My Acoustic Memory

Of Brandywine and Men

2012-02-14T22:45:00.003-05:00

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

2012-01-16T16:35:00.003-05:00

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 bleak 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.

A December Letter to Friends

2011-12-19T22:31:00.003-05:00

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

2011-10-23T22:25:00.001-04:00

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 Don 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 from nearby beer ads shining in her eyes for the message to take seed.

I wasted no time on the ride to Threadgill's singing Janis Joplin to make my daughter understand just who Janis was 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 like Janis because here we’d already passed Peter Pan Golf, and she 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 Threadgill's and even though the show was on the lawn, I direct my daughter inside to do some sightseeing. And there she was, on the wall, at least a dozen photos of Janis, singing. My daughter takes one look and says, “Oh, she looks as obnoxious as she sounds.” And that just singes, you know, because I did look up to Janis a wee bit once upon a time. But the next day my brother-in-law would tell me back at the in-law compound (with about two dozen mounted animals as witnesses) that Janis was voted ugliest man at UT. Thus, 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.

We’ve arrived late to the lawn for the show, and 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, who are assembled 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 either 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.

I have a couple books on my shelf back home in Pennsylvania, 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 family proclivity for story. 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 Archer City, the town he calls “Levelland” and 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 her copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, only that day my daughter was a little girl in pony tails. Not like this night of acoustic memories at Threadgill’s, when she shines brighter than the neon light.

Never on a Sunday?

2011-08-07T22:49:00.001-04:00

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, 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

2011-06-15T19:44:00.000-04:00

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 Montessori, 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 60’s. 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 did 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

2011-05-22T21:10:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-21T13:49:00.000-04:00

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

2011-05-19T17:09:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-24T22:55:00.000-04:00

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!

2011-04-09T08:00:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-08T12:18:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-06T17:24:00.000-04:00

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

2011-02-05T19:06:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-31T17:10:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-17T16:35:00.000-05:00

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?

2011-01-16T10:59:00.000-05:00

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

Lunacy

2010-12-20T22:29:00.000-05:00

For those of you staying awake tonight to watch the total lunar eclipse, here’s some scientific reading I found through a PubMed search about the effects of the moon on humans. In particular, I like the article by the Swiss researchers because they reference a John Lennon song in the title.

This topic of a full moon brings back memories of my first days on labor and delivery as a medical student. The nurse walked us to the blackboard where each patient’s name was written along with facts like the estimated date of confinement (the lingo is telling my age) and the number of centimeters of, well, never mind that detail. Anyway, the nurse explained that when the moon is full, the board fills up with patients.

My mother-in-law once told me that the phase of the moon at the time of your birth influences your personality, and if you’re into that kind of introspection, here’s more reading for you. Unless you already know the phase of the moon on your date of birth, you may need a chart like this one.

My lunacy impacts two areas of my life: writing and sleeping. Where the pen’s concerned, I’ve noted it’s difficult for me to write fiction unless there’s a waxing gibbous moon. I have trouble sleeping when there’s a full moon, and I relate that to the light that comes in my room despite very thick draperies. When we were students on call for obstetrics, we slept in a room with about ten beds and no windows. The room was called the womb. Since that time I’ve always had trouble sleeping with even the tiniest amount of light. In hotels I put socks and towels over clocks, cell phone chargers and anything else neon that might wake me. Around two o’clock in the morning, I usually wake to find a beam of red or green light somewhere that due vigilance missed.

I’m hoping I won’t be awake for the eclipse tonight. Good night!

And it's a strange lamp that lights the path back into memory/ Showing you not what you have but what you need.
Scrappy Jud Newcomb, "I Think of You"

Blog Writer Plans Hibernation Day

2010-12-14T20:40:00.000-05:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Doctoredits via Google account on the comment page for this blog

Blog Writer Plans Hibernation Day

Worthy Tips for Watching Television, Reading Random Stories, and Eating With Little to No Cooking

CARRBORO, North Carolina—December 14, 2010--I am officially hibernating. I last left home at 2:00 p.m. today and don’t have any plans until I fetch someone from the airport at 2:30 p.m. Thursday. And if I play this the right way, and Mother Nature decides to cooperate, I will be able to push that responsibility off onto my husband who’s a more suitable driver on an icy interstate.

Why hibernate? My fridge is stocked. My door is locked and my diamond is hocked? Not really.

I’m hibernating because I don’t like the cold unless it is accompanied by dramatic precipitation and Alpine terrain. I’m seriously living in the wrong country, and there’s nothing like December, January and February to remind me.

I’m hibernating because this is my coldest December on record in Carolina.

And what’s to do? Well, hm. I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps this idea is not fleshed out.

Wait a minute. I could work on my 2010 taxes. I could fill out next year’s financial aid application. I could write query letters for my novel manuscript. I could write query letters for my article on mammography. I could update my will and spring clean a few months early. None of this is fitting for one aspiring to metabolic depression.

This hibernation needs more thought. I’m already afraid I may squander it fecklessly checking Facebook. Wait! Television might be the answer.

I know, I’ll place a glass of water and a Tupperware of gluten-free banana muffins bedside and stay under the covers all the way through American Morning, my favorite really early morning show. (Have you checked out the acoustic memories they play as they return from commercial breaks? Evidently, Jon Stewart doesn’t like them.) And this just in, John Roberts will not be on American Morning anymore after the month is up. What better justification for watching it past the point of 6:50 a.m. when I normally bail out of bed?

After American Morning I think I’ll walk to my sofa to watch The Holiday for the first time this year and the twentieth time of my life. When that’s over, I can boil some shrimp and green beans for four minutes while my potato absorbs microwaves for eight. Then I’ll take my tray to the sofa to watch last night’s PBS NewsHour minus the commercials. After lunch I can check my e-mail and see what has happened to my shares of GM stock that have a stop order on them.

Then I may have to finish "St. Mawr," the D.H. Lawrence story that Dr. Weldon Thornton recommended to me at a Derby party this year, before starting on Utopia by St. Thomas More (this may seem like a word association, but actually, utopia was the word of the day on WCHL this morning, and Dr. Wayne Pond told us the word originated with St. Thomas More).

Once I’ve tired of reading, I’ll plan for my husband to cook my dinner when he comes home from work.

Individuals seeking ideas for a similar hibernation or needing a soundtrack for hibernation should contact me via the comments page.

-END-

Permission to reprint: You may reprint any two of the suggestions herein as long as you promise to wake me up when this cold weather is over.

Need an image? Evidently all my blog photos are being placed on Google Images by robots while I sleep. So far, it’s not keeping me up at night, and it probably won’t interrupt my hibernation.

I don’t want to get out of bed/ You don’t want to go out in the snow/ We don’t have to do the things Eskimos do/ Let’s have a hibernation day, me and you.

“Hibernation Day” Jars of Clay

Westboro Baptist Church Needs to Turn, Turn, Turn Away from Elizabeth Edwards' Funeral

2010-12-09T15:47:00.000-05:00

Two things are making me sick today: one is a gastrointestinal bug and the other is even crappier. WRAL is reporting that the Westboro Baptist Chuch (based in Kansas) is planning a protest at the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards in Raleigh on Saturday.

These protesters would do well to listen to their acoustic memories, which have evidently short-circuited on the “do unto others” sound track. If that is the case, here is a song, based on Bible verse, for this misguided group.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)/ There is a season (turn, turn, turn)/ And a time to every purpose under heaven/ A time to build up, a time to break down/ A time to dance, a time to mourn/ A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.

-Pete Seeger, "Turn! Turn! Turn!"

Give us our time to mourn, Westboro! Turn out of Raleigh!

Snow Was Falling Like Moravian Stars

2010-12-05T15:42:00.000-05:00

Snow was falling like Moravian stars the day my son suggested we visit Old Salem. We crossed a covered bridge and stepped back in time.

The Moravians settled in North Carolina in the middle of the eighteenth century on land known as the Wachovia tract.

Their religion, the first Protestant denomination, was founded by a Catholic, Czech priest who was burnt at the stake for heresy. The Moravian Church is still in existence today in the United States.

Farther down Main Street we came across the campus of Salem College for women. Perhaps you’re more familiar with Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Moravians believed that education was essential for salvation. The day of our visit, children were rolling snowmen on the green while a trombone choir performed. The Moravians are credited with bringing classical European music to America.

Needing to warm up, we stepped inside the Winkler Bakery for some sugar bread. Serving sweet buns during a church service (the lovefeast) is one of the Moravian traditions.

In every gift shop, we came across the Moravian star, with its twenty-six points, a symbol of Advent.

Outside snow continued to fall until it turned purple.

We walked along Main Street in the cold. That's my husband in the yellow jacket, strolling past the Single Brothers' House. Wreaths decked doors with diagonal designs.

We saw homes that could have inspired the likes of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Up on the Housetop.” Our thoughts turned toward getting back home before the interstate froze.

"In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love."
Motto of the Moravian Church

MAM at the Improv Slam

2010-11-30T21:38:00.000-05:00

The weekend after Thanksgiving I found myself at Dirty South Improv getting an acoustic memory workout. The two improv teams, in their attempt to take home the gold, called on the audience for backup, putting all of us in memory boot camp.

Why so much work?
Audience participation. It's a staple of the improv slam. At one point we all participated in something I'm going to call My Acoustic Memory Shuffle.

An acoustic memory shuffle?
Right. The red team left the stage while the black team asked the audience to list favorite movie lines and favorite song lyrics. And please note, the 7:30 show was an all ages show, and as DSI promised, the show was fit for everyone from the 5-year-old to the grandparent. And that made things even more challenging. More about that shortly.

What movie line did you contribute?
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Was it hard to keep the suggestions clean for the family?
Yes, as you can see, my potty mouth got into my acoustic memory with the “d” word.

What movie line did your 10-year-old like the most?
“Dobby is free.”

Which song lyric didn’t make sense?
De Doo Doo Doo De Da Da Da

What did they do with the lines that the audience suggested?
The black team wrote each line on a strip of paper and then scattered the strips on the stage before calling the other team back to the stage.

Then what happened to the acoustic memories?
The red team came back on stage, and there was a request for the audience to name a place where people get things done. A child shouted out, “the office," but it was pointed out that people really don’t get much done at the office. Someone else hollered out “grocery store,” and the three members of the red team immediately started to improvise dialogue and mime actions of shoppers in the grocery store. As the scene progressed, it became apparent they were portraying two old farts with a grandson in tow.

Once the scene was established for the audience, they started inserting the lines from the songs and movies into the dialogue by cueing up a statement, such as, “And then he said to me…” and then stooping over, picking up a piece of paper, and reading the line to finish the sentence.

But was it funny?
Yes, it was hilarious. Uh, maybe you had to be there. And you can go, but you have to come to Carrboro, North Carolina, to see Improv Slam played Dirty South Improv style.

Can I try this at home?
Yes, please do. It would be the perfect entertainment for family gatherings during that next set of holidays that starts in December. All you need is a pencil, some paper, two teams of three people and some other random family members to make line suggestions, laugh or boo. And acoustic memories. Of course, you need lots of acoustic memories.

De doo doo doo, de da da da/ Is all I want to say to you
-Sting

Sufferin 'til Suffrage

2010-11-01T13:31:00.000-04:00

Hey y’all, pull down your levers! It’s time to vote.

Last week my 5th grader memorized the amendments to the Constitution. I had to plead the 5th when he asked me to explain the 9th. But I’ll never forget the 19th amendment, oh no.

Saturday mornings I’d wake up and bake cinnamon rolls from a tin can and eat them while I watched cartoons in the den. Schoolhouse Rock infiltrated the mix of Scooby Doo and Lidsville. Remember "Sufferin 'til Suffrage"? You know the 19th amendment “struck down that restrictive rule.” That lyric refers to the turn of the 19th century, when women who had the right to vote in certain states lost that right. The 19th amendment ensured women would not be denied the right to vote on account of their sex. My grandmothers Elizabeth and Rose were able to vote when they reached the age of majority, but not their mothers, Lucille and Flora, respectively.

Voting rights used to vary from state to state. My current state of residence was the last state to remove the restriction that voters had to own property. That change occurred in 1856. Even in our times, it was not until 1971 that the 26th amendment established that in all states the legal voting age would be 18. So my sister was able to vote in ’74 when she was 19. She’d been waiting, too; I still remember the McGovern poster in her bedroom in ’72.

Here’s more to read on the history of voting rights, but you might want to save this reading material until after you vote—I don’t want to impinge on your voting time!

Disclaimer: There was a time that I was so turned off by politics that I was an independent, not because I wanted to remain impartial, but because I thought I was above it all that way. Now I’m affiliated with a party, and I’m humbled by my right to vote. I see it as part of my duty to model good citizenship for my children, and as a tribute to the people who came before me to ensure my right to vote.

No literacy test, no poll tax. I’m voting. Because I can.

And now we pull down on the lever/
Cast our ballots and we endeavor/
To improve our country, state, county, town, and school.
"Sufferin 'til Suffrage" Schoolhouse Rock

Backfield in Motion

2010-10-02T08:32:00.000-04:00

There’s an old rivalry in Louisville, Kentucky, that goes back further than Papa John's to the early days of KFC. Each fall two Louisville high school football powerhouses square off in front of a crowd of around 40,000.

If Trinity is winning the game, you can here the crowd chanting, “We will, we will ROCK you.” In the fourth quarter if St. X is winning, you can hear the crowd singing, “Nah, nah, nah, nah/Nah, nah, nah, nah/Hey, hey-ay/Goodbye.”

I attended those games from 1969 until 1982, first as a child sitting on her dad’s shoulders, last as a cheerleader standing on her partner’s shoulders. And you can add this game to the long list of things I miss about my hometown.

Last night a little nostalgia came over me as I took my son to see the Friday night lights in the 2751-oh zip code.

The library lights at Carrbor-Oh High shone like a beacon, but on closer inspection, the library was empty.

Even the principals were out of their offices. And in Carrbor-oh, Principal Batten is cool enough to wear a purple velvet jacket to the game.

I ran into one of my babies who’s in Raleigh at college this year.

But no one was drinking beer. Somebody tell me if I’m wrong: I think they sold beer at the St.X-Trinity game in the 80’s. Not that I had any.

Carrbor-oh was 5-0 going into this game, and it's the talk of the town that this team has beaten the others in town in its first five years in existence.

This morning I can’t get the soul song “Backfield in Motion” off my mind. It hit the charts before “Starting All Over Again.” This Soul Train video of the latter song showcases the talent of the cousins from Mississippi. Their moves remind me of those of the backup singers in the Kentucky band The Trendells that I used to go see at a bar in Lexington when I was in med school.

How did we get from football to soul?

Backfield in motion, yeah/I’m gonna have to penalize you/Backfield in motion, baby/You know that’s against the rules.
“Backfield in Motion”
Mel & Tim

Girls on Film

2010-09-14T20:35:00.000-04:00

The ad shows a woman, spade in hand, dressed for a morning in her flower garden. On closer inspection, “she” is a lifelike sculpture. On her lapel, a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness makes it clear how she met her untimely death.

I find the ad while flipping through a magazine in the waiting room in the radiology suite, where I have had a mammogram, have been told it is abnormal, and have been left to wait for a radiologist to consult with me.

When you are waiting for the radiologist to tell you just how abnormal your mammogram looks, the last thing you want to do is see a reminder of breast cancer’s toll. But what should you be doing while you are waiting in radiology during your annual screening?

Mammograms have a regular part of my health care since I was 25. Because my mother was diagnosed with premenopausal breast cancer, I started getting screenings earlier than the average woman, who usually begins screening at age 40.

I practiced diagnostic surgical pathology at the world’s largest medical center and saw many breast biopsies under my microscope every day. Although I still dread my mammogram, I have become more savvy about how I mentally prepare for the screening.

Taking all kinds of potential problems into consideration, I have come up with a list of action points to minimize the stress of scheduling and getting a mammogram. My suggestions are based on a decade of mammograms at three academic centers in large metropolitan areas.

• Understand your insurance company’s policies regarding reimbursement for a mammogram. Last year the radiologist suggested I have an ultrasound on the same day as the mammogram. I complied. When the explanation of benefits arrived in the mail, I was surprised to find out that the insurance company did not pay for the mammogram because a second service was billed on the same day.

• 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.

• Consider telling a trusted friend when you are going to have your appointment, but think twice about asking a friend to go with you. When I am mustering courage, sometimes talking stresses me out, and I would feel obligated to talk to my friend. See if a friend can help you with child transportation duties if necessary.

• Plan a fun activity to follow the mammogram, but make sure 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. Whether or not you receive immediate feedback on your films, it is nice to celebrate that the exam is out of the way.

• The night before the mammogram, pack your insurance card into your purse and review your breast health history, including all procedures and screening exams. You will be filling out a history sheet in the office before your mammogram. Also, check your calendar and write down your LMP—you will be asked for it. Having this information on hand will keep you from feeling ill-prepared while completing the necessary paperwork.

• Don’t wear deodorant; do wear separates. Pack your deodorant into your purse the night before your appointment--this way you won’t reach for it out of habit the morning of your mammogram, and it will be in your possession when you get dressed after the appointment. Deodorant can cause aberrant spots on the X-ray. If you accidentally apply deodorant the morning of your exam, don’t sweat it: The radiology suite will have moist towelettes for you to use. During the mammogram you will be asked to undress from the waist up. If you wear separates, you may be less cold during the procedure. Wear a top that won’t wrinkle after it has been folded into a plastic bag and left there for an hour. This way you’ll look fabulous for your post-appointment activity.

• Eat breakfast before your mammogram. Even if you are scheduled for an eight o’clock appointment 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 sure recipe for unease.

• Be very careful when you walk through the parking lot. Stay aware of your surroundings and don’t allow yourself to slip into a mood of anxious unawareness. If you have an early morning appointment, the parking lot for patients may be used by employees who are speeding into the lot to find a spot. Look for crosswalks and don’t assume cars will stop for you.

• Take a portable music player. I say this for two reasons. You will make yourself unavailable for chit chat with well-meaning people whose story may only make you more anxious. Secondly, you will be able to drown out the audio of the TV in the waiting room that may be blaring a talk show dialogue about cancer, a faltering economy, or anything else that could zap your positive attitude.

