Light in the Darkness

Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.
- Victor Lebow, 1955

Today is Earth Day, and when I woke up this morning, my back spoke to me. "Nerissa," it intoned." Get thee to a yoga class. You cannot spend another day hunched over your MacBook. I refuse." So my poor, chronically rounded and abused back and I went to Yoga Sanctuary where my favorite yoga teacher in the world, Sara Rose, was teaching us balancing poses so that we could better deal with all the crap life throws at us in mid April. On the way up the stairs, I noticed a flyer that said Annie Leonard was speaking at UMass tonight. I'd loved her video Story of Stuff (which my friend Sarah Getz sent me back in 2007) so much, I'd referenced it and her in my first edition of How to Be an Adult. Maybe Elle and Jay would be old enough now to get something out of it.

In class, Sara said, "Aren't you glad you have a yoga practice? When the world goes crazy, you have something to come back to, to lean into, to sustain you."

I immediately thought, yes, and that is why I am a musician. Music does that for me. It's the ground of my being. It's what I come back to over and over again.

I am seeing another kind of light at the end of the tunnel. For the past year and a half, I have been working on a second edition to my 2008 book How to Be an Adult, which came out on Mercy House Books and Collective Copies (our local, independent print shop-turned-book-publisher.) Almost right way I'd wanted to make the book an ebook to cut costs to consumers. But I got sidetracked by having a second child and that music career thing. Some other stuff happened (another book, another couple of CDs and a DVD, kindergarten, Suzuki violin) and so it's taken me till now to finish my last edits. On Wednesday the book went to my editor, who says she can have it back to me by mid-May. I am hoping for an early June release. There will be an ebook version and also a new hard copy (paperback) version. I also plan to post excerpts weekly right here, so stay tuned.

It's been hard to be quiet, to be away from this blog while I hustled to get my book done. So much has happened this spring, this week, this month. It feels wrong not to write about Boston, about the bruises we all feel. As with Sandy Hook, the bombing felt too close, almost, to even talk about. It shakes us, leaves us unmoored to see how very close the gap is between self and other, when something like this happens so close to home. Some of can and do, like the wonderful Anne Lamott); some of us would rather deflect our grief elsewhere. I've felt myself welling up over my kids' rapid growth spurts, probably to not have to think about the sweet 8-year-old whose front teeth were just growing in, whose face smiled out at me in digital images wherever I turned last week. Every April, I gird myself mid-month for something like this to happen (why? I wrote about that here in 2011.) Life is expensive, and April is all about the big gamble that is birth. Birth comes at a cost. Life is risky. Easter and Passover both remind us of this paradox, as does Stravinsky's "Rites of Spring."

One of the sobering things about revising my book is to see how far I've strayed from those ideals of my early 20s which somehow lasted through my early forties. Maybe it was because I was in a rock band, and then a touring folkie, and a denizen of Northampton and a latecomer to motherhood, but I hung on to my vision of being a downwardly mobile artist who lived outside the system for a good long time. Re-reading my own book has made me wistful for that lifestyle where I could spend 80% of my income on Whole Foods and not worry about saving for my kids' college education, let alone buying them a new plastic gizmo every time they filled a marble jar for good behavior. As I look around my crowded and cluttered house, full of no=longer-used toys, I wonder, how did I get here? As I set up my laptop on the dining room table so the whole family could gather round to see Annie's Story of Stuff, I was horrified by how many of her wonderful examples applied to me, how fully I have become the consumer at the center of her linear march of doom. She parses the journey from Extraction to Production to Distribution to Consumption to Disposal. There's a Golden Arrow between the train cars of Distribution and Consumption, (which is the nexus Victor Lebow talks about in the quotation above.) That Golden Arrow is increasingly where I find myself these days. I buy a new iPhone every time my contract is up. I have twenty-five shoulder bags up in the attic. Every couple of years I “need” a new bag. Most ironically, I lust for a new Prius. My eyes follow my neighbors' curvy little cars all over town. My kids, whom I've roped into my campaign, can spot them by ear, now and squeal every time they see OR hear one. I say it's because of the gas mileage, and I reason that to get one would be good for the environment. But the truth is, even though Tom's truck gets about 8 miles to the gallon, he bikes to work every day and drives the truck at most couple times a week, and just for short distances. Which would use more resources? To keep on as we are, or to buy a whole new vehicle?

The day after the bombing, we had been scheduled to go to Cambridge with our kids. We were going to ride the T and see the ducks and the swan boat in the public garden. Instead, we went to the dinosaur museum in Amherst and rode our bikes on the bike path and had our cousins over for a campfire complete with marshmallows and singing and the spring's first case of poison ivy. As the moon rose and the sun set, I pulled out my guitar and we all sang "Hey Jude," the older kids huddled together in my soft guitar case, and four-year-old Jay playing along on his collection of tambourines and wooden blocks. We sang a few songs, but the kids wanted "Hey Jude" again. Paul McCartney's song of comfort to his young friend Julian Lennon on the occasion of his parents' divorcing reached easily through the decades and comforted us, as we channeled it through guitar and voices (and tambourines. And really loud screeches).

Our happiness as a nation has diminished since 1955, says Annie somewhere in the middle of the Story of Stuff, because even though we now have way more stuff than we used to have, we don't have the time to use it. We don't sit around and talk to our neighbors, laugh around the kitchen table, jam around the campfire. But last Tuesday, we did. The smoke rose and so did our voices, filling the space between birth and death, between you and me, between known and unknown. In the face of Boston, in the aftermath of Earth Day and my own and our collective shame at the state of the world, it can be hard to keep on hoping for a better world. In my own little microcosm, it can be hard to believe that my poor old body can ever get straightened out again; it's been hunched over keyboards, guitars and babies for way too long. But what is the alternative? William Sloane Coffin says hope is "a matter of the soul, not about the circumstances of one's life." It's all about that light in the darkness. The darkness is so much more vast than that wee little light. But all one needs to see a little is a wee little light. So I will go back to my yoga, my boring daily stretches. I will go back to circling the house before bed to make sure all electrical appliances are unplugged and taking their own rest. I will restrain my consumer impulses. And I won't forget to pick up my guitar when I start to lose hope. Better yet, I'll find some under-20s and sing with them.

What Do You Remember About Music?

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of holding a baby just 10 days old. It was mid afternoon, and I was guessing her poor mama hadn't really slept since the birth. Elle and I took turns cuddling the baby, while my friend crept upstairs for a much needed nap. After a few minutes, the baby began fussing. I picked her up, walked around the room, sang our version of "Hush Little Baby." Still gritchy. I switched to "All the Pretty Horsies" and did a gentle canter-y gait. More fussing. Then I started in on Ledbelly's "Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie." The baby pulled her head off my shoulder (strong baby!) and stared at me as if in disbelief. She stopped crying and listened as I sang. When her mother came downstairs fifteen minutes later, I told her what had happened.

"No wonder," said her mother. "We played that song and sang that song many times while she was in the womb, and since birth."

I'd certainly heard of this happening--baby recognizing pre-womb music post-womb--and in fact, we wrote about this phenomenon in our book All Together Singing in the Kitchen: Creative Ways to Make and Listen to Music as a Family. But I'd never witnessed it so directly. (Well, maybe I did. Maybe it happened with my own kids, but I was so sleep deprived then, I have no recollection.)

Today in Jay's Suzuki class the teacher had the four-year-old pre-twinklers form a circle. She played "pass the Twinkle," playing the first line of "Mississippi Stop Stop" to the child on her left, who in turn, wordlessly passed it on to the child on his left, and so on, around the circle. "Isn't it amazing," she said. "How you all knew what to do, and could do it without even saying any words. Music is a language we can all understand."

Plans for SOS-SOA are looking up. Emails are circulating. I am making phone calls, juggling schedules, refining our focus. Meanwhile, doing a lot of thinking about the role of music in our children's lives. Why fight to keep music in the schools?
-it's a language we all share.
-it cuts through reason and goes right to the heart.
-when I look back on my own school memories, so many of them have to do with music class, performing, practicing an instrument. Maybe that's just because I am a musician, but I can't imagine growing up without all the music I had.
-it unites a group of disperate kids
-it's the only academic discipline that is equally left-brained and right-brained

What about you? What do you remember about music education growing up?

For more about music education, visit the National Association for Music Education.

