tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39628862024-03-07T15:16:14.149-05:00Not All Who Wander Are Lost<br> When I jumped off,<br> I had a bucket full of thoughts.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.comBlogger1676125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1245602814072223142008-06-13T00:12:00.003-04:002008-06-13T00:15:29.588-04:00On Hiatus Here; Coverfolk ThereRegular readers have surely already noticed, but it bears repeating: this blog is on indefinite hiatus. <br /><br />Thanks to the support of some amazing folk artists, label representatives, and promoters, I am now blogging about cover songs of and from the folk community at <a href="http://coverlaydown.blogspot.com">Cover Lay Down</a>. Feel free to stop by anytime.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-15227144229480072192008-02-29T22:21:00.003-05:002008-02-29T23:16:21.133-05:00Testing...Hope no one minds this space being used as a testing ground for <a href="http://coverlaydown.blogspot.com">Cover Lay Down</a>; I'm blogging over there thrice weekly, these days, in case you're in the mood for some stellar coverfolk. <br /><br />Anyway, assuming this works, enjoy some sweet Neil Young covers -- details available at the above link. <br /><br /><embed src="http://www.box.net/static/flash/box_explorer.swf?widgetHash=2fsro23cck&v=1" width="380" height="250" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br /><br />Grr. Huge and wonky. try two:<br /><br /><embed src= "http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" quality="high" width="300" height="52" allowScriptAccess="always" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars= "valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=http://www.box.net/shared/static/tgdu3xackc.mp3" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"> </embed>boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-60193782037315957382007-12-22T16:56:00.001-05:002007-12-22T17:12:56.933-05:00On the cusp of the seasonTwo years now on the last day of the school year I give my middle school classes a break from the brainbending work of figuring out non-linear writing and trying to make sense of their increasingly virtual world and instead show them how to make virtual snowflakes. The flash-based software is pretty cool, to be fair, allowing more precise cuts and more perfect folds than real paper, where folds turn thinness into mass so quickly by doubling rules. <br /><br />What I like about this activity is that it reaches an unexpected set of kids. Normally, my teaching style hooks a specific type of kid, not necessarily the best and brightest by traditional standards, but those who can visualize and reimagine the world flexibly. Over a term, they build a relationship between real world and virtual which explands their views of rhetoric, of space and time as applied to communication and perception -- a tall task for the average fourteen year old. <br /><br />Here, however, the kids who get stuff quickly are lost and too-quickly bored. Instead, it is those who need seasonal magic -- a few cuts turning into something delicate and lithe, hexagonally-speaking -- who brighten up. The sad kids who just needed a plaything, the different-brained kids who turn to games out of a lack of understanding of basic writing parameters; the kids who loved the hands-on work of elementary school and have lost their way in the new paperwork of middleschool -- here is the moment, the magic, the time to find them more than just a new medium for expression of the same old cumulative concepts. <br /><br />It is no-stakes, in one sense, but it means everything for them. The room fills up my time with kids eager to share what their virtual scissors have wrought. For a change, the "lost boys" want me to see their work, instead of hiding its skimpiness from view as I pass by. I get to smile and praise students who have not been praised or smiled at for weeks. And I get to see their secret selves emerge, if they let me, if they try, if they let their newly jaded middleschool selves get hooked. <br /><br />If I'm careful, the lesson can continue from there. I've got scissors and paper ready; I do not push, only mention that what can be true in cyberspace can be made real here, as always. Against the back wall counter, I show those who seem interested how to turn the online lesson into a tempate for real paper, real folding, a lesson hiding topology and imagination-to-real lessons which will hide in their brains until they need to use the virtual world to make the real world work to their advantage. By the end of class, while their peers play space invaders illicitly on the internet, those few and happy kids lag behind, finishing one last papercut before slogging off to math and the endless spate of sugarparties that inevitably characterize that last pre-holiday schoolday, lost to too much energy, curriculumless and chaotic. <br /><br />But I am left with their temporarily recovered childhood of paper dolls and cheer, proudly pasted to windows and walls. It makes the heart sing as I close down the computers for the long break, to know that their last day was full of pride and youthful glee. Over break, the custodians will scour the paperscraps from the floor, hiding the activity; on the first day back, the sowflakes pinned there will come down and be filed away, or more likely fill the recycle bins. But one or two will stay, high in a corner where no one will notice much. It's enough, I think. Maybe, just maybe, they'll remember when they return.