• Take your own reading material that you have selected based on its low likelihood of stressing you out. Books that you already read but would like to revisit are excellent choices.

• When you leave the mammography suite, 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 and call to schedule that appointment two months in advance.

I hope you share this information. The idea is to get more “girls on film.”

My day in the radiology suite ended with an ultrasound that showed benign changes; I left and took myself to lunch.

"And she wonders how she ever got here as she goes under again."
"Girls on Film" Duran Duran

Questions 67 and 68

2010-09-05T23:30:00.000-04:00

“Was your hair that red Friday night?”

That was the first question he asked me, when at 11:55 a.m. Central Time on Labor Day, I came to the front gate to enter the code to let him into my fortress strong.

So we were for all intents and purposes on a blind date because clearly he was blind to my hair color three nights prior when we met at the Duck. But interestingly, I came to find out several weeks after Labor Day, we had been matched as dance partners at the Duck by Therese and her decorator friend, Craig, on the basis of hair color although his reddish highlights were more subdued than my brassy red hair. My Parisian hairdresser, Sebastien, referred to us, his clientele, the female physicians from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, as his “painted ladies.”

I dismissed his question as one of sincerity and not approbation and invited him in. I pulled him through the corridors pretty quickly, as I recall, trying to avoid the man down the hall that I had canceled the date with for Labor Day. (That was fairly easy because his sister fielded the call when I canceled.)

Inside my unit the next thing I suggested still causes laughter: I invited him to have a quick cup of hot coffee in my kitchen when it was 105 degrees outside. I did not know that he was not accustomed to slamming a cup of Joe like a physician does before heading to the OR. So he politely sipped at hot coffee in spite of not wanting it.

He drove us to River Oaks Theaters in his black Tahoe to see Celestial Clockwork, my choice.

I lost all movie picking privileges very early in the relationship. Since that time we have both returned to IMDb to see there just were no good movie picks for that Labor Day weekend. Just like there are probably no good movie picks for this Labor Day weekend. It is historically not a good movie release week. Try not to start a relationship with a movie date on Labor Day weekend.

In the parking lot of River Oaks Theaters, I noticed that his car had two bumper stickers, Fly Girls and a Darwin fish. I didn’t understand either one.

Questions. He asked a million questions, which he later told me was because he was nervous.

At one point I felt like invoking my grandfather Farmer's line: "You ask the damnedest questions!"

In the Darwin fish car in the movie parking lot, he asked me what nationality my last name was. I told him it was my ex-husband’s last name. That silenced him for a while.

The movie was no sleeper. It grossed 410,000 dollars in the US. Ten of those were ours.

On the way back to my apartment, we passed Randall’s on Westheimer. He asked me if I wanted to go out to eat for dinner. I said I had picked up a few things for dinner.

That was the understatement of the year. Susan had spent her last day in Houston helping me shop two or three stores for this date. But I wasn’t going to mention any of the date prep to him.

You see after I left him in the parking lot of the Duck the Friday prior, I decided and vowed to my best friends that there was no way I would try to find him if he did not call me Sunday as promised. Evidently, the call almost never happened because by the time he looked on his hand for the phone number later that night, he found that most of it had transferred onto the steering wheel of the Tahoe, most likely while the song "Good" by Better Than Ezra played over the car airwaves. (My friend Barrow dated a guy in that band back in Baton Rouge.)

The night after I gave him my number, I spent with my girlfriends at Cezanne, the jazz club above the Black Labrador Pub, listening to an African American woman deliver jazz standards with a “sultry, meet you after midnight voice” (Susan’s words, as told to me in a personal correspondence last week).

The day before the date, Suzanne flew back to Louisville early, and Susan and I hung out, shopping at Whole Foods (the small one that was closer to I-59 in Shepherd Plaza), Whole Earth Provision, Cactus Records and Randall’s. I won’t tell you everything Susan suggested I buy, but I will tell you it was fun.

After the movie, back in my kitchen I had the chicken breasts, Tahini sauce, eggplant, and a salad I prepared of avocado, Kalamata olives and grapefruit.

During this second visit to my kitchen, he noticed the photo of the little girl on the beach at Galveston mock surfing on a piece of driftwood and asked who that was.

“That’s my daughter.”

The questions stopped for a while longer. Then I asked him to do something for me: Grill our dinner on the patio. He had told me he was a volunteer fireman in Austin. I figured he could stand the heat.

We ate at my dining room table with clover cutouts, a hand-me-down from my Hoffmann grandparents’ Germantown kitchen. He pushed the salad around on his plate, not mentioning that he hated olives.

Then we moved to the sofa for more Q and A. Somewhere between questions 67 and 68, we fell asleep. Then we woke at two and he went home.

Can this feeling that we have together/
Oooh, suddenly exist between/
Did this meeting of our minds together/
Oooh, happen just today, some way

“Questions 67 and 68,” Robert Lamm

Pink Adobe Hacienda

2010-08-30T08:59:00.000-04:00

Here’s what happened the night I met my husband fourteen years ago today.

My Sacred Heart classmates had flown into Houston to celebrate Labor Day weekend with me. I was working at the ranch that Friday (Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital). I knew that by the time I fought traffic on 59 South and made it to my apartment in the Upper Kirby Business District that it would be dinnertime. I left a key for them with the management. They sunned poolside until I showed up.

We were on a mission to get to the Mucky Duck by 7:00 p.m. A rockabilly band called the Hollisters was playing. I slammed on a pair of denim overalls and a T-shirt with the logo for a local bar, The Black Labrador. And in retrospect, let me just say, yuck. I didn't even have enough time to put on makeup.

The Mucky Duck was not just any venue. It was my home away from home. I was there most nights, getting inspired to write songs and play my guitar. The owners, Rusty and Therese, knew me by name. Their pub calendar was on my refrigerator.

The Hollisters were not just any band. They were my ex-boyfriend’s favorite band. He and I were always trying to get out to a Hollisters show, but somehow we never made it out to see them.

Susan and Suzanne were not just any friends. They were my best friends. They had endured Father Wagner’s impossible Friday vocabulary quizzes with me senior year of high school. One day in Fr. Wagner’s class they asked me to go to Florida with them over spring break. I am fairly certain the three of us failed the test Fr. Wagner gave us the week back after spring break for a novel (I do not even recall the name of the book) that none of us read. I know I failed that test. We were part of a group of teenagers that roamed Louisville with the original moniker, The Gang. Susan and I choreographed a dance to the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” that we performed for certain graduates of a boy high school on the night of their graduation. Suzanne and I shared the coincidence that our fathers had graduated from another boy high school in the same class with Tom Cruise’s dad, whose last name was actually Mapother.

When we arrived at the Duck, we made a beeline to the bar. Three Aggies in starched shirts and khaki pants accosted us. We dismissed them. After all, my friends were married, and I wasn’t looking for a starched shirt.

We settled down at a long table just in front of the stage. I always have to be in the front row.

Now the Duck is an intimate venue that seats probably seventy-five max. It’s where I met Troy Campbell, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Kelly Willis (who was my accomplice one night during a fight with the ex-boyfriend), Darden Smith, and Alejandro Escovedo, to name a few. It’s where I took potential boyfriends to test them to see if they liked music as much as I did.

I recall we were in high spirits at my table. The Hollisters, they rocked.

I had glanced over at another table and spotted a very handsome young man with long hair in a ponytail, and then just looked away. My girlfriends were going to get all of my attention.

So to my surprise, said ponytail man tapped me on the shoulder, apropos nothing, and asked if I would “care” to dance.

Wait, back up. I left out a big point about why our table was in such high spirits. The owner of the bar, Therese, was scheming with her decorator friend, and she sent a bottle of champagne to our table, and told us that it was from the men at the table where the guy with the long ponytail was sitting.

Okay, I would have danced with that guy even if I was perfectly sober. You see, on closer inspection, he was wearing the following:
A billiard ball motif silk shirt
A pair of jeans
A pair of suede clogs
A scrunchie (that a “girl’s mom” had made for him)

The man could shag. I had spent much time shagging in the basement of the Phi Delt house at Centre College. I had not mastered the Carolina shag, but I could fake it.

When silk shirt asked me to dance, his two friends asked my two friends to dance shortly thereafter. We all ended up on the very small area of floor in front of the stage that could accommodate dancing.

I think we danced to “Pink Adobe Hacienda." But, it could have been that we danced to “East Texas Pines” or “Better Slow Down.”

We only danced one song. They returned to their table, and we returned to ours.

At our table the discussion went like this: “Heather, he is doing all of that dancing in clogs!”

A song or two later, the three gentlemen reappeared and asked for another dance. We consented. My future husband and I left the dance floor holding hands and did not let go the rest of the night.

We moved to their table, and much sparring and Q&A ensued. My friends vetted silk shirt. And they bragged about my ability to throw a party. And they found out that he had thrown a party or two himself on his ranch in Texas.

The band packed up. We stepped out into the night sky, where silk shirt pointed out the moon, two days past full. He asked the designated Duck police officer for a pen, which he used to write my number on his hand. The number was something like 528-3869. At that point there was only one area code in Houston, and it was 713.

Silk shirt said he would like to see me again. I said that I would be busy with my girlfriends until Sunday. I asked him if he was laboring on Labor Day, and he said no. So I suggested that he call my apartment Sunday afternoon.

Susan, Suzanne and I climbed into my brown Volvo sedan. I cranked the moon roof open, and we drove back to my apartment.

I’ll tell you the rest on Labor Day.

A Whale of a Tale

2010-08-14T23:54:00.000-04:00

When was the last time a stranger entertained you with a story? Traveling minstrels don’t favor hot concrete so I bet it wasn’t this summer. And in the absence of a minstrel, who is going bend your ear?

Larry McMurtry bemoans the death of the coffee shop story in his book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. He’s right; there isn’t much storytelling at coffee shops these days with all the laptop screens dividing customers into their own mutually exclusive, synthetic, virtual worlds.

I traveled riverside this afternoon and was delightfully surprised that the river can transcend time and technology. Those of us gravitating to the southerly flow of rippled liquid seem to want to tell and be told stories as much today as folks did back in the days of Huck Finn.

“How did you end up here?” My waiter inquired, on the shore of the Ouachita River in Eastern Louisiana. I had already told him I was en route to Fort Worth, and being that the Warehouse No. 1 Restaurant isn’t just off the interstate, it was a fair question. And I had already noticed he looked like a young Dave Grohl, so I didn’t feel like I needed to hold anything back.

I briefly mentioned that I research all my stops on a trip. I am an official member of the Hey See Club (as in, "Hey, see this," and "Hey, see that"). We don’t tote membership cards but you’ll know us when you meet us. We think the journey is just as important as the destination. That’s why we’re drawn to rivers, where the allure of slow travel on a boat still hangs in the breezes today.

So I told my waiter I grew up in a river city (Louisville, Kentucky is, after all, the River City) and I’m always trying to see ones I’ve never seen before. My waiter told me the river I had chosen to see was one of the most beautiful in the state. “Not here, where there’s all this crap in the water, but not too far from here.” He told me the river is named silver water in Indian speak. Then he told me a story.

Time was I could have my story before lunch every day—didn’t even have to wait for bedtime. My grandpa George would drive me into Battletown before noon because it was just too hot to be out past lunch. We’d go to Jake’s General Store, the one that smells musty. There Jake would be behind the counter, ready to spin a tale about a president coming down the Ohio on a boat.

I was a story hog growing up. When I was sick with the flu or in bed with a headache, my dad would sit on the edge of my bed and ask if I needed anything. “Tell me a story,” I’d say. Then I’d add, “About when you were little.”

And Dad would oblige. He had stories about swinging across Beargrass Creek on vines, climbing the fence to get into Churchill Downs and running from the police in Germantown. Uncle Gordon never got caught and Dad didn’t think that was fair.

If Grandpa George were here today, I’d say, “Tell me a story about when you were in the CCC.” He fought forest fires in California and made a daytrip to Tijuana with his buddies. I have the Daguerreotype of them in a mule cart with a fringed surrey. But I don’t know the story behind the picture.

I think the only person who is going to tell me a story today told it to me an hour ago. Here it is: Last spring there was more rain than there’d ever been in years in Morgan, Louisiana. So much rain that the Ouachita River rose until it was “a foot up off of the deck.”

Now here I had to ask my waiter what he meant. We were on a deck that seemed to be about twenty feet off the ground. I put my hand down, like I was petting a dog at my feet, and inquired, “Do you mean it was this high?”

“No,” he said, “It was just a foot under the deck.”

“Wow,” I said.

 “Yeah, it hadn’t been that high since 1991. And we all came out here on the deck, and hung a guy over the railing, keeping him just above the water.”

And that was his story. It was over just as soon as it began, but I suppose it’s the sentiment that counts.

My waiter told me to come back in the fall, when it’s cooler and people like to sit on the deck to linger over dinner. They probably flipped for me today to figure who would wait on the only woman crazy enough in Eastern Louisiana to eat lunch outside in the heat. But I think I’ll return next time I’m passing through especially if there’s a story waiting for me there.

Onward I went over the Ouachita, and after passing into Texas, at the very first stop possible, there she was. A beacon. A promise for Larry McMurtry that stories can still be found in Texas. I saw a sign. It was a DQ!

Maybe here, in this state of “tall tales and other big lies,” I’ll find someone to tell me a real story. And go on and feel free to click on that link to see one of the funniest animated shorts ever, starring Ray Wylie Hubbard and produced by my friend Troy Campbell.

Books: A Southern Train of Thought

2010-08-02T21:04:00.000-04:00

When I moved to Chapel Hill, I heard that everyone here has an M.D. or a Ph.D. James Taylor’s neighbor told me this town was once known as Pill Hill. Forget doctors; I’m starting to think you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a writer.

I live in the land of the southern writer. I’ve seen Daniel Wallace at the Y. I’ve attended cocktail parties where Fred Chappell sipped juleps. I’ve even spotted songwriter Tift Merritt looking all rough and tumble in her jeans with Zeke at her side at the Saturday morning market.

I didn’t know much about southern literature until setting foot on the campus of the University of North Carolina, where I’ve acquired a taste for it at the annual Thomas Wolfe lecture. I fell in love with Ellen Gilchrist one year at the lecture after hearing her read from her story that begins “It was the summer of the broad jump pit." Another year, my friend Garrison Somers, the editor of The Blotter (the South’s free literary magazine), and I fell under the spell of Fred Chappell.

Hearing a writer read his stories has a certain pull for me. I’m growing addicted to it, much in the way I grew addicted to hearing a songwriter sing his songs in Texas.

Last night caught me a bit by surprise. Excuse my ignorance but I had no idea who Louis D. Rubin was until yesterday. He came to my attention as I supped alone at my dining room table and took a few minutes to ponder an e from Flyleaf Books. A reading by an esteemed writer and editor who had taught many students over the years--I’m in, I thought.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the community room of Flyleaf Books, listening to a spectacled southern gentleman talk as he gestured with his right hand.

He read a passage from a time in his life after he had graduated from JHU but before he went back to the campus as a professor. Can you imagine returning to Charleston and seeing the train that always piqued your curiosity, then buying a ticket to ride to the end of the line just to see where it goes?

That concept makes me think of some of the trains I missed and some of the trains I rode, and I am speaking figuratively, to be certain.

I woke this morning earlier than usual, reeling from a dream about my extended southern family preparing to board the Canadian National Railway, and twitching to write about my own American childhood. Then as I stood in the early morning light near the window, far off a train’s whistle blew.

Who is this man Rubin and what has he stirred in me? I turned on the computer and answered both questions. He is none other than the cofounder of Algonquin Books (Water for Elephants) and professor of Annie Dillard.

Something has happened in the world this night
Of rare consequence for some time to come,
Whether or not it alters the final sum.

“Passage” Fred Chappell

Summer Flesh, But Seriously

2010-07-31T15:31:00.000-04:00

In 1970 when I had just mastered my ABC’s, Michael Jackson arrived on the scene with an ABC song.

This summer I’ve got your back. I’m going to teach you the ABC’s of melanoma detection.

By now we all know someone who has been diagnosed with melanoma. In my surgical pathology practice in Houston, I diagnosed more basal cell carcinoma than melanoma, but melanoma scares me more. Melanoma can strike at a young age and ultimately metastasize to distant organs and kill.

While this topic seems serious for my good-time blog, it is, after all, about prolonging the good times.

It’s summer and skin is everywhere. The girl in front of me at the Durham Bulls game last weekend was wearing a halter that left most of her back and her two-tone nevus bare. Two-tone is for spectator pumps, not spectators.

While the ethics of a doctor’s responsibility to tell a stranger to get a skin biopsy would make for an interesting topic, it's not as interesting to most people as say, baseball stats. I will allow that when I saw my husband’s “funny looking mole” on his back last month, I didn’t even nag when he said he would take care of it. I scheduled the appointment and drove him to the dermatologist.

Now it’s time for the ABC’ s of skin cancer detection. Any one of the following signs is reason for concern about malignant potential in a nevus and could be the first sign of melanoma:

Asymmetrical growth
Irregular border
Variations in color
Diameter larger than a pencil eraser
Evolving (new look or new symptoms)

The accompanying pictures of melanoma are purposefully horrific to illustrate their respective point. Keep in mind that melanoma doesn’t have to look “that bad.” If you have any mole that makes you worry, see a dermatologist.

Early detection is important with skin cancer. I strip for my dermatologist every year and you should, too. If a dermatologist hasn’t seen your back in a couple summers, it’s time to go back!

Feel free to pass this blog on to anybody whose back you want to cover.

Dad's Lullaby

2010-06-20T18:11:00.000-04:00

Sir Robert Mansfield

A master of nicknames--mine was Hez--
he wore a Robbie roby,
fashioned of plaid flannel blue and gray,
and sang of a shiny pony
as he paced the hall of our ‘60’s ranch,
my febrile head at rest on his shoulder.

A savior from sickness and avengers,
in the Smokies he gunned our Impala at the boulder
to keep us safe from Chief Falling Rock and his mob.
“Only once in your life tell off a boss.”
So much advice from a man named Rob
there’s an eponymous book, his Rules of Order.

A city boy allergic to the farm,
at the track he explained all things pari-mutuel,
not my musings on cell division.
And he bought his form at a package store in Buechel.
Though in school he studied the catechism,
the nuns they cracked his knuckles with rulers.
His hands never healed and his joints were his fate.

