The Morning After the Smokeout

This isn't a review of Up in Smoke or the sequel to Richard Linklater's Slacker.  This is advice for moving beyond the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout if you're a smoker.

Today you won't have the rest of the country to support you as you quit.  But you can have the power of music to fortify you.

Instead of stepping outside into the cold (if you're in Philly) or putting yourself at risk in the sun's rays (if you're in Phoenix), try taking five with a song instead of smoking.

The Industry powerfully equips the cigarette with chemicals to stimulate and chemicals to relax.  (Boy, did they think of everything to hook you.)  It's time to load some tunes into your iPod to plan a counterinsurgency.

You'll need songs to make you wanna set the world on fire, and songs to rock you to sleep.  I suggest you try some new songs for your new life without the old addiction.  Of course, don't include any you associate with smoking.  If that means moving down the dial to the kids' station, it may be time to "get to Sesame Street."

Here are suggestions to start your song list if you want to stop smoking.

Songs to Get You Moving:

"Start Me Up" (M. Jagger, K. Richards)

"Ain't No Mountain Higher" (N. Ashford, V. Simpson)

"Hercules" (E. John, B. Taupin)

"A Little Bit of Soul" (J. Carter, K. Lewis)

"Living in the U.S.A." (S. Miller)

Songs to Help You Unwind:

"Lenny" (S.R. Vaughan)

"Melissa" (G. Allman)

"Miracles" (M. Balin)

"Winterlong" (N. Young)

Oh, we're gonna make it baby/

Oh, we're going to shake it, baby/

Oh, don't break it!

"Living in the U.S.A."

-S. Miller

Pink

According to the American Association of Cancer Research, half of women who could get mammograms don’t get them. 

If mammogram anxiety is keeping you or someone you love from getting a mammogram, here are some tips to share with women who are eligible for the screening.

• Schedule your mammogram for the first two weeks of your menstrual cycle when your breasts are less tender. The compression during the exam will be less uncomfortable that way.

• When you call to make the appointment, get the mailing address in case you need to send any previous mammograms in advance of your appointment. Find out the exact physical location of the building and ask where to park.

• Plan a fun activity to follow the mammogram, but make sure that it is one with a flexible start time since you won’t be able to control how much time your visit to the radiology department will take.

• The night before the exam, pack your insurance card into your purse and review your breast health history, including all procedures and screening exams since you will be filling out a history sheet in the office before your mammogram. Also, check your calendar and write down the date of your last menstrual period—you will be asked for it.

• Plan to wear a shirt that won't wrinkle when it's folded into a plastic bag and left there for a couple hours.  

• Pack your deodorant into your purse the night before your mammogram.  This way you won’t risk applying it out of habit before your appointment and it will be in your possession after your appointment when you are getting dressed the second time that day.

• Eat breakfast the morning of your mammogram. Even if you're scheduled for eight o’clock and think you’ll be at the bagel shop by nine o’clock, eat at home.  You never know what delays could occur or what additional tests could be performed over the course of the morning.  Stress plus an empty stomach is a recipe for a bad experience.

• Take a portable music player. I say this for two reasons.  One, you will make yourself unavailable for chitchat with well-meaning people who will try to strike up a conversation with you but who may only stress you out more with their own story.  Two, you will be able to drown out the audio of the TV in the waiting room that may be blaring something that could zap your positive attitude.

• Take your own reading material. I once flipped through a waiting room magazine and found an ad memorializing a breast cancer victim; the ad only made me worry more.

• When your visit in radiology is over, be certain that you completely understand when you are supposed to return to the clinic for your next appointment.   Mark that date on your calendar as soon as you return home. 

Pink.

It’s not even a question.

“Pink” 

-Tyler, Supa, Ballard

There's a First Time for Everything

Four hundred and twenty blackbirds just flew into the trees outside my window. I ran to the sunroom and opened the door to hear the cry of the birds accompanied by the sound of displaced acorns falling on the patio.

