Finding Beauty in Middle Tennessee

There is a beauty to Middle Tennessee. It isn’t the beauty of the ocean. Nor is it an architectural beauty; most of the buildings around here – the one’s that aren’t strip malls – are made of brick. It isn’t the charm of European walking distance, the library, the grocery store and a playground all within a few moment’s walk. It would take an hour or more to get anywhere here on foot. Yet, there is a beauty to it.

I first noticed it one morning when everything was shrouded in fog, laying thick and quiet along the slope of the land. Myself and the other commuters sped through these earth-bound-clouds cautiously, making deadlines, going places. And then, as I crossed over the Cumberland River, I looked across the rail at the water below. The sun glinted off the strange water and refracted through the overhanging fog. The scene was strange and mysterious, and flowed with memories of the frontier.

A few days later, I saw something else. Construction is everywhere in Nashville. The city has grown so fast over the last decade that public roads and other facilities have burst against rising demand. In an effort to make up the difference, nearly every road in Nashville is being widened, and new connections are being made. Thus, cars share the roads with construction machinery and their handlers. It was just such a situation that gave me another glimpse of the beauty to be found here.

Just off highway 155E, in a knot of trucks and pylons, a group of construction workers had gathered before starting their daily labor. They stood together in a loose circle. Tattered shirts and old jeans, gloves and hard-hats, dusty hands and faces, they gripped coffee or a biscuit from Jack in the Box or McDonald’s and greeted each other. It reminded me of my warehouse days. It reminded me of the feel of the warehouse first thing in the morning. Muscles just warming up as hands and feet took up new tasks. In their faces and postures, in the work that waited all around them, I saw something else that is beautiful in Middle Tennessee: its people.

And, finally, a third thing – quickly said as this is getting long. We visited a Baptist church yesterday. A congregation of perhaps 120 in a not-unattractive sanctuary for 350 people. Just before the sermon, a man of about 45-50 years sang “Special Music”. It was a gospel song of gratitude for being a “child of the King” filled out with pre-recorded percussion, bass and background vocals. Cheesy, that’s what I thought as a kid. But, as this man, this bearded grown man, got into the song, and could barely choke out his real gratitude for being such a one, I didn’t think it was cheesy at all. It was grace. Southern religiosity takes some getting used to, and I’m not sure if I will ever totally trust it, but that doesn’t mean that it is false. It certainly wasn’t to this man. And as he struggled to sing in those last few bars, I saw something else beautiful, beautiful and beyond beauty.

The other habit

Watching TV the other night with Kara, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she had her fingers up near her face. Thinking the worst I said, “Kara, stop picking your nose.” “I’m not picking my nose Daddy,” she whined, “I’m doing the other habit!”

Fifty-or-Fit

So the lot of us were at Friday’s a week or two ago to celebrate Mary Shelley’s birthday. Mary is on my right, Dolley Madison on my left. Opposite are Idgie Threadgoode and Alypius; Mr. Darcy at the head. Little by little the subject turned to New Year’s resolutions, and, from there, weight loss. “I need to lose weight this year,” said Mr. Darcy. Dolley agreed, and in a flash Mr. Darcy’s hand was out. “Let’s make a bet out of it,” he said, “50 dollars apiece to see who wins the most by…” Dolley laughed and shook on it. Discussion followed. Alypius threw in. Do it! I thought. You need to lose weight big time. Plus, this is a great way to do that and be a part of things! Now $50 is a lot of money, and I’m normally not given to wagering anything. When the powerball was up in the 200 million, I didn’t even buy a dollar ticket. Just do it! I went back and forth, and then finally shook on it. The date set was April Fool’s Day. Whoever loses the most weight, measured as a percentage lost, wins the pot at $150.

The next morning, Dolley sent an email to the rest of us. “….one mile, x sit ups, y push ups….GAME ON!” Mr. Darcy’s shot back: two trips for beer. My strategy hasn’t so far been as aggressive. Slight, incremental changes are my forte, harnessing the power of caloric compound interest. Park further from buildings. Drink water. Cut out sweets. Take the stairs. I lost 20lbs doing just this a few years ago, and I wagered these would make a good sortie toward the goal. That is until Alypius started getting up early to work out. Now I’m thinking a good deal about that fitness center in the new apartment complex.

Lynn-nore was a little shocked when I broke the news. $50 is a lot of money! (Did I mention that?) If every couple has a spendthrift and a tightwad, then I am most definitely the former. Still, the health benefits of having me a bit lighter, coupled with the prospect of winning enough money to cover the cost of a new wardrobe sweetened the deal. Also, we have since figured that the money saved by acquiring our apartment, thereby negating the need to pick up a Y membership, is none too shabby. I even think, having been at it for over a week now, that she is a little proud of me – and that feels good.

Catching Z's

The sun is going down, and from the window next to my cubicle, I can see the tips of trees, yellow and brown. They stand on the dock, and wave to the Sun as it sets out to the west. Inside, someone is on the phone. Another is chatting to a co-worker, in this case Dolley Madison. The rat-a-tat of ubiquitous keyboarding joins the hum of ventilation. A quiet afternoon that is soporific in the extreme.

I have been trying to read a galley copy of Brian McClaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus (IMHO largely a colloquial popularization of a better N.T. Wright lecture) but keep wanting to nod off. Most days there is a good bit to do, but todays “to do” has caught fast in the wheels of others.

Domestically, we found an apartment. We went from 1250/mo for a simple 2brdm with < 1000 square feet of space to much less $/mo with 1200+ square feet + fitness center/2 pools/volleyball/tennis court AND - perhaps more importantly - a dish washer! L. and I are pinching ourselves! Caleb has begun teething. 3 little white incisors are starting to peek out on his lower jaw. It is a good thing, too, since he’s anything but covert about his desire to chomp into real food. While his sister chants “Meat! Meat!” at a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, Caleb has to make do with rice serial and bananas. He’s ready for more. This, unfortunately, has made him a very light sleeper. Suddenly we are up 2 and 3 times a night again (I say “we” but poor L. takes the brunt of it.) Once he goes down around 8, it is tiptoe time for the next 12 hours. Alas, Kara can’t help herself but shout and groan and make all sorts of noise when we’re putting her to bed – no matter how many references to the Spanish Inquisition one makes by word or sign! Kara is in her first full-week of a new Kindergarten, and she is really enjoying it. Thanks to a visual method for sight-reading, she is sounding out words and simple sentences in a leap of ability bordering on the miraculous! I am very proud of her, and sensitive to the face that spelling doesn’t always mean you keep the secret. Gramma spelled out “Z-O-O” last Saturday, and Kara had no trouble at all deciphering it on the spot.

Coming up: $50 or a pound of flesh.

Santa came to Manchester

Going through some papers, I came across this article that L. cut from the Manchester Cricket. File this under "only in New England"!

SANTA IS COMING TO TOWN AGAIN!
Mark your calendars for the annual Jingle Bell walk, co-sponsored by the Community Center and the Manchester Mothers Club. Set this year for December 3rd, Santa will arrive at Masconomo Park via lobster boat. Santa will lead children on a Jingle Bell Walk to Singing Beach, followed by an Open House at the Community Center from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Refreshments will be served and Santa will be available for pictures. Put on your best holiday outfits and come join Santa!

I gave Max Lucado a Cold

I gave Max Lucado a cold. Who? Max Lucado /loo-KAY-doe/. As comfy as a fireside chat, as pastoral as your favorite Uncle, as best-seller as an Oprah book club discount card. That’s the Max Lucado I’m talking about. I met him my first day on the job. Who? Max Lucado. White like sunlight glancing from whitened sandstone. Tall like the A in Antonio. Downy and pastoral, a tenor with a sweater-vest, a heath-hearted fire. That’s the Max Lucado I’m talking about, and I gave him a cold on my very first day.

Unlike my last foxhole, my new cubicle is open and spacious. Wide writing surfaces, with a slide-away file cabinet and drawers are topped by under lit, lockable shelving. The first day, this space was still full of K’s stuff: the accumulated junk of years of shuffling and re-shuffling. Wires, plugs and bags of materials, dusty and unkempt gave the whole a transitory feeling. There were secrets, too.

It is a premium in my new position to keep an eye on the details, details intricately bound up with judgments and manipulations of time. Underneath the dusty leftovers and boxes were a few archaeological bones of K’s own astrology: a file with a color-coded dot; the way she organized the folders in her C:\ drive; different-colored pens. I was left alone for an hour that first day like an acolyte in the temple, looking past the standing stones at the moon and the setting sun and wondering at the question of time. I squared off the site and began sifting and diagramming each of its treasures.

“Excuse me, Thom,” said Mr. Darcy, just as I was about to empty a stack of antiquated emails into a bin, “Max is in the office today, and we’re going to have a meeting with him. We’re going to pray for his upcoming book.” “Pray! How does that work?” I wondered. Not that I don’t mind prayer, but in a corporate setting. Since coming to Nashville, the borderline between religious expression and, to speak existentially, the street, are always crashing into each other in unpredictable ways. And, here on the Outlook tasks: prayer.