A Southern man in blue seersucker,
his white Cadillac with the “Go Cats” plate, a fave.
The scourge, it put my father too soon to the grave.

Go to sleep-y, little baby/
Go to sleep-y, little baby/
When you wake/
You'll patty-patty cake/
And ride a shiny little pony.

Into the Mystic

2010-06-18T01:04:00.000-04:00

Writing challenges me more than anything else I know. Making reality fit intention wrestles on the page with letting magic trump reason.

When I’m running on empty I turn to poets and troubadours for inspiration.

My dear friend Susan gave me a book of poems, and the poem for June 18 was written by Percy Shelley. The last year of his life, he wrote this poem for another man’s wife after hearing her play the guitar he gave her:

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 magic of that world of music can evade on the written page. I need magic in my novel manuscript because it’s about music, that intoxicating elixir.

I’ve turned to writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez to study the trade. I’ve enjoyed reading books, like Bel Canto, that try to capture on paper the aura around a singer. The three sci-fi writers in my Raleigh coffee klatch told me that the cow can’t suddenly jump over the moon on page one hundred.

Seeds. I had to plant seeds early so as not to spook readers later.

Most of my friends know me as a girl caught in the two dimensions of what she can plainly see in front of her face. It’s not just that I have to open up and believe, but I have to take my readers down with me.

Nature does her share. Carolina feeds me daily. While I’m working on feeding a family in the kitchen, sycamores and pines beckon to me from a southern-facing window.

One morning last month I rose craving miracles and I turned to the miracle-maker: Mother Nature.

My camera could hardly keep pace with the wonders.

Most days I feel like my writing conveys a tree in a forest

But what I really want my readers to see is the mystical light on the tree trunk,

and that kind of sun just doesn’t shine every day at my keyboard.

I want to rock your gypsy soul/
Just like way back in the days of old/
And together we will float into the mystic
Van Morrison, "Into the Mystic"

The Memory Stax

2010-06-17T11:23:00.000-04:00

Whatever is going round and round your head, I bet there’s a song with it.

The DJ of our life is that man in our mind—I think he is Jonny Mambo’s great-uncle—who takes a memory and pairs it with a song from our mental Rhapsody player. He also works in reverse. He can take a song and run to the stacks of our life memories and pull out a day that fits the song. It’s an acoustic rhorschach. For me the exercise goes like this:

I hear “Itchycoo Park” and I remember sitting on my mother’s lap at the dining room table in the morning before heading to montessori.

I hear, “My Old Kentucky Home” and I remember standing at the Kentucky Derby, the first one after my mom died, and watching my dad brush a tear from his eye with his handkerchief.

I hear “Strange Magic” and I remember making out in the backseat of a parked sedan while another couple made out in the front seat.

Inevitably, the association evokes an emotion, and so the full reaction plays out:

The Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park"—Mom’s lap—filial love

ELO's "Strange Magic"—parked sedan—young passion

Stephen Foster’s "My Old Ky Home"—Dad’s handkerchief—loss

Gin Blossoms' "Follow You Down"—Phoenix hotel clock radio –ironically, excitement about moving to a city where I was not following anyone

Steve Earle's "You’re Still Standing There"—missing someone while driving a rental car in Nashville--achingly smitten

For some songs I can also layer on a specific sense:
The sax of "Bahia"—a lover’s apartment –lusting full tilt—the smell of garlic sauteing with onions

Over the years friends have shared their acoustic memories with me. One told me the song he heard on the road in his car the moment he found out on his cell phone that his child had Down Syndrome.

What’s playing on your station today?

She gets rock n’ roll in a rock n’ roll station for a rock n’ roll dream/ She’s making movies on location/She don’t know what it means/ But the music make her wanna be the story/And the story was whatever was the song/What it was/ Roller girl, don’t worry/D.J. play the movies all night long

Mark Knopfler, "Skateaway"

Naked Valedictorian

2010-06-13T12:01:00.000-04:00

A naked valedictorian. I was not a naked valedictorian, but Matt the Electrician sings of a valedictorian who sheds her clothes and says, “This is who I am, and I’ll never see any of you ever again.” I heard Matt sing the song live in Raleigh a few summers back. When I told Matt I was the high school valedictorian, the lady sitting next to me at the bar said that she was, too. We’re out there at Matt shows, the former valedictorians.

Last night my daughter was stressing about writing a speech she’ll give at graduation, and it was taking me back to a time when Andy Dumstorf and I tried to write my valedictory under the influence of Pete Townshend.

Actually, if I had to write a speech today I would call on Andy or Tim Culver or Kelly Ford to help me.

I did flounder a bit with my valedictory. The nuns rejected the first copy. So I wrote the speech with fifteen minutes to spare before jumping in the sedan to head downtown with my parents.

And while I was driving around in North Carolina today, thinking about this blog, I heard a gospel singer named Mary Williams sing on The Story on NPR. Her voice immediately reminded me of that of my beloved classmate, Cathy Hughes.

I got to know Cathy personally sitting next to her on the bus. Buses deposited us at a common stop on Bardstown Road and Grinstead Drive every morning. My first bus came from the Fern Creek area, and hers came from downtown. Together we rode on the second bus that took us to Sacred Heart.

Cathy did not graduate from high school. A river washed her away one summer in Tennessee. A river—think of that—something to be enjoyed and loved—something that should inspire. In this instance the river was the reaper. It ended Cathy’s story. Cathy had so much vocal talent that one can only wonder where that voice would have taken her.

We had a teary memorial service for her that August, and we sang “Candle on the Water.” The ever-composed Jean Cassidy led us in song. It was a song that was supposed to make us feel better. Every time I have an acoustic memory of Cathy singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” I get a deep down sorrowful feeling of loss.

And today on The Story, Mary talked of how gospel music can give you the courage to go forward. Mary talked of troubles present. World problems. Dick Gordon and Mary decided a song can be a way to a solution. We need a world of song today.

And wouldn’t you know, after longing to hear Cathy sing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Mary sang it on the radio show today. She sang it from the bottom of her toes, the very depths of her soul, the way a song should be sung. I heard Cathy again.

I’m thankful for singers like Mary Williams and Cathy Hughes. They give us the courage to go forward. And that’s something that today’s graduates need.

Principals and counselors close in, trying to avert a scene/
She just keeps on sticking to her speech, feeling like a prom queen

“The Valedictorian,” Matt the Electrician

Romancing the Stones

2010-05-22T21:47:00.000-04:00

I’m romancing the stones. You’d expect this from me, right? You know I’ve got it bad for Mick and the boys, and you probably think the re-release of Exile has me mad. Yes, I’m writhing on my sheets. No, it’s not what you think.

The irony is that I have some rolling stones in a vestigial organ that concentrates bile, and I’ve been out of sorts lately.

Remember the 911 call? Not an auto accident. Thought it was a heart attack. There have been roughly four more since that day, only one other that involved a fire truck and beefy men. By the way, the Durham firemen are more buff than the ones here in Orange County.

The workup wasn’t too prolonged. Thanks to one of the studies, I now have the reassurance that I don’t have mitral valve prolapse like some in my family. But the problem is what I do have is really, really painful. And can you believe my friend, Susan, made the diagnosis over the phone without seeing the patient? And without spending a fortune on medical school like I did.

So I’m romancing the stones. Cutting fat out of the diet. Painful? Very. My husband is a wizard in the kitchen and we can’t break bread the way we used to. Every day sustenance is a challenge. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. And stay away from the muffin man.

My strawberry shortcake ain’t what it used to be. Here’s one that I made with gluten-free cornbread, strawberries soaked in apple cider (not balsamic) vinegar, topped with (yum?) no-fat plain yogurt and a sprinkle of what might be too much coconut now that I've checked the label.

Taking a walk on the bright side, I get to watch late night TV if I’m having an attack--they often occur when you’ve already drifted off to sleep. This week I tuned into two-timing, sorry, two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and heard him suggest that Catherine’s understudy might come home on the nights Catherine has to do the show. Yep. Also caught Sean Penn on C-SPAN2. He gave a harrowing account of an ambulance ride with a young Haitian who eventually died of Diptheria. Saw Hillary looking tough as nails in a hot pink suit on the same channel. Turns out the New Start treaty has nothing to do with "Start Me Up."

So I better roll. I’ve got a stone to romance.

“I’m romancing the stone, never leaving your poor heart alone/
Every night and every day gonna love the hurtin away.
Oh and in the heat of rapture when I feel the cold winds blow/
Through the broken glass, I’ll see at last the sweet desire in you.”  
“Romancing the Stone,” Eddy Grant

She's Already Made Up Her Mind

2010-04-27T09:06:00.000-04:00

Was it the Texas Ranger Museum? Dr. Pepper? Or Big 12 conference athletics?

Let Lyle say it for me. She's already made up her mind.

Two years of road trips. Think Thelma & Louise.

We were on the run from idle hours in Carolina. We weren't sure where we'd end up. We always met friends on the road.

Hit a couple of honky tonks and record stores along the way, like the Bruton family biz and the Love Shack. Stayed with Uncle Jeff. Even caught Pat Green sneaking into a Mystiqueros set.

We hit the Big D, the capitol of Texas, and Capitol Hill.

We even stormed the Mall. No, wait. It was storming on the National Mall.

Now the journey is over.

Ella is off to university. She's already made up her mind. She picked the private school in Waco.

She's leaving me because she really wants to
And she'll be happy when she goes
She'll be happy, she'll be so very happy
She'll dance and sing and even learn to fly
-"She's Leaving Me" Lyle Lovett

Love Shack Baby!

2010-04-07T21:09:00.000-04:00

Songs keep me coming back to Texas, and this acoustic memory is gonna expose a little more about a Texas song that’s all wrapped up in the concept behind "Acoustic Memory."

Roundabout seven years ago I started trying to write a novel in earnest. The emotion was there but the stylings were hard to work through.

The story is about a woman’s suppressed love for a Texas guitarist. Or is it about his suppressed love for her that makes her suppress her love for him? Hm. I’m still too confused about my own story. Anyway, two years into the project my mil sent me a CD she bought in Johnson City. The artist’s name is John Greenberg. I’d never heard his songs before, but I took one listen of “Amy Walker” and thought it clearly summed up the novel’s theme.

So on my next trip to Texas, I went on a pilgrimage to River City Grille to meet the songwriter with my mil. He played “Amy Walker” for my mil and me after the show, even though he’d just flown in from Italy that day.

I’m on John Greenberg’s mailing list and every week read about all the good folks that come to the RCG to play with him and Mike Blakely, who is a novelist himself. Sometimes John goes on the road with Walt Wilkins and the Mystiqueros.

Funny thing is that John and the Mystiqueros were going to be in Fort Worth the same night that I was visiting my husband’s uncle with my daughter. I called Uncle Jeff a week before the show and left him a message about the band. He called back with a brief response, “I’m in.”

The night of the show, we headed out to Tim Love’s Love Shack So 7 with no expectations. The Love Shack is a burger joint owned by Tim Love, who’s probably better known for one of his other Fort Worth restaurants, the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro. We were blown away by the Mystiqueros playing in the beer garden—all three generations of us.

Uncle Jeff worked hard after dinner to get the two girls good seats, right in front of Walt where we could revel in the harmonies of Bill Small and John Greenberg. A few songs later when I was adrift in bluebonnets, Jeff came back from the men’s room, all excited cause he’d spotted Pat Green. Sure enough, Pat joined Walt at the microphone. The song I can’t get out of my mind is “The Trains I Missed.” The boys capped off a night of hill country blues with a Van Morrison cover, “Into the Mystic.” By then I was heavy into the Mystiqueros.

Check out the Mystiqueros’ new CD, Agave, on Blue Boot Records (a Ft. Worth label) or go old school and buy John Greenberg’s CD, Red River Blues, when you head down to the River City Grille on May 4. That night Gurf Morlix joins John and Mike for a TexAmericana Tuesday. Tell ‘em Heather sent you.

"Only now I wish I could be that same smooth talker,
Talk myself out of wanting you."
-John Greenberg, "Amy Walker"

Bluebonnets for Liz

2010-03-21T21:28:00.000-04:00

This morning I learned that the legendary Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, passed away in Austin, Texas, yesterday. Many of the newspapers today are focusing on the short speech that she, Bill Moyers, and Jack Valenti wrote on Air Force One for President Johnson to give when he landed at Andrews with the coffin bearing President Kennedy’s body.

I had all but forgotten about Liz until about some five years ago when I was having coffee one summer morning at Austin Java with Troy Campbell. Troy mentioned he would be driving to a farm near Crawford later that night to play at an anti-war rally. He said that Liz Carpenter would be there, too. It takes a hurricane to keep me from attending services at the Saxon Pub on Sundays in Austin so I didn’t head to Crawford.

That night Ray Wylie Hubbard sat in with the Resentments and I figured I’d made the right decision. I got to hear RWH play “Snake Farm” before the CD was released.

The next day when I picked up the Austin American Statesman, I realized maybe I should have gone to Crawford. You could have checked any newspaper the following morning and seen how big the Joan Baez concert was, and I felt like I missed out on something big.

Liz Carpenter lived a very long, full life. A photo of her in today’s Austin American Statesman shows her seated on a sofa with a pillow that says “Uppity Women Unite.”

Amen to that, Liz.

Next week I take my daughter to Texas to look at schools. They grow strong women in Texas, and I’m thinking it’s the perfect place for my daughter. We’ll have plenty of time to drive along the highways, contemplating Lady Bird and her highway beautification efforts. For Liz, the bluebonnets will likely be very blue this April.

My Mother’s Advice for Spring Break 1982 Still Holds True Today

2010-03-16T11:20:00.000-04:00

Despite having been made to read at least a dozen Shakespearean plays by the time I was ready to pile into a paneled Jeep with four other Sacred Heart seniors on spring break, I did not recognize that my mother’s parting words to me (“to thine own self be true”) were those of the bard himself.

It’s spring break for colleges, and my mother’s words are ringing in my ears. If you agree that the cost of health care is too high and want to have a new reason to be outraged, read on.

I opened my own biomedical communications business about a year ago, and I often seek work as a medical writer. I almost made a very big mistake this week.

I make it a practice to read a news log called MedCenterToday. Between that practice and my mother’s words, I’ve managed to dodge trouble. I’ve been following stories about a dirty little practice called medical ghostwriting that impacts your health care bottom line.

Let me explain exactly what medical ghostwriting is in today’s context. Medical ghostwriting can work several ways, but I’ll pick one scenario to examine since it’s the one most pertinent to me this week: A medical education and communications company (MECC for short) writes a grant application to bid to advertise (although they will package it as continuing medical education for doctors) a pharmaceutical company’s product. Let’s call that product Better More Expensive Pill. The pharmaceutical company says, why yes, by all means, we will give an Exorbitant Amount of Money to you for this work. Then the MECC turns to one of its M.D. or Ph.D. serfs that it pays less $50,000 a year to write for the company and says, write a first draft of a medical journal article touting Better More Expensive Pill. In this article, make sure you reassure the reader that Better More Expensive Pill does not cause Most Dreadful Unwanted and Potentially Fatal Side Effect so that doctors reading the article will prescribe the pills. And oh, by the way, please contact doctors at the Top Medical School to put their name on the paper you wrote and we will give them a little kickback. Then once you are finished with the article (and please hurry because you need to start on another one), we will contact the pharmaceutical company and collect for the article (and oh, you probably shouldn’t know this since we pay you so little, but they are paying us $25,000 for your paper).

Now do you see why this is so heinous given the cost of medical care today?

This week I almost interviewed for a job at a MECC. The job description said that I would be writing “continuing medical education,” which you know your doctor has to get each year, at a cost of about $1000 a course, to maintain his license.

While there is clearly a market for continuing medical education that is legitimate (educating your doctor about improvements in medical care since the time of his graduation), that does not justify the creation of businesses in the name of continuing medical education that are veiled advertising agencies for pharmaceutical companies.

No, I did not go through with the interview once I pieced together what was going on.

The cost of medical care is too high. As a consumer I am willing to embrace innovations and pay for them, but I do not want to pay for the dirty little tricks that industry tries to turn along the way to make a profit for executives at the expense of sick people. Medical schools do a fine job with continuing medical education, and third party for-profit companies don’t need their share of the pie.

The stories that have been written about MECC’s involvement with a marketing campaign for estrogen for menopausal women despite the risk of breast cancer is one of the best examples of what can go wrong, as are the tales of medical school docs taking big paychecks from industry to further the cause of a therapy.

It has been suggested by some writers that the authors involved in medical ghostwriting should face criminal charges. One cartoonist suggested they should sign autographs in bookstores. Senator Grassley is committed to bringing change and transparency to medical schools where these practices have been known to exist. Even some pharmaceutical companies are trying to take three giant steps backward--Pfizer and Glaxo Smith Kline have stopped providing grants for MECC’s.

Now I have an extra hour on my hands because of that interview I canceled this morning. I’ll think twice in the future about becoming anyone’s serf, because my mom and Shakespeare told me to be true to myself.

An Ad for the Car that Moves Forward Too Much

2010-03-10T19:56:00.000-05:00

Riddle me this: If you were writing a jingle for Toyota, what would it say? Better yet, what would it not say?

Advertising is my one that got away. As a kid I wrote jingles: “Lite beer is the right beer; drink the right beer to be light.” As a med student I spent more time than I care to admit designing a logo for my business cards when I taught CPR. So I enjoy ads.

Sometimes I am shocked by advertising humor. Today I was just shocked by marketing stupidity.

Old habits die hard and I can’t help but use the keyboard as a placemat for lunch. This afternoon I looked up from my Pink Lady and spied a Toyota ad next to my inbox. They are moving forward.

And M.D. Anderson is making cancer history. Now that’s one I like. It makes sense. There’s a double meaning. Great.

But in this day of the runaway Prius, should Toyota really be moving forward? Maybe they should borrow from the alcoholic beverage industry and say their cars know when to say when. Maybe Ford should capitalize on this problem and say friends don’t let friends drive Toyotas.

How long does it take for the damage control peeps to sit up and notice a national advertising campaign that looks more like a joke at this stage of the story? Toyota moving forward—is that an excerpt from a 911 call?

Disclaimer: The author’s first car was a white Corolla and she presently drives a black Highlander.

