welcome to the island of America

One of the few news stories that got through to us on our recent backwoods vacation was the detention of a Bollywood superstar at a Newark airport most likely because some typist can’t spell.

Shah Ruhk Khan’s recent experience with our official US welcome committee sent shock waves through our house. We are film freaks and Bollywood is on our passion list---last year we watched Om Shanti Om instead of the Oscars. If you are not a big follower of the genre, let me put it this way: How would you react if the Beatles were on a suspected terrorist list because of a typo? Can you imagine Brad and Angelina and their multinational brood questioned for 66 minutes at an airport? For a huge chunk of the world outside our myopic borders, Mr. Khan is bigger than Elvis. And I think he’s a better dancer, but we could argue on that.

It’s a little bit wonky, but if you managed to read through Richard Florida’s work, you will get his point that economic prosperity flows where diversity and creativity thrives, and as Mr. Khan’s experience showcases, this country has been in a creative lockdown for years. We don’t track the flight of artists, but I know film production is fleeing our borders with frightening speed, and with it go the really good jobs that kept me and my colleagues afloat. When you are making movies, you go wherever the box office gold WANTS to go. And there’s the struggling music industry: more than one music festival has had to substitute a headliner last minute because a major, well-known artist has trouble getting a visa. I think it’s really sad and bad for long term economic recovery that it’s nearly impossible for interesting creative folks to get here without jumping through innumerable hoops. I mean I know Art is a Hammer with which to change reality, but famous folk are easy to keep an eye on.

My kids are growing up in a global economy and culture—they have Facebook friends and email pen pals on multiple continents. I am frustrated that the education system only requires them to master a single language--even developing nations require at least 2. The planet is shrinking---but the only way to really be global is to go there whereever there is and have them whomever we designate as them come here. We need to meet, converse and exchange ideas and art with the world. And we need to understand where everyone is coming from, so the worst thing about the fact that the biggest Bollywood movie star in the known universe was treated as he was, was the fact that the folks detaining him had no real idea of who he was. His face is instantly recognizable to at least twice as many folks as the US population. We cannot build our security if we isolate our selves and teach our children a single language: our own. Talking to ourselves about ourselves is not relevant or helpful. We cannot be safe in a world if we don’t know who our neighbors are.

Horse Camp 09

Just got back from the land of a thousand mosquito bites. Year 11 of our equine tradition, and what a year of change! The original members of our band have mostly moved on to college, high school, jobs and opera gigs (though my eldest made it back for 2 lessons and a stunning fall from a horse after a jump!!!!!) We completely changed the format which FREAKED out my habit bound kids. We kicked off the week with a visit to Pierogi fest in Whiting Indiana (surrealistic Kitch in a land that time is leaving alone in the shadow of steel mills refineries and casinos) then on to Michigan where we took LESSONS instead of the same old camp hang out for hours around horses and get dirty format, and we were at new stable where everything happens outside. Good thing we had the new 80 sunscreen. We tried WESTERN saddle. We tried JUMPING oh my god. And I got to spend a week with TWEENS. Next year, I need to get some little ones back in the mix because the social jockeying and nascent hormone thing got to be a bit much.

The menu was just plain weird---with vegetarians and foodies and celiacs as the predominant eaters, we did Indian food and falafel and pesto. Not a chicken nugget to be found. We watched classic films, not movies. We went to a French Market. My kids may never recover. After a decade of doing the exact same thing, all this new stuff was truly shocking.

My favorite new thing was Christmas in July at the South Bend Silverhawks baseball game. Note the adorable Jewish girls flanking Santa in his surfing shorts---this picture was taken right before the skies opened and lightening flashed and we got to enjoy our very first RAINED OUT game!!!

I also got to enjoy a new thing: NO DOGS for three days. Ah, peace! I could have used some adult company and a happy hour, but I had enough caffeine to get me moving and I did get to read 1.5 novels. I made it to the top of Warren Dune without panting. We still picked and ate blueberries, although at a new berry patch, and we still went bumper boating and go carting and bought too much tooth rotting candy at the 5 and dime, which is miraculously still there (many businesses are not)

In the end, it was perfection, though I am waiting for the welts from the poison ivy to show up!

Angela's list

Every spring, before I am swamped by impending summer insanity with my job’s Frantically Busy Season, I make my infamous list. I also make this list every year before the Holiday Season Tsunami swamps the family. On this list, I write
That Which Is Essential.
The necessity for The List dear friends, is Yoga Mama’s lesson for this month:

Before you get lost in the overwhelming schedule of trying to have it all and do it all and losing your mind, before you crash and burn with your inner gears in overdrive, before you are sunk in the sea of overblown expectations and bound at the ankles by limited time and resources, you must, on a clean sheet of pristine paper, stake your claim to your touchpoints which will moor you in a state of zen equilibrium, while all those around you spin their wheels in the muck of mediocrity.