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-75070140118628452172007-11-30T09:38:00.000-05:002007-12-27T01:14:49.144-05:00Now Blogging...Folk Music Covers!Those who stop in from time to time may have noticed I'm not really here these days. <br /><br />I'm fine. Happy, even. Just living life instead of blogging about it, mostly. <br /><br />I'm also musicblogging. If you're interested in folk music covers -- both covers OF folk music, and folk music covers of popular songs from Cat Stevens to Britney Spears, head on over to <a href="http://coverlaydown.blogspot.com">Cover Lay Down</a>!boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-33186970406697523482007-09-21T13:10:00.000-04:002007-09-21T13:29:44.387-04:00My Sporadic LifeA letter today from an old, old friend on the other coast just about to pop with firstborn child, and I'm thinking about California, especially after last night's chat with Dad. He always says how sane I seemed, there on the road and the highclass hotels, despite homelessness and joblessness. I guess I've come to love uncertainty, now that I've learned to trust the way my best self emerges in chaos, the more the merrier. <br /><br />And then, I guess, too, I've learned that as long as everyone is safe we are whole together, there's nothing to fear. And here we are, the kids and wife and I growing every day: the spouse in the background making jam from wild concord grapes she harvested down the street, homemmade streetfair pretzels from downloaded recipes; the elderchild tapdancing out of rhythm and gleeful, learning to be okay with male authority as she learns to love kindergarten gym class; the wee one growing ever-less wee despite lingering linguistic quirkiness, doubling her plurals, refusing to use the letter s in combination, asking for more <i>chippez</i> while she sucks at an applesauce <i>moon</i>. Meanwhile, the larger family dissolves into diaspora; we walk on eggshells, recast our relationships, put each in its new place, safely. <br /><br />Me? I've got that asthmatic bronchitis again, and the doctor says it's not quite pneumonia yet; the meds ream my system sickly, but I know I can take pain, and it's worth it. No cigarettes since I first awoke, just gum instead; it's hard to figure if the delirium is from the lack of nicotene or the illness or the meds, probably everything and anything. Middle school teaching's going great and smooth after two years of figuring it out, but no matter how honest the workdays, there's nothing like a day off work to stomach-clutch and swim in the trippy haze of meds and gut mayhem.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-67927476754045190642007-09-03T13:10:00.000-04:002007-09-03T13:39:47.549-04:00On Coffee<a href="http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/stok.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 210px;" src="http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/stok.jpg" border="0" alt="''Stok: it's like Jolt, but for coffee''" /></a><br />I never know how to count coffee consumption. It takes two mugs and a thermos to drop the liquid level from six to one; I know, because for most of my teaching life, it's been two mugs to get me into the car, and a tall metal sippy cup to get from there to the end of first period. Is this five cups, or three? And more importantly, is it enough? <br /><br />I have a hard history with caffeine. Jolt -- "all the sugar and twice the caffeine of regular cola" -- got me through high school AP exams; those No-Doz were a lifesaver in college, at least the first time around. And coffee? I chewed espresso beans to get through my graduate program; drank a twenty ounce every Monday for a seven year stint at my latenight radio show, deep in the bowels of the now-dark classroom buildings, and on a school night, yet. <br /><br />Once, then, I would have jumped at a testrun of <a href="http://www.stokexpress.com/">Stok</a>, these new coffee shots in creamer tubs, recently <a href="http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/09/03/stok-coffee-shots-in.html">boingboinged via their new gadgetblog</a>. That they come in both black and sweet would create a conundrum of delivery like nothing since the day I discovered there were other dark roasts besides French. The idea of adding an extra minishot to every cup would be worth serious consideration, at least. <br /><br />Not this year, however. Because this year, in an attempt to find a cure to the as-yet-undiagnosed syndrome of yesteryear, and also because I finally noticed the uncanny coincidence of summer mellowmode and the halved ration of coffee that gets me to and through it, I've been drinking a cup less in the morning. <br /><br />I still have energy in school -- still sing "Won't You Be My Neighbor" at the top of my lungs as the kids stream down the hallway from the bus, waving my coffee mug like a mug of grog. I still get there, ready to go; in fact, I've been getting there earlier. But I'm a little more focused, a little less anxious, and a lot more happy. I'm also falling asleep early, which is a mixed blessing. <br /><br />As an added bonus, it takes less nicotene gum to get me through the day. <br /><br />Maybe I'm on to something, here.