Afterthought: Maybe Toyota can’t afford a new ad campaign. If that’s the case, I’ll retract my barb.

Note to Mr. Toyota: Please spend all the money you need on quality assurance right now. I’ll offer you a new slogan, gratis, once you put safe cars on the roads.

It Ain't Over Till the Bugler Dreams

2010-02-14T19:07:00.000-05:00

After catching a snap in the Calgary airport with Herbert Vasiljevs, I marveled at how much fun it could be to experience the Olympics in the host country. I didn’t know just how much I identified with United States culture until I felt something was amiss while trying to watch the Olympics in Canada.

How can it be the Olympics without Leo Arnaud’s “Bugler’s Dream?”

I’ve followed the Olympics at home since 1968, the year ABC sports introduced me to Arnaud's music at the Grenoble Olympics and the first year we could watch the Olympics in color.

My dad loved “Bugler’s Dream,” too, and his enthusiasm for the Olympics was always a source of contagion in our house.

As I watch the winter Olympics with my 10-year-old son this year, I wonder how to ignite his torch for the games without the US theme song.

Thank goodness we’ll be back on US soil before the games are over!

Stormy

2010-01-31T21:38:00.000-05:00

I’m snowed in and reflecting on all the storms that have crossed my radar. What better time to recall the Classics IV, and that song that Cobb and Buie gave us in ’68 called “Stormy.”

Yesterday's love was like
A warm summer breeze
But like the weather, you change.

First tornado: Louisville, Kentucky, April 3, 1974
The change in barometric pressure triggered a migraine and my mom picked me up early from St. Athanasius Elementary School. Our home bordered the southern entrance to the General Electric plant, land that had previously been used to grow apples and corn. The higher elevation in our suburb allowed a view of downtown Louisville from my second floor bedroom window. The skyline twinkled at night, and the twinkling could be enhanced by earphones full of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. But on this particular day, we remained on the first floor and stood at our sliding glass patio door and watched as the tornado swept across the horizon. I will never forget the absence of sound prior to the tornado or the civil defense sirens that I heard not that day, but for years afterward when the county met the need created by the tornado and tested the sirens with regularity.

Oh Stormy, oh Stormy
Bring back that sunny day

First snowstorm with power outage: Louisville, Kentucky, January, 1994

The guest bedroom in my Rock Creek Gardens home had a view of pine trees in Cherokee Park. When my surgeon husband was on call, I often slept in this room. On this particular night I did not hear my husband climbing into bed in the wee hours, but I woke early the next morning to the sound of icy precipitation outside the window. The cold motivated me to check the thermostat, and flipping the switch in the hall did not illuminate a path.

As a busy mom and resident, I often had an empty refrigerator, and unfortunately, all I had left in the house to eat the morning of the power outage was a sour cream coffee cake that I baked late on the eve of the storm.

My toddler woke about an hour after I did and complained of cold hands. I called my friends the Higdons, and Steve picked up the three of us in his SUV and drove us to their home in the Highlands.

All of a sudden there is
Rain falling down

First tropical storm: Allison, Houston, Texas, June 2001

I wore something very edgy to the hospital the morning before Allison, and in retrospect, what was already in the air that morning when I paired a navy and white geometric print skirt with a silk blouse in a contrasting print?

Fridays at work usually dragged into the evening hours, and at 7:30 my husband picked me up from Hermann Hospital. En route to Rice Village for dinner, in pouring rain, we agreed that fatigue had surpassed hunger. At home we fell into bed and slept well thanks to the sounds of rain and the snoozing toddler that lay between us.

The following morning my scientist husband headed to Baylor and noticed some things just weren’t right. By the time he filled the lab freezers with liquid nitrogen, the entrance to the medical center was barricaded.

Back home we didn’t have any food in the house, and we drove over I-59 via the Mandell Street bridge to get to the Westheimer Randall’s. Cars abandoned by motorists had floated up the swollen interstate to within ten feet of the overpass. In the grocery, we waited to check out for hours. I struck up a conversation with the woman in front of me—the chairman of pediatrics from the med school in San Antonio who was visiting her Houston grandchildren.

Amazingly, we still had power, despite the flood, and we watched on national news as the piano in the lobby of my hospital floated up two floors. The hospital struggled to move patients before closing. I stayed home on paid leave for over a month.

Now things are dreary, baby, and it's
Windy and cold

Second snowstorm with power outage, Carrboro, North Carolina, December, 2002

My Texan son had never seen snow, and I billed the white stuff as one of the fun features of North Carolina in the buildup that led to our move. And sure enough, two weeks after we unpacked in North Carolina, snow fell one afternoon. I photographed the children on the deck. Because Sam did not yet have the proper outerwear, he was wearing hand-me-downs from his sister. That night the ice storm downed trees all over the Triangle, taking the power lines with them.

The previous homeowners had left enough firewood for the season, and we heated cans of food at the fireplace. A few days later the power returned. What does my son think we’ve gotten him into in North Carolina, I wondered.

And I stand alone in the rain,
Calling your name.

First hurricane (Isabel), September, 2003, Carrboro, North Carolina

School had been cancelled so I had to take the children with me to a radiology appointment on UNC’s campus. I left the Gravely Building with good news only to find that a horrific storm awaited us in the parking lot. It poured the rest of the day.

My biggest concern was the butterfly bush. I stood at the front door and watched as the rain pelted it. After only one season I had become so fond of its purple blooms and its yellow and orange winged visitors. Against the odds, the bush survived over the years and has actually grown stronger.

You were the sunshine, baby,
Whenever you smiled,
But I call you Stormy today.

Third snowstorm, Carrboro, North Carolina, January 2010
This time the weatherman gave me time to get ready for a power outage. I planned, shopped, stocked, filled, watered, salted, treated, vacuumed, laundered, ironed, flat-ironed, baked, boiled, mailed, posted, paid up, checked, and e’ed.

Now I’m a shut-in, enjoying electricity and breaking in a new pair of Sorels in eight inches of snow for the upcoming trip to the Canadian Rockies. My son watched the Miss America pageant for the first time, and I had an acoustic memory--my mother used to sing the pageant song at our house.

Oh Stormy, Oh Stormy, Bring back that sunny day

Seems like it's been stormy for years now.

Saturday Howling

2010-01-23T18:08:00.000-05:00

Does Saturday night have a soul? Tom Waits says it has a heart.

Fess up now: If you were going to write a song about any weeknight, would you write about Thursday night or Saturday night?

At almost every stage of life it seems there is some anticipation of Saturday night. As a youth, I dreamed of drinking Dr. Pepper and playing board games come Saturday night. When I was old enough to be dragged out into the world with my parents on a Saturday, we went to Catholic baseball fields where the smell of beer and sweat blended with cigar smoke. In high school it was a night of cruising, looking for a party or congregating in Cox’s Park until the police arrived. As an adult with cash, Saturday was a night to dine.

As an adult with kids, Saturday night excitement is lacking, and for that reason I qualified the word every with the word almost. I wouldn’t dream of drinking Dr. Pepper and playing board games now because the Dr. Pepper would keep me up all night, and really, what’s there to do? Although with your own teenager out cruising, you can never really sleep soundly because you wait for the sound of the garage door opening, and upon wakening at two to realize you haven’t heard it, you have to pad down the hall and open the teenager’s bedroom door to make sure the bed isn’t empty.

Dan Zanes suggests in “Carelessly” that Saturday is a special night for couples. Unfortunately, “Carelessly” was the theme song of my divorce. My ex and I had separate but equal copies of the CD:

Could every night feel like Saturday night?/
Could every word come from the heart?

For most, amorous expectation defines Saturday night. It’s a night where hope springs eternal, even for the betrothed. My sister once sat at the bar at Two Keys Tavern in Lexington, Kentucky, eavesdropping on a man who told the bartender that his Catholic wife would only have sex with him one night of the week, and it was, yes, Saturday night. If I could put one footnote in this blog, that footnote would tell that the man at the bar identified his wife as a graduate of my own esteemed high school.

On Saturday, as a high schooler, I never stayed home. Now I see my Facebook friends (who were my high school classmates) status updating about quiet evenings at home on Saturday. There’s comfort in knowing that my status is not so unusual--maybe other people who consider themselves social are indeed a la casa on Saturday night. Yet there is something inside me that yearns on a Saturday night, something that can’t ever be quite satisfied by sitting on the sofa even if I am watching Austin City Limits.

So while you’re sitting at home tonight on your sofa, open your window. Listen for the howling of my soul. It’s another one of Sam Cooke’s Saturday nights. The restless voices deep down inside me, they bark the loudest about domesticity come Saturday night.

Hollywood has already diagnosed my yearnings as Saturday Night Fever. Steve Marriott says I don’t need no doctor.

Play Any Song About Roses Today

2010-01-16T20:30:00.000-05:00

My mother and I shared some things in common, but then again, she was a bit more down to earth and had a higher vocal range.

She and I were different:

• She would drink Falls City beer.
• She could sing “Amazing Grace” as a soloist for a wedding. In my two years of chorus class at Sacred Heart Academy, I lived in my mother’s shadow because Mrs. Cassady had heard my mother belt "My Old Kentucky Home" at Churchill Downs.
• She would eat pork rinds.

But we both had:

• The charm for striking up a conversation with a stranger. I remember being at my uncle’s wedding reception at Hurstbourne Country Club and seeing her chat with a new acquaintance, Denny Crum. She was in her prime in her thirties and brighter than the sun in her yellow summer dress.
• A history of posing with high school classmates on the Daniel Boone statue in Olmsted’s Cherokee Park.• The knack for entertaining with a big ole pot of red sauce.
• A complete inadequacy for controlling a temper. My mom almost threw her engagement ring off the Belle of Louisville and she torched her tulle wedding dress after a fight with my dad.
• A weakness for any song mentioning a rose. She was the daughter of Rose. One of her favorites was “Bring Me a Rose.”

In loving memory of JoAnne Farmer Hoffmann, July 16, 1935-January 16, 1987

John tells us of a time when time will be no more
 In the day when the trumpet shall blow 
We'll meet over yonder in that heavenly place 
There, we'll see each other face to face

“Lights of the City”

9-1-1 What's Your Emergency?

2010-01-06T20:32:00.000-05:00

My husband didn’t waste any time telling me what to do when I called him from my car Monday afternoon. I followed his advice and called 911. I was feeling worse by the second. Not as bad as the bloke in Richard Thompson's 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, but you get the idea.

Two days later all I can think about are the words of this Old Ceremony song:

Yeah, cause in a flash, the car will crash, the heart will give in/
And the levee breaks; our one mistake was never ever really living.

Having been reminded of my own mortality, I grow convinced of the wisdom of my resolution to have more fun this year. Well, resolutions are always tough, and if you thought mine were crazy simple, I guess the hard part was more about the more and less about the fun.

“Can you tell me your name?” the operator said.

My name--so much to say--a heathen name the baptismal priest would not tolerate even though my mother assured the priest I would surely do some many good deeds in my life that I would be the first person in heaven with the name she had chosen to call me. So a biblical middle name was added as an afterthought, giving me four names to go along with my original middle name, the last name of my dear grandfather George. After all that, I was given a nickname by my father, as a joke about my need for a biblical name. So I became Hez, to a small but select group, including my father and my Texas mother-in-law and one of my best writing buds, Garrison Somers. I only gave two names—my first and last--to the 911 operator. Time was of the essence.

The questions people ask you when you might be on your last breath! “Can you tell me what kind of vehicle you are in?” the operator continued.

What is the last question you would ask me if you could? Please tell me you won’t ask me about my car even though it is one of the tools of my trade as mom extraordinaire. Ask me about my son starting a paper airplane club, or my daughter learning five foreign languages, or me, the fraidy cat, jumping into the falls at Dripping Springs. Ask me about my new favorite song about a flying squirrel. Ask me what happened one night (or another night, or another night) in the Mucky Duck in Houston. Ask me who sat in that night with the Resentments at the Saxon Pub. Ask what it feels like to hold a beating heart. Ah, so close to the heart of the matter of this blog.

“Are you pregnant?” the fireman asked. Now that’s an interesting question. A bit personal, too. If you were pregnant, would you ever think of confiding that to a man with a bullhorn in his truck?

“Do you want to ride with me to the hospital?” Wowzers, this was the best pickup line any man ever tried on me. And he was fast, too. We’d hardly spoken for a minute. Just my type! I thought about saying, “Aren’t you a little young for me?” but bit my tongue, the same way I did that night in the Mucky Duck when my husband asked me to dance to a Hollisters song. Instead of saying I was married, I proclaimed loyalty to another man, my family practice doctor. I promised to call him right away, even though he gave me a clean bill of health two days before Christmas.

The short of the story is that I’m fine, but call me if you’re planning something fun, and I’ll bring on the more!

“And I want to do so much more before we get there.”
Django Haskins, “Our One Mistake”

A Little Bit of Resolve

2010-01-03T21:28:00.000-05:00

I just couldn’t come up with resolutions.

I’m going to take some cues from gifts received in December to find my resolve. Last year I was trying to be fearless; this year I want to have fun.

Fay gave me Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns’ illustrated history of US national parks. This gift reminded me of my father’s love of the national parks and the stories my grandfather told of his CCC days. Think I’ll try a park this year. Hopefully this summer I can go horseback riding through the hills of my roots in Shenandoah or canoeing through the cypress trees at Congaree Swamp.

My sister wrapped a copy of Jacques Pepin’s autobiography in beautiful floral paper. His inscription says, “cook with love.” I’d like to move out of my comfort zone this year in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll take a class at A Southern Season.

My mother-in-law sent an apron and a scouring pad. Hmm.

My husband gave me a camera. He heard my gnashing of teeth even though I never complain too loudly. (Did you believe that lie?) The one I used last year let me down on a couple of important occasions in Austin. This year I’ll include more photos in the blog.

Moving on to the next gift, I received a fantastic hat from Susan the first week in December. The note in the box said last year’s hat was country and this year’s is rock n’ roll. Last year’s hat put me on horses and this year’s hat puts me back in the mosh pit with a backstage invitation. It’s time for more acoustic memories.

Have a great year. I’m off to find some fun.

Acoustic Decade

2010-01-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

2000: Dr. Binder says, “It’s a ten-pounder, and it’s a boy!”
Despite spending the last two weeks of 1999 in some potato sack, zip-front lounger, lying around eating pies and watching Monday night football seven days a week, I was not able to have the “millennium baby.” At least I was not able to have one of the first ones born in 2000. Sam was inducted into this world the second week in January. Dr. Gary Binder delivered Sam, in what would be the good doctor’s last year of practice before he succumbed to lung cancer. I had told Dr. Binder that Ella was almost too big for my small hips and made him promise to induce me if he had any inkling that this baby was over eight pounds. He is lucky I did not throw anything at him when he said, “It’s a ten-pounder, and it’s a boy!

2001: Beckley says, “A plane flew into the World Trade Center.”
I was dressed in a suit for the hospital, holding Sam in my arms at the edge of our drive, waiting for Beckley to drive down the street in the Jeep to pick me up for work. It was a changing of the guard. Some days he went into the Rich lab at Baylor early in the morning, returned mid-morning to take me to the med school, and he then stayed with Sam until one of the Polish sisters could come take care of Sam. September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day in Houston. Beckley seemed a little late. He pulled up, and I put Sam in the car seat and then took my place in the passenger seat. That’s when Beckley said, “A plane flew into the World Trade Center.” Later I was in my office, at the microscope, diagnosing cancer on glass before I learned of the second plane. The other doctors in my department and I went about quietly doing our work, shaking our heads at each other when we would pass in the hall hospital corridor. This was the day that it became hard to live in this world without tears.

2002: Mamaw says, “I’m praying for North Carolina.”
We were in a cornfield drive-in theater in southern Indiana, passing the phone around, talking to my mother’s mother, aka “the belly rubber” because she once walked up to Beckley at a party and rubbed his belly apropos nothing. My kids had picked the movie Stuart Little. We had traveled to the Louisville area for my 20-year reunion at Sacred Heart Academy. That summer we still didn’t know where we were moving for Beckley’s post-doc. All we knew is that we were leaving the Enron-ravaged Houston. The choices were Scripps or UNC. No one in my family favored Cali. When we hung up that night, Mamaw said, “I’m praying for North Carolina.” Those were her last words. She had a stroke and spent the next days in Baptist Hospital East. We did move to North Carolina, several months later. Mamaw always got what she prayed for when she prayed to the Virgin Mary, as her neighbor, Babe Fisher, told me when I was a kid. She was right. So put your hands together.

2003: I recall that in 1987, my dad said, "Father Time gets us all in the end."
We were leaving Resthaven in 1987, in the back of a limousine, having just buried my mother, and my father says to me, “Father Time gets us all in the end.” In 2003 Father Time took my father. As I drove through the Smoky Mountains on my way to Kentucky for his funeral, I recalled all the trips to the Smoky Mountains with my parents. Once we neared the southern Kentucky border on I-75, my father would begin the chant: One-uh-see, two-uh-see, three-uh-see… until he got to Ten-uh-see. I hold onto those Smoky Mountain memories.

2004 Jesse says, “I remember that night better than entire years.”
Before Sunset is one of my favorite movies, and Ethan Hawke (Jesse) and Julie Delpy (Celine) have one of the best on-screen chemistries ever, "even if it doesn't seem quite right."

2005 Dr. Richard Deichmann says, “There’s no need to euthanize anyone. I don’t think we should be doing anything like that.”
In 2005 friends of mine who had been working over a decade to get the training they needed to return to their beloved Louisiana and practice medicine had to pack up their belongings and leave their dream house on Lake Ponchartrain. He was the head of his department at Ochsner Clinic. In the days following Katrina, he told me that he was sleeping in his office at the hospital. I contacted a practice in Austin and found someone willing to talk to Gregg about hiring him in Texas. He was offered the job and took it. Other physicians made more difficult choices, and this article is about the doctor who had to decide what to do with the patients who could not be evacuated from Memorial Medical Center. The article, written by a Pro Publica physician journalist, recreates the ethical dilemma weary caregivers faced while tears were rolling down the street.