The summer list is simply what I MUST do to have the Best Summer Ever and it can’t have more than 15 things on it. Much of the list now falls into the category of tradition, so its not hard to put it together. This year’s list
1. go to the Renaissance Faire
2. eat a picnic at an outdoor concert
3. go to Super Dog
4. watch sunset at the beach
5. eat fresh picked fruit
6. go to a big screen movie on a really hot day and eat popcorn for dinner
7. see an outdoor movie
8. mostly give up driving
9. drink coffee in a garden
10. grow tomatoes
11. read 5 novels
12. socialize with a neglected friend

I have to say, I am one week into July and I have checked off most of this list. There are things on previous lists that were so delicious that they become habits, kind of the background noise of contented existence: grilling out, watching classic films, making pesto whenever there is a fresh crop of basil. You will notice what is NOT on the list: I do not write “clean out the garage” or ”reorganize the filing cabinet” or “fix the busted ceiling”---those items require internal and cash resources I lack at this time and they would bring me no sensual pleasure. And with summer here the briefest of sweet seasons, I need my list to be In the Moment, to refresh my spirit and renew my soul, not beat me up for being the dysfunctional broken Human that I am.


My family
Is more Druid
Than Hi Tech,
Tracing the seasons
With our traditions and
Gatherings
At Certain times
With Specific people
And rituals
To which we must adhere
Lest the universe comes undone.
We go to Bernies
To declare independence
And I must bring the corn.
We gather beneath
The Blinking Hot Dogs
To welcome
The Spirit of Summer.
We ride the horses
At Dawn
To initiate the novices
We don our Elizabethan Garb
To Wallow in the dust
To endcap
A solstice Season.
Twitter and facebook may link us
But our traditions
Make our world revolve.

How an WNBA game is a little like a CSO concert...

If you know me well, you know that I’m not exactly the target demographic for sales pitches for sports team season tickets. I’m the type to subscribe to opera and theater and not the Women’s NBA ---but I understand and appreciate the innate drama of sport, and I think it’s important for my kids to take in everything—even if they spend a big part of the pre-game/pre-show hollering how boring its going to be. In the past week I extracted my kids from the idiot box watch, shoved them into the mini van and headed to a Chicago Sky game. And I have to say: after actually attending a game, the overall experience is a LOT like, in terms of family entertainment, going to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s kids series. First of all, when you head on out to either the CSO or the WNBA, what you will witness, fundamentally, is a spectacle of mastery. You will see humans who have spent a very big chunk of their lives perfecting their craft, and these folks are the very best of the best. They have survived grueling auditions and draft picks, and they have to stay really good to keep working. Their skill brings them a small celebrity and a living wage—the two operations are not the star studded overblown mass consumed celebrity of say the boys NBA, but true devotees know who they follow and love, whether its Jia Perkins or, in my families case, soprano Joyce DiDonato.

For the Chicago Sky team, like the CSO family series, a choice has been made to gear the show/the game to be the Ultimate Family Experience. At CSO you’ll find a musical instrument petting zoo. At Chicago Sky you will get two mascots, a magician and free airbrush tattoos. At the CSO they push musical literacy, at Chicago Sky, with the help of a corporate sponsor, they push reading and regular literacy. Both venues have percussion—the Chicago Sky drumline is definitely more danceable than the kettle drums at CSO. Both venues have interactive art booths, and both have Take Aways---though the CSO could learn a lot from the WNBA about those lovely lovely sponsors who laden the audience with ever desirable Cool Stuff. Not sure how I would feel about the musicians tossing tee shirts into the house, but maybe coupons for music lessons?

And the venues: the UIC pavilion and Orchestra Hall feel up close and personal, perfectly sized and close to the action, even if you are in the balcony. Both have enough potties for itty bitty bladders. And both feature nearby parking—so important when you are squiring extra kiddies to the Event, or have to carry a sleeping child back to the car at the end. The WNBA though, has way better food---cocoa and cookies can’t compete with dippin dots and Chicago Dogs.

But at the end of the day, you can’t go wrong with a family or group outing to either the WNBA or the CSO. Happy Experiences!

poem for a hot day

Summer, after solstice
shows up
As if on contract,
Warmer than a womb.

Clothing, routines
Drop to the floor

We sip Pinot in the garden
smelling leaves,
watching moonflowers bloom
in slutty slow motion.

Movin On

Tis the season of transition. In our house its been chock full of culminating events, final parties, award thingies, final gatherings and two weekends of recitals. I am keeping the paper goods out just in case I have forgotten a celebration—we are ready for a party at a moments notice. And of course this is a month of new people, new situations, growing up. My youngest played Bach from memory. My oldest got on a plane to go to Europe without a single family member. And I survived my first day of running 8 day camps at once. Every one who works for me can quote my science fiction speech on transitions—you know how in all science fiction when you move from one space time continuum to another, you can come apart molecularly, and how we have to be the heroes and make sure that all time travelers make it to the other side? But this is the season when you close the chapter on one thing and turn the page to another. And that brings me to another one of Yogamamas Rules of the Universe.

