of Decembers ago.

I have made minor modifications to the recipe.

Yogurt Chocolate Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a tube pan with butter before dusting the pan with rice flour.

In a medium bowl, combine the three flours to make a total of 2 cups. The flour combination will be about
1 1/3 cup white rice flour
½ cup potato flour
¼ cup minus 1 Tablespoon of tapioca flour

To this mixture add
1 tsp. xanthum gum
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. powder egg replacer
¼ tsp. salt

In a mixing bowl, beat 1 stick of butter with ½ cup Ghirardelli cocoa and 1 and 1/3 cup of sugar on medium speed. To this mixture add 1 cup of boiling water and stir.

In a small bowl, beat one egg and two egg whites. Add to the mixing bowl and beat on low speed to avoid splashing over the sides of the bowl.

Add flour mixture to the mixing bowl. Beat on low to combine.

Add ½ cup nonfat plain yogurt and 2 tsp. of GF vanilla to the mixture. Stir.

The batter will look springy and does not pour. Transfer the batter to the tube pan with a spatula.

Bake for 50 minutes on 350.

Cool for 10 min. before removing the cake from the pan.

Dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Guess what I had for breakfast this morning? Blame it on this acoustic memory of Bill Cosby!

“Eggs, eggs are in chocolate cake, and milk, oh goody--that’s nutrition!”
-Bill Cosby

Calling All Linemen

If there’s an ice storm in your future, there could be a lineman there, too. I’ve fallen under the spell of a Jimmy Webb song about a lineman, made famous by Glen Campbell. “Wichita Lineman” may be the song of the week if the Weather Channel knows what they’re predicting about an ice storm, and if Webb was referring to Wichita, Kansas.

The lines that seem the most relevant to the forecast go like this:

I know I need a small vacation/
But it don’t look like rain/
And if it snows that stretch down south/
Won’t ever stand the strain.

Little did I know until this week that I was already a Jimmy Webb fan back in my preschool days when my record collection included the 5th Dimension.

Other Jimmy Webb songs include “Up, Up and Away,” "MacArthur Park" and “Highwayman.” Here's to all the great lines by Jimmy!

I hear you singing through the wire/
I can hear you through the whine.
Jimmy Webb, "Wichita Lineman"

Some Answers and a Bigger Question

Here are the answers to yesterday’s tagline quiz:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Godzilla

Erin Brockovich

Meet the Parents

And now here is a question: How come a root problem is often overlooked while the consequent, lesser problems get full attention?

Let me tell you a story. Several years ago at my daughter’s high school, there was a violent attack. I was scheduled to speak on tobacco prevention at the school that afternoon, and that morning my daughter sent me an e that read: “Mom, don’t come to school—too much violence.”

I didn’t read her e before leaving home that day. When I got to the school, the halls had been secured and the knife had been confiscated by the authorities. People told me what (they thought) happened.

I didn’t find out what really happened until several days later, in the evening, in the school gymnasium during an address by the principal that I had requested he give. The district superintendent was present as were many concerned students and parents.

It turns out that there was a student attending the school who had severe psychological illness. His illness was manifesting in many ways, including alignment with Nazism. The white student had been picking on black students for weeks. The black students couldn’t take it anymore.

Prior to the outbreak of violence on campus, the administration of the school, not recognizing the student’s mental illness, went to the trouble of hiring a mediator to come to the school to fix the poor race relations. The mentally healthy students were forced to sit in a room for several hours a day with the mentally unbalanced student to try patch up their differences.

Only after violence erupted at the school, did administrators look back on the situation and say, “We didn’t know what we were dealing with.” I can still hear those words as plain as day.

Mental illness goes unrecognized all the time. Awareness of mental illness is lacking. Until we address this problem, violent acts like the one at my daughter’s school and the one at the Safeway in Tucson will continue.

It is growing increasingly difficult for me to bite my tongue when every day, a new spin is given to the Tucson shootings—the need for concealed weapon permits, the consequences of political hate rhetoric and anything else you want to mention. The moral of the story should be let’s do more to spread awareness of the symptoms of mental illness and to make the general public aware of how to report mental illness.

What's My (Tag)line?

It’s time for the Golden Globes, and in 1962, “What’s My Line” won an award for the best television show. If you don’t remember it, no worries, it’s not the Ambien amnesia setting in; the show stopped airing in 1967.

The panelists had to guess the contestant’s line of work (hence line) through a series of questions. You might enjoy this clip of Frank Lloyd Wright on the show.

Yesterday I played a different kind of What’s My Line. I tried to finalize a tagline of sorts for my novel manuscript. A tagline is a marketing slogan, often used for movies. And while I do have a treatment for a screenplay on file with WGA, this month I’m writing query letters to agents, and I need to succinctly capture the plot of my novel manuscript in a sentence.

Despite posting on Facebook that my resolution for this year is to drive to the beach the first day it’s 70 degrees in Wilmington, a more serious endeavor is working on my novel manuscript every day. It’s amazing how inspiration flows in effortlessly when you commit to fifteen or thirty minutes of imposed concentration a day. And I really prefer moments of inspiration to hours of fretful consternation.

Yesterday my inspiration came to me over lunch. Since I’m reading The Herald-Sun while my neighbor is away for the weekend, I peeked at the newspaper TV listings for the first time in a long time.

Have you ever paid attention to the taglines of movies in the TV listings?

Try these and see if you can name the movie:

"A youth learns that his father is the Greek god Poseidon."

"A giant mutant lizard wreaks havoc in New York."

"A woman probes a power company cover-up over poisoned water."

"A man spends a disastrous weekend with his lover’s family."

I’ll post the names of the movies tomorrow on the blog.

Reading taglines really energized me yesterday. First, I was able to pick up my index card grocery list for Whole Foods and write a sentence about my story: A song takes a woman back to the man she loves. Next, I was able to frame my life past and future by considering what a writer would say the tagline of my life is.

If you’re looking for inspiration on the heels of your resolutions this January, think like a marketing executive and pen your own tagline. Try writing one for your past and go ahead and acknowledge a weakness if you must. But when you write one for your future, write yourself out of your current conflict.

May all your taglines come true!

She's making movies on location/ She don't know what it means/ And the music make her want to be the story/ And the story was whatever was the song--what it was
"Skateaway" Mark Knopfler