2006 Walter Tragert says, “You can only have two requests.”
It’s a dark and stormy night, and I’m in Westlake, between an Okavango Delta lion and a Kalahari Desert lion. You’re thinking Africa and I’m describing the in-law compound in Austin. Backstory here is that my in-laws are hunters and they go on safari each year. I was in their heavily holiday-decorated media room, where the stuffed animals wear Santa caps, but two of my faves, Scrappy Jud Newcomb and Walter Tragert, were playing my Austin birthday party. Scrappy gave us unrefined sugar from Turbinado and songs that would later be released on Byzantine, and ironically Walter played a song about a man with the heart of a lion. I made a special request for “Sleepless Nights in Shining Armor,” and then another for a cover of Jimmy Cliff's “Many Rivers to Cross,” but then mentioned that it might be nice for them to play the Stones “Beast of Burden,” given the beasts in the room. Scrappy immediately said that they could do that, but Walter told me I could only have two requests. After their performance I found out that Scrappy was in the Highlands during the Louisville snowstorm (15.9 inches) of 1994, because he was going to play Snagilwet. Where did the time go?

2007 Al Gore says, “We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency.”
I spent the last days of 2007 in the nation’s capital, on a museum run with friends from Louisville. Susan and I spent a wonderful day in the National Gallery’s Turner exhibit. The beauty of the sun in the clouds through Turner’s eyes left a lasting impression on me. Earlier that year, in Oslo, Al Gore accepted a Nobel Peace Prize and urged us to think about global warming. If we can't get together on the issue, there's no way to feel alright.

2008 Jeff Eugenides says “How do you get to the point where you won’t sign your own books?”
I like to call the summer of 2008 the summer of my second Pulitzer, but first let’s go back to the summer of 2007. On 7/7/7 my sister and her boyfriend read Shakespearean sonnets to each other on their neighbor’s porch in Groton, Connecticut, and declared themselves mated. They hosted a party at the Brown Hotel in Louisville in the summer of 2008 to celebrate. For dinner my sister seated me next to her mate’s brother, Jeff Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, for which he won the Pulitzer in 2003. Jeff’s favorite author is Saul Bellow, as has been previously reported, and mine is, of course, Larry McMurtry. When I talked about the sign that is purportedly taped to McMurtry’s bookstores doors that says he will not sign books, Jeff said, “How do you get to the point where you won’t sign your own books?” In his nonfiction Mr. McMurtry makes no apologies about his bum moods in the land of steers. I met him at one of his bookstores in Archer City, Texas, in June of 2001, the summer of my first Pulitzer. He did sign my copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. Despite these brushes with literary giants, I'll still settle on being a paperback writer.

2009 Mike Leach says “I steadfastly refuse to deal in any lies and am disappointed that I have not been afforded the opportunity for the truth to be known.”
It’s the year of the college search for my daughter, and I’ve been devoting an inordinate amount of attention to college athletics this fall. My daughter wants to attend a college with a vital athletic department. Some people in my family think athletic programs should not be affiliated with schools. I’m starting to wonder. The issue of football head injuries and dementia has been on my mind lately. If Adam James really was mistreated after his concussion, I’m happy to see Mike Leach walk. This fall I heard a story about a college wrestling coach that makes this one seem trivial. Let’s see, now we need to decrease our carbon footprint, lower the cost of medical care, and reform college athletics. I’m tired before the new decade begins.

It’s been a challenging decade. I think I’ll end it on an encouraging note. If in this decade we can’t all make it back to the top, maybe we could settle for the top of the bottom.

Virtual Vinyl

2009-12-19T08:56:00.000-05:00

Times like these when there’s nothing to do because the weather outside is frightful, I really wish I could snuggle up with some cold, hard vinyl. No idea what became of my collection. Back in the eighties were my parents throwing it all away , taking it to the streets in black plastic bags or did they sell the collection to put me through college?

Okay, I promise no more hidden song titles if you’ll tell me your favorite records (and let’s keep it vinyl) of all time, based on two criteria: album cover art and actual music.

Without the visual cues from the missing vinyl collection, I’ll pull from the acoustic memory archives to make my lists.

Best Album Cover

1.)Bob Welch, French Kiss: I gave this album to my high school boyfriend, and my parents considered making me go to confession for the licentious cover art.

2.) (a tie) The Who By Numbers: I was so young that I still liked the chance to connect the dots.

Some Girls, Rolling Stones: Sure we could always picture Mick as a girl, but this cover gives you the opportunity to see rest of the boys in lipstick.

3.)Red Octopus, Jefferson Starship: That octopus/heart graphic is slick, pun intended.

Best Album Music

1.)Night Moves, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band: 7/9 aint’ bad.

2.)Stand!, Sly and the Family Stone: Here I’m tapping into my older sister’s collection.

3.)Heart Like a Wheel, Linda Ronstadt: just enough cowbell.

Memories will remind you/

That our love was meant to be.

-Collins, Banks, Rutherford, "Throwing It All Away"

Christmas Music

2009-12-16T13:43:00.000-05:00

I’m just a sentimental fool come Christmas time. This year I sent a few cards, homemade, of course, and couldn’t help but enclose lyrics from a couple of my favorite holiday classics.

It’s that time of year when the world falls in love/Every song you hear seems to say/ “Merry Christmas, may all your New Year dreams come true.”

That’s “The Christmas Waltz.”

Course the version of that song I like is the one that Bruce Robison sings on the Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison record Happy Holidays. His Texas rendition is so sincere. Bruce warmed my heart some ten years ago at a Cactus Records in-store when he told my daughter she was the prettiest little girl in Houston.

I also quoted from “Santa Baby” for some of the holiday cards; surprisingly, Senator Javits' niece wrote that song.

I don’t own many Christmas records, at least not that I’ll admit, but I also have one by Willie Nelson. He sings “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” almost as well as my grandfather did.

Yesterday my son asked what my favorite Christmas song is, and I told him my grandfather’s version of “Up on the Housetop” was my favorite when I was his age. Anything Pawpaw George sang with his Waitsian voice and his ukulele was special.

Turns out I also have a John Prine Christmas record. He sounds down-and-out enough on that record to be from Texas, but he hails from Illinois.

Gosh, all this talk about music makes me homesick for Texas, but this Christmas I’ll be in northern Carolina, bracing for snow. My inbox is filling with Austin gig announcements from folks like John Greenberg, Dave Grissom and Troy Campbell. I’ll miss them all.

Think I’ll leave you with this song to give you a little taste of Christmas at the ranch. Brings back lots of acoustic memories of Bruce and Kelly from the Mucky Duck in Houston to Gruene Hall in Hill Country. And if this doesn’t put you in the mood for a Texas dance hall, check out John Spong’s article in Texas Monthly. God bless.

Before the Cock Crows

2009-11-30T15:08:00.000-05:00

Everywhere a sign. Many people heed signs; others don’t.

If your personality profile says that you are intuitive, you probably look for signs and ponder a deeper meaning. But if you perceive only with your senses, you might not be so inclined to interpret signs.

In the oral tradition there are many signs. My family passed down a few to me. Pawpaw George said, “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors’ warning.” His wife had a favorite saying that conveys an itchy nose is a predictor someone with a hole in their underwear is about to knock on your door.

In medical school I learned of signs, not to be confused with symptoms, the patient’s complaints. Signs are those things a doctor can observe, like yellow eyes, flushed cheeks, or labored breathing. There’s Battle’s sign, the sign of Leser-Trelat, and even Sister Mary Joseph’s sign, which should delight those of you who would like to know more about Mayo Clinic history.

Songwriters like to talk about signs. Everywhere a sign. I saw the sign. I am waiting for a sign.

We all, at times, look for signs: a sign that it’s over, a sign that it’s love, a sign that you’ve gone too far.

It occurs to me that some signs foretell and others just loudly announce what has already happened.

If you’re reading, send up a smoke signal and let me know you’re here. What signs do you heed? Are there any signs that were taught to you in the oral tradition that you intend to pass along to the next generation?

I’ve gotta tell you in my loudest tones/That I started looking for a warning sign.
-“Warning Sign” Coldplay 

Who's Singing on Your Radio?

2009-11-03T21:05:00.000-05:00

If my mother didn’t make the Beatles magically appear in the studio at WKLO by turning a knob in her light green Impala sedan, then maybe I would not have grown up thinking music is magic. Disclaimer: This was not a case of a mom duping kid. My mom never said, “When we turn on the radio a band plays live in the studio on Broadway.” She didn’t have to. I just knew they did. And it made me happy to know they were there with me in my town.

Since no one in my home played an instrument, music first cast its spell on me via radio towers.

Important radio stations—let’s start with WLRS in Louisville. Album rock appealed to me because I had a fairly large collection of albums from the RCA club, and as I sat on my four-poster bed, doing my high school homework at night, I could look out my window at the skyline of downtown Louisville, all aglow with light, and ponder songs like “Dark Side of the Moon.”

More than a decade later, toward the end of my first year in Houston, I discovered KPFT. The owner of the Mucky Duck sat me at a table for a Toni Price show next to a KPFT DJ, Phil Edwards. He talked up the channel to me that night, and paid for my drink, saying, “If you have any extra money laying around the house, just send it into the station.” Of course, the funniest thing is that my drink magically disappeared because Phil forgot it was mine and drank it himself! I tuned into KPFT for the rest of my years in Houston, and discovered the likes of Dan Zanes and Darden Smith, thanks to DJ’s who knew what they were spinning.

After I met my husband I noticed he tuned to a certain radio station as soon as the radio towers became visible on the 290 drive into Austin from Houston. It was KGSR.

KGSR streams daily on the computer in my office. Part of the fun of it is just seeing what will be playing, like now, Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up.” Earlier when I started the blog, Talking Heads were in the studio (not really, but you know KGSR is the place it’s most likely to happen) playing “Life in Wartime.” More importantly though, I may just hear a song by someone I’ve seen live in a small venue, like Alejandro Escovedo.

Radio magic continues tonight when an acquaintance of mine, Ian McLagan, chats with the host of a show on WCOM in Carrboro, NC.

Feel free to share your magic radio stations on the blog.

"But I heard you singing on the radio/your chariot was swinging way down low."
-Walter Tragert, “Singing on the Radio”

Writing for the Senate

2009-10-20T21:18:00.000-04:00

My parents let me play hooky for two reasons: to write or to go to the racetrack.

One of those pastimes makes you a bit more employable than the other although it’s a toss-up as to which one will make you more money.

I’ve written over the years for school, for promotion and for hire. I’m happiest when I’m just writing for the fun of it.

I participated in a career development seminar in medical school. The verdict after six weeks was that I should be a writer. Oh well, I thought, I will write in patients’ charts.

There are two places that I currently write--the Chapel Hill Public Library and my home office.

I have to write near a window with birds in plain sight. I have a wall of framed Audubon prints in my office. My novel manuscript is about looking for a songbird, the rufous-sided towhee. Course I don’t have to look for them today; there’s almost always one singing somewhere around the house or the library. People sometimes look for what they already have, anyway.

Many of my writer friends keep a talisman near them while they write. My friend Garrison Somers kept a plane on his desk while he wrote his novel manuscript about a WWII pilot.

I have an office angel with butterfly wings; a friend sent it one holiday. A James Michener quote adorns the skirt: “I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotion.”

Turns out Michener is buried in Austin, Texas, my home away from home, and there is a Michener Center for Writers at UT.

When it comes to writing, I remember the advice of one voice. Surprisingly, it was not an English professor. It was the typing teacher at Sacred Heart Academy. She wore a beehive and way too much Tabu. Her name was Mrs. Pike, and she taught us how to type on our Pica typewriters. This is what she said in a deep southern accent about pounding the keyboard: “Girl if you don’t get it right, you’ve got to do it again.”

Now that plays right into my Catholic, repressed psychodrama. No wonder I worked on the novel manuscript for seven years.

I was fortunate to have many teachers and professors who gave me directive advice about writing on the days that I wasn’t at the track or in my basement typing poetry. They are the ones that I want to thank today in celebration of the National Day on Writing.

Off the Beaten Path

2009-10-15T20:13:00.000-04:00

Have you ever been offered the perfect job in a new location that is slightly off the beaten path?

In 1995 during my surgical pathology fellowship at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, I considered taking a job in Appalachia. I was going to be paid a salary that nearly competed with the one the UT med school was offering, plus the Kentucky practice was tempting me with every other week off.

With that much time on my hands, I figured I’d finally learn how to play banjo. I’d been playing acoustic guitar and wanted some variety.

Certainly the job would’ve gotten me a little closer to my hometown of Louisville, where my dad and two grandmothers lived. Something worried me though: I figured in Appalachia folks would be knocking on my door to deliver babies night and day, cause, well, in the hollers, a doctor’s a doctor, right? Yeah, but this doctor doesn’t know nothing about no birthing and babies, and so I got scared away from the prospect of moving to the hills of eastern Kentucky.

Subsequently and sadly, I never learned to play the banjo. I stayed in Houston and picked up windsurfing. But happily, at night, when it was too dark to windsurf, I hung out in a place where fiddles, mandolins, and banjos made their rotation. That’s where I met a young musician from Appalachia named Troy Campbell.

His band, Loose Diamonds, covered a song “Stonewalls and Steel Bars.” The song is on their Freedom Records release Fresco Fiasco. “Stonewalls” is my second favorite song on the disc that Neil Strauss of the New York Times called one of “ten records from 1996 that haven't received much attention but are worth the extra time it takes to hunt for them, either through mail order or a local independent record store.” I’d never bothered looking at the liner notes to find out who wrote the song. Then this summer at Antone’s, Troy introduced the song as a Stanley Brothers tune.

I read yesterday in the Times that the only remaining Stanley of the Stanley Brothers, Ralph, has written his autobiography, which was due out today. Now even if he’s embellished history a tad, Appalachia's the kind of place where the truth is always going to be stranger than fiction, so this book is likely to be a hoot.

“Stonewalls and steel bars, a love on my mind/
I'm a three-time loser; I'm long gone this time."

C. Stanley, “Stonewalls and Steel Bars”

Like the Times reviewer said: Go find the Loose Diamonds CD. Better yet, catch Loose Diamonds live for the electric version that Ralph Stanley would consider sacrilege.

My Uncle Sam and McCartney's Uncle Albert

2009-10-03T13:33:00.000-04:00

"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" ("UA/AH") takes its place among those songs with lyrics that confound. I didn't know what the song meant when I was seven, and I probably won't know when I'm sixty-four.

In 1971 while my dad drove us along the Rock Creek Parkway in DC, "UA/AH" was on the radio. I sat in the backseat with my sister and my Mrs. Beasley doll. I was in a dress, on my way back to the hotel from the Smithsonian.

Last Sunday a cabdriver speaking Arabic drove me along the same segment of Rock Creek Parkway, and "UA/AH" was playing in my acoustic memory. I sat in the backseat with a doll, my 17-year-old daughter. She was in a dress, and we were on our way to the hotel from the National Gallery.

In '71 "UA/AH" was one of my favorite songs, but "Bridge Over Troubled Water" won the Grammy. That sad song always makes me think of the deaths of President John F. and Senator Bobby Kennedy. In '71 our troops were in Vietnam; now they're in Afghanistan.

This week the only word my cabdriver said that I understood, as he held a cell phone to his head while he held our lives in his hands, was Afghanistan, and I recall he said that word just as we passed the Watergate. In a Neil Young song "even Richard Nixon has got soul." Nixon certainly had an ego. It kept him from doing the right thing.

I was invited to the Capitol by a college classmate on Monday, and as I toured the building, I felt the same awe to be viewing one of our nation's jewels that I felt as a child at the Smithsonian.

We've suffered as a nation since the 70's. There's the misery of those who returned from war and the misery of those whose kin did not. We're scarred by September 11th and the hurricane.

The misery of "those who have not" hangs in the balance as we makes fools of ourselves over who is entitled to health care. Will the sick have to rely on charity or will access to care be deemed an individual right (not to be confused with an individual mandate)? If our country fails here, the disgrace is all our own. There has been no provocation from foreign soil. We cannot blame the elements.

People who reproduce are said to be genetically fit. Maybe the term should be changed to mean those who can afford the best health care policy their DNA will allow. The insurance companies are becoming genetic watchdogs: "Your body repairs DNA damage, you can have insurance; your body does not repair DNA damage, no insurance for you."

Genetic bullying wasn't okay for Hitler, and it's not okay for us.

Sometimes songs we don't understand still resonate. Even in those songs that lose us, there's usually one line hits the mark. In McCartney's song, "the kettles on the boil, and we're so easily called away." I hope we don't get called away from this topic of national urgency.

I had to turn off The Ed Schultz Show today when the cancer-stricken caller began crying. I didn't want to get that upset while driving, but it was too late because I'd heard enough of the story. The caller's status as a provider had been decimated by his illness. Not only did he lose the business that provided health insurance for his employees, but he also lost his ability to support his family.

Maybe our legislators will get it right. On Monday at the Capitol, my friend pointed out one of Senator Kennedy's sanctuaries. Although the senator's at rest now, we needed him a little bit longer.

"We're so sorry, Uncle Albert/But we haven't done a bloody thing all day."
-Linda and Paul McCartney, "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"

Drivin' That Train

2009-09-27T10:44:00.000-04:00

“How fast is this train going?” I asked my daughter as the skin on my face grew taut from the train’s acceleration.

“One hundred,” she said casually, as if oblivious to the miniature face-lift the subway had provided me.

One of my hundred goals for this weekend was to make my daughter an independent rider of the DC Metro since she may matriculate at a school in our nation’s capital next fall. After reading an article in the Washington Post entitled "Sandwiching Older Metro Cars Was a PR Move," I may not be so keen about the notion of anyone I know riding this system that is an accident that has already happened.

I was all set to write a happy little blog about my greatest lifetime memories of visiting DC when the newspaper article set me back into citizen Cassandra mode.

Let’s file this complaint under public relations trump risk management: The Metro system paid consultants sums of $4000 a day and $275 an hour to smooth over public concern about the safety of the system after a crash this summer killed nine people.

Consequently the old (series 1000) cars that are deemed unsafe were sandwiched between newer shock absorbing cars. End of solution. Cha-ching! Tax dollars save the day. Now hold on a minute. The action was not the result of an engineering analysis according to today’s newspaper. Can anyone say damage control?

This past week when I was chaperoning a field trip to the Haw River, the teacher made a public service announcement before we boarded the bus about her husband being attacked by a copperhead at the river last week. Although the teacher intended to keep her class safe, one of the 9-year-olds became so distraught by the warning that I took her aside and tried to comfort her.