SOS-SOA-Save Our Schools-Save Our Arts

photo c/o Sarah Buttenweiser. Read her always wonderful, insightful and inspiring blog, "Standing in the Shadows."

Time for Spring, time for budget cuts. Time for Big Ideas.

As I posted earlier, we're facing a huge budget deficit in the school system here in Northampton (endemic in Massachusetts because of a combination of Prop 2 1/2 and some crazy formula they made 30 years ago). The proposed cuts are heartbreaking: $1.2 million all together, including bussing, many classroom teachers including our dear almost-family member Ms. Mc, many teachers in the high school and middle school, and of course, arts and music teachers at the middle school and high school. Katryna and I want to fight it. Of all the issues near and dear to our hearts, this is number one. We are who we are as artists, musicians and people because of the music teachers we had in our own school systems.

Tuesday I attended a meeting at the middle school (JFK in Florence). They were expecting 30 people on a snowy night after a snow day. Instead they got over 175. Peter Kocut, our state rep, laid out clearly for all of us the need to increase our state taxes. (No hard sell with me. I think it's ridiculous how little we pay and how much we get, but that's another story. And I do know that not everyone can afford higher taxes. But a lot of people can, and I am all for a progressive tax code. If everyone in Northampton paid $320, we'd cover the budget deficit.)

Peter Kocut spoke at great length about how we got here, why we have the deficit, how he is working hard to get legislative change, but it'll be two years if he's successful before we have the money to restore the cuts. And if we don't take action now, there will be more cuts.

Since 2000 we've had to cut and cut and cut. There is not too much more to cut.

A 13-year-old girl stood up and said, "I hear what you're saying. But the thing is, I want to know how to save our band teacher's job. She's the best teacher we've ever had. And I want my little brother to get to have her when he's at JFK middle school. What can we do? How can we help?"

Right. Blah blah blah. How do we get our teachers to stay?

If anyone with a heart could see these kids imploring us adults to let them keep their band teacher, they'd find it impossible to refuse them. I'd personally give all my savings to keep our teachers at Jackson Street whose jobs are on the cutting board. But it doesn't work that way. If we do private fund raising, the taxpayers will think the problem is solved. And I don't believe our public schools should be funded by private fundraising. What about schools in poorer communities that can't fundraise as effectively?

It was strongly suggested at the meeting that an override would be necessary again.
A JFK teacher stood up. "In 2009 we were in a similar place. And we were in a recession. Everyone said the override couldn't pass. We got 60% of the vote, and we saved our teachers from being cut. We can do it again."

"And your job," said our city councilwoman Pamela Schwartz to the 13-year-olds. "Is to spread the word. Tell your neighbors. Tell all the adults you see. Get out there and lobby!"

Who could I lobby? I thought as I sat there feeling helpless. Who cares the most about arts and music in the schools? Besides the students? HooteNanny moms and dads and grandparents! I whispered as much to my friend Liz. "We should do a benefit to raise awareness." She pointed over to the middle schoolers. "Well, be sure to include those kids!"

So as soon as the meeting was adjourned, I made my way over to the group of middle schoolers. I explained who I was and how I had access to about 300 local moms and dads. "Let's put on a show!" I said (basically). My friend Lucien, a high school freshman at NHS overheard. "I can get a group from the high school," he offered. Our longtime publicist, Michaela O'Brien is a parent of two boys in the school system. She immediately offered to help, too.

So here's the vision: Katryna and I do a benefit--proceeds go towards helping publicize the override. Also onstage with us are the JFK Jazz Band and groups TBD from Northampton High School. I'd also love to have the Jackson Street Faculty Ukulele group and maybe one other performance by JSS or another school. All the schools. Let's celebrate our young musicians in this town that's so well-known for music and arts.
We need:
-a location (NHS? First Churches? Helen Hills Hills? Center for the Arts?)
-a date (late April, early May--we're having a hard time finding a date due to so many moving pieces)
-a sound system and someone to run it
-some volunteers to collect money, help set up and clean up
-the teachers of the school groups on board
-to reach out to the Gazette, RSI, FCR, other media

Will you help us? Do you want to join a discussion to make SOS-SOA happen? Please email me at Nerissand@gmail.com or respond to this blog with your contact information.

Speak Up for the Arts and Music in our Schools, part 1

[From the Jackson Street School Music Assembly 2012]
A friend just sent me a copy of the proposed budget cuts for the Northampton school districts. I went through them all, and I am heartbroken. I feel so strongly that we need to speak up and raise awareness about these cuts. If our wonderful schools lose all these teachers and programs and services, they will not be as strong. I think we should talk about how weakening our schools affects real estate, an issue that even folks who are out of the school-age era care about. If our schools cease to be a draw, the values of our homes will fall. Educating our young people is a direct investment in the future of Northampton. Of course, as a parent, I feel there's no better use for our tax dollars. I am sure many feel the same, whether or not they have children in the public school system. But we have to talk to our friends and neighbors about this. I am hoping for another override.

I had the pleasure of attending Jackson Street School's annual music assembly. I was moved to tears by the efforts of the music teacher, the passion of the teachers who supported their students and the whole event, the strength of the principal, Gwen Agna and the gorgeousness of the student body who sang a song written for the United Nations called "United," bespeaking a multinational, multiethnic world. The kids sang music from Ireland, India, Mexico and Ghana. At times, they were accompanied by a faculty ukulele band. Music is such a powerful force that unites a community like no other, and it breaks my heart to see potential cuts in music, arts and drama (to name a tiny few of these cuts) on the table at the Middle School and High School level.

Please, if there is anything you can do to raise awareness about these cuts, speak up. This is our community; these are our kids. They will grow up, go out in the world and eventually run it themselves. We all want maximum love and nurturing for them during these crucial years. May they not be shoved into overcrowded classrooms. May we not take away their arts and music and theatre and PE. My hope is our town is better than that.

To see the proposed cuts, go here.

Apple Products Anonymous

I've figured out one sure sweet pleasure. On occasional Mondays, I unplug my new Hofner bass, pack it up and drive into town with my Beatles scores and head down to a basement cubicle at Downtown Sounds, our town's remarkable little music store. Here I find my teacher, Doug, a 60 something lap steel genius. The two of us choose a Beatles song; he plays guitar and I, with my now mandatory reading glasses, stick my face deep into the Beatles tome and pick out the tablature for the bass line. We started with "Help!" and stalled at "With a Little Help from my Friends"--too hard. We backtracked to "I Want to Hold Your Hand," which has a juicy little chromatic bass riff (after "I think you'll understand...nier nier nier nier neet..."), "Hey Bulldog," "Lady Madonna," "Eight Days a Week." And today I learned that totally wild "Come Together" part, complete with bass slide at the 12th fret. I figured I was ready to try again on "With a Little Help." I stuck my nose back in the book, but quickly found I didn't need to. I found the melodic line sitting neatly in my memory, and I was, with all those other songs behind me, able to find the notes myself on the bass. Progress!

It's March 4 today--my mother-in-law would have had her 83rd birthday. She's been gone now almost 3 years, and today is one of those heavy days where my internal organs all feel constricted and hard as iron. The wind blew with surprising ferocity as I left Downtown Sounds, and the elation from the bass playing blew away down the street. Perhaps to counter this, I bought a new iPhone 5 and gave my 4 to Tom, which necessitated a lot of stupid wasted minutes reprogramming, trying to remember passwords, and surrendering to our daughter who begged to play on the AT&T store's iPad.

I've been in a funk about technology, noticing how addicted we all are to our various devices. I want to throw them all away, even my brand new iPhone, which already strikes me as a disappointment, and go back to communicating through smoke signals and tin cans with string.

It's probably good that I am already done with my new iPhone. As addictions go, this one must be pretty weak if it's already lost all its pull. But still, I need it, just as I need the morning's coffee or risk a killer headache. Gone is that sharp awake feeling I had when I was a caffeine virgin. Now I just drink to maintain the dull high. The tremendous thrill from opening that crisp rectangular box and tremblingly raising the tiny piece of technological perfection to my eyes was obscured by the annoying reality of having to buy all new cables for the damn thing. But then I thought, "Ooooo! A trip to the Apple Store! Maybe I should get the new iPad mini!"

Tom says I need to join APA: Apple Products Anonymous.