I’ve never seen this before.

“There’s a first time for everything.”  Remember when someone said this to you as a kid? The context was never good.  You had left your guitar at home and Sister Juanita was mad at you.  You had just been bit by Hot Diggity Dog and blood was seeping through your shirt.  You had gotten your first B from Ms. Pica in typing class and you saw your GPA plummeting for a business course your mom said you had to take but Madame Danzig said should have been sacrificed for German.

You’ve stayed up all night before.  It’s preferably with a lover and preferably not with a sick child who wants you to read The Guest Who Threw Tomatoes over and over until dawn.  This week I stayed up all night with a dog, only to take her to the ER at six in the morning.  A first.  There’s a first time for everything.

There is a first time for everything. Just sometimes though, there will come that first time for something that will be glorious.  It will be splendid.  And if it happens at a certain age when you think first times will not send you, you will be doubly blessed.

I’ve had some notable first times recently.  One came last night.

I was in my office, editing, when an e came in at nine-thirty from my son.  The subject line was “wrote this for english” (sic). It was a poem, his first. 

My son, how did you know which words to capitalize?  My son, how did you know about structure?  My son, where do these deep thoughts reside when you are walking through the house shuffling a deck of cards with a blank look on your face?

To my son, who used to tell children, “My mom is a writer but I can’t write”: You were wrong.  But don’t worry, there’s a first time for everything.  And I hope that in the balance, most of them are splendid.

All your life/

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

“Blackbird”

Lennon-McCartney

Blue Moon Sessions

Yesterday at Pine View Dairy Farm, the back-to-school flavor of the month was peanut butter and jelly.  While it’s true I ate my strawberry ice cream without company since my kids are in school, I thought a blue moon flavor might be a better offering.

In August 2012 we'll have two full moons, the last one occurring today.

The blue moon to me is all about value.  In grocery store lingo it’s a lunar bogo (buy one get one).  It’s got me thinking about value in my life. I’m so inspired by the moon’s beneficence that I’m looking to song lyrics for a similar generosity of value.  But more on that later.

When I recall poems and songs about the moon, one poem really comes to mind. Some years past, my friend Susan, who is just as moved by words as I am, gave me a book of poems, 365 of them, to be exact.  The concept is that for each day of the Julian calendar, there’s a poem.  

Spoiler alert:  You just may fall in love with the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem for June 18, “To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling”:

Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

The poem was inspired by Shelley’s infatuation with a guitar-plucking housewife in Pisa named Jane. The lines about “music and moonlight and feeling” resonate with me during this month of the blue moon. 

I’ve made a point to spend some time with the moon this week, harvesting the magic. These blue moon sessions of mine include a patio and some candles and an iPOD. I’m listening to songs and recalling their meanings at the time they were popular (thinking about the acoustic memory) and comparing them to the lyrics’ current message for me, or really, how the song speaks to my life today.

These blue moon sessions have been rather purposeful:  I’m mining old favorite albums like Decade and Let It Bleed to look for lyrics that might suggest a second meaning at this juncture in my life.  I’m searching for songs that will render a blue moon acoustic memory.

A couple times I’ve run across a song that's inspired me to run in the house and play a song on my guitar (like Shelley’s Jane) when lyrics call to mind a newer meaning.

Aside from harvesting blue moon acoustic memories, this month's double dip of a full moon is a great time to contemplate intent.  If you could have something twice this month only, what would it be?

I am a lonely visitor/
I came too late to cause a stir/
Although I campaigned my whole life toward that goal/
I hardly slept the night you wept/
Our secret’s safe and still well kept/
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.

“Campaigner” 
-Neil Young

Country Girl

Acoustic memories often come with a hankering, and since I just drove to Austin with my daugther in the car a few weeks back, those hankerings have been countrified.  Somehow the longing in my heart has shifted on the dial.