“There is risk in all that we do,” I said to the worried student, “but as long as we are cautious and aware of our surroundings, we’ll be fine.”

Sometime after the Metro wreck this summer, a Facebook friend commented, “That’s why I don’t ride the front or the back car.”

Yesterday I rode the middle cars, unaware that they are likely the 30-year-old series 1000 cars.

Should Casey Jones and her daughter just stay off that train? Let’s face it: The drivers are all a-Twitter, the old cars are not safe and there are terrorist threats in the news. One reason not to buy a fare card is likely enough.

Trouble ahead.
Trouble behind.
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.

-R. Hunter, "Casey Jones"

Death on the Highway

2009-08-28T10:21:00.000-04:00

Call it suicide or call it homicide, he was just a nice kid.

One of the last things that he did on Earth was call 911 and ask for help.

People in Chapel Hill are talking about the unexpected death of Courtland Smith, a premed biology major and fraternity president at UNC.

I would start with the story but since we still don’t know the rest of the story, I will stick with the facts as I know them from police reports that aren’t sealed and from the rivoting 15-minute 911 call Courtland made the morning of his death.

• Courtland was the DKE president at UNC.
• There was a party at his fraternity house Saturday night.
• His best friend saw him at 2:00 a.m. after the party. He reports that Courtland was “fine” at that time.
• About two hours later, Courtland placed the now famous 911 call.
• A female operator handled his call.
• Approximately 15 minutes later, Courtland was shot to death by a police officer on 1-85 southbound in Randolph County.

The questions outnumber the facts at this time. A video remains with sealed evidence. The medical examiner’s report has not been made public, nor has an e-mail Courtland wrote to his parents “that explains everything anyone would need to know” as Courtland told the 911 operator.

Because so much is unknown, the 911 call seems all the more important to our initial attempt to grieve this loss. The audio for the call can be accessed in the box with the story in the newspaper article.

Would I have listened to this call if I hadn’t watched Phone Booth last week? Maybe not. But Courtland's death would still have weighed on my mind as I worked with my premeds this week, talking with those students who are disappointed and feeling dejected about their low MCAT scores.

So many of my friends have sent their children to college for the first time this month. It’s every parent’s fear that their child will encounter danger or become severely ill while away at school.

The UNC campus has seen it’s share of tragedy recently. A few years ago, the student body president, Eve Carson, was shot to death at close range after being kidnapped and driven to an ATM machine to make her last withdrawal.

When Eve’s death was initially reported, there were holes of information big enough to drive a truck through. With Courtland’s death, the holes are even larger.

But what strikes me is the human interest. Sure, this is a human interest story, but that’s not what I mean. Somewhere in those last 15 minutes of his life, Courtland developed an interest in the female operator. He even asks her where she is from. And whether, as in Phone Booth, there was someone with a gun on Courtland’s “back pocket” or whether Courtland intended to fatally harm himself, he still cared about the operator and took an interest in her.

Call it homicide or call it suicide, he was just a nice kid.

One of the last things he did on Earth was call 911 . Our acoustic memory of Courtland is that of a young man who grew increasingly frustrated during his last cry for help.

Zombie Highways

2009-08-17T09:01:00.000-04:00

Time was we worried about Chief Falling Rock when we took to the highways in my dad’s sedan. It was politically incorrect family slang for falling rock. On our family excursions along highways en route to the Smoky Mountains, the roadside signage warned of falling rock in the area. Chain link fence along the interstate heightened the sensation that a boulder could come sailing into the passenger window at any moment.

"Chief Falling Rock is after us," my dad would warn. A few years ago I took this acoustic memory and used it as the opener for a short story about a family portrait.

Times have changed a bit. Today there’s new terror on the roads. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer warned tonight of Zombie Highways. The story was about the Appalachian Development System gone too far in building a road to nowhere in north Birmingham. I saw some zombies on the interstate this summer, but the kind of zombies I saw were a little different than Jim’s.

If I had a quarter for every person talking on a cell phone while driving on the interstate, I could have made it to Austin and back without using my credit card once. Throw in a dollar for every mom (with kids in car seats) merging onto the highway while texting and I’ll make a contribution to your favorite charity.

We need laws to get people to quit taking undue risk.

How does that legislation get enacted? It seems soon after airbags began showing up in automobiles, I was witness to an autopsy at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Kentucky where a woman, under the height of 5’4’’, did not walk away from her accident because she suffered injuries when her airbag deployed on I-64. I don’t remember the exact role the ME’s office took in bringing about legislation to warn consumers that people under a certain height were at risk of airbag deployment injury, but I know there was some communication between Louisville and Frankfort on the issue.

There are plenty of people who argue government is too big, government does not need to take our freedoms away. If people made judicious use of capitalistic pleasures like phones with keyboards, maybe we wouldn’t need so many laws. Trouble is most people never want to think of safety until someone has hurt them.

While we’re in Mexico at the summit, we need to remember that we don’t want eighteen wheelers from Mexico on the interstate with the yellow HISD buses. Yes, let’s quit sending guns into Mexico for the drug cartels but no, we are not ready to allow Mexican trucks without brake inspections on US highways while my family is on the road.

Too much free trade and texting is bad for our safety on the roads. Darwin awards are for suicide, not homicide.

(This post was written last week and deemed too negative for the blog. Nonetheless, so many people have talked about dangerous road texting in the past four days that I felt compelled to post today.)

Taking the Time to Lay Down Some Tracks

2009-08-07T20:14:00.000-04:00

I had a very pleasant morning with my son. I made chocolate chip pancakes. We watched a British show about training dogs. We walked our Lab and listened to the sounds of birds and cicadas along the way. We talked about mockingbirds. We paused to admire our favorite tree alongside the stream that flows into the one where James Taylor played as a boy.

Walking with a dog along a path takes me back to my grandfather’s retirement haven in Meade County on the Ohio River. He and I would start the day around five-thirty, sitting on stumps and drinking coffee under a large oak. Then we’d take his dog, a big ole slobbery shepherd mix, for a walk along trails with enough rabbits to keep Cesar showing off for hours. My grandfather pointed out the finer nuances of berry and tree identification along the way. By eight o’clock we’d be back at the house where my grandfather would scramble eggs and fry bacon. My Italian grandmother would still be sleeping when we spread her elderberry jam on our biscuits.

Now I can’t walk in the woods without remembering that mystical place where decades of river travel floated up from the steep banks to the house, on the notes from the Belle’s calliope.

The Pitch-Perfect Acoustic Legacy of a Parent

2009-07-30T14:09:00.000-04:00

After a week of playing catch-up from an Austin pilgramage, I finally made it to the Muse Scripts box at the Carrboro post office. Nothing makes me happier than reaching into that box and pulling out a big ole glossy Texas Monthly. I dig that senior editor John Spong used to babysit my husband at the Westlake Oaks compound.

Ever play the game where you plop the magazine open and read only the article on that page? Nothing maintains the allure of an issue like taking it one randomly selected piece at a time. Maybe you can tell I was one of the kids that saved some candy for later.

This afternoon I dug into the magazine and up popped a photo of Roland Martin in a pinstripe suit and a lilac tie. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I returned from the Triangle Area Freelancers meeting so falling upon an article on being a multimedia journalist seemed fateful.

In the interview with Pamela Colloff, Roland Martin talks about Tiger Wood's father's remark, "'Even when I'm gone, Tiger will always hear my voice in his head at any moment in his life.'"

The legacy of what we tell our kids and what our parents told us is Texas size.

This week I traveled to the North Carolina Administrative Offices of the Courts and talked to parents about what they should tell their children about tobacco.

I told them about how tricky the topic of mortality can be for the younger set (9-11). By the way, that's the age of initiation for smoking, so if your youngin falls into that group, it's time to get your game on.

A friend recently shared the story with me about how her son, who is in the aforementioned age group, cut through a parental admonition about dying young with the eager anticipation of a premature death for a chance at early admission to heaven.

The day my mom told me she knew I had been smoking cigarettes, we were driving home in her light green clunker and my favorite song "Blinded by the Light" was on WKLO. (That keyboard intro still gives me chills.) My calliope came crashing down, alright. She gave me the usual, "Wait until your father comes home."

My father let me agonize in dreadful anticipation through most of the meal. His words were simple: "In our house we value our health first." Because I had a headache from the five or six cigarettes I'd smoked that afternoon, round one ended rather quickly.

What are you telling your children about tobacco? What are they saying? I'd love to hear.

I also want to hear what you remember your parents saying when you hear their voices in your head, on any topic.

Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun.
But Mama, that's where the fun is...
Bruce Springsteen, "Blinded by the Light"

Songs I Heard on the Way Home

2009-07-24T18:37:00.000-04:00

Got a good station on I-10 outside of Nawlens. How could I have forgotten these songs?

1.) My Baby Blue

2.)Hot Fun in the Summertime

3.) Devil with the Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly

4.) Band of Gold

5.) My Maria--the 1973 B.W. Stevenson version

I must add that BW (Buckwheat) Stevenson's song "Shambala" was covered by my fourth grade crush on his brother's electric guitar at our 4th grade talent show at St. Athanasius.

Sly & the Family Stone recorded "Hot Fun in the Summertime" in 1969. My sister had the Family Stone album with "Sing a Simple Song."

"Time is passing, I grow older, things are happening fast. All I have to hold onto is a simple song at last."- Stewart, Sylvester

Stupidly/Stupid

2009-07-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

Oh, I just can't bite back my tongue (that's how Richard Thompson says it) any longer.
Yes, I like Obama. Full disclosure: I voted for him.
Today I watched with glee as he called a spade a spade. No matter how you slice it, the police in Cambridge acted stupidly. I've even blogged about racial profiling on this, my mostly apolitical blog.
And yet, when Obama starts to talk about folks going to a primary care doc with a sore throat and alluding to the public that they could fall prey to doctors who will yank the tonsils to make a buck, he's stupid. Primary care doctors don't even remove tonsils. That's done by an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. Was Obama winging it or did his adviser take the day off? Please, when you are trying to triumph yourself as the answer to our health care crisis, don't let that tongue get so loosey-goosey in areas where you have absolutely no content knowledge.
There, and now I feel better. And it was free--the insurance company ain't getting a penny off this.
But I'm not finished yet, while we're talking adverbs. If the police acted stupidly, how is it that the students in the audience today in Ohio were dressed "good." He said, "I didn't dress that good when I was your age." Wince.
Can we get the prompter back?

Magical Thinking

2009-07-21T20:28:00.000-04:00

It’s seven o’clock Central Daylight Time on a Sunday night; I really would prefer to be at the Saxon Pub, but I’m headed East toward New Orleans on I-10 instead. Last Sunday a promise was thrown out to cover Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” tonight at the Saxon, but I’m missing that.

Even at 75 miles per hour, there are more songs than grasshoppers bombarding my windshield.

I just passed Opelousas and thought of the song “Sweet Relief” that mentions it. I recalled the young friend of mine that used to play guitar with me in Houston who was so fond of Maria McKee that he followed her all over Europe one year. Check out Maria’s cover of “Sweet Relief” on the tribute CD for Victoria Williams. Back when Victoria was diagnosed with MS, other musicians covered her songs on a benefit CD. My Cajun friends Barrow and Gregg used to play that CD at their apartment back in Houston.

And how could anyone drive through Louisiana and not think of the other Williams, Lucinda, headed back to the Crescent City?

Egrets dot the rice fields, and I hear Adam Carroll's song "Rice Birds." Scrappy just covered it last Sunday at the Saxon. You can hear Adam's version on YouTube.

Roadside billboards advertise boudins and cracklins. I remember being seven and believing Neil Diamond was singing about my grandmother Rose in "Cracklin Rosie."

When we are children we pass through a phase called magical thinking--Troy was just talking about this with Dano and me Saturday at lunch at Hyde Park. It’s about three parts ideas of reference (they teach you this is pathologic in med school) and ten parts hope. In Human Development classes, they say it’s just a stage, something you move beyond as you age.

As I age I realize what I cherish about music is that it tells me magical thinking is not a stage of development but a state of being that we can all check into when we want. I still believe. And hope, it’s still in my diet. Troy sang about finding it in so many places during his show at Antone’s Friday, and he mentioned at lunch how many people in Austin still have it. Check out an early version of his song on YouTube.

I’m preparing to cross the Mississippi—getting my camera ready to capture twilight on the surface of the water. I’m back at my grandfather’s farm on the river. I hear the calliope on the Belle of Louisville. I remember the song "Riverside." I think of all the wonder still to come.

And oh, the wonder…

Felt the lightening

and waited on the thunder.

Bob Seger, “Night Moves”

Under the Influence of the Druid Bard

2009-06-17T12:00:00.000-04:00

It seems that as much as I might neglect my novel manuscript, she pursues me. Take my recent trip to Arizona for example.

I networked day and night at the National Conference for Tobacco or Health and had little time for relaxation and no time for writing, except for editing my clients’ work. I met a woman from Erie who invited me to rent a car for a day trip to Scottsdale to see Taliesin West.

I’m a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright homes, but I’d never set foot in one until last Friday. During the guided tour we learned a little about Frank’s personal life and how the house evolved from year to year. Of greatest interest to me was that the home did not have glass windows, originally. Canvas was stretched across the openings. Mrs. Wright the Third convinced Frank, over the course of 10 years, to use glass because he would then be able to work, inspired by the scenery around the house. Then, when he blasted to excavate for his cabaret, all the glass in the house shattered.

The guide told us, before we even set foot in the house, that taliesin means "shining brow." Then she talked about how the house was purposefully situated not on the top of the hill, but under the top, like a brow, so as to blend with the landscape.

This morning I got around to an Internet search for the word. I came up with some of Frank’s own words:

"Taliesin was the name of a Welsh poet, a druid-bard who sang to Wales the glories of fine art. Many legends cling to that beloved reverend name in Wales.

"Richard Hovey's charming masque, 'Taliesin,' had just made me acquainted with his image of the historic bard. Since all my relatives had Welsh names for their places, why not Taliesin for mine? . . . Literally the Welsh word means 'shining brow.'

"This hill on which Taliesin now stands as 'brow' was one of my favorite places when as a boy looking for pasque flowers I went in March sun while snow still streaked the hillsides. When you are on the low hill-crown you are out in mid-air as though swinging in a plane, the Valley and two others dropping away from you leaving the tree-tops standing below all about you."

- Frank Lloyd Wright

My Facebook friends wrote to me and suggested that I read Loving Frank. After checking the synopsis, I understand that this story of taboo love is meant to inspire me to finish "Acoustic Memory." And so I must return to the influence of the bard.

Why Not Phoenix?

2009-06-17T11:13:00.000-04:00

I’m in Phoenix. There’s a pigeon at my feet at the Starbucks table, a waning moon has paused between twin towers across the street, and my US News and World Report hasn’t told me anything my teenager did not presciently discuss with me on the day before I left. Panhandling and mandated health insurance have one thing in common: They’re both controversial. One of them is very pressing right now—I keep getting harassed for money by panhandlers—feels much like Chapel Hill.

Phoenix was a fork in the road for me in 1997. The song that was on the radio in my rental car was the Gin Blossoms “Follow You Down.” I was offered a job at Good Samaritan Hospital and belabored the decision. I recall that they did a fairly good job of courting me. The very friendly Mass General trained female in the group took me in her Land Rover on a tour of expensive digs that looked like adobes. We cruised past the Scottsdale Neimans (I was in a blue pinstripe suit from the Houston Galleria Neimans). She gave me the word on the guys in the group and told me that being single was no problem: She met her surgeon husband in the doctor’s lounge at Good Sam. (I bit back the “been there, done that.”) They could have enticed me with a hike on Camelback (well, I hiked it anyway by myself) or pictures of the head partner’s cabin in the mountains that was only discussed in the context of his car when we went to dinner. “He drives an economy car because he sinks his money into his weekend retreat.”

In the end there was my darling Ella, a daycare child, who would be in a very hot climate (as if Houston wasn’t hot enough) and there was a grad student at Baylor, who struck me as a fun guy. Now there is a son, Samuel; a husband; Beckley, the Baylor grad; and Ella with a recently diagnosed proclivity for making preneoplastic moles. Forget the Arizona sun; the moon across the street tells me I made the right decision. Now the only phoenix in my life is the one on my husband's tattoo.

Takin' It to the Streets

2009-06-05T15:07:00.000-04:00

It's funny just how jam-packed a life can become when you are living fearlessly. I'm approaching the 6-month mark of a resolution to take it to the streets.

I'm putting more miles on the car, spending more time with real world people, meeting one on one with exceptional folks with stellar track records, and finding myself moving forward on many fronts. I'm filming a video that has teenagers enthusiastically asking to participate. I'm following a big idea dream that has talented people jumping on board. I'm aiming for backing from the WHO and the CDC. I'm watching legislative committee meetings. I'm reading political blogs.

Just in the past thirty days I've interviewed a pilot home from Charlie Wilson's war, spent two hours in the office of the executive director of the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network, bent the ear of a National Urban Fellows graduate, and made plans to work on a storyboard with a filmmaker in Austin. I've attended a freelance writers' seminar, registered for the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, and listened to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Chair of the Cullen Trust for Health Care speak on tobacco and health disparities.

New words in my vocabulary include ecological momentary assessment, MPOWER and F-scanning.

The people around me inspire me: I learned that my next-door neighbor is on the board of Africa Rising, that James Protzman's political blog rocks, and that altruism is alive and well at the Splinter Group.

My community is asking me for more. I've been asked to speak at two state employee functions, to write a letter to the editor of the local papers and to consider how I would like to contribute to leadership in the American Lung Association.

All of this for a girl that used to be chained to a microscope. Now I'm holding on to whatever I can find.

When a Picture is Worth a Thousand Lives

2009-05-28T12:02:00.000-04:00

My generation did not "kick the habit" because for every "We Mind Very Much If You Smoke" jingle, we had another one about coming a long way. Those acoustic memories intermingle with memories of friends and loved ones whose lives were extinguished by the tobacco industry.

There is a global movement underway toward graphic warnings about disease on tobacco packaging. What follows is my letter to the editor of a North Carolina newspaper.