February Album Writing Month was a half success. Meaning for the first half of the month I worked on my songwriting, and for the second half I completely abandoned it. I did accumulate what Katryna has termed song "starts"--the way one "starts" plants in March--tiny green dots in a black soil landscape nestled in trays on your window seat. That's what I have, and I don't even have the requisite 14. But mid-month I was seized with a desire to bring to completion a project I've wanted to do since 2010: a revision/new edition and ebook version of How to Be an Adult (2008, Mercy House). I went to Kripalu for President's weekend and spent an entire 48 hours with my face bent over my computer and print-outs. So much for a relaxing yoga retreat. But work--when it's cranking, when I'm really writing, when it's all flow--is actually relaxing for me in the same way that playing Paul McCartney bass lines is relaxing for me (or so I believe, anyway). I left Kripalu invigorated, and moved immediately into a solo parent stint with both kids (and Katryna and her kids) in Florida. This I had no illusions about: I knew a trip to Florida without my husband would be more like boot camp than a proverbial day at the beach, and as I've shared here before, I am not really much of a beach gal. I don't like to swim, am cold unless the water is warmer than my body temp, and I don't know how to just sit back and chill. Like many of my artist friends, I don't really know how to play. I can be playful; I can laugh; I can make others laugh. But sometimes I have to work at it. Forgetting how to play is not conducive to songwriting.

I decided I would treat this trip as the meditation retreat I should have had at Kripalu (the kind of meditation retreat where they don't let you read or write. NOT the kind of meditation retreat where you sit for 15 minutes and then they have some wise American Buddhist, who has written several best sellers that teeter somewhere between spirituality and self-help, talk at length about her funny adventures in India as a 20 something.) No, my meditation retreat would be the kind where I had to be present and awake and iPhone-free for as much as possible.

I did pretty well, actually. It helped that Katryna was with me and that she has given up her iPhone for Lent. We supported each other in our efforts to put down the drug. And our kids got into the act too. "No cell phones!" They'd moan if they caught us reaching for the cigarette-pack-sized thing. And cigarettes are a good metaphor. At the airport on our way home, our flights were delayed. The entire airport was full of people bent in that tell-tale position over their devices, lit weirdly by tiny screens. It was all very 1960s Mad Men where everyone in any context is lighting up. Only we light up with fluorescence, not fire.

I have no idea what kinds of songs I should be writing. I'm at a complete loss. Partly this is because sometime in early February Jay (who is now four and a half) discovered the Nields' back catalogue and has been spinning the disks 24/7. He became obsessed with my ex-husband David and pelted Tom and me with questions about him (he still doesn't know that David was my husband once, or what it means that David's last name is Nields--a name Jay shares with him. He is more interested in the fact that we had 3 Daves in our band.) But hearing our old music ad nauseum (and I really mean ad nauseum) has made it hard to write. Mostly because I think the old stuff is pretty good, and I'm reminded that I've said a lot already. Is there anything more to say? Right now, what seems to need saying is that 20 somethings should know how to cook brussel sprouts, and that it's harder than it used to be to qualify for a mortgage; and that they should know that if they have a dream for their future, they should go for it, but to be prepared for the eventuality that it might end up looking very different from what they imagine.

In my little ministers' Bible study last week, we looked at Luke 13:1-9, which talks about how bad things happen to good people, and how it has nothing to do with God's love for them. God isn't punishing the wicked and rewarding the good. We all know this at some level, even as we worry about our karma. The passage underlined for me the importance of being useful. Jesus is saying no way does God doesn't cause bad things to happen. But Bad Things are our wake up call to realize that life isn't about what we can get out of it (which is my orientation, by the way. Part of me always believed that bumper sticker from the 80s that says "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." Hence the iPhone obsession.)

Life is sucky when we orient that way, though. It tastes like yesterday's coffee after awhile. Life is much sweeter when we see what we can put into it, what we have to give. The CD that I most like hearing (and the one Jay has most recently discovered) is our 2007 release Sister Holler. Those songs were written to order for my sister and my parents and the new church Tom and I had joined. Those songs have always struck me as useful. I'm not saying there's no use in our older songs (and I'm not even saying art has to be useful! On the contrary! Is there any use in "With a Little Help From My Friends?" "Come Together?" well, actually, yes, a ton of use. Was it useful that today I played?) But there's a part of me that just wishes I had that album still to write. Or that I could write a neat sequel.

I completely forgot to register Jay for kindergarten. As I was putting dinner on the table and about to sit down with Tom, he reminded me about it. I threw down my napkin, dashed out of the house and jumped in the car, and as I drove to the school as the sun was setting, I thought, "I'm afraid I'll never write another good song again. I'm afraid I'll never do anything useful ever again. I'll probably spend the rest of my life never doing anything of note, just being me." Once again, the sky, all mottled and purple and blue, glowing with the backlit sun, seemed to say, "So? Do you think I love you because you're a songwriter? Don't you think I've loved you ever since you were a tiny baby, just like you loved your own little babies? If you never did anything, I'd still love you just as much as I do now. I've always been in your thrall. Do you think you have to accomplish anything more to be loved? Do you think you have to accomplish anything ever to be loved?"

Grace, I thought. Amazing grace. Right. And I breathed a few breaths and made it to registration on time. And then, as soon as I was back in my car: Yeah, yeah. But what am I going to write next?

Sanity comes in tiny postage-stamp-sized windows: God doesn't care what we accomplish. God just cares about how we treat other people. And, I suspect, the way we communicate all this to God is through play. I have been here many times before, this place of creative despair. I always get my answer. "Let your children teach you how to play," my friend Jane said. So I came home to dinner. My son was standing on the small playtable by the window, DJing at our Bose as usual, air-guitaring to "Jack the Giant Killer." So I grabbed a spoon and sang along.

Price of Admission

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."-Khalil Gibran

Last week, the phrase "crawling out of one's skin" came to mind a lot. I found myself short-tempered with the kids, constantly on the verge of tears, and generally feeling as though I were separated from the rest of the world by bandages of gauze. My kids were up to their usual combination of cuteness and exasperating behavior, and I had that same sense I had during their babyhood and my sleep deprivation: knowing that they were amazing, but not feeling it, as I usually do. I'd try to connect with nature and it would all seem theoretical, not transporting. The old thoughts came: "It's always like this. It's never going to change. It's all downhill from here. You are doomed. And also it's all your fault."

I called my therapist who suggested I listen to a relaxation CD and possibly take Ativan. The relaxation CD sounded about as helpful as summoning fairies to sprinkle confetti on my head; the Ativan was much more promising, but there's the minor issue that it might be addictive to some, and I knew full well that if it did work, I'd want to be on that magic carpet for the rest of my life.

I didn't want to tell anyone I was feeling so blue, because if I did then the jig would be up, and everyone would finally know that I don't actually have all the answers. So I suffered for a few more hours, and then I told a friend. We were sitting at the Y waiting for our kids to finish their gymnastics class and as I told her how I felt, the tears came. And with the tears, everything I have been tamping down since Christmas. Newtown. Mothers with kids who might be homicidal. The huge tear in the veneer of our small town existence, exposing the violence that so many others live with on a daily basis. The unfairness of it all. The shame of privilege; the searing cold of poverty. All kinds of poverty.

"It sounds like you are going through some grief," said my friend. I nodded. I cried some more. I went home and made some more calls. "Talk about it," said another friend. "That's what we do. We talk our way through this stuff."

Shared sorrow is half a sorrow, goes the saying. So I trod forward a bit, letting my husband know how sad I was, telling some more friends. I felt their concern like warm hands on my shoulders even when I was alone. And I downloaded the stupid relaxation CD and listened to it every day twice a day. On another friend's suggestion, I also downloaded Bach's Unaccompanied Suites in C minor for cello by Yo Yo Ma. And on Thursday night I started to write a song. On Saturday, I drove by myself up to West Cummington for our show. The sunset was my accompaniment, and as I followed the pinks, greys, far-off fires in the sky, I felt in wordless dialogue with those heavy hands on my shoulders. I felt profound joy and gratitude. I felt the gauze unwrap, and when we stepped on stage (metaphorically speaking--there actually is no stage) in front of our audience, I was myself again.