I’ve been bit by the bug--not a bed bug--a Country with a capital “C” bug. I was voted least likely to be bit by the country bug.  I cut my teeth on Stones and Faces (and Maker’s cause that’s how they handle the younguns in Kaintuck).  I aspired to become a rock guitarist (or a vet or a detective), not a country music fan. And don’t blame it on my parents: My dad only tuned to WTMT 620 for race results. I promise my dial was set to LRS-102 during the impressionable years, as the photo clearly shows. (Technically, this was Paul Neff's basement.)

How did it happen? Might be all the time I’ve been spending on farms in Lancaster County. Could be the windows were open while I drove through Nashville.  Blame it on the sound of eighteen wheelers infiltrating my dreams on the road. I could’ve caught it from Kelly Ford, the diva of country music DJs, at our high school reunion. Or maybe it’s emanating from the pearl snaps on my western shirt.

Maybe I’m evolving. Nah! Too late for that.

Cards on the table, here’s what was on my daughter’s iPod on the road trip that’s now on rotation in my head:

Jake Owen/ “Alone With You”

Luke Bryan/ “I Don’t Want This Night to End”

Eli Young Band/“Even If It Breaks Your Heart” 

Way back on the radio dial/

A fire got lit inside a bright eyed child/

Every note just wrapped around his soul/

From steel guitars to Memphis all the way to rock and roll.

“Even If It Breaks Your Heart”

-Will Hoge and Eric Paslay

She Wears It Well

I’ll admit I changed my Internet loading page to PBS NewsHour to get away from the mindless drivel of information that headlines on Yahoo.  Nonetheless, I find myself starved for some popular culture from time to time, and although I enjoy Jeffrey Brown’s segments, my diet is still deficient.

That’s why I found myself looking at an analysis of Kate Middleton’s spectator attire at the Olympics.  I’m happy to report I liked what I saw.  

What I didn’t see: toe cleavage, plunging necklines, tattoos, VPLs or even visible panties. Instead, I saw classic beauty in subtle wrappings.

I’m sure Kate would love to cut loose with some short shorts and peep-toe pumps, but I’m glad she’s promoting a demure, feminine image.

Now I can't get the song that mentions Madame Onassis out of my head.

But I ain't forgetting that you were once mine/

But I blew it without even tryin/

Now I'm eatin my heart out/

Tryin to get a letter through

“You Wear It Well”

Rod Stewart, Martin Quittenton

Back on the Chain Gang

My daughter and I are back on the chain gang.  We're not really out in orange work clothes on the side of the highway, but we're about that miserable.

Our chains are made of mental heavy metal as much as they are of pretty papers.  At some point when she was just a little girl, we made a chain of colorful construction paper to count down the days to a special event.  Nowadays, we use the chain to count down the days until we are reunited.

Over the years, my daughter's status of child of divorced parents has caused heartbreak and misery on the part of both mother and child.  The summers apart or the holidays spent away took giant chunks out of my heart. Now, when we start to feel like we've been apart too long, the chain rears it's head, offering up both bondage and hope.

My daughter is visiting her father this week.  She's been away two days and is due back in five.  So it's back to the chains. Sing it, Chrissie.

The powers that be/

That force us to live like we do/

Bring me to my knees/

When I see what they've done to you/

But I'll die as I stand here today/

Knowing that deep in my heart/

They'll fall to ruin one day/

For making us part

Chrissie Hynde

"Back on the Chain Gang"

WTMT 620

The jingle for WTMT 620 could only mean my dad was at it again: on the go and in need of race results. My first intersection with country music was with my father and the radio.  Although my father’s musical tastes ran more toward mainstream pop, his gambling genes put him on the receiving end of country airwaves more often than not.  He always needed to know how that horse in the fifth did at Aqueduct or the horse in the sixth did at Santa Anita.  For that reason, his right hand could turn the dial to 620 while his left hand steered onto I-65.   Once he had the racing news, he’d put the dial back onto something more to his liking.  And he liked songs with a backbeat and a great big ‘ole hook.

Back in ’78, when he was still driving me to school, his favorite song was Alicia Bridges' “I Love the Nightlife.”