Fumbling with names, and coated with new-guy inapproachability, I followed the rest along toward a good sized meeting room. Suits were already there, sitting in a closed square around the center. We pulled chairs from stacks and assembled respectfully along the wall. I bumped along to the right, and found myself sitting alone beside two late-middle-aged women who took no notice of me. I barely noticed myself. And then everyone stood up, and next thing you know up comes Lucado. He takes my hand, looks me right in the eye and says, “Good morning, I’m glad you are here.” Normally I never shake hands with anyone when I’m ill, but Lucado just sort of took it. Surprised, I still managed a smile, “Thanks, I’m glad to be here.” After that he milled through the rest of the crowd, finally ending up at the head of things. Then there was a half hour or so of prayer. I wondered whether only the important people could pray. I wondered whether anyone in the outer ring would pray. What sort of “prayer dynamic” was at work? Who felt as if they had to pray? Then it was over. Time for the Christmas party.

“I hope you like the party we threw for you!” I heard this about half a dozen times as I bummed a ride from some co-workers, still strangers but probably friends. We climbed into an SUV, and climbed out into the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Inn. Our group had a table reserved, right up front. I was seated beside Mr. Darcy, who gave me a “whose who” of the room and fired off well-meaning insults, giving as good as he got, from the rest of the table. I still felt cold and new, like brittle glass.

Around me, the room, opulent and red velvet, was loud. People were having a good time, shouting and jostling each other in friendly greeting. Patsy Clairmont was the speaker. A little, graying woman with a booming voice (or were we sitting in front of the speakers?) she spoke about Jonah, and I was glad to note that she’d obviously read a commentary or two before she wrote her standup. Lucado took the stand to talk about his book.

I was taking in everything. One thing I wanted to know about this group all seated at the same table was whether they liked each other or not. In my last employ, a few hellos would go around, and small talk would be attempted, but there would be little in the way of non-office friendliness. I was pleased to discover that this was largely not the case. This group was more like a cluster of teens at a youth convention than a bevy of suits who came for the food. It is normally very difficult to get any sense of personality at functions like these, but in this case, each person seemed to own themselves. Each person shone in their own color, more along the lines of a church assembly than a collection of co-workers. I marveled at this while wondering with the rest of the table what we were to do now that the wait staff had taken our forks, when the music started.

One golden-voiced executive, with two others drawn from other departments in the company, had taken the microphone and the three men began to sing Christmas carols. The second man played a giant, black Gibson Epiphone hooked to a jazz amplifier. They sang two songs, and then asked the audience to sing one together. They chose “Silent Night” and began straightaway:

Silent Night, Holy Night
All is calm, all is bright

I joined in, lifted up by the room. Missing worship with my church, and the move having taken advent out of the December weeks, I was hungry for carols, hungry to sing, and here was a company singing together, singing in all sincerity about Jesus. And lest you think only the first verse was sung, no, they launched out into the remainder, and by the time we got to

Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace

I knew that I wasn’t the new guy any longer. I felt it all the way through. It has been a long time coming, but on this day, I said, here is exactly where I belong.

The last leg

Again, I wasn’t sleeping. My eyes closed and opened again on restlessness. “You can relax,” I told myself, “you are at John and Tina’s house now. You are with friends.” At one point, John woke up and moved to occupy a sleeper sofa not far away in the living room. I noticed him by a pair of socked feet out of the corner of my eye. Not having brought anything myself, I slept in my clothes. “Where is this place?” I thought. “Somewhere between New England and Tennessee. Somewhere between the past and future? . . . I must be in shock.” I turned over, finding a better position on the couch. “Look!” I said, ubraiding myself, “God has given you so much. This is a fantastic opportunity for you and for your family. Stop griping. Stop moaning about like something awful has happened!” But isn’t reality more complicated than that? Can’t you grieve and rejoice at the same time – is this a mood with no words?

Daylight slipped through the front window. Realizing we were both awake, John and I considered just getting up. It was good to be here. We hadn’t seen either John or Tina in years. And now, meeting their daughter, H. for the first time was a wonderful occasion. The adults congregated in the kitchen. It had been refurbished in the last few years, and L. and I admired it. John and I talked about books, about work, about his interest in the form critical developments behind the American Constitution. My mind felt disorganized. In-transit. Finally, H. woke up – what a cutie! It took a few minutes, but she and Kara soon warmed to each other. Kara was so eager to meet her. Again, what a great attitude – Kara was handling this whole thing like a pro. Then we had to push on to Nashville (with a stop at one of our favorite restaurants: Misakes).

I don’t even remember the remainder of the drive. But when we pulled into L’s parents house – their beautiful retirement home nestled in a community with high-ceilings, cathedral windows and a rocky waterfall at the entrance – with two kids, a pack-n-play, boxes of clothes, guitars and toys and baby wipes and diapers and two vehicles a baby swing, a crib, blankets, legos, CD’s, and who knows what else – I just didn’t know if this was going to work despite everyone’s best intentions. And, frankly, neither did they.

The Journey South

Finally I have a moment to review the last few weeks. Living with Lynn-nore’s parents, living with someone else’s schedule and habits, has meant time away from the routine that would have guaranteed a little more communication before now. Nevertheless, I want to talk about the trip down and let everyone know how we are doing.

The journey south was relatively uneventful. Our stuff made it in record time, arriving at the terminal in Tennessee a mere two days after pulling away from Manchester-by-the-Sea. Our own passage took a little longer. We had hoped to visit friends on Long Island Monday evening, but that didn’t materialize. Instead, we stayed in Pennsylvania. I hadn’t been sleeping well. My mind kept turning on innumerable details – car registration, insurance questions, potential trucking fees, the heavy work of unloading the truck in Nashville. It did no better now that everything was underway. The second day, Tuesday, was hard driving. An ice storm was supposed to roll in that evening, blanketing the Appalachians. We couldn’t stop until Kingsport, until we made it to John and Tina Grubb’s house, a 12-hour trip. So we drove 80 m.p.h. most of the way. I-81 is a major East Coast artery, and I worried for Lynn-nore and the kids as trucks whizzed by. On one occasion, a car turned in between us, so I slowed down to force him to pass. 60 … 55 … 50, the driver matched every deceleration without a hint of frustration. This was a Sunday drive, apparently! At 35 m.p.h. I wondered if I wouldn’t have to stop and ask the driver to “please go on ahead.” Threading the mountains in West Virginia brought another challenge. This time, a small truck weaved first this way and then that, staying in the lane but with obvious difficulty. He was tired or he was under the influence. I sped past him and then hovered, encouraging Lynn-nore to do the same, but she didn’t move. She hung back. “Come on,” I said aloud, even though she couldn’t hear me, “pass him!” She seemed frozen. Finally, her blinker came on – take the next exit. “We’re just going to have to face this guy again,” I grumbled. We stopped at a truck stop, and I punched out of the truck. “Caleb needs to be changed,” she said. “I thought you were just nervous about that drunk driver,” I interjected. She didn’t know anything about it.

The truck stop smelled of cigarette smoke. Kara and I waited while Lynn-nore took Caleb into the ladies’ room. Hunting gear, electronic poker machines, and angel statuettes were everywhere. Kara took me on a trip through the gift shop. Kids toys, remote control tanks, t-shirts, hawaiian hula dolls, hair care products. I thought about the life of a truck driver, the life of many of the people sitting in the restaurant next door, watching the remote control tank in a video demonstration, buying a Coke at the register. I’d always placed such a life somewhere between the varieties of condoms for sale in the men’s room and the brands of cigarettes behind the cashier. Yet, I have lived in communities where being a trucker is a good life. Men save up to buy their own rig to the tune of $60,000+. These men and women are as much an image of God as I am. I have no business thinking less. They need toys for their kids, t-shirts, Cokes, shaving cream, just like anyone else. Our clothes smelled like rumpled Winstons as we returned to our vehicles. Kara had me plug the DVD player back in as I strapped the seatbelt around her. It had been all day in the car and she had a better attitude than I did.

My attitude was somewhere between grief and masculine single-mindedness. I wanted to get there (wherever) in good time. Yet I missed New England in general, and our friends SWR&QE in particular. Missing them was a dull ache in my heart. Yes, I was afraid of losing “me” to my Southern roots. “In some ways it is like New England never happened,” Lynn-nore had said one evening a few weeks ago, talking about the move and the future. Thom grows up in Kingsport and moves to the big city, with that loop somewhere up North. Nothing changed, nothing put behind, nothing new added. New England had been my going away to college, every choice there had been my own. Lynn-nore and I had made what we are there, and had put 11 years into it. The result had been running into people you knew on a regular basis, a church family with shared history, the historical-yet-frenetic nature of Boston, the omnipresent beauty of the Atlantic coast, the rich resources of the BTI, decent snowfall, church bells in Harvard Square, the song-sand of Singing Beach and many, many friends, like shiny coins jangling in a pocket, and then there was SWR&QE.