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-84402897671759386472007-08-10T13:29:00.000-04:002007-08-10T13:48:03.303-04:00Coming ToThere must be a word, I think today. <br /><br />(But a word about what? At the time, there was some thought of a new perspective, an illumination that should not go unnoticed -- one as yet unworded, unnamed. By the time I got here, it was gone. All was vague of purpose. But here I ended up regardless:)<br /><br />And unbidden, I think of this space, and the language begins to scan itself. Three paragraphs swim into blurry unfocus, the smooth flow of the light serif blocks out in the brain. The public mind awakens as if no time had passed. <br /><br />Once I spent a summerweek writing my blogging life. Four chapters, an hour at a time by the banks of the Smith College waterway, by battery in the rough-hewn wood of a Japanese Teagarden, my back to the woods and dormitories beyond. <br /><br />In the end, I took the unfinished half'script home, archived it -- and never opened it again. <br /><br />Today, a thought: perhaps it was only a beginning. Or a part of the larger writing, the life-logging constant, in review. <br /><br />Regardless. If there is to be a language flow -- if I dare let the hidden itch rise to the surface, to grow back into the constant nag of the brain that this, too, must be written. <br /><br />Maybe the book is there. Maybe not. Maybe this is a hiccup, a faint one-fer, a retired novelist's daydream, a once-poet's bubble amidst another life. <br /><br />But there must be some sort of word, I think. <br /><br />And so goes this unblogging. And so comes the return, like shingles: reluctant, blossoming, and oh, the relief of the fingernail scratch on the keyboard like skin. Perhaps an outbreak. Perhaps a fluke. But for one moment, awakened, here I am again.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-26967997665833439642007-03-22T18:03:00.000-04:002007-03-23T15:52:36.999-04:00Unwritten Postcards from the PeripheryIn the evenings I empty my pockets of blogs that might have been, postcards from a life on the road. In and out of days, weeks, a month and more, they pile up in my computerside cubbyholes: a growing catalogue of the unread and unedited, living out a darkened existence on the back of envelopes and old maps in a shaky hand. <br /> <br />They cry out to me, sometimes, when I cannot sleep, these almost illegible scrawls, written up against the steering wheel on the back roads and highways. <br /><br />Some excerpts from a life unblogged:<br /><blockquote><i><br />...Every once in a while on a different way home I pass the house not taken and wonder what that life would have been. Back on our familiar streets closer to home, the neighbors have removed the inflatible leprecaun from the lawn, though the tinsel shamrocks still swing from the trees. How much polyurethane, how much air and light, how much sheer commercial kitsch will it take to ring in the subsequent season? What will Easter bring? We'll soon know... <br /><br />...I'm in therapy now, paying ten bucks a week for the privledge of talking about myself for an hour uninterrupted. The health plan picks up the rest; I wonder what they think I'm getting out of it, whether they'd tell me if I asked, if the answer would help me understand why I go back every week... <br /><br />...The urge to write still comes, sometimes, but my heart stops me. Without a grand entrance prepared, the prodigal return seems unsurmountable. Does it take humility to come back home? Am I so stubborn still? ... <br /><br />...I care too much, and cry at the radio, play and replay the same sad songs and stories from This American Life: children challenged for who they are, their parents cursed for who they would never be. I try to care more about people, less about things; more about nature, less about human nature. But still I dwell in my mind's eye, seeing my children in these voices, these rooms, these roads, years from now, in an imperfect world I could not fix for them.... <br /><br />...I've lost my voice, and cannot sing. My sinuses stifle, my ears clog. I cannot hear myself. The poignant pieces of our trivial lives -- this one's first haircut, the paper plate rainbow that one makes for me in school -- overwhelm my senses. I used to want to feel less, to protect my heart. Now the feedback I once depended upon for understanding goes missing, and I know not how to recover it...<br /></blockquote></i><br /><br />This evening after supper I bring in the last of this year's wood. Clearing the line brings light into the yard where no light has been for months; the neighbors house and the woods beyond emerge after a long winter. <br /><br />Afterwards, in the waning light, I raise my eyes to the sky, give of myself back to the world, give over to the urge. And like an answer, out of grey nowhere, drops begin to fall from the sky. <br /><br />Snow melts away into Spring below my feet. The smell of ozone fills the air. <br /><br />I feel the rain on my face. <br /><br />The rest is still <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/natashabedingfield/unwritten.html">unwritten</a>.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-36067301849015025662007-02-09T21:36:00.000-05:002007-01-31T21:20:05.245-05:00Wandering OffIt's been two weeks, and though I have nothing to say, I suppose I owe it to me/you/us to create some closure. Quickly, then, and fragmented as it comes, before the moment passes:<br /><br />In the myriad possibilities of wandering, there must always be an acceptance of that which passes. After all, we cannot carry our entire histories on our shoulders as we go. Sometimes, if we are to go forward, entire worlds must be left behind.