Year: 2013

May The Circle Be Unbroken

Round and round we go.

When the apocalypse finally limps over the finish line and the power grid goes down for good, things will get a lot quieter for many people. But in the silence of that new day there will still be music. Quieter, indeed, but no less marvelous.

Last weekend the 33rd annual Washington Folk Festival, blooming like a field of beloved wildflowers under the lofty trees at historic Glen Echo Park, Maryland, showcased the kind of music that has kept the human spirit alive for centuries.

A festival made in the shade.

Long before earbuds and iPods and virtual Clouds, there was music in the air all around the world, played by shepherds and troubadours, lovers and sailors, the lost and lonely, the hopeful and devout. Music was, and continues to be, a most potent magic.

One of the most precious things about folk music is that it belongs to all of us. Anyone can pick up an instrument, or raise a voice, and join in. It is the most democratic of genres, freely shared and lovingly passed on from generation to generation.

This reverence for the heirloom quality of folk music was clearly evident at the recent festival, where groups of younger musicians carried on the traditions of bluegrass, old-time country swing, gospel, blues and international folk music, showing reverence for the past while breathing new life and energy into the material.

Glen Echo Park is a perfect venue for such a vital process. While the much larger National Folk Festival down on the Mall attracts bigger crowds and more attention, as it should in the heart of the Nation’s Capitol, the more intimate and down-home Washington Folk Festival serves as a reminder of the heart and soul of the folk movement, which enjoys periodic revivals every generation or so, as new audiences discover its timeless charms.

The ride is gone, but the sentiment endures.

Glen Echo Park itself was begun in 1891 as an ambitious project to further the arts, and although the original effort failed, the site was reinvented in the early 20th century as an amusement park and enjoyed a long reign of popularity until it finally closed in 1968. Taken over by the National Parks system in 1971 and revived as a center of arts and amusement, Glen Echo now attracts a wide variety of visitors who come to dance in the  Spanish Ballroom, to take art classes, and to ride the beautifully restored circa 1921 Dentzel carousel.

At the recent festival the carefree music of the carousel wove in the air with the sounds of mandolins, bagpipes and Celtic harps. Outside the Cuddle-Up stage, where the New Old-Time String Band was playing a medley of gospel favorites, passersby sang along to “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?”

I’d like to think that even if the circle takes a beating from time to time, it will still keep rolling, and playing a joyful song or two along the way.

Nap Time

Nap Cat can get comfy anyplace, anytime.

If you believe the lyrics of popular song, then you know that summer time is the best of times.

The livin’ is easy, the fish are jumpin’, etc. The summer breeze makes you feel fine, the summer wind brings love without heartache. School’s out, and it’s time to play ball, eat ice cream and generally revel in the long days of sunshine and warm nights of moonglow.

In reality, there will probably be a few days during the next couple of months when the vagaries of weather and the larger forces of destiny and fate will align to produce a few transcendent moments of that rare essence of Summer.

But for the most part, summer struggles to live up to its hype. If it’s not the bugs and the heat and the incessant lawn mowing, it’s the humidity, the haze, and the pressure to have fun, fun, fun every minute.

Personally, I’m of the view that what makes a summer moment perfect is the kind of suspension of expectations that comes with time off from work, social obligations and media overload. I need time unplugged.

When I forget this and overbook myself, I get cranky. That’s when I turn to my cat for advice.

Normally, I take the cat with a grain of paprika. It looks good, but doesn’t add much to the flavor. However when it comes to the science of down-time, cats are Zen masters. This is why they can’t hold jobs. They’re too good at doing nothing.

Sometimes I forget to do nothing. The mania for multi-tasking runs many people ragged, especially in these tech-infested times.

Cats by their very nature are blissfully immune to the lure of the internet. Sure you can find lots of cat pictures and cat jokes on the internet, but cats themselves have no interest in computers, unless they happen to feel like napping on one.

Summer, in its purest form, is an extended catnap. Whether on a beach, or a hammock, or simply curled up on the couch, an hour or two of refreshing indifference to the rush and bustle of modern life can make all the difference.

So what if summer doesn’t officially start for a few more weeks? Everyone knows that Memorial Day is the unofficial start of real summer. The pools are open, the beach umbrellas are open, the ice cream truck is jingling on the corner.