Stephen preached that Sunday about Martin Luther King Jr, and used the story in Exodus about Moses getting his call. The burning bush tells Moses to go way down to Egypt land to "let my people go." But, Moses protests, "Why me? I am a guy with a stutter! Who is going to listen to me? They have no idea who I am! I'm this adopted kid from the aristocracy. And anyway, who should I tell them sent me?"

And God, in the form of the burning bush, says, "Tell them 'I will be what I will be' has sent you."

Telling my therapist about how I recovered myself (and grudgingly thanking him for the relaxation CD), I said, "But this might not work every time. I mean it's not like every day I get a great idea for a song. It's not every day that we get to play an amazing show."

He smirked at me. He raised an eyebrow. (This is how we speak to each other.)

"Right,"I nodded. "Manna from heaven." Those who had been slaves coming out of bondage followed Moses through the desert for forty years. Every day they were given exactly what they needed: no more, no less. If they tried to hoard extra manna it turned to mold and rot. "I am a songwriter. I have that inside me. I am a performer. That's me. It's always there."

The other half of that aphorism is "Shared joy is doubled joy." I've been following author and researcher Brené Brown since 2009, and in a recent interview for Spirituality & Health Magazine, she writes:

"...Joy is probably the most difficult emotion to feel. It's hard to feel joy because we are so keenly aware that it's fleeing. When we lose our tolerance for vulnerability, we lose the courage to be joyful. Joy is a daring emotion! We are going to let ourselves stop in a moment that won't last forever, that can be taken away. we fell almost that 'you are a schmuck if you let yourself feel too deeply because the bad stuff is going to happen.'...'If I let myself feel this joy, pain will be all that much harder. If I let myself just really sink into the joy of my child, something is going to happen to him or her, and I will be devastated.' It comes back to the idea that it's easier to live disappointed than feel disappointed. And yet we are starving for joy. I have never met anyone who doesn't want more joy in their life."

The burning bush was a miracle: a burning bush that did not consume itself. But as Stephen pointed out, it was also a miracle that Moses even noticed it. Lots of people--I for example--would have been moving so fast that we would not have stopped to notice that the fire never won.

On Monday, I sat my kids and visiting nephew down in front of the TV and together we watched Barack Obama speak to the nation in bold terms, sketching out a future that involved the efforts of all of us. "We the people," he invoked. Not far from the spot where Dr. King had famously unveiled his own dream fifty years ago. The coupling of Dr. King's celebration and the inauguration of our first black president is so shimmering with joy that it dazzles me at times, and I can hardly take it in. But following the sunset on Saturday evening had given me some practice, so I just let myself feel the amazement, the sweetness of witnessing this historic event with my kids cuddled next to me on the couch. They have never known anything but an African American president.

As Obama left the scene on Monday, he stopped to turn around and look at the crowd. “I want to take a look one more time,” he was heard to say. “I’m not going to see this again.”

We more than talk about our grief. We use it. It's our raw clay. And we couldn't feel compassion for others let alone serve others if we didn't touch it now and then. For an artist, we couldn't do our work without all those technicolor feelings. It's a high price. And I'll pay it. Getting to commune with that sunset the other night was worth the cost of any ticket.

Thoughts on Sandy Hook and the Incarnation

I haven't written on this page since December took me down the dark rabbit hole of holiday prep, end-of-year festivities, and of course the terrible news. I have written many posts in my mind, starting with the line, "Dear Gun Owners, Please help me to understand where you are coming from." I have never been quite so shaken by something I learned about from what we call "the news." My reaction to what happened at Sandy Hook on December 14 is much more like my reactions to my own, personal devastating news: my miscarriage, my break-ups, the deaths of friends and relatives. I can't stop crying, coming back to the horrible reality of a nightmare coming true: losing a child in the most violent way imaginable. Wondering what kind of state those children were in when they were killed. Thinking about teachers like Victoria Soto who hid her kids in cupboards and closets and told the killer that they were in the gym. At her funeral, her sister read a letter. "In it, it said they had to sit down with three small children, explaining to them that monsters sadly do exist out there. But they felt relief that because of my sister, they were able to tell them that superheroes also are very real."

A meme on Facebook was going around to comfort us via Mr. Rogers:"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world."

How do we be helpers? By not forgetting. By not losing sight of the tragedy in the warm wash of our own holiday celebrations, not letting 2013 turn the page on 2012. For me, and for many others this means getting political. I'm not afraid to fight this fight. When I was a child, I remember learning about wars, especially World War II. At the time, I understood that there might be a cause worth dying for. I took in the sacrifice of those soldiers and wondered if there might ever be a cause worth dying for in my lifetime. Would I be brave enough for the fight? I still don't know the answer to that, but hearing about what Victoria Soto did, for the first time I thought, I hope I would make that same choice. Maybe it's automatic; maybe if it's in us, it's in us to just leap into the fray. Maybe it's a choice; I don't know. I just know that she died so that 20 some kids could live on, and forty some parents would be spared the funerals, the never-ending gaping hole. (Though I am equally sure that every family with a child at Sandy Hook is going through some kind of anguish, even if their child was spared.)

I'm doing easy things for now. I sang at a vigil on the solstice sponsored by MotherWoman. I sang songs from our latest CD The Full Catastrophe that seemed apropos: "Your House Is Strong," "Which Side Are You On?" and "I Choose This Era." The last is a song I wrote a week before Elle was born. It's about the ambivalence of giving birth in this crazy time of climate change, violence, the erosion of everything we used to count on, like the simple goodness of the sun. I am writing letters to my congresspeople asking for a renewal of the assault weapon ban. I am talking to my kids about the importance of including everyone in their "clubs"--Elle's new term which I fear might equate to cliques. I hear Elle tell Jay, "Do you know what bullets are? Bullets kill people!" when he "shoots" her.

I thought about my friend Edward who grew up in the inner city in Washington DC and recalled a story he told. When he was fifteen, he got into a fight with another kid. Edward came home and told his twin brother, who handed him his gun. "Go shoot him," said his brother. But even though it's commonplace for kids in the inner city to resolve typical boyhood altercations with a gun death, Edward did not.

And most gun owners don't become killers, either. That's important for a lefty, pro-gun-control advocate (since 1980) like me to remember. Still, I don't buy the NRA's tired line, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Yes, but mostly the people who kill people do so with guns.

The day it happened, I collapsed on my dining room floor and screamed at God, "What were you thinking???" I don't know where that came from. I didn't think I believed in that kind of God. I guess my own understanding of my beliefs isn't so clear. It's the old Harold Kushner question: if God is both all-powerful and all-loving, how can massacres of first graders possibly happen?

I really don't know. I usually have some equanimity in my not-knowing."Let the mystery be," as Iris DeMent would say. But on Dec. 14, I wanted answers.

I talked with my minster friends, Peter Ives and Matilda Cantwell (who wrote this lovely and helpful piece on the tragedy). I went to my beloved West Cummington Church and prayed, cried, held hands, sang. I sat in the dawn as I usually do, watching the sun struggle up over the horizon and bathe the world in pinks and blues, shed golden light on the trees. It's darkest before the dawn. I think back to 1980, the year I became politicized on the topic of gun control. It was in the shadow of the murder of John Lennon, and part of my reaction was to learn everything I could about the second amendment, which guarantees us the right to bear arms in the context of maintaining "a well-regulated Militia." ("A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.") (Does this mean that we can each own a drone? Where do we draw the line?) Since then, we have watched the debate move sharply to the right. No one was talking abut assault weapons in 1980. We were just talking about handguns. What happened?

We have to take this debate back. I know Obama has other fish to fry. I know it's not popular. We have to make it popular in the truest sense: of the people. We have to put money into ads where we ask the American people if they really intended to make this Faustian bargain: free easy access to guns with the understanding that this will mean the deaths of our children and other innocents in periodic massacres. Really? REALLY?

In the 1980s, mothers banded together to change the conversation about drunk driving and formed M.A.D.D. Drunk driving deaths are down 24% since 1980 when two moms who had lost their children started this remarkable organization. What I know is that as I was growing up, none of my friends would even think about getting behind the wheel after having more than one drink. For my parents' generation, this was not the case. Moms (and dads) need to band together again to stop the craziness that is gun violence in our country. There's M.A.G.V, but I couldn't find a website for this organization; there's the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (http://www.csgv.org/) which looks more promising.