<br /><br />Maybe I'll come back one day. Maybe I'll need this place that never existed, yet can always be found, right here where I left it. <br /><br />Until then, I suppose. May the road rise up to meet you. <br /><br />And may our paths cross, once in a while. You'll know me: I'll be the boy smiling at the evernew world in his hands.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-25909441981780215452007-01-31T21:10:00.000-05:002007-01-31T21:20:05.541-05:00Midweek MuseI've been thinking about poetry again, wanting to capture the way the mothers huddle together at the end of their driveways, glancing half-anxious over the hill's horizon as they wait for the bright yellow buses each afternoon as I drive past. <br /><br />I think there's something there, maybe an image to pair with the way my old students, now hulking high schoolers, stand huddled in their own coats, watching their breath and the cars pass each morning, watching for another town's bus, way on the other side of the same mountain. <br /><br />Of course, I'll never write it now. <br /><br />In the halflight before the sun came up this morning the world was covered in a thin layer of snow, and everything -- the sky, the ground, the trees, the air -- everything was the same color, the same shade of grey, the color of bleached night. <br /><br />It's like poetry, this world. Sometimes, I guess, it's enough to leave it at that.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1170014536776011872007-01-28T14:47:00.000-05:002007-01-28T15:20:57.041-05:00Reading as Death, Writing as LifeOn Teaching Your Own Child to ReadSo many stories about death in this year's Best American Essays: spouses, dogs, your own impending. Winter is like death, too, or so the everpresent "they" have always said. I read outside in the frigid cold, five minutes at a time, and watch last month's too-soon bulbs wither and die.<br /><br />In our house life reigns. We're teaching the elderchild to read and write, the two of us in turns over the weekend. It's a difficult task compounded by her vast brains and creativity, a well-intentioned reassurance that she need not bother yet carried over from school, an ADHD instinct to look away from the page and into space when trying as if the words were everywhere at once, a tendency to already know what the words should be.<br /><br />The living room gets taken over by her magnetic drawing board, a focused selection of books. We take on the task for the bare maximum of her attention, and I wonder how much we can truly get done in ten minutes at a stretch, and marvel at how much progress we've made in one short weekend.<br /><br />Yesterday after I got frustrated, she copied the word "moss" perfectly from the page where we had been working. I didn't know until I unearthed the word, centered on an otherwise blank page, there on the floor where we had been working. Today she knows the word, and it's hard to tell if she recognizes it wholecloth or if she really reads it to me.<br /><br />I want to keep this, her first privately written word, in my wallet, hold it close to my body forever, a talisman against the independence and solitude that reading represents. Instead, I leave it in the pile, hoping it will do her some more good.<br /><br />Words are life, I explain to her when I tuck her in that night. With words, you will be that much closer to your own self, and to the world. In my head, I finish the sentence, knowing that, in the way they open up the world to her, the words will change her, take her away from me, add one more little death of us to the pile that is her daily growth.<br /><br />I kiss her, and tell her how proud I am that she is learning to read. She smiles that proud, almost smug grin to herself, and I tuck her in quickly, and turn out the lights, and close the door almost all the way, hurrying to leave before I can cry in her presence.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1169309451836456922007-01-20T10:55:00.000-05:002007-01-20T11:10:52.286-05:00On Reeling, WrithingBooks left on the glass-topped table outside crack at the spines when you open them -- something about the way the glue gets brittle in the cold, I suppose. <br /><br />When I was a kid I used to love the way the paperback spine would stretch and give as I found my place again. Some of my oldest young adult selections still sport the scoring of my fingernails, pressed absently into the soft, forgiving pasteflesh during a lifetime of latenight reading. <br /><br />I've been reading a lot, and blogging little. There's both comfort and avoidance in this, especially given the end-of-term grading that looms before me: a hard drive's worth of projects, two boxes full of notebooks in the backseat of the car. A strong practitioner of structured procrastination, I use the time to post a <a href="http://wmsteach.blogspot.com/2007/01/homeand-back-againstudent-projects-and.html">discussion</a> of disk-death and the home-to-school work dynamic in the <a href="http://wmsteach.blogspot.com/">workblog</a>, anticipating a long-overdue but politically sensitive switchover to web-based storage for our students and teachers. You can't read fiction at work, no matter how much you plan to timeshift; it looks bad. <br /><br />Back home the books I read are random, pulled from the giftpiles accumulated over my birthday week: more Terry Pratchett, a Jewish humor collection, the NPR's This I Believe collection. I read them outside, five minutes at a stretch, in the cold and suddenly white-coated world; I read them on the couch by the pellet stove fire, late at night when the kids and wife are asleep, and I really should get to bed myself.