The Morning After the Smokeout

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

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

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

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

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

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

Songs to Get You Moving:

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

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

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

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

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

Songs to Help You Unwind:

"Lenny" (S.R. Vaughan)

"Melissa" (G. Allman)

"Miracles" (M. Balin)

"Winterlong" (N. Young)

Oh, we're gonna make it baby/

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

Oh, don't break it!

"Living in the U.S.A."

-S. Miller

Pink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pink.

It’s not even a question.

“Pink” 

-Tyler, Supa, Ballard

There's a First Time for Everything

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

I’ve never seen this before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All your life/

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

“Blackbird”

Lennon-McCartney

Blue Moon Sessions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Campaigner” 
-Neil Young

Country Girl

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

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

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

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

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

Jake Owen/ “Alone With You”

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

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

Way back on the radio dial/

A fire got lit inside a bright eyed child/

Every note just wrapped around his soul/

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

“Even If It Breaks Your Heart”

-Will Hoge and Eric Paslay

She Wears It Well

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I blew it without even tryin/

Now I'm eatin my heart out/

Tryin to get a letter through

“You Wear It Well”

Rod Stewart, Martin Quittenton

Back on the Chain Gang

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

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

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

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

The powers that be/

That force us to live like we do/

Bring me to my knees/

When I see what they've done to you/

But I'll die as I stand here today/

Knowing that deep in my heart/

They'll fall to ruin one day/

For making us part

Chrissie Hynde

"Back on the Chain Gang"