Please don’t talk about love tonight/

Your sweet talk won’t make it right.

Backbeat, check.  Hook, wait for it:

I love the nightlife/I got to boogie/On the disco round, oh yea.

My daughter’s home from college, and the sounds coming from her room have changed.  No more Foo Fighters.  Now it’s the Randy Rogers Band.  Her biggest risk factor for a country music affinity would have to be living in Waco during the school year.  I’ve never cared for mainstream country, and it was just her grandfather’s way of finding out how much money he’d made. Otherwise, he'd never have strayed all the way down to 620 AM for a country station.

But this country music coming from a distant corner of the house is taking me back to race time with Robert.  Given that we’re right here between the Derby and the Preakness, it’s a timely acoustic memory.

Sailors sail, cowboys ride/

Lovers love when they get the chance.

“Kiss Me in the Dark,” Randy Rogers Band

Last Word

My professional writing has sparked my muse, and I'm left to ponder the power of last words. A study from Mass General on marathon runners contained the nugget of history that Phidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to announce victory and in proclaiming it, died on the spot.  His last words: “Rejoice, we conquer.”  

My grandmother’s last words were, “I love you.”  I received the words (thanks to Alexander Graham Bell) in a car at a drive-in. I relished the truth that Mamaw spoke her last words to me before going to bed, saying her prayers, and slipping into her final slumber.

My nephew slipped into a diabetic coma this month.  When his friends and family gathered, many testified.  He had been quite a catalyst in his short twenty-six years. He leaves behind songs and guitar melodies as his last words.

Today my friend Susan will stand before friends and family, giving her version of the last word on her father’s life.  Unfortunately, he lost the capacity to speak due to a brain tumor, but he had proactively worked out a system of communication using blinks and hands. In his final days, Susan was a vigilant daughter at his bedside decoding messages.  

Imagine that, though, trying to come to peace with the end of your life yet not being able to speak.  Surely Susan’s father was a strong man in life and in death.  And that he died quietly might be a testament to this man’s style in life. And perhaps our deeds should speak our last words for us.

In his case, news of one of his great deeds reached me after news of his death. When we were high school students, a friend in need received a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor that changed his life for the better in a lasting way.  None of us had any idea who gave him the money.  I recall the power and the mystery of the money scared me a bit and yet no harm was done. 

Before he died, Susan’s father told her he was the donor.  This quiet man’s deeds have outlived him. Last word.

I read in the Good Book someplace it says every word uttered will be accounted for/

What’s the last word? What’s the password? Anybody gonna say?/

But in heaven it’s the lion laying down with the lamb/

Yeah in heaven, all the dinosaur look in the face of an angel man.

-Victoria Williams “Last Word”

In memory of Michael Sheldon Griffin and Brenner Fillmore Eugenides

Of Brandywine and Men

Sometimes father and son pursue the same career, just like Senior and Shrub, Kirk and Michael, Woody and Arlo. And the Wyeths.  Like father, like son, right? A trip to Brandywine River Museum left me less certain.

After weeks of driving around the rural, winter Pennsylvania countryside, a pilgrimage to Chadds Ford (the area of Pennsylvania that inspired Andrew Wyeth) became inevitable. One weekend I was in Chester County photographing farms like this one

And the next I was visiting farms made famous by Andrew Wyeth like this one

I arrived at the "Wyeth well" early on a Saturday afternoon.  At the Brandywine River Museum, I hadn’t expected to be pulled to the river first, but given the abundance of glass that only minimally separates the museum from its surroundings, nature competes with the gallery interiors. Outside each gallery, a southerly wall of glass allows views of the gently flowing Brandywine River.

After spending some time on the banks of the river, I moved inside the converted mill, and over the next few hours grew in my conviction that very small, intimate museums often give me more of a reason to pause than the d’Orsays or MoMAs.  The Brandywine seems to exist for just that reason:  to provide the thoughtful art viewer an intimate place to look and and reflect. 