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1169091267381880242007-01-17T22:16:00.000-05:002007-01-17T22:34:27.446-05:00SporadicaThe blank space, white like the snow that never falls, a world that hardly beckons. How to begin again? And where is the urge?<br /><br />The house is clean, intermittently. We eat out more often than we should. The wee one speaks in sentences we cannot always understand, sits in her highchair at supper and picks at her pale white foods: crackers, cheese, plain pasta, the occasional pea. <br /><br />Out the window the world is deceptively autumnal, the backyard ground still unswept of brownleaves and twiglets. Only when we step out the door do we feel the sudden freeze in our lungs, sharp and dangerous. On the morning drive to work the world is still, save for the constancy of smokestack grey rising ever upwards. Even the students waiting for buses by the roadside do not move, their shivers lost inside their huddled, heavy coats.<br /><br />At work the term winds down in the usual fog of grading and last-minute adolescent angst over grades long past the point of revisiting. My computer classes give up their mice, learn to love Tab and Shift and the function keys, come finally to trust that no amount of key banging and guesswork will irrevocably enflame the hardware. I sit at my desk and chat in hearts and symbols to the howdyspouse, at home with the kids on her lap, while the students struggle.<br /><br />One night the elderchild's musicbox stutters and is still; I play soft strings, dulcimer in the dark by her bedside, until she falls asleep, and the next night she is finally weaned of our attention, her solo slumbers come so easily it is as if we never coslept at all, never worried how we would ever get our bed back. <br /><br />I spend my time reading birthday books: the full round of this year's Best American collections, mostly. Deep in my mind, the world is still and quiet, unfamiliar, and yet somehow like the winterworlds I remember, white snow dampening everything, out and in, macro and micro.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1168657641594920072007-01-12T22:04:00.000-05:002007-01-12T22:07:21.746-05:00Are you there, blog? It's me, boyhowdy.Two weeks with nothing but a haiku food review to show for it, at least in the virtual world. Starting over again, it’s hard to know where to start. <br /><br />But embracing life has been a noble experiment, worth every minute. <br /><br />An increasingly verbal wee one has turned into quite the Daddy’s girl. She looks for me in the dark house before I leave for work, makes me read to her with my coat still on when I return. Mama brought her in to work twice this week; both times, the look on her face as she ran towards me was priceless. <br /><br />Meanwhile, elderchild goes solo at bedtime for the first time. She looked so proud and sleepy when I stopped in to check on her. <br /><br />It’s my birthday tomorrow, and we’re having a party: barbecue and beer, a mixed bag of coworkers old and new, a few friends from church, their kids. It’s the first party we’ve thrown, I think, other than family events, and the first time our guest list runs multigenerational in both directions. It feels very adult. <br /><br />In other news, mama’s replaced the computer chair with a huge yellow yoga ball. It squeaks beneath me as I write. There’s been a flurry of books, arriving each day like rain; used paperback Discworld novels, the year’s Best American Non-Required Reading. The quantity of it pleases me. I read a book a day, all week, and do not blog.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1168110706196001572007-01-06T14:01:00.000-05:002007-01-06T14:16:25.040-05:00Haiku Product Review: Fabulous Flats Tandoori Naan<img src="http://www.preparedfoods.com/PF/2006/10/Files/Images/fgf7.jpg" align=left vspace=10 hspace=15 border=0><strong><a href="http://www.fgfbrands.com/flat-breads.php">Fabulous Flats Tandoori Nan</a>*</strong> <br /><br />Sprinkle with water,<br />Heat. Buttery. Delicious. <br />Gets stuck in toaster. <br /><br /><br /><small>*Winner, "Best New Innovative American Product of 2006", <a href="http://www.preparedfoods.com/CDA/Archives/1b12c9640283e010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0____">Prepared Foods magazine</a>.</small>boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1167535085717751062006-12-30T22:00:00.000-05:002006-12-30T22:39:04.466-05:00ResolutionNothing to say tonight, really. I just missed the old regularity of the blogged life. It's been a good week, anyway. A little restless tonight, perhaps a little bittersweet. Two days worth of nostalgia are coming, and I'm looking ahead with my heart. <br /><br />First, tomorrow night we've accepted a quiet invitation to old friends from the prep school teaching days. After seven years on campus, it's going to be more than a little odd to feel the pull of these now-deserted buildings that once held our lives captive. <br /><br />The next morning we're expected at what will surely be the last of a long tradition of Hangover Special breakfast feasts farther north, at the house in Newfane, where we crashed for one glorious summer, and a decade of New Years Eves; where