SWR&QE are missionaries, and missionaries live their lives under the question mark of God. We, too, were aware of that question mark: things would change. One day God would open a door and that would be it. Hadn’t that been my prayer for nearly a decade: “What next, Lord?” New England had been a stepping stone in the beginning, a cliff not a plain. We knew going into our relationship with them that every moment had the word “temporary” written on it. But it didn’t matter. Words weren’t required. How many times did QE go up and read to Kara in her room after a long day of managing 1st graders? How often did SWR just take Caleb from us, not as if holding him was a chore but a welcome pastime. They are “our bummy friends.” We had opened the doors of our heart to them, and with it all other doors as well. How could we go with the baby due? How could we go with stories yet to be snapped off in a weekend? And it was we, not they, who were leaving. Leaving for a place far away and not coming back. Who is the missionary now? Who has sent whom? I nursed my ache with each passing mile, and my mood was as torn and overcast as the clouds against the black Virginia hillsides.

BBC4's Advent Offerings -- Thanks Be Unto God

Thank God for BBC4’s advent offerings. If you have never visited their website, I suggest you check it out. From an audio-rich advent calendar, to daily services recorded in various cathedrals throughout Britain, you can easily fill your ears with carols, choirs, readings from the lectionary, and advent homilies. Over time, the BBC has become a staple of my advent experience, if simply for the music. I can’t get enough performance during the season, and certainly can’t afford in cost or time what is available. The BBC serves it up for free.

Music, and especially choral music, really makes the advent season for me. My Mom, both a teacher of voice and an experienced and accomplished alto herself, was always dragging me to performances in my youth, and, well, it must have rubbed off. Now I’d drag myself to one every day if possible. There is nothing quite like experiencing music as a living thing. In our day of artificial lungs and mechanical hearts, we know how to keep a performance going on decades afterward, and we have mistakenly equated these corpses with living bodies. At the same time, performance groups in every area of the liberal arts have out-priced tickets to all but the wealthy, and, as each year more die from lack of funds and public interest, they reap the results. So-called culture isn’t dying because people aren’t interested any longer, rather, people are dying because ‘culture’ has turned its back on them. Music – good music -- needs its reformation.

A large part of it, too, is education. Even as I sit down in a theatre or music hall and begin to enjoy a performance, I am always painfully aware that I don’t know how to listen. I have no real framework for making meaning from what is happening. The aesthetic enjoyment is there, but experienced as a child at play, not as an adult who enters into the real depth of the thing. The only performances for which our culture educates us are political and athletic ones. My soul feels poorer for it. Just last year I drug L. and Kara to a local Episcopal church for an advent’s evening of English carols. They came more for me than for them. I wanted Kara to hear live music, to see the performers, to hear the sharp intake of their breaths, the rustle of flipping pages and the shifting and coughing of the audience. But, I had not way of really explaining to her how to take it all in. All I could do was drag she and L. there and hope for the best. There is something wrong there. If I was to go with a friend to a wrestling match, by the time we arrived at the stadium he would have filled my ears with the back-story and suitable anecdotes attached to each of the competing wrestlers. He certainly wouldn’t just induct me to our seats, sit down mutely beside me and say nothing with every body-blow of the match.

Advent suggests an answer to this malady. During Advent, the songs, readings, sermons and even the movements of time participate together lending their voices to each other. The coming of God to his people and as his people informs everything, creating what the academy calls a meta-narrative. Inducted, then, by every voice, we are led through this great story until we ourselves form a part.

So, I weep for you music and theatre. I weep for you members of the Handel & Haydn Society who, each year, sing the complete oratorio of Handel’s Messiah. I compose a lament for you well-wishers singing Christmas songs in shopping malls. You are like sheep without a shepherd. You listen but hear not. You sing, and dance, and speak your lines without knowledge. You wander in exile without a narrative-home, clutching your arias, symphonies, concertos, and chamber pieces to your breast. You have forgotten your informing logos, become unseated from the dynamic and creating Word, and need, as much as any of us, advent to give you life again.

Adventus

How should we greet the future?  With gladness or with grief?  It comes to us like a pale dawn, like New England, but it isn’t New England.  We know it for our benefit, but, at least today, parting is grief.  You, future, must wipe our eyes.

November's interview

The interview went amazingly well. I didn't get to bed until 12:20 the night before, and was up to leave at 4 a.m. God was good, though, and that nap felt as if it took 12 hours. It was raining hard driving to New Hampshire. I kept the radio switching between talk radio stations, and breakfasted on a granola bar. With me was the Chicago Manual of Style and a change of clothes. The plan was for L's parents to pick me up at the airport and take me over to the interview. Unused to Southwest, when I boarded the plane they had not assigned me a seat. What to do? Finally I claimed a seat about 3/4 of the way back, an isle, two seats over from a guy watching an Adam Sandler movie on his Dell. I read the style manual for awhile and slept for awhile. God was good to me again: the flight took forever – more sleep for me -- and my ears didn't notice a thing. No trouble at all meeting up with L's parents in Nashville, they put me in their car and drove me out to one of those isolated, Martian office parks. Gigantic squares and rectangles of glass thrust up from the grass at odd-angles. Robotic architecture. Mechanical aesthetics.

We arrived at my appointed publisher’s offices. Well-dressed, happy people coming in and going out of a blue marble lobby decorated in a red Christmas-bells motive. Even the metal trash cans had rims made special for red potpourri. I was dressed in leather shoes, slacks, with a blue shirt, a subdued complimentary tie and a blue sport coat. I carried references and a legal pad in a leather holder with Harvard's veritas crest embossed on it -- a gift from a friend. Taking the golden elevator, I pushed 5.

A receptionist named R. and I struck up a conversation about a pair of golden, Mickey Mouse ears perched on her counter while waiting for my interviewer, Mr. Darcy, to arrive. The entrance to this portion of the company (corporate headquarters is a huge, steel-and-glass building a block further away) was all of glass, though the interior was far too busy. The people, however, seemed human and approachable. Mr. Darcy himself was tall and quite cordial with black hair, blue eyes and a good handshake. He wore a blue shirt and tie. He took me to his office and sat down with his desk between us. His workspace was cluttered with attempts at organization. A large Van Gogh print was framed behind him, and pictures of his daughters made the rest -- he is in his upper 40's with a couple of kids in Middle School. Amid the papers was a Bugs Bunny coffee cup, one of my favorite scenes in which Bugs has been taken to the mad scientist's castle and is giving the monster a pedicure and saying, "You monsters are such interesting people." I decided that I liked this Mr. Darcy.

Now on the way down, I had been stressing about different interview questions. What do I say if he asks me this or that? I started thinking, as I told you, about my Dad's advice: tell stories. I can do that. The part of my mind that blogs and thinks and chats with friends comes up and says, "I'll take care of everything." And, sure enough, it did.

As Mr. Darcy asked me a question, I gave answers, stories. I described, narrated, engaged, cited, and above all informed him about me with every story-power I had. Be three-dimensional, be blood and bones to this man and you'll do a good deal, I thought.

Mr. Darcy steered clear of the stupid, evil questions and stayed on the "who is this guy and why should I hire him" questions. His clustered around the following: (1) can you put up with working on popular, rather than academic, religious books? (2) How do you handle detail; (3) How are your political skills; (4) Why do you want to be an editor? Halfway through the discussion, he started up and grabbed his boss, a member of the Board of Directors named the Storyteller. The Storyteller, a thin, tall man with grey hair and a grey moustache, smiled and shook hands. We talked like men talk at church over coffee. We talked about Texas, about barbecue, about the publisher’s stock, its CEO, the future of the company. Then he left Mr. Darcy and I to continue. We talked for 2.5 hours! I had an opportunity to get all my questions in, too (I’d taken care to come up with some good ones.) He said he was making a decision within the next week. He would want someone to start by mid-December. Afterward, he had to go and I had to take an exam. Beforehand, he loaded me down with four or five books.

The exam was awful - all English exams are. Unlike Math, where there is a clear answer, you never know if you're getting everything with English, and your mind starts second-guessing itself. Still, I knew I had lots of prayer with me, and so I carefully marked each page, going back over them several times. Checking isolated sentences is a totally different thing from editing prose. Prose has a feel, it runs in your hands and you can feel for inconsistencies. Isolated sentences are antiseptic and dead. I let myself out, the entire department was at a meeting, and met back up with my parents-in-law.

With a few hours to spare before my flight, I had a chance to tour L's parent's house: beautiful. A nice cup of coffee in their comfortable living room. We talked about friends in Germany, how their tapestries are showcased better in this house, what they were doing in the front lawn. Auntie Kara met me at the airport, looking not a day's different than she did in college. She looked so youthful I had to keep reminding myself that it was 2005. And, though it had been two years since I have seen her, I tell you not a day had passed. The flight back was macabre. The plane flew through alien and forbiddingly thick clouds of white ectoplasm. I couldn’t get comfortable, and wound up staring out like the dead into the monochromatic sky. L. stayed up to greet me, despite a horrible cough. I pulled in at 12:20 a.m. We talked until 1 a.m. about how things had gone and about our plans. Then we went to bed.