Sunday, May 31st is the World Health Organization’s annual World No Tobacco Day. This year’s theme is the implementation of pictorial warning labels on tobacco products. Other countries, including India, Canada, the United Kingdom and Brazil, already place pictures of diseased patients on tobacco packages, making the health risks of tobacco use hard for the consumer to overlook. The United States lags behind. Currently textual warnings are all that are in place on tobacco products.

Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. I witnessed this firsthand at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where I diagnosed thousands of cases of disease caused by tobacco.

World No Tobacco Day is an ideal time for all individuals to consider their own possible contributions to the WHO’s MPOWER initiatives to “Monitor tobacco use and the policies to prevent it; Protect people from tobacco smoke; Offer people help to quit tobacco use; Warn about the dangers of tobacco; Enforce bans on tobacco, advertising, promotion and sponsorship; Raise taxes on tobacco.”

Let us act responsibly and proactively for the benefit of our country’s children by advocating for picture warnings on tobacco products.

Dolley Madison and Maureen Dowd

2009-05-18T06:47:00.000-04:00

We were having dinner with some friends on Saturday night and I was enjoying the company of a bright 5-year-old who sat to my right at the dinner table and held forth with me on the topics of his selection, namely, the war that won’t end, Dolley Madison, and Hotel for Dogs. When he mentioned Madagascar 2, I said I thought the plot was a little too similar to The Lion King. I told him I felt like I was back with Scar and the hyenas all over again. Because the boy is an accomplished writer, who had shown me several books before dinner that he had written on first grade paper, I introduced him to the word plagiarism.

Plagiarism. Well first, he wanted to spell it. You know the schools are really creating brave spellers these days because now there is a theory called something like experimental spelling in usage in the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools whereby students are not penalized for using a word that they cannot spell correctly in their writing. Thinking back to my days of typing term papers at Sacred Heart Academy on a typewriter, I wish this educational coup would have occurred decades earlier.

So the experimental speller gave it a crack: P-L-A-Y-G-E-R and so on. This spelling makes plagiarism seem like child’s play. A quick check on Webster’s online says that the word is from the Latin word for kidnapper.

And the taking of the idea must be willful. I made that point very clear at the table.

Did Maureen Dowd willfully take from another and fail to credit him in her NYT column? I personally find it doubtful. According to an AP article I read this morning, she told the Huffington Post that the material she wrote was an acoustic memory. She did not use my term acoustic memory. That might have gotten my goat. She did say it was something she heard and then wrote. The AP article does not go on to say if she intended to credit the speaker or if she didn’t feel it was necessary.

I am such the idea purist that I do fault people who steal others' ideas. But what under the sun is new today? Still I think there is a line that does get crossed too often. Having been around many writers in the past five years or so, I once witnessed a writer discussing a topic at a coffee and then saw a very near exact quote of his concept in another writer’s work, uncredited, the very next day by a writer who was at our table.

But what of aging brains and acoustic memories during the creative process? For example, have I heard someone posit this question and failed to credit him? Does Maureen Dowd sometimes forget she did not create an idea and then fail to credit it? At my age it would be plausible. My son constantly tells me that I forget because I am OLD. His caps. His emphasis. There, I gave credit.

The Dalai Lama and My Mama

2009-05-12T19:14:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Barbara Walters' memoirs, Audition. An elderly friend of mine bought the book for two dollars from the Chapel Hill Public Library and passed it on to me.

Every time I think of Barbara Walters, I think of my dad. My father was on his deathbed in Baptist East Hospital in the fall of 2003. I had flown to Louisville to visit him. I had plans to meet two friends, Susan Ward and Kim Maddox, for lunch. My dad was short of breath because he was dying from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. It was my second day in his room, and we'd been over the important stuff. It didn't seem appropriate to waste breath on small talk, so my dad asked me what I would like to watch on his television in his hospital room. I said The View.

"That damn Baba Wawa," my dad said, in an exasperated tone of nearly benign disgruntlement, "I never did like her."

After reading Barbara's memoirs, I realize one thing: Men hate her or they try to seduce her. Harry Reasoner--hated her. Fidel Castro--tried to seduce her.

I'd been reading the memoirs in a fairly linear fashion, which is something that I do on rare occasions when I am entirely fascinated. On Mother's Day weekend, I had asked my husband to read me the chapter on Monica, so I had already skipped ahead a bit. Last night I chose to read the chapter on celebrities. Barbara writes of her visit with the Dalai Lama in that chapter.

Now two friends of mine, Troy Campbell and James Protzman, have recently spoken of the Dalai Lama to me. Troy mentioned the Dalai Lama when he told me about the movie Happiness Is (Troy is an associate producer of the film)and James said that he would most like to interview the Dalai Lama when I interviewed James about his first book, Jesus Swept. So I was clearly at attention while reading this passage from the book, even though it was about thirty minutes past my bedtime of ten o'clock Eastern Time.

I got to the part toward the end of the chapter where Barbara interviewed the Dalai Lama, and he told her that the purpose of life is "'to be happy.'" I had to put the book down. I had an acoustic memory.

It was January of 1987, and my mother was on her deathbed. We were both on her deathbed, actually, because I was lying with her in her bed in her bedroom. I was getting ready to leave Louisville to return to Lexington for the spring semester of my first year of medical school. My mother, realizing that the breast cancer was going to win, turned to me and said, "I want you to always be happy." That was it. The last piece of wisdom my mom ever bestowed.

And yet, it did not seem profound to me. I was climbing, climbing, up and up toward a dream of becoming a physician, and my mom was advising me to be happy. The advice seemed so cliche at the time that I filed it away into my memory archives and never really thought of it too much. To be honest, the advice she gave me one day in the Brown Cancer Center, upon watching a rather plain jane physician walk past us ( "Heather, when you are a doctor, at least put on lipstick in the morning") is advice I have mentioned to my daughter and to my friends because I thought it was clever. It was slightly more directive than, be happy. At that age I really craved substantive advice and lipstick seemed more substantive than happiness.

When I was able to pick the book back up, I mused that Barbara seemed fairly surprised that such an important man gave such simple advice.

Upon reflection, my mother's advice about happiness was much harder to follow than her advice about wearing makeup.

And so on this spring day, when the dog took one look at my inbox and whispered, "There's nothing to edit yet, take me on a walk," I did. We saw a mockingbird chasing a crow away from his turf. I felt amused. When the breeze whispered, "This may be the last spring day," I headed to Southern States for soil and fertilizer and worked on my patio garden past noon without sweating. I found the first tomato on the tomato plant. I felt happy.

The Specter of Disease

2009-04-28T18:53:00.000-04:00

Well, it’s comforting to know that amid a growing swine flu outbreak in the United States, Arlen Specter can trump a virus. Maybe this isn’t going to be a pandemic. After all, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer covered Specter’s shift to the left before the swine flu tonight.

Since the weekend, the swine flu has spread to more states in the US, and given the incubation period and the laboratory identification lag phase, we can expect that just in time for the this weekend’s run for the roses in Louisville, Kentucky, some folks will find themselves wondering if they should make that trip to Churchill Downs or not. Three weeks from now there will likely be a spike in cases in Kentucky. Who can stay home sick from the Derby?

You can. It bears repeating that the CDC urges all of those who are ill to stay home one day beyond the day all symptoms subside. Yes, that is one day beyond, and not one day into symptoms, as is the usual practice in our capitalistic, thou must not call in sick society. The CDC is asking business owners to proactively consider the flu.

If you are well enough to go to the Derby though, put some money down on Advice for me.

Beware the Barking Pig, Be He Human or Swine

2009-04-25T08:23:00.000-04:00

The Center for Disease Control has confirmed cases of swine flu in San Diego, California, and San Antonio, Texas. They will update their case list at 3:00 p.m. today.

Here are some important facts about swine flu:

This influenza virus is spread from person to person by respiratory droplet, the same way other respiratory viruses spread. People can also spread the infection to pigs and vice versa. You cannot get the virus from eating pork.

The symptoms of swine flu in people include fever, fatigue, cough, runny nose and sometimes vomiting and diarhhea. The CDC reports that pigs with swine flu appear depressed (don’t ask me) and cough (sounds like barking).

There is no human vaccine for swine flu.

If you have swine flu symptoms, it is important to avoid contact with other people and see your doctor. The current strain is responding to two antiviral drugs, so if you see your doctor within the first five days, you can get tested and potentially treated. That window is ten days for children. At this point the virus is striking mainly adults.

Bottom line for North Carolinians this weekend: Make a trip to the store for some hand sanitizer and be wary of close contact with people who say they have “a cold,” especially if they are just back from Texas or California. It’s safe to go to Allen and Sons Barbecue for pork this weekend. As for the Piedmont Farm Tour, it’s probably more likely that a visitor would infect a pig than a pig would infect a visitor. Nonetheless, steer clear of sad, barking pigs.

With Liberty and Genetic Fairness for All

2009-04-23T08:35:00.000-04:00

My DNA still scares me. No, I’m not talking about the untimely deaths of my parents.

Last Sunday the New York Times reported that some states and the FBI are now routinely collecting DNA samples (a cheek swab) from people being detained for crimes. The premise is that they need a database to solve future crimes. The rationale is that it is no different than fingerprints.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I understand that the FBI and even local police departments would like to have DNA databases. Two things: Law enforcement officials could solve all crimes more quickly if we all had a government-placed microchip implanted in our shoulders like prized sporting dogs. Let’s not do that. Secondly, if the people that are detained but then released for crimes are the victims of racial profiling, then the people who are having their cheeks swabbed are also the subjects of racial profiling.

If we need a DNA database to solve crimes, then shouldn't all citizens be on file? And illegal immigrants? Good question: I don’t have all the answers today.

I can’t even think of all the questions, and that’s my point. There should be a multidisciplinary presidential task force taking stock of all applications coming out of the burgeoning field of genetics and considering the ethical and legal ramifications of the technologies to protect us.

In December, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Reviews reported that Obama wanted to create “an inter-agency task force on genomics research,” but the article went on to describe research initiatives that would be improved by the Obama presence in the White House. I would like to see some air of caution in the rhetoric of progress.

While Obama says that he introduced the Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act (GINA) that President Bush signed into law in 2008, it would appear that this legislation only protects our rights with employers and insurers, not with law enforcement.

Is there any indication that the Coalition for Genetic Fairness might broaden its purpose to investigate this discriminatory collection of DNA by law enforcement? I'm going to see if they will.

As we translate biomedical research into practical application, there should be some public comfort that we are not headed toward a flawed futuristic society.

Professor Chism and the Sacred Heart Weekend

2009-04-10T12:11:00.001-04:00

A crescent moon

A lilting tune

A prayer that soars above

Your daughters sing

While vistas ring

To honor the school we love...

Becky and I go way back to Saturday eighth grade Algebra class at that other high school across town. We were the French version of the foreign language/science geeks at Sacred Heart Academy, class of 1982. Together we attended French theater of the absurd plays in downtown Louisville, said the Angelus in French every Friday at noon in Madame Danzig's classroom with the view of the campus dogwoods, and endured the biting sarcasm of Father Wagner's A.P. English class.

In driving rain I picked up Becky in my white Toyota Corolla to go to Showcase Cinemas to see a movie the first night I got my license. Becky drove me to KFC for senior lunch the first Friday she had her Honda Civic.

I gave up French; she gave up science. Somewhere along the way we lost touch.

Her flight arrives this afternoon. Rain is in the forecast. We're seeing Louisvillian Jon Jory's production of Pride and Prejudice on the UNC campus. We're taking in a comedy show at Dirty South Improv. And we're catching up. Where to begin? Maybe hello. Or better still, bonjour!

The Keen Stars Were Twinkling

2009-04-04T23:57:00.000-04:00

I’m still reading The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard.

It is very difficult to know all that he was attempting to accomplish in this work. Certainly there is meditation on houses as structures, and houses as homes. That I was expecting. There is a chapter on daydreams. There is writing about the process of creating. Bachelard quotes French writers I didn’t read in college.

“An artist does not create the way he lives, he lives the way he creates.” Jean Lescure

Interestingly Proust, whom I have read, is also quoted. The reason this is significant to me is that in describing this book briefly to a friend in the gym, he said, “sounds a little like Proust.”

Poetry is the thread that unites the chapters. Though not on every page, Bachelard has sprinkled verse throughout the text, and when he does, he gives the poem in French followed by a translation in English.

Mainly Bachelard attempts to deconstruct poetry.

Bachelard considers the imagery of doors and forests: “On May nights, when so many doors are closed, there is one that is just barely ajar. We have only to give it a very slight push! The hinges have been well oiled. And our fate becomes visible.”

The forest represents a “limitless world.”

I made use of a forest setting in two chapters of “Acoustic Memory”—one where the lovers are together and one where Raven longs for Gray. The glass walls of the Chapel Hill Public Library allow a view of a forest and facilitate work on pastoral scenes.

But back to Bachelard, in deconstructing poetry, he considers imagery and also sound, but not rhythm (at least not that I have seen yet—I confess I am not reading this book sequentially). He writes pages about Baudelaire’s use of the word vast and the phonation of the word vast. In the middle of this long rant, there is a gem of a metaphor for the human voice. The voice is a “delicate little Aeolian harp that nature has set at the entrance to our breathing” and it “is really a sixth sense, which followed and surpassed the others.”

More about Bachelard another day.

I look out the window of my airplane and see darkness penetrated by a strobe-like, red light that momentarily illuminates the wing—flicker, flicker, flicker. I’ve just flown over Chicago.

And here I will leave you with one of my favorite excerpts from a Shelley poem with a much more romantic take on the voice of a beloved:

"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."

Silence and Space

2009-04-02T23:16:00.000-04:00

Somewhere above Montana and surrounded by the snow.

Somewhere above Montana there's places you oughta go.

Somewhere above Montana the snow mutes all the sound.

Somewhere above Montana with only memories around.

I'm back in a mountain fortress, the place in my manuscript where Raven came to a turning point in the early drafts. The weakness in your plot, said a trusted friend, is that Raven never decides. True. She was weak. No more. I'm at this fortress strong and Raven is going to emerge, like the knight down the hall, with armor, ready to fight for her honor.

The stark terrain of the Rockies is the truth, as it was established over a hundred million years ago. The truth, like the mountains, is all that can emerge with time.

In the mountains, by herself, Raven looks inward and knows her truth. Then, fearlessly, she acts. The other ending was too cliche. This one is going to be true.

Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise

2009-03-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

I’ve been reading how the memories of our first home come to bear on our writing.

My first home was a brick ranch with hardwood floors, a garden, a collie and traditional parents. It strikes me that our house was very quiet. There were places you could go in our house and not hear anyone else. My favorite place was the basement.

We had a finished basement, replete with faux fireplace, a sitting area, a bar with swiveling turquoise pleather barstools, and a large desk with a manual typewriter. Did I say it was quiet?

I have to have quiet to write. It is a curse.

My current home is a smaller ranch with Pergo, a garden, a Labrador and traditional parents. (Well, I didn’t used to be traditional when I worked at the med school, but now that I work less than fifteen hours a week from home I am more or less June Cleaver without the pumps.) Our house is very noisy. There is no place you can go in my house and not hear anyone else. I wish I had a basement.

GRRRRRRRR. Did you say something? Good, I need quiet!

Right now I can hear someone rattling around in the kitchen. I wish they would stop. My son just clomped down the hall. He’s going out to play. Now the dog is tap, tap, tapping as she walks. Her nails need to be trimmed. I could get up and remind someone he said he would trim her nails today, or I can try to keep writing.

There is a clinking of a spoon in a bowl. My teenager is already into the mint chocolate chip ice cream that I bought less than three hours ago.

Someone just walked down the hall and into the garage. Our garage is no destination place, so just as I thought, that person is now trekking back in from the garage.

Now someone is opening the kitchen cabinet to tear paper towels. What is being done with paper towels? Now the water at the kitchen sink is running. Was there a spill? Do I need to see if the cleanup is going to be sufficient or should I stay here and try to write?

Now someone is opening my bedroom door.

GRRRRRRRRRR. I turn around to behold my teenager, who is holding a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. As she swirls the eggs to mix them with the salt that she has no doubt poured in the bowl, she tells me someone at her school got into UT-Austin yesterday.

I put on a motherly face and make a motherly comment.

She closes the door and leaves.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Should I stay here and try to write? Hell no! Now my room smells like hard-boiled eggs.

Yes, I realize the irony of my last post now.

Keeping My Ears Open

2009-03-09T13:57:00.000-04:00

My muse and my memory: They both come to me pretty much on demand through my ears.

If you had to choose between your vision and your hearing, which one would you keep?

Paintings in museums would be hard to forego. Wegner’s Christina’s World in the MoMA, Manet’s Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe in the Musee D’Orsay, Georgia O’Keeffe’s Red Hills in the Phillips Collection. I used to say I was either going to be an art historian or a pathologist. Where would I personally be today if I had not memorized a bunch of visual patterns and applied them at the microscope in my practice of medicine?

But when I think about my happiest hours, they are spent sitting at live music shows deciding just when to close my eyes and give in to the pull of the sound. As sight is sacrificed, the aural experience is heightened.

The slam of a door, the lilt of a child’s voice, the morning business of the birds, the sounds of a lover, the calliope of the Belle of Louisville. Are these more worthy than the yellow light in the sky of a Turner masterpiece?

As a child I favored sight to sound. I think it was a childish fear of the dark. Now that I’ve seen some of the world’s wonders and have laid eyes on my own babes, I’m inclined to value my hearing more. And while it may be true that eyes are much prettier to behold, what enters my ears stirs my soul.

Could I go on writing “Acoustic Memory” without sight? With difficulty, I could.

Could I go on writing it if I were deaf? Nothing would unmoor me more. My inspiration derives from the bass note that warns, the melody that welcomes and the voice that woos.

In the coming weeks I’ll be taking dictation from Richard Thompson’s guitar and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. I’ll be floating on the sound waves like that Wagnerian twig on its way to a distant lover.

“A word is a bud attempting to become a twig.”
-Gaston Bachelard

Rodeo Religion

2009-02-26T19:01:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year. Time for the Houston Rodeo.

The trail rides leading up to the actual festivities have already begun. No telling what tales, new and old, will be shared by the "pilgrims." Once they get to Houston, there will be plenty more oral storytelling at the concerts that have become such a staple of the celebration.