our family grew bigger as Darcie's brother Josh found his own second family. <br /><br />The world is about to change again. The siblings continue to disperse: Josh and Clay to Oregon next week; Ginny back to Hawaii the next. The endless uncertainty and stress of the workweek whirlwind looms in the forecast, longterm and practically eternal. <br /><br />I've been thinking more about the <i>idea</i> of New Years resolutions than about any particular self-improvement or renewed conviction. Giving my wife the gift of time for the holidays has left us both more relaxed, and with more energy left after kid bedtime for each other. I'm fresh off a workmeeting about my professional goals, with clean markers of progress to report; my Instructional Technology certification finally arrived last week, an early holiday gift from the great state of Massachusetts. <br /><br />Which is to say: I'm doing okay, I think. My family is amazing; my environment is safe and stable, if still bereft of snow. Life is crazy, as it always is. But this year, I'm resolving to let the world be what it is.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1167448118284138312006-12-29T21:39:00.000-05:002006-12-29T22:31:45.230-05:00Pimpin' The B & J<small><b>Do you like beer? Do you like ice cream? Well, has Ben & Jerry's got a taste for you...</small></b> <br /><br> <img src="http://daysthatendiny.com/uploads/1692553431441f5b525e7047.84720145.gif" align=left vspace=8 hspace=8>I consider myself somewhat of an ice cream snob, ever since I spent a summer scooping ice cream at a local Steve's franchise, my first real job (from which I was ultimately and rightfully sacked, a story for some other evening). At Steve's, we made all our own ice cream, and it was beautiful to watch; we folded our own toppings in by hand on a long, creamywhite countertop long before a generation of Cold Stone employees discovered tendonitis, and it was a glorious, sticky summer all around. <br /><br />One especially hot and adolescent evening we decided to try making beer ice cream. It tasted like vile swill -- mostly because the beer already tasted like that before we put it in. But otherwise, our experiments were generally a success. I can still taste the fresh peach ice cream like it was here in front of me. With mixed-in mini-sized chocolate chips. Mmm. <br /><br />And after being so close to the process, I'm always game to blow those gourmet bucks on the best quality. No cheap, rectangular ice cream cartons for me; it's Ben & Jerry's if I'm doing the shopping. For a long time, I stocked up on Pecan Pie (with real chuncks of pie!) or old standby Chubby Hubby when I got the chance. <br /><br />This week, after eyeing it on the shelf since it's release date in March, I finally tried something really new. Black & Tan, Ben & Jerry's new pintflavor, ain't the work of a couple of stoned teenagers. Here, the bitter bite has been tempered to a faint and fond hint of a quite distinctive cream stout. <br /> <br />I don't usually "do" product reviews these days, but this is amazing: deep, rich, extra-dark chocolate ice cream blended with cream stout ice cream, with a cream stout head. It doesn't taste like beer so much as it tastes like the world's best beer ice cream. It's like frozen Guinness, if Guinness didn't leave that bitter bite on the back of your tongue. And it looks like this:<br /><br /><img src="http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060421/060421_blacktan_hmed_4p.hmedium.jpg" border=0><br /><br />Yeah, I know it's freezing out. But there's still no snow. Settle for ice cream.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1167359167893140462006-12-28T21:19:00.000-05:002006-12-28T23:24:03.013-05:00I'm just sayin'Tonight's moon is a boat: <br />hollow, bright against seablack night, <br />rippled by cloud. Here the sea <br />moves against the silver hull. <br />The trees are coral. Later, <br />they will drown the moon. <br /><br />Well, it was <i>going</i> to be a poem when it startedboyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1167331161269710622006-12-28T13:22:00.000-05:002006-12-28T13:39:21.376-05:00Tidbit ThursdayA lazy day amidst the holiday season -- errands late this morning, a leftover lunch of christmas ham sandwich and heavy squash soup, a bout of to-the-basement woodstacking in the clear, still-snowless side yard. <br /><br />In other news, elderkid got a gigantic Colorforms set for the holidays; I've more than doubled the piececount by cutting out lines and boxes from the sheet from which the original shapes had been punched. Check out how well they photograph against the soon-to-be-terraformed yard. <br /><br /><align=center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfarber/334294411/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/334294411_f9a2a14c30_t.jpg" width="100" height="75" alt="DSC02256" /></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfarber/334293782/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/161/334293782_e83ce08a7d_t.jpg" width="75" height="100" alt="DSC02253" /></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfarber/334295507/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/334295507_098b347984_t.jpg" width="100" height="75" alt="DSC02261" /></a></align><br /><br />Darcie suggested we use the shiny plastic to map out the lines for this spring's yard project. It works out: red and white for path and stone walls, yellow for deck and railing, green and blue for field and fountain. I'll probably have at the windowglass this afternoon, after furnace fire, perhaps a nap.