Mama & Caleb after church on Sunday.

 

Here's our little cutie-pie! 

Kara and Caleb November 17th. Just can't get them to both smile at the same time! 

the hands of love

I wish I had time to describe Joy. A beautiful girl with white-blond hair and possessing of unshockable frankness. She had Appalachian good sense and a good soul and saw at eighteen that raising a family in one’s own home is as full and rich as life ever needs to be. That was her secret in the pantomime that is High School, and it was a secret worth telling.

As we found out, Joy was getting married, and she asked Wes and I to play in the service. It was our first gig, and on a heartbreakingly beautiful day. Joy was so happy. The wedding party was happy. The green of the grass and the blue of the sky were happy. Wes and I were happy driving that morning up toward Bristol, my guitar case and bits of sheet music playfully askance upon the backseat of my Celica.

The play list for U2’s first gig at a Mount Temple talent contest included Peter Frampton’s “Show me the Way” and bits from the Bay City Rollers. Wes and I attempted nothing so audacious. My assigned piece was “The Rose.” The rolling arpeggio of the bass was perfectly suited to the classical guitar. It sounded very nice during practice, though I feared the sanctuary’s largesse would swallow it whole. (If only I remembered my fingering!) Who knows what Wes was assigned to do. A nervous pride overwhelmed me every time he played, and never more so than during public performance. Even today, whenever he plays, I want to leap around shouting: “Look here everyone! Listen to my friend play. Isn’t it beautiful! Isn’t it amazing!” Thus, I remember the anxiety but not the music, and isn’t that the way of everything.

Being a wedding there was, of course, an accident. I held the epicenter. It was a tuning accident of immense proportions -- my 6th, E-string broke – and in the middle of East Tennessee nowhere and less than a half-hour before I-Do time. What to do? Horrible horrible! The only solution was an attempt to recycle the same string in hopes it was long enough to stretch. It was, if barely, and held the tone. The wedding was simple and tasteful. Wes and I contributed flawless performances. Everyone was so happy. It was a perfect day.

fiasco

A month or so ago, Lynn-nore was asking Kara about the position of a certain scene on a particular Winnie the Pooh videocassette of Kara's.  Kara responded by saying, "It's after the fiasco."  "Did you just use the word, "fiasco"?" asks Lynn-nore.  "Yes," replied Kara, matter of factly.  By second grade she will be expectorating to her teacher: "The tedium of this philistine syntax is made superfluous through juxtaposition with the lively reciprocation of natural native speech."

On borderland we run

Where to meet? We had a bassist, long-time friend Tommy V. We also had a drummer. Wes had a friend in drama, Barry, who was willing to give it a go. Both Tommy and Barry were in band together. But where to meet? A band cannot simply practice anywhere. U2 hammered out War from inside a garden shed behind the Evans' home, but none of us could think of a spot in God's country where the beating of cymbals and drums, the crunch of a distorted guitar and the thump of an electric bass wouldn't enrage the surrounding populace. (By the way, here's a fantastic way to make a little money. Build a garage, run electricity out to it, heat it, soundproof it and then rent it by the hour at a price low enough to allow bands to practice and high enough to pay a little sum above heat and electricity. One could even charge to store or rent gear! It's an untapped market, as far as I'm concerned, because every band from here to Seattle has to practice somewhere.) There was one place that could serve our purposes, however, and that was the church.

Over the few years we attempted to play together, we met in at least two churches. The first one was a local Christian church, a brown, barn-looking building, which my family had long-attended. What made it attractive was that it was available. It had a piano and, more important, it had a new sound system! I begged a key, and Wes and I met there one Saturday morning to give it a go. It was cold that day. Wes' knuckles ached against the piano keys, and my guitar refused to tune properly. We found the thermostat, and turned on the new sound system - Crack! Hummmm. It wasn't difficult to get the microphones going, but the board was beyond us. (We were never able to sort out the electric complexities of a sound board.) Man, that guitar sounded good coming from the eight or 10 speakers in the auditorium: speakers on every corner and even in the pulpit. That was a lot of sound for a 250- to 300-seater. The second church we used was a truly auditorium-style Assemblies of God church in Johnson City. It also had a sound system and, more importantly, a mixing board. I also had a key, but it was just as cold. A few hours into a session and everyone was shivering. The face of my guitar - by then I had inherited a yellow pine-faced Yamaha acoustic from my maternal Grandfather - was always cool against my forearm. Wes also graduated up to a four-octave keyboard. Neither instrument was performance quality (the Yamaha buzzed ferociously above the 5th fret).

Now, you would think that the real trick is what to play, but it isn't. The real trick is how to play. We had some interesting chord progressions, a few U2 songs Wes and I wanted to take apart and put back together, and what not. But how do you get four people to work together? It isn't easy. First, there is an order to readiness. Once the drums are set up, they are ready to go. Keyboards aren't far behind. The bass guitar requires only a little tuning. And once musicians are next to their instruments, they are going to play them. Try tuning up to three guitars in that! Wes, whose attention to the acoustic detail was better than any of us, was always responsible for miking instruments, running wires, setting levels and getting all the amplification to work together. His job wasn't much easier - that's the last thing to go. By then, Tommy is discussing the technical boorishness of Van Halen's bassist, Barry is half-listening while running through a 2/8 tempo band exercise on the snare, and I'm going over a few particularly sticky riffs embedded in the session's playlist. Someone has to be the heavy. Someone has to lead. Someone who has the song in mind and knows how to get there. Someone who isn't (like me) painfully obsessing about their instrument to the detriment of everyone else. We had no such person. Early sessions were a horror of fits and starts, re-tunings, side-conversations, and other snafu's.

Looking back, we didn't really understand what a band is supposed to do. As simple as it sounds, having fun with your instruments takes precedent over making art. In some ways this reflects the difference between piano and guitar culture, shaped music versus discovered music, controlled liturgy versus pietist emotionalism. Piano culture is notation, planning, elegance, complexity, full-harmony. Guitar culture is wondering what happens when you do THIS. It is an unfortunate polarity. Piano culture, like Chopin's nocturnes or Mozart's concertos, was once improvisational. J. S. Bach, for example, was renowned for his improvisational abilities, transposing and arranging in his head on the fly. Improvisation is the electricity of a performance. Play is the mother of art. Mutual improvisation - jamming - encouraging and being encouraged in your instrument - this is the most important thing. You might even call it a form of musical love, the ex nihilo creation of a selfless and creative community whose being-together begets and is begotten in the whirl of energetic and spiritual power called music. "Do you know how to dismantle an atomic bomb?" Bono asked an incredulous Michael W. Smith a few years ago at a Nashville fund-raiser for African debt relief: "Love."

A good band, be it bluegrass or Dixieland, watches each other, listens to each other, and gives individual space to first one instrument and then another. Every instrument gets a turn. Even a symphonic orchestra passes the underlying motive around like a communal cup. The sum is better than the parts. Every musician will tell you how much they learn from such experiences; you come out better than you went in. But we didn't know this! Like children in a nursery school, we simply did not know how to work together. U2 provided little guidance.

The members of U2 seemed to know and inhabit their places from the very beginning. Together they formed an ordered, liquid suspension of Bono's ego meets Larry's unflappable, type-B personality and Clayton's determination to put up with anything in order to be a rock star. The only odd piece was the Edge, Paul McCartney to Bono's Lennon. Wes and I were two David Evans on the bare edge of failure or success. We knew our project needed better models if it was going to survive, and so we went out searching.

Loosen our lips

Melody is the essence of song. I wish we’d have known that. Every other element in music, every technique, every period of music, everything -- including lyrics! -- exists to set off and enhance melody. As Bono confesses in “Stuck in a Moment” (All That You Can’t Leave Behind): “I'm just trying to find / a decent melody, / a song that I can sing, / my own company.” If only we’d have figured this out sooner! Wes and I were so interested in the revealing possibilities of music, that we did not pay attention to the simple straightforwardness of the art itself. Melody is the keystone, the meta-narrative, the crux. That is why we were afraid of it. It seems comic now, but the very thing we longed for we also feared. “The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound that opens our eyes.” But, then again, there is a more basic aphorism -- call it a struggle with limitation: instruments do not play themselves.

Now Wes is a singular personality when he puts his mind to something, and he had put his mind to the piano. Night after night he sat in his bedroom, hunched by the light of a cheap desk lamp over that little Casio. I had given him a nice copy of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 in C minor – the Pathetique -- and it wasn’t long before Wes could play a hauntingly beautiful Grave-Allegro di molto. Wes taught himself enough music theory to piece it together. First he memorized the right hand and then he memorized the left, going measure by measure. That Casio was too small and too crude to allow the use of both hands. After school, I often found him in the music room putting treble and bass together and working up beautiful and often complex pieces of his own.