If I were going this year, I'd want to see Gladys Knight. Did you know that "Midnight Train to Georgia" was originally going to be a song about a plane to Houston?

Rodeo 1995 I was still in Kentucky. I'd sit facing the Southwest on my back porch and listen to this song coming out of the speakers. I fell in love with Lyle and Texas before I ever set foot in the state.

I paid an obscene amount of money to see Lyle sing with this woman my first summer in Texas.

Over the next year I developed a taste for sad songs and very intimate venues. That means Townes Van Zandt, of course.

I hung out in my neighborhood bar, and that's where I met Scrappy Jud Newcomb and Troy Campbell. Thought it was cool that Troy spent time in Appalachia, and I told him about Susan's summer work in the hollers.

Before long I was making the drive to Austin to see shows. A modern day pilgrim of sorts.

Not all the songs in Texas are sad. Every once in a while a crazy guy from California comes around and sings a sad song in a happy way. But for rodeo, you need a sad one.

Soft Seduction

2009-02-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

In 2000 I moved from 77019 (featured in National Geographic a few years back) to the Museum District in Houston. I knew I was moving to Carolina, eventually, and wanted to garner top dollar for my house, which I sold to a Rice English professor from New York. The professor's real estate agent was Wes Anderson's mom, Texas Anderson.

My new digs were walking distance to the Museum of Fine Arts, the Glassell School, the Italian Cultural Center, and the Jung Center.

A neighbor was a professor at the Glassell, and he used to have garden parties to show off his art.

After moving to Carolina and starting my novel manuscript, I figured out that I was going to have to write some short stories to show off my art. Sigh.

So I set my first story in my museum district neighborhood, and John Pence was nice enough to print this in The Blotter about five years ago.

The Art of Kissin and Stealin

Stolen kisses that tasted like whiskey. In the end, that’s what I missed. In the beginning, that’s what got me into trouble.

I had been drinking whiskey for some twenty years. Had my gums rubbed with the amber liquor when I was teething. Something important had to come from it. And something important did.

Whiskey is entwined with the history of my state—the oak barrels near Getsemanee and the mint julep that’s served at Churchill Downs. But personal history took me far from that land that DeSoto roamed in the 1500’s to a land that is larger and hotter.

Come inside my air conditioned room and have a seat. It’s a beautiful day to sit at the window and watch the leaves blow from the trees. A non-committal sun is making intermittent cameos. The gray sky is a blank slate for the ruby, orange and banana yellow leaves that flutter and spin on their way to stillness and decay. In other parts of the country, the air conditioners have long been silenced. In Texas, their noise will have to compete with the blare of the leaf blowers and lawn mowers for a few more months. In the summer, the lawn companies make their rounds early in the day so that the work can be finished before the heat of the afternoon. But in the fall, they come later and later each week.

Pedro wasn’t any different. His men started to interfere with my open-air sessions in mid-October. I had an art class at the Glassell School in the early afternoon. No sooner than I would get home and set up that I would I hear the Latino music that blared from his van. This gave me roughly three minutes to haul my palette and canvas inside, but the easel would stay on the driveway. Later I would dust the flecks of freshly cut grass off of its unstained wood.

Eventually I accepted their schedule change as another source of domestic annoyance. One of the many necessary digressions that an artist faces, like paying bills and cleaning the toilet. Nonetheless, the new schedule was really starting to get my goat. I’d been feeling out of sorts lately. I was growing sick of the portraiture work that kept food on the table and allowed me to live in the tony museum district of Houston, if only in a garage apartment. What I really wanted to do was get my hands back into clay. I hadn’t actually bought any yet, because of my impulse control problem. I knew that once I bought the clay, there’d be no more heads on the canvas, no more fat checks to cash, and eventually, no electricity for that much-needed air conditioning. Then I’d be hot and grumpy.

I was painting topless one day, something I did when I was feeling uninspired or just couldn’t get the creative juices flowing. I had broken into the bottle a little early too, in fact, two hours before my five o’clock special of whiskey on the rocks.

This time there was no loud Latino music to announce the truck, no sudden cacophony of voices, no cranking of the mower. Just Pedro. “Seniorita,” he called out as he rounded the corner of the house and entered the backyard.

I turned and looked at him just before I realized that my breasts were out of a shirt.

“Santa Maria!” he exclaimed, as he made the sign of the cross.

I dropped the palette. Splat, the green liquid made a stellate pattern on the ground where the board landed near my bare feet, which were speckled with paint. “Shit.” I backed up to get out of the paint, upsetting my Styrofoam cup of whiskey and nearly toppling the easel.

Simultaneously, a river of whiskey and Pedro ran toward me, Pedro with his hand over his eyes as if my breasts would blind him. Sensing that he had somehow played a part in this man-made disaster, he was evidently going to help me restore harmony despite my partial nudity.

“No Pedro, no necessito.” I didn’t know how to speak Spanish, but it worked because he stopped mid-sprint and turned around, and even though he was facing the other way, he kept his hand shield over his eyes.

I grabbed my shirt from the branch of the tree and fumbled with the buttons. When I had covered myself and righted the easel, I turned to find Pedro still as stone. A light brown sculpture in my corner of the yard, draped in worker’s clothes. That’s when I knew what I had to have.

I thought about Pedro and the family that I knew he must have. I could almost be certain of where they lived, the apartments in the part of town near the Fiesta market. The area where gang graffiti had first appeared tentatively on dumpsters, then on the sides of buildings before boldly defacing road signs. The graffiti was not in words. Not ones that I could decipher. It looked more like hieroglyphics. The broadly curving lines conjured thoughts of sinuous calves and orb-like buttocks. I was sure that these were not the images the graffiti artist had intended to confer. To those in the know, the messages probably screamed, “Shitbags, this is our gang’s turf. Stay away, or I’ll smash your face and rape your sister.” Yes, Pedro’s wife probably shopped at this Fiesta, and she could probably use some extra money to buy food for the family.

But no, it was cerveza. That’s what Pedro asked me for the first time that he sat for me. I racked my brain, which was wired to understand English first, French second, and Italian third. “No say,” I improvised.

“Cerveza,” he repeated, and tilted his head back and took a swig from his hand that evidently represented a bottle, his thumb, the neck of the bottle.

Something to drink. Oh. I had whiskey.

When I returned from my apartment, Styrofoam cup of whiskey in hand, he was sitting on a stone bench near the yellow lantana, taking off his T-shirt. That’s when I first saw Santa Maria. I saw her hanging from a gold chain on his hairy, burly chest, just above his Buddha belly. So this is where East meets West. “No Pedro, no necessito.”

He stopped. This line was coming in handy. His black eyes looked at me imploringly, all forty-five years of his pride on the line. Yes, I have noticed your biceps, and yes I have dreamed of your pecs, but I want to sculpt you the way you looked the day that you stood stock still because I was half-naked.

Some sittings and a few whiskeys later, I had a sculpture. I felt bad about my Pedro’s outcome. He ended up under a tree in a man’s front yard, just two blocks north of my street. Sure, the proximity suited me fine. It’s just that this was the home of the man who paid two Hispanic men to hand wash his Hummer and his wife’s H2 in his driveway every Saturday morning. He had help at his house every day. Last Halloween, the help carved pumpkins on the front porch with his children. This ostentation was despicable, and I had to rescue Pedro’s form from its new lawn jockey status.

Before I even masterminded the plot to have Pedro’s brother underbid a job at the house so that he could dismantle the motion sensor lights, wait for a new moon, and bribe Pedro with beer (which I now know is cerveza) to carry out my heist, I considered the bottom line of stealing my Pedro. I would never be able to exhibit the statue. It could never stand in grace next to the other sculptures in the garden across from the Museum of Fine Arts. If I suddenly had the sculpture again, wouldn’t it be proof that I was a thief? Circumstantial evidence, or something like that? My apartment was small. Not only would I have to stow my big Pedro in a small apartment, I would have to hide him under a sheet.

We carried it off, all right. And I was the driver of the black Toyota truck. Pedro and his brother narrowly outran the insomniac au pair who screamed for the police at the top of her lungs. They shared a ride in the bed of the truck with my Pedro as I drove to Fiesta for more cerveza. Just in time to watch the graffiti artist wielding a can of green spray paint.

You’d like to see my Pedro? Come into my bedroom; he’s in the back corner. Oh, no need to turn on the light. Santa Maria, you taste like whiskey.

The Meet Cute

2009-02-20T21:36:00.000-05:00

It’s Oscar weekend and I’m attending Jerry Bruckheimer’s aunt’s Oscar party. I met her four years ago at the Chapel Hill Whole Foods. It was a meet cute.

My parents had a meet cute; they met at the soda fountain at F.W. Woolworth’s in Louisville. My mom, the working girl, waited on my dad, the grandson of the owner of the Broadway Department Store.

Back to my meet cute, one sunny day at the window counter in Whole Foods, Dorothy Moore turned and complimented me on my wide-brim hat. Five minutes later we agreed that cell phones bring out the worst in people and that Louisville is a great city. Ten minutes later we were laughing because I met my first husband and she met her ex-husband in Danville, Kentucky (at the Pioneer Playhouse, no less). Next, she was recounting her days of riding down Brownsboro Road in Warren Oates’ roadster in my hometown of Louisville.

Dorothy is passionate, spunky, and charming. She pulled me right in. Dorothy became my connection to the English Department at UNC (she was the former secretary) and the person that brought me back to my love of theater. One of my more memorable Dorothy dates was a lunch with the director Davis McCallum at Playmakers Repertory Theater in Chapel Hill.

Meet cute's sometimes turn into long-term relationships. Hollywood tells us that. Witness the contemporary movie The Holiday.

As much as I’m a sucker for a meet cute, I’m actually more into remeet cute's. Think Richard Linklater’s film (my favorite) Before Sunset.

My novel manuscript gives a couple a second chance in a remeet cute.

A few years into the writing, I set off for my biannual trip to Austin, Texas. One night in Austin I asked my mother-in-law (I’ll call her my MIL, herein) to drive us to Marble Falls to hear John Greenberg play guitar. “Who’s that?” she asked in her West Texas drawl, drawing out the word that to two syllables (at least).

“You know, you sent me his CD.”

“Oh,” she said in a resigned fashion, “I thought I sent you John Michael Murphy’s CD.”

So already you see the hand of fate at play.

My MIL drove me fifty minutes west of Austin, past Dripping Springs, to the River City Grille in Marble Falls, Texas.

Have you ever happened upon a splendid acoustic guitar show by sheer happenstance? Not much can compare.

At the break, I approached John Greenberg at the bar. I believe he was drinking tequila. I introduced myself as one of North Carolina’s demoiselles and rather humbly implored him to play his song, “Amy Walker.”

I told him I was writing a novel and that the song “Amy Walker” was really at the heart of the matter for me: Guitarist meets woman; he hides his attraction; she walks away; he writes song that says the next time I see you I’ll do better.

John was rather impressed that a Carolina girl had followed him down to the River City Grille. He said he'd play “Amy Walker” for me, but after the show. Then he explained that he would have to work up to that fine acoustic picking since he had just gotten back from Italy that day.

So my MIL and I enjoyed the second set, and as requested, stayed past the end of the show. John and his sidekick, the then president of the Western Writers of America, Mike Blakely, a man with a handlebar mustache (or should I say a handlebar mustache with a man), wowed us with their stage presence and then, after the show, cozied up to us at a coffee table just a foot beneath the stage. A few pleasantries were exchanged. How could she be my MIL? She looked so young.

They played a few songs. It was almost 1:00 a.m.--Central Time, folks. My MIL, in her best Ms. Runnels County 1965 Miss Congeniality voice, turns to John and says, “Now are you gonna play that Amy Walker song?”

First he played a bit of an intro that I recognized, and then he played his heart out. I was sitting directly to his right, and his right knee rested on my left knee while he played the song that completely captures the mood of my novel, the one with all the damn conflict and the remeet cute.

So I was gonna stop blogging here and did for a while because my cell phone rang. I recognized the caller immediately--an acoustic memory. It was the man I had the meet cute with at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill a few weeks back. He’s writing a story about GI’s in Paris that don’t want to go directly home after Vietnam. Tonight he spoke of meeting Jason Robards, Jr. in New York.

As for my cute meet with John Carden: I think it’s charming when a man orders a Campari at noon and tells me that it’s my fault. That’s what John Carden did the day we met. He began drinking early and blamed it on me. He also regaled me with a story of being in a café in Paris and having his female companion point out that Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting at the table next to theirs. “Say something to him,” his companion implored.

Before John could think of anything, Sartre said, in perfect English, “Do you have the time?”

John gave him the time of day and then Sartre said, “Time for me to go.”

And now, it is time for me to go.

I’ll leave you with the words of Robert Mitchum (remember, he was in the movie that scared the piss out of us in 1991), as uttered on the Johnny Carson Show, as told to me by John Carden, tonight on the phone, just before he invited me to his house in Ireland this summer: “There’s no one around that knows how to make movies anymore.”

This Is My Brain on Tobacco

2009-02-16T13:22:00.001-05:00

When we were kids, we sat around on Saturdays, eating our cinnamon rolls from a tin and watching cartoons like Conjunction Junction. Now there’s an acoustic memory!

But while we were learning how to hook clauses together, some very evil people were plotting to hook us on cigarettes. Some good guys tried to save us with a few songs. I’ll never forget the jingle: “You mind very much if they smoke—yeah, yeah, don’t smoke.”

My generation knew of the carcinogenicity of cigarettes because starting in 1984, four labels were penned to let the Surgeon General warn us about smoking on our packs of cigarettes. This was twenty years after the Surgeon General issued a 387-page report on the health risks that attend smoking.

But how were we supposed to stay off the sticks with the clever ad campaigns and the tobacco companies’ use of nicotine to addict smokers?

We now know that the tobacco fields were the killing fields and that the rugged ad cowboy with the cigarette was more likely to ride a wheelchair than a horse. Much has been done in the fight against the tobacco industry, but have we really come a long way?

How is it possible that the tobacco companies can continue to manipulate the nicotine in cigarettes to addict smokers?

Now, I’m sure you know that the chemicals in cigarettes and smokeless tobacco cause cancer; nicotine addicts you to them.

What if happybabyo’s cereal switched to a sugar that was more addicting but was known to cause childhood leukemia? And what if there were a warning label that even said so on the box? WWFDAD? What would the FDA do? Would it even matter? Who would buy the product?

The FDA has let us down. At least the Supreme Court is getting its act together.

Gather round little children and Aunt Heather will tell you a story. Native Americans smoked. The Jamestown settlers grew tobacco for cash and this increased the need for slave trade. In 1865 a prominent Carolina family named Duke founded the American Tobacco Company. And it was pretty much downhill from there. Of all the dirty deeds done, one of the more heinous is the racial profiling of consumers. They increased levels of tar in cigarette brands marketed to African Americans.

When I pick up my daughter from high school, there’s a group of her classmates just across the property line at the town bus stop and they are smoking cigarettes. Who is looking out for them? I’m trying. Last year I gave four tobacco ed lectures at that school. I can’t tell you how many “word up”’s those kids gave me. While it was much more fun to visit schools than it was to sit in my office and diagnose lung cancer, it’s disheartening to see those kids still smoking. But look what I’m up against: It takes four cigarettes to addict a teenager’s brain to nicotine.

Imagine there’s no smoking. It’s not easy to do. How are we going to get there?

We can educate our children. Thanks to Troy Campbell for agreeing to work with me on a cartoon infomercial for kids (we need some more brains on tobacco to help us with the project, by the way). We can provide assistance to folks trying to quit. If you live in the Chapel Hill area, Dr. Adam Goldstein says that his clinic at UNC offers help to smokers “regardless of their financial ability.” But until we stop making the products available, in their addictive form, the work has just begun.

When I was a student I worked as a temp at the corporate headquarters of a tobacco company. I actually typed an in-house document that said, in response to the findings that substances X and Y have been found to be dangerous [did it say carcinogenic--doesn't matter], we will continue to use them in our products. And how could they have been so brazen as to let an outsider have access to such a damning document?

So let me say this again, much has been done in the fight against the tobacco industry, but have we really come a long way?

My friend Jocelyn Godfrey is the editor of Attitude Digest and she interviewed Maya Angelou this morning. The word on Joce’s Facebook page is that Maya says protest, don’t whine. Forgive me Maya, I’m posting a 12-step plan with some undercurrents of whining. But I’m not really whining--I’m fuming!

Before I turn my list over to you, why don’t you get good and mad, too? If you’re down with Obama’s plans for change, check out this website and then scroll to the bottom of the page and see who's funding it.

How about we dance the 12-step?

1. Quit treating corporate America like God. From the Enrons to the Peanut Corporation of America to the tobacco industry—how many times have we seen it play out—corporate America doesn’t always take the consumer’s best interest into account. Let’s not put their best interest first when we use our brains on the tobacco issue.

2. All US production of cigarette, dip, etc. etc, must cease by the year 2012.

3. Because I don’t think we have the chutzpah to carry out #2, how about, smokers, after the year 2020, pay a higher income tax. This gives smokers eight years of incentive to quit.

4. Cigarette corporations will fund all nicotine-containing smoking cessation products and the advertising for them.

5. Homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages will sue the tobacco companies for their money back. A 40-year-old woman who smoked a pack a day would get back enough to pay off a house.

6. Executive pay for cigarette companies will be limited to three colonoscopies a year.

7. State medical boards will set up task forces to assess their states' tobacco problem and to make recommendations more serious than the ones proposed in this list. Look at the impact of the North Carolina medical board on capital punishment.

8. Increase the cigarette tax. In North Carolina I pay 48.6 cents per gallon for gasoline; the tax on a pack of cigarettes in my state is 35 cents.

9. School systems that do not mandate tobacco-free campuses will receive fewer federal dollars for education.

10. The Motion Picture Association of America will rate all movies with smoking "X."

11. Jim Lehrer will take a moment of silence at the end of the Newshour each night for the cigarette smokers that died from cigarette-induced illness that day. Wait, that will take more than an hour.

12. We shall work tirelessly until we overcome. If we couldn’t do it for ourselves, let’s do it for our kids.

If your brain is on nicotine and you want to read something to get yourself psyched to quit, here’s an old article that’s fun to read.

Yes, I know I’m fuming, but this is the “toned down” version of today’s blog.