I live by the light of a God whose plan seems to have included the murder of God's child. Out of the carnage came a new understanding: death is not the end. We live on--at the very least--in the hearts and minds of those we love; and our teaching, if it tastes of the truth, gets passed on and on. The incarnation, which Christians just celebrated during Advent, is about God entering the human experience, finding us in the filthiest of conditions (in the story, a stable; in reality, our worst pain, at our most vulnerable). If we can say yes to God, we partner with the divine. I keep remembering the heavy heavy weight of free will, of having to make up our own minds to love, to have faith, to believe in each other, even when we so dramatically fail each other. But this is the whole message of Incarnation. God joins with us: us in our guise as filthy stable; us in our guise as perfect newborn baby. We have this connection, and it's up to us to tune in, use it, or not. It's up to us to be God's hands in a broken world, to heal as Jesus did, one leper at a time, one schizophrenic at a time, one alienated individual at a time. It's up to us to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And to point out the helpers to our children, so that they know what direction to go in.

Windows Onto Each Other's Lives

View of the new church from the Parish House

Last Sunday, the church that burned to the ground on Jan 17, 2010, rose from the ash and opened its doors to its faithful congregation: we, from many different backgrounds and faiths, who have come to know this little sanctuary in the hills as home. Since the fire, we've been worshiping in the Parish House, a quirky former UU church-turned-Ladies-Auxiliary-Club down the hill which houses a kitchen, bathroom, small office for our minister, Stephen Philbrick, and medium-sized, modest front room where--up until the burning--was the place our children held "kids church." When this became our temporary home, we arranged chairs in rows; another church had donated a shabby but perfectly serviceable pulpit; still other churches had donated hymnals, and Penny Schultz, our miraculous music director, had printed up supplements. Really, we had everything we needed, even a baby grand piano, and a view of the spot where the church had once been in a window behind the pulpit, the spot in most churches where a cross or crucifix would be hanging. As the months went by, we congregants got to watch the "new old church" being rebuilt, growing taller and more familiar with each passing Sunday. We'd worked hard as a congregation to figure out what we wanted, what we needed, what made the most sense. We'd agreed that the new church should look as much as possible like the old church on the outside. We'd agreed that the new church should have a bathroom. (The new church has two. In the old church, we stepped out the back door with our baggies of toilet paper and squatted.) We agreed that the minister didn't need a raised dias. We agreed that the windows--those huge, abundant windows out of which one could stare, half-listening to the sermon, half watching the snow, or new leaves, or atomic blue sky--needed to be the same.

The morning of Dec. 2, we gathered at the Parish House and practiced for the last time our three part a cappella version of "Amazing Grace." Jim brought his baritone sax, Kim her trumpet, Chris Haynes his accordion, Colin banged a tambourine and I strummed along as we all sang "When the Saints" and marched up the hill to the new old church. We paused on the threshold and Penny led us in "Amazing Grace." And then we entered for the first time, the place we had thought we'd lost forever. The place was packed, with the walls lined with folks who couldn't find seats.

Jim, Kim and Chris rehearsing in the Parish House

Marching up to the new old church; Parish House in background

The day before, I'd been in another packed church, this one in Washington DC, at St. Albans Chapel, on the grounds of the National Cathedral. My childhood friend Lavinia Lemon Pitzer had died in mid November of pneumonia, incurable because of an auto-immune disorder only discovered three days before her death. She'd left behind three teen-aged children, her husband Andy, her parents and step-parents, her sister, brother-in-law, nephews, and a league of stunned and striken friends. Vinnie was warm, engaged, thoughtful, loving, funny, sharp and now gone. My parents knew her parents, and so the three of us attended together. I had flown down that morning, rising at 4:20am to catch my plane. We arrived at the funeral fifteen minutes early to find that there was no room left in the chapel, but we could stand in the narthex and listen. I had a moment of frustration--I flew all this way to stand and listen?-- immediately replaced by the thought, "But whose place would I have taken if I'd arrived fifteen minutes earlier?" I had said maybe five words to Vinnie since 1981 when she brought me to Idaho to attend her beloved Van Der Meer's tennis camp in Sun Valley. Here, because Vinnie was 15 and I was only 14, I was separated from the one person I knew and stuck in the "little girl's" dorm while Vinnie went off with the big girls. Fortunately, I'd brought my guitar and two sheets of legal paper with lyrics and chords to two Bob Dylan songs, written out for me by my father. I'd also brought my Beatles songbook. And even though I'd loved the tennis, what I remember most is playing my guitar for the "little girls" who were aged 9-13, finding my place as their troubadour. And so finding myself.

I ran into Vinnie a few times with her family in the Adirondacks, but we had little to say to each other. I’d always thought we lived in different worlds. At the funeral, packed so closely I could see the face lift scars on the women in their tailored suits and perfectly coiffed blond bobs, I was struck by the difference. This was North West Washington, a slice of the Chevy Chase club lifestyle. I had fled this culture right around the time I went to Idaho, spending that summer’s early mornings lying on my back in my bed, realizing I had a decision to make. I could try to play the game Vinnie played so beautifully: get along with my classmates who seemed to have a play book I never received, who went away for mysterious ski weekends, who went to dance classes at Miss Shippen’s, who knew instinctively when to pull up their knee socks and when to let them bunch down over their ankles. I could try to get my hair to behave, to like the boy I was supposed to be “going with,” to smoke and drink at the scantily chaperoned parties. But I had another notion: maybe I was not one of them. Maybe I was never going to fit in. Maybe this insane obsession I had with music, especially the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan was a calling and not just a curiosity. Maybe I was an artist, meant to be a little apart. Maybe I had to find my own drum to march to.

Maybe so, but I am tired of this story, this explanation to myself of my difficult school-aged years. Do others have to be wrong in order for me to be right? Why couldn’t I have reached across that difference when I saw Vinnie in the Adirondacks? Why couldn’t I have made more of an effort to see how we were the same? Like me, she loved her children, her husband, her parents, her choices. Why couldn’t I celebrate that with her? Why see the chasm? Is there even a chasm? If I lived in a culture where everyone got a facelift at 50, I’d line up for mine. I just happen to live in Western Massachusetts where we judge each other by our carbon footprint rather than our wattles.

Back home in Massachusetts by 11pm, Bradley International Airport seemed shabby compared to what is now called “Reagan” in Crystal City, but which I stubbornly continue to call “National Airport.” There was a part of me that wondered if the trip was worth it. Speaking of carbon footprint, I’d spent a lot of fossil fuel and cash making the trip to DC in one day, and I’d spent a lot of emotional capital, not to mention life force to be at the funeral of someone I hadn’t been close to since the early Reagan era. I made my way home gingerly over the black ice on I-91, hung over each of my sleeping children and breathed in the scent of their bedtime skin; then crawled into bed next to my husband. And then, the next morning, at the new old church: yes, I cried as I entered, cried as I took in the sight of Steve standing in back of the same shabby borrowed pulpit (is a new one being made?) and in front of another window in place of cross or crucifix. This window shows the sky, the bare branches of late fall. And as I sat in the place we always chose at the old church—the front pew to the preacher’s left—it hit me. This was not the old church. The quilt Annie Kner sewed, our healing quilt, was gone. The place I’d gotten married seven years ago—unrecognizable. The very architecture of this new church was profoundly different on the inside. Lovely, yes. But not the same. We’d lost the old church. I hadn’t realized it as it was rising up before us from the distance of the Parish House window. I got to think, “The church burned down, but see, we’re getting it back! There it goes, good as new!” This was good; this was new. But I saw for the first time that something precious to me was lost forever. Now, face to face, there was no denying the loss.

Steve Philbrick, our minister

The interior of the old church

My father in front of the old church

So I cried a little more, this time for what was passed. And I realized why I’d gone to Washington for Vinnie’s funeral. There is a value is putting your face right up to death, destruction, loss. Some of us don’t get it otherwise; we just continue to live in our delusions that this one exquisite moment, this one exquisite child, this one exquisite note can be replicated some time in the future, so no need to look up from our tiny screens now. I won’t get another chance to catch up with Vinnie in the Adirondacks. Way more importantly, three kids have lost their mother. Our church—the church we knew—is completely transformed, transfigured, glowing white as Christ appeared to his disciples. And we have to let ourselves be wrung dry by life, by grief, by what is happening now and what is too precious to lose as it’s passing by.