I was involved in a parallel process with the guitar. I owned a Harmony classical guitar, which my Dad purchased in the 60’s from a pawn shop, and the above-mentioned Peavey. Neither could hope to approach the sound or manipulative ease of a Fender or Gibson, but I was determined to make this work to our advantage. The limitations of the instruments would lend uniqueness to their sound, and force methods of “musical extraction” that would go untried using an expensive rig. In the absence of a whammy bar, I learned to physically bend the instrument, grabbing heel and stock and pulling or pushing them against each other. Lacking the subtlety of chorus effects, I learned to strum higher up the neck, emphasizing the midrange, or lower toward the bridge, heightening the timbre and brightness of the tone. I tried different tunings, and experimented with different styles, from finger picking to straight-up power chords. I also put aside the plectrum and played with a basting brush I borrowed from the kitchen. The sound in my head was always more like a watercolor wash than a wicked roundhouse, and the soft bristles of the basting brush, sweeping across several strings at a time and mixed with open chords pushed that Peavey a little closer to the goal.

As usual, U2 was a big help. Realizing their own limitations, they used all sorts of clever tricks to amplify their sound and give it a unique flavor. Wes and I watched their music videos as well as the footage of their concert at Red Rocks very closely. In all of these, the central concept of musical impressionism, the centrality of the music rather than the instrument or individual virtuoso, stood out. Let me go through a few examples. In the course of 20 minutes, the Edge might play his Flying V, then switch to a distressed looking 12-string (which you can hear beautifully in “Second” off War), then put both down and play a motive on electric piano. I watched him use dampening effects, produced by placing the fingers of the left hand over the strings to produce percussive effects. You can hear him do this in the beginning of “Vertigo” (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb), or, acoustically, throughout “Running to Stand Still” (The Joshua Tree). By combining this with harmonic overtones, he could create a rushing cascade of sound. You can hear this in the opening and during the verses of “New Years Day” (War). The Edge also uses a bottleneck-slide – a bottleneck-slide! – and not for acoustic blues but for lead riffs in distorted, effects-laden rock music ("Gloria" October). Again, the entire band was committed in their early, poor days to this post-punk impressionistic spirit: the sound is the thing, do whatever it takes to get it. Larry Mullen would tie things or place things on his drum kit, like a tambourine on the high-hat, to produce different sounds. Bono learned to play rhythm guitar and the harmonica. The four of them plugged everything at one time or another through the Edge’s digital delay, including Adam Clayton’s bass. Everyone joined in where supporting vocals were needed. They even grunted like savages in “Indian Summer Sky” (Unforgettable Fire)! A free hand or foot was possibility wasted. This was music made whole cloth from body and soul. “Cantare amantis est”, says St. Augustine, singing is a lover’s thing – and we stole every trick and technique we could find. But it is one thing to learn, and another to put into practice with others. And, like everything else, Wes and I started out back-end first.

Kicking the darkness

U2 called itself "The Hype" before it finally settled on its name, a moniker which certainly applied to their musical abilities circa 1976. "We formed a band before we could play our instruments," Bono said. "It's really like a street gang, you know, people who are joined by their sense of humor and their sense of what they are against more than what they are for. We were a pretty crap wedding band actually." That description pretty much held true for what Wes and I were trying to do. I had some musical training in my youth and knew how to read music, my Mom is an accomplished pianist. But the piano is not an electric guitar, in this case a natural-finish Peavey with a practice amp built into the case, nor does reading music teach you how to make music in a band. The music in our heads was so far beyond anything we could actually produce with our fingers, and putting that together with someone else who is having the same problems…well, it was often disastrous. Further, for some reason we didn't begin at cover songs. Most people, whether playing solo or with others, pretty much cover stuff, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones ("Satisfaction" was one of the songs used for tryout purposes in Larry's kitchen), Kansas, something. That just never appealed to us at all. It isn't like we made a decision or anything about it, we just never discussed covering other people's work. Instead, we just started at the beginning of everything. As I said before, being a band wasn't really what we were after, and so, looking back, we treated it rather incidentally.

There are a couple of essential things needed to make a band work, aside from actually having people who are willing to play. First, there's the music. You have to be able to make music. Today the big thing is sampling - a process of lifting someone else's bass line or chorus and splicing it into the mish-mash of other collected bits called a "song." In the words of Plato, lots of tekne but no arete; lots of tech but no art. Where is the talent? One avoids the formative discipline required by practice and performance, standing without thank you on the shoulders of those who have done the hard work. It is a loss of identity, a denial of the self and a denial of being. Anyway, I want to talk about the way we approached music itself before getting into the actual business of making noise.

Though our high approach to making music, coupled with a lack of funds and space, spelled an inevitable - if ultimately temporary - end to this entire affair, I am quite proud of our beginning. We wanted to find an authentic voice in music and not just recreate other models. Therefore, we went back ad fontes to the bones of music itself. I took a class on the development of polyphony in the West, and listened to a lot of chant. John G. gave me a few lessons in chord theory and had me memorize some basics like the circle of 5ths/4ths and the order of flats/sharps. John was in the process of hand-copying the score to a piece he had written for the completion of his Bachelors in Composition, and he would show me the completed pages and talk about parts and how they work together. Wes and I chewed this stuff into a developing discussion about theory and structure. I taught Wes the names of the notes on the Great Staff, and he went on to eventually score music for several plays. I also remember he read a book on orchestral composition by Rimsky Korsakov. We also read through some thick textbooks on the development of Western music….this kind of skips ahead a little, but during the summer of 1998, Wes and I were doing shift work for a glass manufacturer, working right on the shop floor pulling hot glass off a moving belt. Anyway, that job is so dangerous that they give you regular breaks. We would break along with a half-dozen other sweaty, scarred-up guys in this tin room just off the shop floor. There was nothing really to do but talk - which no one felt like doing - eat, play cards or read. There were magazines, Sports Illustrated and stuff (though Wes said to me later that he saw some guys smuggle porn into the mix), but Wes and I were hauling music textbooks. We would shout and sweat on the line for half an hour and then read about melisma, oblique motion and cantus firmus. And, of course, we studied The Joshua Tree.

One of the things going on in so-called "alternative" rock during this period, a movement in which U2 participated - if only in that those that listened to, say, The Smiths, 10,000 Maniacs or REM, also listened to them - was an impressionistic approach to writing pop music. I'm not sure if there is even a technical term for it. The Church is an excellent example of this kind of approach as well. Basically, the goal is not to stand out. Remember, rock music was still recovering from Eddie Van Halen. Even popular rock boasted screamingly fast electric guitar chops. Guitar Gods like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai were releasing studio albums. Anyway, the goal was not to stand out but to suggest, support, to color in and create a canvas, perhaps stepping out now and then to suggest a theme: the music never takes over. This is not to say it isn't doing anything. Like a good sonnet, the aim is to create levels of dialogue underneath the lyrical message. The Edge is a master. Listen to "Bullet the Blue Sky" and you note right away that he isn't doing anything incredibly difficult from a technical point of view, but he is using slide effects and laying out a humming, growling distored texture that gives Bono's anti-imperialistic screed the emotional teeth it needs. Larry Mullen's drumming adds its own urgency, as well. Everything is working together underneath what Bono is singing and saying. The message is the thing. "New Years Day" from War is also a fantastic example of this style - really amazing. The preturnaturally smooth and elegant distorted effects that Edge lays down in that song. I'm glued everytime I hear it. The earnestness itself doesn't come from a hyperactive dance beat or Bono screaming obscenities or anything. It is understated. Edge is tearing the guitar apart underneath the second chorus, but the mix puts it underneath so that the ear almost mistakes it for business casual. Along this same impressionistic line, the Edge also incorporated a delay effect right into the core of his sound. Go back to October, for example, and there it is in "Fire". Indeed, he ultimately popularized a whole new way of thinking about the electric guitar. He took the Stratocaster and made it a truly electronic instrument, capable of creating and shaping a limitless number of sounds and effects. I knew that this was the musical philosophy I wanted to bring to the table of our band-experiment. And, just to be a bare pragmatist about it, you didn't have to necessarily be good to play in this style. Impressionism was accessible when blistering chops or $2,000 worth of synthesizers weren't. The only problem was, it wasn't that accessible. You still needed decent equipment, and, at the time, Wes was playing on a 2-octave Casio.

A boy tries hard to be a man

Now when I say we put a band together, that’s wrong. We did find a bassist and a drummer (and there was even a failed attempt at a sound man.) Wes and I had both been doing the autodidact with piano and guitar for at least a year or so. Perhaps I will get into this aspect of things at another time – but when it came to putting a band together we didn’t actually want to play anything, like you might get some people together and just have fun making music. No, we were on an archeological dig. We were trying to find something, something that glinted out from the margins, and in this The Joshua Tree played a central role. Our bellies were painfully swollen with life, though neither of us knew anything about babies. The Joshua Tree was our nurse, our midwife, helping something new come into the world, or, maybe a better way of saying it, helping our world come into something new.