And there’s plenty to consider as you ponder the grandfather, NC, who illustrated James Fenimore Cooper novels, the son, Andrew, who painted rural scenes of his Pennsylvania and Maine neighbors over and over again, and the grandson, Jamie, who followed Nyurev’s career. For me, not all Wyeths are created equal; only Andrew’s work has a haunting quality that transcends time and dimension.

Nonetheless, upon returning from the land of Wyeth, I had to know more about all these men.  In researching the family, I came upon a fact tying the Wyeths to this blog of acoustic memories:  NC’s engineer son fathered a musician who played on Dylan’s Hard Rain. Howard Wyeth, along with others including Joan Baez, Kinky Friedman and T-Bone Burnett, were part of the Rolling Thunder Revue.

Not a word was spoke between us there was little risk involved/

Everything up to that point had been left unresolved/

Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm/

“Come in” she said/

“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

"Shelter from the Storm"

-Bob Dylan

Wyeth Country

Unmoored

At this juncture when I am miles beyond “This is not Kentucky,” “This is not Texas,” and even “This is not North Carolina,” I drive around on the weekends if only to assure myself that I am someplace familiar, someplace like home.  Lately, I find myself in Wyeth country.

Christina's World

My first travels to Wyeth Country began in my teens in the early 80s.  I became enamored with a copy of Christina’s World that hung in my aunt’s house.  At that time I had no idea that Christina could only drag herself across that field.  My sister convinced my boyfriend to buy the print for me.  Suddenly, I found myself in Wyeth country in the privacy of my own bedroom.

You are in line for tomorrow

In the late 1980s, I flew to NYC to spend a day in Manhattan with my sister.  I was not supposed to end up in front of Christina in the MoMA.  As fate would have it, after standing on line for an hour with my sister at Sotheby’s (we were going to see the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels), we reached a sign that told us we were in line for the following day’s exhibit. We had no choice but to retreat to the MoMA.

Breeders' Cup

In the early 1990s, a cold autumn rain fell outside the window of my hospital room as I labored over a name for my firstborn.  Ellis Anne?  Certainly not, the monogram would be E-A-T.  Ella Elizabeth?  A family name, for certain.  My father was at the Breeders’ Cup.  My baby’s father had gone home with a cold.  In my solitude, I settled instead on Ella Christina.  Now, I wonder, was I returning to Wyeth for comfort at that vulnerable moment?

Faraway

This fall, as I drove my son from Lancaster to Reading, I noticed the stark brown landscape of Berks County and thought, Wyeth! The following week, as I poked around in my attic for the first time, taking stock of my possessions now confined to cardboard boxes the movers had stowed, I came upon a framed poster the home’s previous owner had left behind.  I pulled it down from the beam to get a closer look at the front, which faced the eaves.  To my surprise it was Wyeth’s Faraway, the squirrelly little lad with his knees pulled to his chest, his head covered by a coonskin cap.

"Depths of dirt and earth"

This weekend I traveled closer to Wyeth country than ever before, quite unexpectedly, but not uncertain of my arrival.  The dotting of the bleak winter landscape with white farmhouses, the gentle roll of the hills, the quilted land, where subtle changes from one plot to the next divide the earth into rectangular grids of varying shades and heights of vegetation, had a familiar quality.  That evening I learned I was only miles from Chadds Ford, Wyeth’s birthplace.  In my library I found one of the Wyeth books my sister had given me and read what Wyeth had to say about Pennsylvania:  “In Pennsylvania, there’s a substantial foundation underneath, of depths of dirt and earth.” 

In Kentucky, bluegrass was home, in Texas, concrete, and in Carolina, pine.  Here, in the bleakness of a Pennsylvania winter, I find myself intrigued by the still, brown earth.  Graphic art and music certainly can coexist, but when I look at a Wyeth, or when I view the landscape in Wyeth country, all that comes to mind is silence: no score, no lyrics. Just silence.