Dancing for joy in the new old church

Elle's drawing during our first service in the new church

God Is in the Numbers:Republican Math and Self-Disclosure

I feel for the Republicans. It's no fun to confront reality after years of believing one's own math. But of course, I am not a Republican, and this time around, the numbers, AKA the Truth, were on my/our side. I had been passionately, nail-bitingly watching Nate Silver's polling data and analysis. Every time Gallup would say Romney was up three points, my friend Liz would say, "Check with Nate Silver. When he gets worried, I'll get worried." For weeks before Nov. 6, I'd run into parents at pickup and say, "I'm just so scared!" "Me too!" and we'd grimace at each other and hurry off to collect our offspring. Elle voted in an election at her school and refused to tell me for whom she'd cast her ballot. "It's a secret ballot," she said firmly. Although that same day she said, "Mama, what's a saint?" I said, "Hmmm. A saint is someone who is very very good, very close to God and who takes care of poor people." "Oh," she nodded. "Like Barack Obama." "Um, no, not exactly," I said, but I did take it as evidence of how she voted.

I am finally home again after a wonderful weekend away in the DC area. Katryna and I did a benefit for Revels at which three of our lifelong music teachers were in attendance.

with Nancy Taylor

with Katherine Nevius


I also brought my kids who had a fabulous time visiting with their grandparents. The weather was wonderful; coats were left unpacked in the suitcase. My mother and I talked books (Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot) and writing (we are each deep in the midst of our novels), and my father squired the kids around on his shoulders even though he was getting over a cold. On Sunday night, when I told Jay we were going to be leaving the next day, he sat at the top of the stairs and very quietly wept. I knew how he felt.There was a sweetness to this landing spot at my parents, where, though I was woefully low on my normal self-care regimes, I was tunneling my vision into watching the Republicans try to figure out why they lost, and soon I'd have to go back to business as usual (Suzuki, cooking, exercise, teaching, etc.). Call it political rubbernecking, but I really am obsessed. When I wasn't reading the New York Times or the Huffington Post, I was talking to my parents and anyone who would listen to me about this particular delusion.

I am not a numbers person. I never have been. I get easily confused, and I like a world in which the margins are nice and soft. Numbers don't have this advantage. Numbers are crisp and permanent. So I have to take some extraordinary measures to be clear on numbers instead of being vague, which I much prefer. I write down everything I buy, and I write down every penny I earn. As a self-employed person, I keep spreadsheets on all my income and expenses. This is an ongoing process, and I have to keep refining, keep finding my errors, keep working to come up with a clearer, better system. I've come (somewhat reluctantly) to see it as a spiritual discipline. I am not just responsible for myself; these numbers have ramifications for my kids and my husband, and how I give to the world. And yet, now that I am working with numbers every day, keeping track of my income and expenses, seeing where I need to work harder, and just as importantly, where I can work less (so as to be available to my kids, my husband, my writing, my spiritual life), I have a real respect for numbers. I have come to love them. "God is in the numbers," says a friend of mine. I get this. This is a side of God I know--the one who loves me no matter what, yes, but who can't save me or my friends from death, cancer, hurricanes or bankruptcy. This is the God called Reality.

We left Northern Virginia in our ridiculous big-ass black Ford mega vehicle (I let the kids choose--oops) and drove to BWI where, I knew from an email from Southwest Airlines, our flight had been delayed. We went through baggage drop off and were told to get our boarding passes at the gate. We had a lovely chat with a family from India relocated to Albany and I tried to get them to come to our show this Saturday in Cohoes. We made it to the gate a half hour before take off, the kids scooting on their little Melissa & Doug Trunkees. And there we discovered that SW had overbooked our flight, boarded it at the old time and that there were no more flights to Hartford until the next morning. "But," I sputtered. "I am in a unique employment situation! No one can do my job tomorrow! I need to get home!" [I was supposed to teach my Parent Guitar Class at 10am Tuesday.] Moreover, I had no car seat anymore since it was in the belly of the plane bound to Hartford--without us--along with my guitar and our suitcase, which incidentally had our coats and basically everything else except the kids' Trunkees which housed some stuffed animals, cars and drawing materials.

So I rented a Prius with car seats and we started to drive back to Massachusetts at 4pm. Like the Republicans, I had not exactly done the math, but somewhere in southern NJ around 7:30pm I realized we were going to hit the Hartford Airport around midnight, if there were no traffic in NYC, and I'd have to, at that point, get sleeping kids from the rental into a van to take to the terminal to collect a big suitcase, guitar and car seat, then another van to our parking lot, put everything plus kids into our Jetta and drive another 45 minutes home. So I called my aunt and uncle in Fairfield and we crashed there, playing with their little red dog and sleeping in a heap on their living room floor. Fairfield was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy; their house had had almost 3 feet of water and sewage in it. They were finally getting back to normal, but they were tired. These superstorms cut a swath through New York and New Jersey that was easily predicted by scientists who study climate change. God is in the numbers, and God is in the science we use to figure out why the weather is becoming so volatile and why the demographics are becoming favorable to the Democrats. Dear Republicans: please wake up. Please come back from your 1950s-era fairy land, put the ball back on the field and play with us. We have real problems to solve, and it's going to take all of us to solve them.

God has no other hands but ours. This is where the soft margins come in. Katryna's sister-in-law reported that after her home in Red Hook was flooded, friends, family, volunteers and complete strangers showed up to help bail her and her family out. The woman at Budget gave me 50% off my rental car and somehow magicked the tolls into the payment, though there was no EZ Pass transducer in sight. (These may show up on my credit card in the future, however. But for the moment, this is my own version of Republican Math). My aunt miraculously lives where she lives, and we were able to find a landing spot.

The last day we were in Virginia, I noticed the picture of God on the floor in my parents' living room. "What is this?" I asked Elle picking it up. "God," she said. We'd gone to church and heard a rousing and inspired sermon on stewardship by our friend Aaron Fulp-Eickstaedt, and because Elle's God has a purse, I wondered if she had been somehow able to listen from her Sunday School room. But God is not carrying a purse, she explained. That bag is God's bag of tools. And the headband and long hair is to show that God is both a man and a woman. God's face is the sun ("the actual sun," she emphasized.)

I love the hands most of all. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away--perhaps. Steve Philbrick says, "In Isaiah it says 'I, God, make peace and create evil.' [Elle] shows why. (Or: why you want to be sitting on the right-hand of God...)" There is something comforting about this view of the Divine, too, in its own way: it makes pretty clear our powerlessness.

But what I really believe is that God Him/Herself is happy and sad; God shares with us (if we can listen) God's own grief about our cancer, our election disappointments, our bankruptcy, our missed flights, our climate crisis. And God extends a hand to us no matter what our mood, or God's mood. And this morning, I opened an email from Franciscan Richard Rohr. Here's what he had to say about the hands of the Risen Christ, which I thought was apropos:

Fullness in a person cannot permit love because there are no openings, no handles, no give-and-take, and no deep hunger. It is like trying to attach two inflated balloons to one another. Human vulnerability gives the soul an immense head start on its travels—maybe the only start for any true spiritual journey. Thus the Risen Christ starts us off by revealing the human wounds of God, God’s total solidarity with human suffering. He starts with self-disclosure from the divine side, which ideally leads to self-disclosure from our side. The Bible first opened up for me in the 1960s when the II Vatican Council said that divine revelation was not God disclosing ideas about God, but actually God disclosing “himself” (sic). Quickly Scripture, and religion itself, became not mere doctrines or moralisms for me, but lovemaking, an actual mutual exchange of being and intimacy.

Excerpted from Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self, p. 167

Post-Diluvian and My Own Weird Climate Change

I can’t shake the images of the water flushing through the Subway entrances and exits, the cars floating in the parking garages of lower Manhattan. The eeriest thing about these pictures is that I’ve seen them before—in my mind’s eye after watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, six and a half years ago. I left the movie theatre on that scorching June day resolved to do whatever it would take to be a climate change activist, or at least an awake aware person doing her tiny little cloth-diapering, biodiesel-driving part. “Well, now we know,” I said to Tom. “Knowledge is power. Certainly after learning what this movie taught us, we’ll begin, as a country, as a unified world, to change our fossil-fuel burning ways.” I’d had a similar optimistic thought in 1981 when I was 14 and I first learned about nuclear war. Now that we have this power, I reasoned, we’d never use it. We’d know better. War, surely, was obsolete now.