It may help at this point to know something about U2. U2 started out as a punk band in the mid-70’s. Larry Mullen Jr., 16, a drummer, wanted to play dances, and posted a note on the school bulletin board at Dublin’s Mount Temple Comprehensive School. Auditions were held in the kitchen of his house. David Evans (the Edge), Adam Clayton and Paul Hewson (Bono) joined with a few nameless others - who the heck cares about that. The important thing is that this group of teenagers were caught up in what everyone else was caught up in, music. They didn’t know anything about it, really, but the punk-era was all about doing in the face of raw-ignorance. That was a lesson Wes and I missed – we needed a poet-megalomaniac like Paul to pull our bookish curiosity out into the open. You can’t forget, too, that U2 is the name of a spy plane, something we know about, but that has secrets. It flies high in the atmosphere, above the clouds, and comes back down to earth with secrets about human beings and governments. Music is like a secret, and Wes and I knew it. Today the locus of the secret has changed, the wardrobe becomes a door in a wall or something. Today it is, “What is the Matrix?” That’s code for the usual questions: Who am I? Who are you? What is this all about? Can it be different than it is? Computer networks hint at this same kind of thing, but I think it is a fools gold to a large degree. Music comes out of the soul. You can look sideways through it and see something, close your eyes and almost touch something. That’s what brought those guys together in 1976, and it was the same thing for Wes and I.

Now the problem for any artist is figuring out how to talk. You get started trying to talk, and you want to talk, but you don’t know what to say. You’ve got this sickness welling up in side you, and no idea how to get well. It is sweet pain. Drowning in meaning, yet also in frustration, like when you have forgotten something important and can’t remember what it was. Now, U2 is world-class. People will be listening and studying them 100 years from now – 200 years. They were speaking already with Boy, their first album, but the language is amateur. It needs focus, self-awareness and control, aspects that didn’t begin to kick in until The Joshua Tree. As Bono said in an interview in 1988: “…I think that with this record U2 has begun to run.” That’s exactly what Wes and I wanted to do, we wanted to run. We were desperate to run. And so, we listened.

Oh, incidentally, there is at least one reason why Boy had something there already. The reason why Paul Hewson could already, at 18, begin saying something about being that was larger than himself, kind of like Emerson’s essay "Self Reliance": “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius.” His mother died in 1974, when he was 14. To put it bluntly: he realized at an early and formative age that no one gets out alive.

The Joshua Tree, 1987

Sometime in late 1987, I can remember exactly where I was, in the Fort Henry Mall in Kingsport. I was on a break from my warehouse job at Brendles, and, for some reason, I found myself in Record Bar checking out the latest releases. It is weird to think about it, but there were still racks of LP’s available for sale. (CD’s were expensive and reserved in a special section near the front of the store.) It was in the very back that I came across an album just washed out and existential enough to catch my attention. The album was entitled, The Joshua Tree. I thought, “What kind of music is this?”

Wes and I had been trading music back and forth for several years. He and I were mutually supportive hedonists of the senses. We would get together and write, discuss, draw, lampoon and generally spur one another on toward all things creative. The liberal arts were our playground. (Really, it was the meaning and mystery of being which fascinated us and brought us together, but we didn’t know this directly, though we were never indirectly unaware of it.) Wes was the first person I knew to own a CD player, and he would regale me at school with his listening experiences and share them on evenings spent just hanging out in his room. I remember, for example, his telling me about listening to the entire length of Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade (now a personal favorite). Somehow or another, Wes purchased a copy of The Joshua Tree on CD. He made me a cassette copy of the same on a lovely 90-minute Capsule Maxell (the Rolls of commercial blank cassettes) and we listened to The Joshua Tree every day for the next four years.

Around this same time, two other important things happened in my musical world. First, I decided to invest in an expensive car stereo system. I owned a hatchback 1979 Toyota Celica, and my friends and I spent a lot of time in it going from place to place and generally staying “out there” rather than at home. The entire city had, overnight, become our living rooms, and we enjoyed trying out the furniture. All this time was usually spent listening to music, which was okay until the factory sound system chewed itself to bits one afternoon. Wes and I spent a weekend upside down pulling that deck out, but eventually, looking all the world like a surgeon, electronics, knobs, rubber wheels and bits of metal spilling out all over his kitchen table, Wes pronounced it hopeless. I had to agree. I decided to set aside some of my paycheck for a few months and buy a really good sound system. We knew a guy who could install it, and we had plenty of questions over the next few months for the tech guys at audio sound places all over town. In the end, I put a $1,000 Alpine system into that car. I had a cabinet built for the speakers, to which were also attached two Bazooka subwoofers. Mmmmm, that was great! I remember telling my Dad during a “is this fiscally responsible?” discussion: “Dad, of course this isn’t the smartest thing to do! However, I am never going to be able to throw this much money away again ever in my life -- I may as well do it now on something I will enjoy.” My Maxell copy of The Joshua Tree was the first thing I played on the Alpine. I can’t tell you what it felt like to feel the opening chords of “Where the Streets Have No Name” slowly boil up from the bottom of the seats in a rolling crescendo of frenetic wonder. It was like the Kingdom of God! There was no comparing the sound of the cardboard factory install of before, to the calibrated, Alpine clarity of the now. Overnight my tastes began to change. Metal proved too crude, too unwashed next to the singular balance of those speakers. You could hear everything. Every layer of sound was available, and seemed to lie effortlessly, beautifully together. Heavy Metal was like a stone against stained glass. I started listening to a lot of classical music. The Joshua Tree, however, didn’t just sound good in the new system, it became a well of musical secrets and apocalyptic meaning. It expanded out into a world, and left most everything else behind it. Looking back, you could say that I purchased that Alpine system to please my friends or myself, to ease the pain from losing my first girlfriend, or to exercise my new sense of economic power and independence. You could say all of these: but I wonder if it wasn’t just to listen to The Joshua Tree.

The second thing: Wes and I decided to form a band.

Sunlight in Winter

I long for sunlight in winter
To stretch out my limbs
   in warm generous rays
And see them washed clean
   by light.
To greet the new day.

Mama's little Frog Prince! I made the froggie hat and crown this morning to go with the costume I found. Guess what Kara is going as? -- Mama's Little Princess! 

Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott / Happy Reformation Day!

When in 1517 indulgences were sold (I wanted to say promulgated) in these regions for disgraceful profit, I was a preacher, a young Doctor of Theology, as they say. I began to dissuade the people from lending an ear to the shouts of the indulgence-sellers. I told them that they had better things to do and that I was sure that in these matters I had the pope on my side. I was relying greatly on his trustworthiness, since in his decrees he had very clearly condemned the excesses of the quaestors [name of a treasury official in ancient Rome] as he called the indulgence preachers.

Shortly thereafter I wrote two letters, one to Albert, the archbishop of Mainz, who was getting half the money from the indulgences (the other half was going to the pope, a fact of which I was at the time ignorant), the other to the ordinary of the place, Jerome, bishop of Brandenburg. I begged them to put a stop to the shameless blasphemy of the quaestors, but they despised this poor little brother. Therefore, finding myself despised, I published a list of theses and, at the same time, a sermon in German on indulgences. . . . What I did toppled heaven and consumed earth by fire.

~ Martin Luther. Introduction to the 1545 complete edition of his works.

Faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God.  It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith.

Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.  Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.

~ Martin Luther, from the introduction to his commentary on Romans.

Happy Reformation Day!!

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Caleb, lemon-yellow in his jammies and peaches and cream in his cheeks, had a great time simply smiling at me yesterday.  He smiled at me for about two hours last night.  Lynn-nore had to step out – it was an emergency, we were out of diapers – leaving Caleb and I to camp out on the living room floor and mutually entertain each other.  I entertained him with some scrunchy circles.  One is green, with wavy lines.  The other is blue, with more wavy lines.  It has a bell inside, to which Caleb likes to listen.  He doesn’t really know what to do with these crunchy circles when he gets his hands on them.  His hands wave around like blindfolded pre-schoolers at a hyperactive piñata, but he still manages to hurl the greenie about 3 feet when I look away.  Grinning and squeaking adorable as gingerbread sugar all the while.

Kara is a good 50 pages into The Silver Chair.  I’m amazed at C. S. Lewis’ fondness for lengthy description.  He can go for as long as two pages simply describing Narnian marshland and some low hills.  I resolved last year, just a few pages into Voyage of the Dawn Treader, not to elide a single word.  Nevertheless, Kara seems to follow along.  “Why is Aslan in all of these books?” she asked me last week.  “Ah!” I intoned, “that is not for me to say, but for you to figure out.”

Two applications went out last night.  I was up late writing long-answer essays for one of them.  It is hard to not really enjoy having my books upstairs.  They seem so happy to see me, and even Lynn-nore, who seemed a few years ago to have had quite enough to do with bookshelves-as-décor, says hello to them.  Occasionally, during their 3-year basement exile, I’d go down there and greet them and make alligator promises.  But the light of one solitary bulb coupled with the concrete cold of it all made subterranean study or writing an impossibility.  “One day you’ll have a proper home,” I’d tell them.  And, even now, it could be years before they see proper shelves.