The Rule of Transition
All transitions are important. They must be marked with ritual and some kind of food—the food needs to repeat so that every time you do the transition you want that food. The beginning of summer at our house is Super Dogs and a milk shake. I also like to mark them with smells---hairspray for ballet recitals, the spirea flowers on the piano for that recital, the stinky sox of the baseball playoffs…you get the idea. All transitions should be attended by Significant Persons—who can be friends, folks you pull off the street, or ship in from distant lands. All transitions should be marked—on the calendar, in the journal, the blog or the email. And all transitions must for better or worse, interrupt the flow of daily life. You need to be disrupted before you come through the wormhole on the other side.

Every last day of school, my poor husband has to eat three different and separate meals out so that each kid gets a date with him. He gains 5 pounds before the end of the day.
Every first Friday of the first week of camp after we have to drink a margarita on my front porch. After the piano recital we have to invade a local restaurant and destroy it with rice all over the floor due to the young age of several siblings. So wherever you are I hope you are enjoying your transitions in the vortex of the year.

Movie Musings

When my oldest child was 2, we took her to her first Big Screen Movie: Toy Story, by then unknown Pixar, an animation upstart. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and it took 25 minutes down country roads to get to the vaudeville house that the little town of Niles had converted into a cinema—the Ready 4. I remember that ten dollars got all three of us in and the works in terms of sodas, popcorn and South Bend chocolates. That theater has long since closed, but I can still take my family of 5 to the movies for under $20 out there in the country. Going to a movie in the city requires cashing in a savings bond and forget the eats unless you are in a top tax bracket. So we almost never go any more, weighing carefully which are the must see Big Screen, and which will work on the Big TV. But going back to that very first movie experience……. She turned around as the credits rolled and, eyes wide, said That Was A GREEEEEAAAT movie. And it was. At two, with no more experience (Sesame Street, Bananas in Pajamas, Disney Songs videos) than any two year old media savvy kid, she instinctively knew that this was a classic. And it has stood the test of time—it was the first movie she downloaded on her iPod.

Pixar is now owned by Disney, and is still turning out classics. We very uncharacteristically went to see their tenth, the new UP on its first day of release here, the whole entire family. WHOA. I still thing that Wall E may be a more important film due to its political message, but my kids are all making our dogs do DUG voices, and you can’t really quote WALL E since it goes so long without any dialogue. It was a wonderful family experience, and I am sure we will buy the DVD so we can keep sharing. As the music guys say on their show—it’s a buy it not a burn it.

And that one time two year old with great taste in film recently had her first short screened at a film festival and is eyeballing film school, and she is trying to participate in her third international film festival—this one in India. Ok, ok, it probably helps that your mom is a sometimes media teacher, and I am not sure how much weight one should give to those early experiences because I am a firm believer that kids pop out pretty much formed and its our job as parents to put what they need in front of them, but it has been interesting to watch her taste in media develop. We made the mistake a couple of years ago of buying tickets to the wrong theater when Disney released the Miyazaki film Spirited Away a few years ago---we wanted to take the whole family to the dubbed version, and ended up having to read subtitles to our 2 pre readers for 3 HOURS—we were NOT popular with the people sitting behind us. But my then 11 year old was suddenly WILD for Miyazaki and to this day prefers to see the film in the original language with subtitles. I learned something important with that error. You should just expose kids to the good stuff, to the real stuff, to the unusual stuff. They don’t HAVE preconceived notions. They are sponges ready to soak it all up.

In the end film is a way to tell stories. And storytelling is part of the deepest aspect of our humanity, from when we began as a species to paint on walls and to grunt out tales around the fire. We are hardwired to get it, if its done well, even with subtitles. In the end though, the story told must be a good one. It must resonate within our lives and help us bring meaning to our lives, because we all walk around, desperately trying to find meaning.

As I coped over the weekend with the ongoing and slow personal but universal tragedies of mortality and the economy, heightened intensely by taking in a theatrical adaptation of Gogol’s Overcoat (the Russians are way better at the human tragedy and existentialism than the French), I thought that the existential reality of human life is tragic—we die and we are aware that we die. That completely sucks. And all the beauty and love and goodness are more intense because we die. Some days, it just hurts so much to live with that. But that’s the mirror side of the tragedy. Live we must. And tell the tale.

As I told my sister in law, after dropping off her kids which I had whisked away to Michigan and the carnival and mosquito bites and poison ivy and sibling battles—

It is not what really happened, but the Tale We Tell After, and how we tell it. So live, and tell good stories.