Al Gore and his ilk were predicting the kinds of floods we saw earlier this week to occur in about fifteen to twenty years, if memory serves. When climate change aficionados spoke of receding coast lines, as a former New Yorker I thought first of my sister’s in-laws on West 4th street and Red Hook and wondered if it was wise for them to continue to live where they lived. Maybe in ten years they should think about selling, I thought. Property values won’t diminish much between now and then. I imagined the waters rising up over the Henry Hudson, taking the joggers and the cyclists along with them.



Earlier this year, in July, I experienced my own weird climate change. For the first time in 16 years, I got my period. Without getting too personal and TMI, I’ll just say that the stress of my years on the road in my twenties had taken a pretty significant toll, and one doctor on my case back in the 90s had commented, “Evolution takes pretty good care of these things. You wouldn’t want the matriarch of a starving tribe to be pregnant with twins.”

My bandmates thought that was uncannily apt.

I did everything I could to restore my cycles, trying acupuncture, diet, yoga, alternative healers, psychics and finally western medicine. With the help of a talented endocrinologist, not to mention a patient and loving husband, I was able to conceive and deliver two gorgeous healthy babies. And then a few months after the last one weaned, to my great surprise I discovered I was menstruating.

At the age of 45, chances of my getting pregnant are slim, but not impossible. Every month when I feel that twinge in my side, I start doing the math: if I conceived now, would it interfere with Falcon Ridge? If we had three kids would we have to ditch our extremely fuel efficient Jetta wagon for a minivan? Could we pay three violin tuitions per year? (The answers: yes, yes and no). More importantly, how would a younger sibling impact the two I already have and cherish and want to give the world to? I know the answer: I asked them. “Nah,” is what they each said. No baby brother or sister, thanks. They are smart enough to know that the emotional resources around here are scarce.

I say that with no self-deprecation, which is new for me. I’ve spent the past 6 years feeling guilty about the quality of my mothering: that I am too distracted by my career, too spiritual, too ADD, not willing enough to get down and play with them on the floor, not silly enough, not strict enough, not crafty enough, not soft and flabby enough. I knew about the mom wars, and I thought I was too smart to fall victim to them. I was wrong.

But I got my feminist on recently; probably sometime around Mitt Romney’s reference to his binders full of women. I got reminded by some kick-ass mom friends of mine that motherhood is the hardest goddamned job on the planet, and one that rarely wins its practitioners the Nobel or a Grammy (no pun intended). When a girl was raised to be everything she could be career-wise; when she has a deep abiding love of something other than family (art, God, humanity, the Beatles) and then tries to excel at Motherhood as if it were just another arena, she is doomed. Not that I know this personally.

I’ve gone back to the Winnecott mantra: don’t even try to be a good mother; just be a good enough mother. Just good enough. See this as a long marathon, not a sprint. Your reviews after one evening’s meal and violin practice might be scorching one day, but you’re in this for the long haul. Get the food into the kids. Get their practice in. Read them a book. Cuddle them until they fall asleep. Rinse, repeat. When Elle was an infant and I was on hallucinogens (metaphorically speaking),a friend of ours--father of 2 teenagers--said that he experienced parenthood as being like working in a button factory. “It’s mind numbingly boring,” he drawled. I could not begin to relate then, but now it’s a relief to know that some others feel this way too.

Oddly, as I began to accept myself as wholly imperfect and frustrated, something shifted. I stopped feeling so frustrated. It might have helped that they’ve moved on from 24-piece jigsaw puzzles to those new Lego trucks and campers which I find so thoroughly absorbing that I am tempted to work on them on my own when the kids are at school. So I actually am on the rug with them more these days. (Elle recently said, “Mama! Go away! They are my Legos! Stop playing with them!”) It’s also helped immeasurably that I know this is the last year I have a preschooler, and I am in that sweet spot of treasuring each day I have with him. (Which doesn’t preclude me from sitting him in front of Thomas the Tank Engine so I can get my writing done, as I did today. Also, did you know that Ringo narrates Thomas’s earliest episodes?)

Here's the thing. Even though every part of my rational mind knows that I should not have another child, and for most of the month I really don't want another child, for those two or three days when I am ovulating, all I want to do is procreate. And no, I am not endorsing this insane article suggesting that women while ovulating were more likely to vote for Obama. I am just saying that even I, a well-educated mostly sensible person who has deep roots in addiction recovery, have a hard time not just going for what I want when I want it. If someone with my level of dedication to restraint (not to mention fear of what others will think of me) could lapse and find herself with child, what hope is there that billions of people will voluntarily band together and agree to drive a lot less, consume a lot less, procreate a lot less?

A child is supposed to grow up. I am supposed to feel the gap, feel the grief of separation. It’s part of life. Losing Manhattan—not so much. So this new ache in my heart, this helpless helpless feeling, I can’t get my mind around. I am left, yearning for connection with others who are willing to seek answers, policies, leaders who can speak the truth about what’s happening and give us orders. We can’t dig ourselves out of climate change perfectly, and we probably can’t even slow it down, even if we were a united front. I am left with these words from Job:
38 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:
2 “Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?
3 Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
7 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors,
When it burst forth and issued from the womb;
9 When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness its swaddling band;
10 When I fixed My limit for it,
And set bars and doors;
11 When I said,
‘This far you may come, but no farther,
And here your proud waves must stop!’
12 “Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
13 That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,
And the wicked be shaken out of it?
14 It takes on form like clay under a seal,
And stands out like a garment.
15 From the wicked their light is withheld,
And the upraised arm is broken.

42 Then Job replied to the LORD:
2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

Why a Pro-Life Christian Is for President Obama

When people ask me why I am voting for Barack Obama in this election, I say, “Because I am a Christian and I vote my values.” I am pro-life, and when you line the two candidates up side by side, there’s an overwhelmingly clear choice. Which
candidate supports the life that is wriggling all over our public school’s playgrounds? Which candidate supports the lives of those who cannot afford health care, or who might be denied health care because of pre-existing conditions? Which candidate supports the lives of those on death row, who may or may not be wrongly accused? Which candidate supports the lives of our future descendants by pro-actively encouraging green, sustainable energy sources? True, Mitt Romney calls himself pro-life, but only on one issue: abortion. Given that we cannot truly know when life begins but that it’s pretty obvious that life abounds in the above situations (playground, hospitals, prisons, and—oh, yeah, the planet) I’d say Obama is the real pro-life candidate.

How to Write a Novel

Disclaimer: This post is really just my scribbling about process. So skip this if you are looking for deep spiritual insights or cute stories about my kids and read this instead.

Damned if I know. Well, OK, I do, actually. I have written a novel, and really I have written two novels. The first one, Plastic Angel, was published by Scholastic in 2005, and it's a YA about two girls finding themselves (and each other)through music. The second, called The Big Idea, is about a folk-rock band who is also a family (write what you know...). I finished a draft--five years in the writing--in 2005 and my agent tried to sell it and could not. I got many kind and encouraging letters back from various publishing houses which I stuffed away somewhere and concentrated on my growing belly and eventual daughter, and the son who came two years later. Every year or so, I would revisit the pages, making small changes. Almost every day I have thought about the characters. It feels as though they are in prison. I want to set them free. But the task seemed so gargantuan that I needed to give myself a pep talk and a plan.

And so this fall, I threw The Big Idea into the midst of a group of five incredibly talented writers, my Weeding & Pruning group. Every other week, I submit a chapter from TBI and they go at it, telling me where they are thrown out of the story, what they like, where they want to know more. We talk about what we should be reading to strengthen and inform our own writing practice. I am writing new scenes. I feel reborn, and my characters are talking to me again.

What are my professional and artistic goals in life? I ask myself this question all the time.
-I want to write gorgeous inspiring funny vibrant books and CDs that will make people feel, smile, cry, relate, understand, feel connected to each other, and grow.
-I want to be able to spend more time writing and making music. (but I need to make a living, and right now, those pursuits don't pay the bills. So....)
-I want to make a greater income than I do now through sales of my books and CDs. So...
-I want to finish my ebook How to Be an Adult, sell it online, and thus learn how to self-publish
-I want to write The Big Idea so that it is as perfect, complete, absolute as a book can be. Then I want to publish it myself.
-I want the book to come with the CD of songs the characters write. I want the CD to be a recording of a band just like the Big Idea, which will necessarily be different from what Katryna and I can do. So I want to find these musicians, find a producer, executive produce that soundtrack.
-I want to be able to pay these musicians and producer, so I need money. Maybe I will do a Kickstarter campaign when the time comes.
-In order to do any of this, I need to re-write the book. I need to find times every day to write AND to read, for I am convinced that in order to write well one must read well.
-In order to this, I need some more discipline, self-control, grit and determination, and I need to schedule my time even more precisely than I do now.