My Dad called the other day.  Turns out he liked the N. T. Wright lectures I gave him (I knew that he would.)  Why is it that Anglicans are turning out such good stuff – N. T. Wright, Marva Dawn, Rowan Williams -- even as their denomination turns to mush?  Could it be the subtle influence of creedal Christianity providing a little backbone, even from the bottom of the denominational wastebasket; a suppressed influence, wandering like a stray wind through the prayer book and tradition?

Another Success Story for Miriam and Moses

Well it appears that all went well today with Kara at school as Miriam. She attended Chapel with her class and stood up in front with another little girl too shy to stand by herself and the school got to guess which character Kara was. The other little girl's costume was a bit more obvious with wings and a halo, but Kara was pleased that people were able to figure it out. Evidently nothing else happened at school because that's all that was mentioned today!

No school this Friday, so we'll have to plan a fun day. Monday Kara's class is having a Pumpkin Party and I'm going to be helping out with that in the afternoon. Monday evening we are having dinner with the family of another little girl in Kara's class and then we'll all go out Trick or Treating in her neighborhood. Hopefully a good time will be had by all. We are contributing a Princess and a Frog to the festivities. Don't think Thom and I are dressing up... maybe we'll go as a Professor and a conservative Soccer Mom :-)

Kara, this morning, dressed as Miriam with Baby Moses in the basket. She had to dress up as a Bible character for a Chapel this morning at school. They're going to try to guess everyone's costumes. We thought the baby in the basket might help people figure this one out. FYI - the "dress" is actually a maternity shirt from Leslie - thanks, Les! And the scarf came to me from Lil Mom in the late '80s, it might have even been Mama Perry's! Kara now plays with it in her dress-ups. The scarf that Baby Moses is wrapped in was a scarf I bought in high school and wore as a belt. The outfit Baby Moses is wearing is actually a karate outfit made my Aunt Nancy for my cabbage patch dolls. It's too big on that doll, but it works for this occassion. 

Here's a look from the beach yesterday about four hours before high tide. What you really can't see is the wind. 40-60 mph gusts and constant rain. First time we've driven out to the ocean during a Nor'Easter. Quite beautiful and yet fierce and reminds me of the power of such an expanse of ocean and thereby, the power of God. Makes me feel rather small by comparison. 

 

 

 

The Day After Yesterday

At 2:30 pm yesterday, we weren’t sure how it was going to go.  I had been hauling books upstairs for at least an hour, and the water level had risen during that time.  Still, the electricity, notoriously fickle, was still on and the sub-pump was still working.  Both were keeping things under control.  Yet, with another hour’s work ahead of me, not to mention 15 or 20 boxes of other materials, the loss of either could be devastating – and especially since high tide was a few hours off.  So Lynn-nore called Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth.  SWR proved invaluable, helping me move to empty bookcases upstairs and move those umpteen boxes to safer, dryer locations.  The rain stopped.  With everything upstairs, our apartment felt like a storage area.  Lynn-nore cooked a quick dinner of Tortellini and they had to be on their way.  Caleb was perfect the entire time, rocking lackadaisical in his swing, alternately snoozing and waking.  During his waking times, he was content to suck quietly on his thumb and contemplate the smooth clicking sounds of the rocker and the living room scenery.  Kara was also quite good.  She offered to help me do several different things, and Kara also spent time playing with Queen Elizabeth once she had arrived.  During evening hours, we held Caleb for awhile (who was a quart low) and I began sifting and shelving books.  The “toss” pile had grown to some 20 volumes by midnight!  Lynn-nore and I went around most of the evening feeling very much like we did in college.  We couldn’t explain it.  Something about having all my books up in line-of-sight again; something about having friends to dinner and it not being a scheduled thing; something about moving everything around, it all felt optimistic, energetic, youthful and familiar.

This morning did not feel youthful.  It was dark and the rain on the windows kept whispering: “shush….shush….sleep...sleep.”  Kara’s first words were, “Why are you waking me up when it is still dark-time?”  I woke up too late to shave.  AM light always feels like science fiction.  You turn it on to simulate some liminal organic, living past with cardboard industrial prefab.  Mornings in commercials are always sunlit and 9 o’clock.  Kara’s school invited students do dress up as their favorite bible character today.  Lynn-nore puzzled over this for awhile.  Eventually, she and Kara came up with Moses’ sister, Miriam.  L. put Kara in a brown/earth tunic, with a white shawl and carrying a baby in a basket.  The original baby was a girl with blonde hair (I made a crack about how Moses had been replaced in the pilot by Sarah Michelle Gellar.)  Speaking of cracks, it didn’t occur to me until Kara and I arrived at school that she could have been something besides people.  There are lots of things mentioned in the Bible.  We could have, for example, put her in an Eeyore costume and had her continually ask people, “Why are you beating me?”  or sweetly chime out, “Hi! I’m a talking ass.”  Kara and I did decide that Ogasa, who was being particularly loud this morning, must have decided to come as one of Daniel’s lions (pre-Angelic stopper.)

 

Coastal Flood Warning!

Coastal Flood Warning from the National Weather Service:  

A COASTAL FLOOD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM EDT THIS EVENING.

Widespread minor with areas of moderate coastal flooding is likely around the time this evening’s high tide cycle (6pm). Storm force northeast winds of 40- to 50-mph with gusts to near 65mph today will produce a storm surge of 3 to 3 ½ feet.  This, combined with strong wave action of seas climbing to around 25 feet across the MA coast, will produce extensive minor coastal flooding.  Reporting at 12pm, the storm surge had risen to 3 feet at Boston and 2.3 feet in Nantucket.

Needless to say, I’m taking some sick time and heading home to move the library and our files upstairs.  Too bad the washer & dryer can’t magically lift themselves a few feet off the floor.  Everything else is in plastic tubs.  The word at work is “Why haven’t we lost power yet?” combined with stories of the effects previous nor-easters have had on the local power grid.

My cute little man! 

Strong and Smiley! 

Cute picture, but it Caleb doesn't really look like this. His face is usually much rounder and smilier! 

Friday mid-October Noon

You couldn’t ask for a clearer, more blue, more New England fall day than today.  I was just up in Rowley having lunch with Mike Tucker.  There was a blue clapboard house right across the road that was the picture of anglican comfort and good sense.  Pumpkins are everywhere.  They are lined up in rows on windows, stacked in the corners of stairs and driveways, and even squared carefully atop a roof.  The trees are being stubborn about turning this year, but there’s enough on the ground to skitter along roads and sidewalks, slip into floorboards, and cluster around doorfronts.  The air is cold, though, coming down out of Canada.  With a high today of 50 degrees, it isn’t long before winter comes and the snow with her.

I was dreaming a ghost story when the alarm went off this morning: 6:15am.  Caleb stirred.  It is hard to believe, really, that the dark of a house, the solitary action of cleaning up, of sneaking around to find shirt and shoes, means that you gain entrance into the bright, knockabout world of daytime.  Larger thoughts fill up the mind.  They make Lynn-nore worry at the knots in her stomache.  I can’t seem to stop looking at what is right in front of me: Caleb smiling a huge, round toothless smile, his blue eyes narrowing atop bright chubby cheeks; Kara pulling my fingers to show me the pumpkin seeds she picked out by hand; Lynn-nore leaning back against the kitchen cabinets telling me all about a phone call with her mom.

This is not a Pipe

Antagonist: Oh, now where have you been?
Protagonist: Me? I’ve been holding my breath.
Antagonist: And where has that gotten you?  No posts on your blog and nothin’ today neither.  People are going to start thinkin you’ve died or something.  They’re going to stop checking to see if you’ve written, and that’ll be it for you.  May as well talk to yourself then.
Protagonist: You’re right, I know it.  It’s just, I can’t stand speaking right now.  It hurts to hear the words.  Like a bomb falling with each one, messing everything up.
Antagonist: You think too much.  You just have to get yourself out there and see what happens.
Protagonist: But the tension - I hate it!
Antagonist: You’ve gotten stuck - don’t tell me about it.  Standing there isn’t going to get you any further.  The future gets blame enough without carrying your blog along behind it.  Now get your fingers out your ears and open up your eyes a little, oh and pass me something from the fridge while your up.

Caleb and Grandpa!  

I just snapped this one of Caleb sleeping in his crib beside me. He was such a sleepy boy! I had to wake him from a similar position this afternoon to go pick Kara up from school and he's been looking forward to being back in his crib ever since!

And so it goes...

So, it's been 10 days since Thom's last post, even I'm getting sick of looking and not seeing anything SO, here's a brief update on life in New England. We survived about 10 days of straight rain, truthfully, some of it might have been coming at an angle, but it all just kept coming and coming. Fortunately we only had standing water in the basement that first weekend, after that it was just the moldy stench of a soaking wet rug that kept reminding us of the deluge. Yesterday Kara, Caleb and I came home from a playdate and I thought - that's it - that's the last day I'm coming home to the smell of wet carpet - SO, after moving three tons of basement stuff the rug is no longer with us. We dragged it through the dark cobweb invested back hallway behind our basement that leads to the bulkhead door and out it went. A short trip in the truck and it is now disposed of completely.