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1167195131423858572006-12-26T23:20:00.000-05:002006-12-26T23:52:11.510-05:00Toddler Mine<br><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfarber/334753808/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/334753808_6ab65120dc_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" border=0 alt="Pikaboo!"></a><br><small><b><i>Pikaboo, Daddy!</i></b></small><br /><br><br />I am rolling elderchild around atop the giant yoga ball before supper; shrieks of glee echo throughout the house. The wee one, ever Daddy's little girl, sees this as an imposition, a usurping of her usual role, and runs over. <br /><br /><i>No! My ball! NO! I'm....ME! </i><br /><br />My wee one. Lighter than air, deceptively small for her age. Says please and <i>nak noo</i>, fusses over the slightest mess, spends hours wedging herself into the tiny space under the kiddie kitchen sink. This is a kid who names her emotions, who, when the world begins to whirl in front of her, yells <i>Fun, yes? Fun, Daddy!</i> like a <a href="http://archive.sonandfoe.com/issue2/" alt="rtfm">spriggan</a>. <br /><br />Surely, she intended to say <i>No! I'm mad!</i> Just as surely, something more primal, the sheer identification of the feeling ego, was all that could emerge. Only with language so new could emotions so potently overwhelm the very vocabulary.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1167157779396351832006-12-26T13:18:00.000-05:002006-12-26T13:29:39.466-05:00PostHome from the heavywet snows of Vermont to a garden pushing up green bulbshoots through the heavywet leafbed. The house is cold, as if the fog had infiltrated everything in our absence. The cat is happy to see us, happier still to be let outside again. <br /><br />It was a frantic Christmas, like every year -- a dizzying flurry of wrapping paper and elderchild deliveries from undertree to aunt, uncle, grandparent, parent. We were late arriving, and my wife's siblings had to run their separate ways soon after, but the long afternoon with the inlaws was quiet and centered, and the kids were happy to play with new braintoys, the hanging bells, their great, great grandfathers' music boxes. <br /><br />Now we fill the fridge with scavenged Christmas ham, line the kitchen counters with gifted bakedgoods, begin the long process of cleaning up for tomorrow' mass playdate, my father's afternoon visit, a week of snowless vacation. In the corner, the dog chews on her Christmas bone, tired out from long outdoor hours with my in-law's mixedbreed giant. The wee one slumbers in the car outside, pooped out from a long overnight. 364 days to Christmas, and it's good to be home once again.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1166893521985467272006-12-23T11:47:00.000-05:002006-12-23T12:14:45.483-05:00Not With A Bang, Nor A Winter<br><img src="http://www.davlinswoods.com/WillowTree/thumbs/tWT26504a.jpg" width=191 height=198 border=0><br><small><b>Family, finally.</b></small><br /><br><br />Emotively speaking, the middle school holiday break begins midweek, somewhere between the multifaith and snowman-heavy decor and the calendar's end. <br /><br />By Friday morning, the kids are a mess, and so are we. Learning has gone out the window, to be replaced by so much sugar it's not even funny. In my case, this meant cookies, gummi bears, and enough chocolate covered goodies to overload the nervous system. At 7:40 in the morning. After the usual six cups of coffee. <br /><br />Of course, you just have to have one of everything, lest some kid feel left out. Not even the gift of a half dozen buttery, smooth pierogi, boldly requested in compensatory jest from the kid who took Thursday off from school to make 'em with his family, could take the edge off the sugar high. <br /><br />By midmorning I'm practically hallucinating. I've given my morning lab classes the option of free play on the computer; the best and brightest choose to make holiday cards, or fiddle with the <a href="http://snowflakes.lookandfeel.com/index.html?taf=receiver">snowflake-maker </a>courtesy of my mother in law, but most play mini golf while they munch on their cookies. The rest flail around the classroom, hurling gift wrap at each other, laughing uproariously while I make snide comments that keep them -- barely -- on this side of appropriate behavior. <br /><br />I save the last few minutes of each class for a comprehensive crumb-cleaning and lab shutdown, finish my own classes by ten thirty, spend the afternoon wandering the halls, wideeyed and jittery. The kids are in their teams, watching holiday films; most won't finish, but the point is to be eye-glued to the screen, given the potential for havoc. Their teachers look frazzled after their own morning of containment. Their classrooms are clean, and ready for a holiday break floorwash in their absence. <br /><br />By 2:15, I'm on the road, surprisingly relaxed, ready for a long winter's break. No snow in the forecast this year, but the rain begins as I crest the mountain. It hardly makes a dent in my serentity. <br /><br />Back home, the kids are charging around the house like angels, pantless and gleeful. Elderchild and I present mama with her gift: some rose-scented bath lotion, the plaque above, and a commitment to moving the bedtime ritual into our mutual corner, that mama might have more time this year. The wee one throws cotton snow from window display to couch; everyone smiles, and no one asks her to stop.