The book I am reading now is Paul Tough's How Children Succeed. I am a little more than halfway through, and I am quite taken by the premise and ideas. In a nutshell, Tough argues, it's character that makes the difference between success (a happy, productive engaged life) and failure, and not cognitive skills. Moreover, failure--or rather, learning how to use failure--is as important as success.

Paul Tough: That’s an idea that I think was best expressed by Dominic Randolph, the head of the Riverdale Country School, an exclusive private school in the Bronx where they’re now doing some interesting experiments with teaching character. Here’s how he put it: "The idea of building grit and building self-control is that you get that through failure. And in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything."

That idea resonated with a lot of readers. I don’t think it’s quite true that failure itself helps us succeed. In fact, repeated failures can be quite devastating to a child’s development. What I think is important on the road to success is learning to deal with failure, to manage adversity. That’s a skill that parents can certainly help their children develop--but so can teachers and coaches and mentors and neighbors and lots of other people.

I can't tell you how bummed I was every time I opened a letter from yet another publisher rejecting the book I had poured my heart into for over five years. A (bestselling) writer friend of mine said, "Just write a new book. That's what I did." And I was tempted to. I was also tempted to just say, "Well, I guess I can cross 'novelist' off my list," and focus instead on music, or non-fiction, or blogging, or the hardest and most important of my jobs: mothering. I have a full, rich life. Do I really need to be a novelist? Being a novelist is so all-consuming. It requires me to read and re-read "my own princess self" as Anne Lamott would say, encouraging my already frighteningly narcissistic tendencies. Who cares about characters who don't even exist? Pay attention to the sweet souls around my kitchen table!

Shorthand: in How Children Succeeed, Tough lists these character virtues as being the most critical:
-grit
-curiosity
-self-control
-gratitude
-zest
-optimism
-social intelligence

I took the grit test on the UPenn website and to my shock and disappointment scored about a 33%. My husband laughed when he heard this; to him I am nothing if not gritty, which may or may not be a good thing. But the questions really gave me pause. One was, "Do you finish what you start?" Another, "Are you easily distracted?"

Oops, just left this page to go check Facebook to see if my old high school buddy Wendy Gabriel had "friended" me yet.

So here's what I need to do.
1. Re-read the book.
2. Write new scenes
3. Re-read the book with the new scenes
4. Make changes accordingly
5. Read some other novels by writers I like
6. Read Suzzy Roche's novel Wayward Saints and Scott Alarik's novel Revival: A Folk Music Novel so I can see what my peers are doing with a similar subject.

In the end, finishing this novel--and by finish, I mean to my artistic satisfaction-- might be one of the most important things I do as a mother. Someone asked me recently what my goals are for my kids as little Suzuki violinists. Orchestra? A career with the Boston Pops or BSO? No. No. No. My goals for them are about the day-to-day. I want them to have music. That's it. And I know, as my sister Katryna would say, that while listening to music is powerful and can be transcendent, making music, the actual play, is always transforming. After we enter this particular communion, we come out different, changed. But having music by making music, by participating in this particular way, as a player, demands a daily practice--and grit, self-control and zest. So I will continue to practice with them, and I will model my own practice by working on my novel every day too.

Besides. The Big Idea needs a fiddle player.

September Garden and Life is in the Practice

I look out at my garden these days and drink it in, knowing that by Saturday morning it will likely be gone. All that work in September. Worth every bit for these morning viewings from the couch in the new kitchen. St. Francis in the foreground, Kuan Yin in the back. But still, it breaks my heart that in a few days the pansies and impatiens will be gone forever, and the cone-flowers and hydrangea will wilt and brown.

Jay has had four violin lessons and one group class. It’s so strange to see how different two children can be. After years of telling friends that my kids were more alike than not, as violinists at least they show their proclivities. Elle’s bow-hold was right-on from the start; Jay grabs his fat marker in his fist and doesn’t comprehend that one does not wield it like a sword. We are supposed to be clapping out each of the six Twinkle variations to our new teacher’s words, but Jay wilts after one-half of one, where Elle dashed ahead, graduating from her Twinkles in less than nine months. I take his fists in my two hands and tap them together for claps, but he says, “Dis gives me a stomach ache.” And more painfully, “Dis is my body and I get to do what I want!” Who can argue with that?

In Paul Tough’s new bestseller How Children Succeed (which I am supposed to be reading but haven’t started yet, but I did listen to half the This American Life piece about it) he argues that the skills most necessary to teach kids are self-control, to learn to focus attention, and to delay gratification. The exercises our teacher gives us are all about these skills. We start with a bow in which Jay says, “Good morning” or “Good afternoon” or “Good evening,” depending on what time it is. We listen to the Suzuki Slow Twinkle CD and clap along, as I said above, and we listen to the Twinkles up to speed while he sways back and forth, his feet in playing position and his box violin on his shoulder. Then we do “Up Like a Rocket” with his pen-cum-bow and his bunny bow-hold. He wants to make up his own lyrics, but his teacher insists on hers. Delay gratification. He wants to make his pen go horizontally for “back and forth like a choo choo train,” but his teacher makes him keep it vertical. Self control. He ends each practice with “Thank you for the wonderful lesson,” and a bow. Nothing to complain about that. It’s teaching him good manners.

So why is this all so hard for me? Because he doesn’t always want to do any of it, and I feel foolish, frustrated, helpless, and most of all like a Tiger mom. A failed Tiger mom at that. We set up his foot chart (a 20″ cardboard with construction paper cut outs of his feet positions) and it can take 20 minutes for him to get in rest position and bow. Before he can do this, he has to fall on the floor a few times, balance on one foot and go, “Whoa! whoa!” and wave his arms around, ask for a drink, decide he has to pee, take off his shirt, roll up his pants legs, look out the window to see if Gulliver the Cat has come over, look out the window to see if his dad has biked home yet, set up his favorite cars to watch the practice, go get his ducky to watch the practice, count the marbles in his marble jar and then fall on the floor crying and insisting he hates violin and never wants to play again.

And we haven’t even picked up the actual violin.

Elle’s teacher Emily Greene says that whatever you are dealing with in terms of family dynamics will come out in the violin practice. As an author, and a teacher of writing, I notice that whatever is hard for me in life is hard for me on the page, and so it goes with my students. If a student doesn’t know herself, it is hard for her main character to be known. If a student is impatient and in a hurry, her scenes will skim by. If a student is fluent in the language of emotion but slow to take action, her scenes will be rich studies of humanity but lacking plot. And if a person cares more about being liked and well-thought of by teachers and other authority figures (but not little boys) and is the tiniest bit afraid of confrontation, violin practice sessions can turn into the Clash of the Titans.

Today I wised up. I looked at what we were being asked to do and decided to do exactly the minimum amount needed to make both of us feel like we had some kind of productive practice. Jay can’t make it through even one Twinkle, either in the swaying exercise or the clapping one. Our teacher doesn’t know this because I haven’t told her. Instead I have brought her practice sheets covered with stickers (and let’s be truthful: the stickers are for me, not Jay. I am the one who puts them on and gets a big hit from seeing them taking over the yellow lines of the paper.) But I will go in on Thursday and tell her we need to slow down, even though progress seems snail’s-paced to me as it is. And this morning, I got down a shaker of non-pareilles which I used to bribe him to do each item on our practice sheet. I had Jay bow, do one Twinkle variation for swaying, one for clapping and his "Up Like a Rocket." It all took five minutes. I hugged him and praised him and he bowed deeply. “Sank you for a wonderful lesson,” he murmured.

He may or may not continue with the violin. He may be a perennial or an annual. What matters is that he get this space each day, this moment of my full attention and love (which includes structure, boundaries, firmly holding the line) the way I have my moments with the pansies and St. Francis every morning.