Meanwhile in other news, Thom's parents were visiting this weekend. His Dad and Karen spent the rainy days of last week bicycling through Vermont with the rest of the hospital execs from East Alabama. We enjoyed a nice weekend visit with them which culminated in a delicious meal at Legal's Sunday evening.

Kara had a fun day today exploring a local farm with her class on a Pumpkin Patch fieldtrip.
Evidently there's a story in there somewhere about a firetruck coming to the farm, but all I've heard so far is "We were on the hayride and we saw fire and a firetruck, but we couldn't get to it." and "There was a firetruck and everything!" Still don't know what happened. If it weren't for the fact that Queen Elizabeth teaches 1st Grade at Kara's school and attended the same field trip I might never get the whole story! (well, I supposed I could actually ask Kara's teacher, now that I think of it!)

Tonight I have a Pampered Chef show - have to leave in an hour. First kitchen show I've done since February. I'm a bit nervous, but it should fall into place ok. Unforunately it's an hour away, so I just hope I break even with the price of gas these days!! (I should, but it seriously affects profit margins)

Friday should be interesting -- I'm volunteering to help out with lunch duty and recess duty at Kara's school. Should be an interesting day.

Hope everyone is well!

Two Catastrophes

Yesterday was the day of two catastrophes. First, the basement flooded. A simple glance down basement showed at least 3” of water, with the sub-pump sleeping on the job. Lynn-nore had long ago re-worked the basement so that everything was off the ground, so there was no need to panic. Still, all that water sitting there and the pump just sleeping away under its wooden trapdoor. Something had to be done!

Taking the broom from its nail beside stairwell, I managed to prop my foot up against the opposing wall, holding myself above the water and providing enough leverage to lift the submerged trapdoor. Bits of dust, cobweb and other unpleasantness pooled around, angry at my labor. And there it was, the pump itself, out cold.

A placed toe made a tentative hold on the trapdoor. I poked and whacked the quiet submersible, all to no avail. And then, just as I was about to give up, it whirred into life. The hose which came up out of the water quivered and shook and took the flood to who-knows where across the ceiling and out of knowing. I dropped the trapdoor and declared victory, going upstairs, then, to continue the Sunday morning sprint to church.

The second catastrophe was a power outage. A manhole just down the street shorted out under the heavy rain and turned back the clock 100 years just at the twilight of the day. Praise God the busy sub-pump had finished bailing us out. Candles came out of hiding and assembled in motley assortment on the living room table. Lynn-nore went at dug-in candle wax with a steak knife. Kara clapped her hands and jumped around the couch in excitement, and Caleb, observing the whole thing stretched out comfortably on the floor, cooed. I called the power company.

The power didn’t come on until 3:30am. I was sound asleep. Lynn-nore told me this morning that Kara’s lamp came on and she, too, did not notice. Lynn-nore got up and went around the house turning everything off – a modern problem, just when things get going again you turn them off as if to say, “Okay, our control over the elements is back in order now. No worries.” I got a good night’s sleep out of it, and woke up late on purpose: mischief minded.

Friday & Fair

Caleb woke up at 6am this morning sucking loudly on his finger. For some reason, he cannot abide having anything on his feet, and so he kicks his covers off and leaves them throwaway at the bottom of his crib. A school morning, I did the usual exercise of dragging myself out of bed and into the shower. During High School, my bathroom was the shower. The shower head came right out of the wall, and the floor was all smoothed concrete. It was very ugly, but quite convenient when it came to self-dragging; nothing to step-over, simply lean against the wall and wait until you wake up. Last night, a few of the Survivor contestants received a shower. The smiles on the faces of the losers reflected not joy for the winners but the knowledge that the jungle insects would find the perfumed skin of their compatriots a far tastier dish in the coming days. Kara has decided to begin cultivating what, by her teen years, will become a stolid resistance to waking for school. This morning, after I was done, I pounced on her like a gorilla, hugging, kissing and bouncing her around while making gorilla noises. There was much laughter and giggling. Today is “bring a friend” day at her school. Her friend is Mrs. Tucker, her Sunday School Teacher.

Wednesday night we went to the Fair. A long-time family ritual, made more affordable by company tickets, the Fair is always an experience in same-and-different. “It was colder last year.” “Isn’t that the place we usually get such-an-such “Have we seen the hatching chicks?” This year, Lynn-nore sensibly cut costs from the ridiculous by pre-making our dinner as well as bringing a few caramel apples along. We still enjoy a ½ pound of Jordan Almonds and some German fries, but, at $5 apiece, home made caramel apples saved a bundle. Kara always enjoys the rides! She even went up in the Ferris Wheel with Mommy and twirled in a spinning strawberry with Daddy. We always see people we know, this year two members of the Black family, and we always stop by the petting zoo to see “Goatie Goat” .”(Though in actuality a different goat each year, Kara imagines each to be the cheeky black one which ate from her hand during her first trip to the Fair two years ago.) Each year we also visit the building of vendors hawking their wares. One of these is always selling various dips with unlimited free samples. Another favorite demonstrates a high-powered hot/cold blender which makes ice cream, soup and salsa from the strangest combinations of fruits and vegetables. Free samples are provided. The giant prize-winning pumpkin this year: 1300lbs!

The Teflon Man

The Teflon Man is walking around today with his legal pad, quick stepping, yet relaxed, hands in pockets and eyes disaffected.  I know well this affect:  He is proud of himself today.  He is like a cock pruning himself before the open door of the barnyard.  Upper management must be on the meeting schedule; he feels like a winner.  The Teflon Man is a fascinating corporate creature, and I’m sure I cannot do him justice.  Yet, allow me to share the following observations:

Distinctively middle-management, the Teflon Man survives by his wits and his allegiances.  His problem is that he is under-educated.  He is an associates degree amid the MBA’s of the meaningful people, and of this he is painfully aware.  His primary defense mechanism is an office-legendary knack for jargon.  A meeting with the Teflon Man is an immersion in business acronym.  The subject is stunned, feeling unaware of the conversation, knocked off balance, providing the Teflon Man a powerful advantage.  Those close to the Teflon Man are usually in the know about this or that catchword, and by such gnostic knowledge he maintains a tight circle of favorites communicating in three-letter grunts and clicks.  Jargon is a powerful wall and he knows how to use it.  In the eyes of the big fish, this ability gives him access to meetings he wouldn’t normally be in, and grants his opinions a weight that they may not ordinarily have had.  Consequently, he has, over the last five years, constructed a web of allegiances in key places throughout the entire company.  In short, he is untouchable.

Also, one has to admire the Teflon Man’s skillful manipulation of that most important form of office currency: the personal anecdote.  See, the basic attitude taken by American business is that people are resources akin to electricity or a power plant.  If the business was fire, some of us would daily be carted off to the incinerator.  Business prefers its resources be easily stored and transported, but people are annoyingly difficult.  They have personal wills and this irritating need for meaning.  It would be best if those who are going off to die remain serial numbers rather than human beings.  It is easier to think of people as collections of marketable skills or label them according to their allegiance to the ideals of the firm (as betokened by little things like elemental tardiness or an arbitrarily discerned but too large percentage of sick days taken, things which don’t apply to those who matter.)  Personal anecdotes dispel this.  Sharing personal anecdotes says, “I am not a resource!” It is political speech of the highest order in cube-ville.  Teflon Man is a master.

Amazingly tight-lipped, the Teflon Man simply does not talk about his family life save where a tale is needed to extend or confirm personal power.  He uses an anecdote to form a buddy-chain with a big fish in a meeting.  He uses an anecdote to advertise his position as a living person, as one who matters.  He uses an anecdote to communicate his willingness to be “one of you little people.”  Oh yes, this is especially true in that silly, adolescent exercise called: the personal review.

Now, I worked for the Teflon Man for years, and found him to be a good boss simply because his ambitions kept him out of mine.  No one would call him a good manager.  He is no good for the furtherance of others; mentoring is out of the question (though the Teflon Man enjoys considering himself a mentor.)  A personal review by the Teflon Man is a nightmare, simply because he hates doing it.  Therefore, one expects that criticism will predominate simply because it must and not because he actually has anything of substance to say about an actual job.  What he most desires is your invisibility and his visibility to all those who actually matter in the workplace.  So, the way he uses the personal anecdote in a personal review is extraordinary.  Always just enough to qualify as an anecdote and no-more (not an actually sharing of life but a revealing of himself as one who matters), he smiles glassily and first asks you to share one.  It is like having one of the popular kids offer to share a smoke with you.  “Tell you what,” it says, “I’ll give you the privilege of acting like I care while you tell a personal anecdote.”  Not expecting this (honor?) you sort of muddle something, and -- this is where the mastery comes in -- then he shares one of his own. It isn’t like brotherhood.  No, that shared smoke is actually a way of communicating whose in and whose out on campus.  What he’s actually saying by doing this is that he is the one who matters and you do not.  The Teflon Man is a fascinating corporate creature, and I’m sure I cannot do him justice.

Go Team !