<br /><br />We light candles, trade a last night of Channukah gifts, eat fresh challah warm from the oven. Darcie calls some old friends, making plans for a New Year's in our old prep school haunting grounds. The air is full of holiday shufflesounds. By nine, I'm asleep beside the elderchild, wiped out from a whole year's worth of bustle. <br /><br />Holiday, here we come.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1166671645507067312006-12-20T22:26:00.000-05:002006-12-20T22:50:08.786-05:00In ShortPre-holiday Wednesday is a bit like the bitter, poisonous taste of biting into an orange rind -- you can take it, even as your lips grow numb and itchy, because there, unfolding before you, is the Fruit, leaking onto your hand.<br /><br />I was going to write more, but now it seems unnecessary.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1166414477620140692006-12-17T22:59:00.000-05:002006-12-17T23:30:45.063-05:00Unca Jesse!<object width="300" height="240"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tQI-RNo5KsQ"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tQI-RNo5KsQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="240"></embed></object><br /><br /><i>My little brother and his nieces frolicking over the holiday weekend. They grow up so fast, don't they?</i>boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3962886.post-1166401714873674242006-12-17T19:05:00.000-05:002006-12-17T19:37:20.946-05:00Back To Appalachia<br><img src="http://www.jcrmusic.com/Images&Sounds/nch_scroll2.jpg"><br><b><small>Oh, one of <i>those</i>: an appalachian dulcimer</b></small><br /><br><br />Hanukkah was a rush this year, as always but moreso, a perennial crunch of eight days into concentrate made both necessary by our family's inevitable diaspora. In eight hours or less, a whirlwind of eventhood: lunch with my brother, our spouses, or father, my children; a rush back and forth in various combinations to get the right people in the right places to prep for the party, and to pick up my brother's car in the shop. <br /><br />By six, we were singing songs around a dozen menorahs with my parent's oldest friends, now joined at the kitchen island by their own grown children holding children of our own. By seven, the family left behind was deep in a gift exchange, the kids burning off the evening's sugar rush rapidly among a blizzard of bright orange toys and wrapping paper snow. <br /><br />By the time we arrived home, it was past ten. The kids had fallen asleep miles back to the story of the Maccabees, the lullabye rush of the holiday traffic on the turnpike; Darcie put them in their beds, and stayed up to clean and read a bit.<br /><br />And instead of heading right for the computer, I used the sudden, rare silence to take out this year's present from mom: a dulcimer, in cherrywood. <br /> <br />The perfect instrument for the mellow and melancholy. Sure enough, I spent an hour in the firelight, faking my way through the Sufjan Stevens Christmas songbook.<br /><br />Since then, I've managed to sneak in a few moments here and there, away from grubby fingers and eager minds unused to fragility. And, after wanting one for years, I'm pretty happy. <br /><br />The dulcimer sounds a little like a banjo, and a little like one of those autoharp things that were popular when your mother was a hippie. You've probably heard it on a bunch of old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell">Joni Mitchell </a>songs without realizing it -- though it's much easier to play. <br /><br />Want proof? Less than two hours total, and I can play the full set of blues chords, but more than that, after years of flute, I can find the intervals in the music, play melody and twang-harmony alike. I've mastered a dozen songs, and can play them at speed, and all without having to run through the usual gradated boringness that is the learner's workbook. <br /><br />And thank goodness. Because it did come with a book, like instruments do. <img src="http://www.melbay.com/covers/94304.gif" align=right border=0>And, typically, the book is called <a href="http://www.melbay.com/product.asp?ProductID=94304DP">You Can Teach Yourself Dulcimer</a>. Which is the dumbest name for anything, really, because either it's true, in which case what do I need a book for? Or it's not, in which case maybe this isn't going to be the best book to start with, seeing as how they don't think you need one. <br /><br />Also, the picture on the cover isn't promising. It depicts a guy wearing a dorky vest and a tall, blackbrimmed, turn-of-the-century hat. He seems to be working at some sort of faux-authentic outdoor museum; all around, perfectly normal children pull at their equally normal parent’s hands, point and laugh and this poor goofy-smiled guy who...well, darned if he doesn’t look <i>just</i> like me, beard and all. <br /><br />I've decided I don't need the book. I can be me better at home than I can in a crowd of overcharged gawkers. No, it's enough to play along with the radio, and with the songs in my head, and finally and so rapidly be an agent of the full, chorded sound that fills my universe. And to be given such peace, such autonomous peace, out of the midst of such chaos. Thanks, Mom. It's what I've always wanted.boyhowdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09799915352726835586noreply@blogger.com0