I’ll take a creamsicle.

Back Tracking

Dad took this photo of a steam engine approaching in 1955.

Since I moved back to the D.C. area last year I’ve been listening to a lot of bluegrass music on the radio. There was a time when I would change the station at the first clang of a banjo. But you know how it is. Time changes everything, and as my need for high energy rock and roll has waned, my appreciation for mandolins, fiddles and even banjos has grown.

Music enthusiasts often joke about the differences between various genres of popular music, noting how country songs tend to be about trucks, drinking and broken hearts, whereas bluegrass music often focuses on trains, home, and the difficulties of finding and keeping true love. I don’t have much to add to the musical conversation when the subject is trucks, or drinking, or matters of the heart. But when it comes to trains, I can blow my own horn.

Trains ran through my childhood. I didn’t care about them particularly at the time. It didn’t matter. My father’s love of trains began when he was a boy and lasted until his dying breath.

I didn’t get it when I was growing up. I mean, when I was a little kid I thought it was kind of cool the way my dad built model trains, and the way he would always take us to see trains, and stop the car on road trips to watch them go by, take pictures, and count the cars, listen to the horns. Some of my earliest memories of my dad are of him, head down, concentrating on some engine he was building at his small desk in my parents’ bedroom. With five kids in a tiny three bedroom house—no basement, family room or rec room—my dad had to put his dreams of a train layout on hold in the early days of his career.

But once we moved to a bigger house with a basement, he poured a lot of his time and money into building an impressive collection of replica HO gauge trains. By the time he had seven children he had more trains than he knew what to do with, and not much energy or time to spend with them, but he continued to hope that one of us kids would catch the fever and take over the layout.

That never happened. One by one each of us would try to take an interest in Dad’s hobby. But trains simply didn’t mean anything to us. They were Dad’s thing.

He would try to make us catch his enthusiasm. He had recordings of trains that he would play on the stereo, so loud that it sounded like the train was pulling into the living room. And he would be grinning like a little kid, sure that if we could only see what he saw in his head, hear what he heard in his memories, we would want to share it.

We all tried. But there was no way we could experience the romantic era of war-time train travel that meant so much to our dad.

But here’s the thing: all of these bluegrass laments about lost love and homesick sorrow go on and on about the lonesome whistle’s blow and the general sadness of trains leaving, etc.

My dad was never happier than when he was on a train. He lit up whenever he heard one in the distance. He looked forward to seeing them, riding on them, learning about them.

I’m glad my father got so much joy from his fascination with trains. I’m grateful that he shared his enthusiasm with me and my brothers. I’ve always loved the sound of trains in the distance, perhaps as a result of my father, or perhaps just because, let’s face it, the sound of a train passing in the distance is a kind of poetry. If you listen the right way.

Since he died last fall I hear music every time a train sounds in the night.

And sometimes, it’s a bluegrass song.

So long as there's a train somewhere...

Calling All Vegetables

Viva vegetables!

They’re back!

Fresh vegetables, grown in fields not far from here, are beginning to surface in local farmer’s markets. Yay!

I mean, I’m all in favor of kale and rutabagas, in theory. But in practice, my go-to vegetables tend to be zucchinis, green beans and peppers in every shape and color. I’m also a big fan of Brussels sprouts and broccoli and mushrooms. However, not everyone for whom I cook shares my enthusiasm for these second tier veggies. So in the interests of familial harmony I tend to stick to familiar vegetables.

Yet even if I can’t always buy them, I love to see the cornucopia of produce each spring. Although we’re months away from backyard tomatoes and squash, the soil is warming, the rains are encouraging, and the general prospects for a great summer are in place.

Sure, there will probably be a killer drought in August. And the 17-year locusts are expected sometime this spring. But gardeners learn to roll with the punches. Strong storms and damaging winds may flatten our crops but they’ll never dash our hopes that we’ll be eating homegrown tomatoes before the Fourth of July.

Right now the roses have yet to see their first Japanese beetle of the year. I’m trying to enjoy the moment. Garden pests are just part of the Big Picture, like bad calls in baseball or delays on the metro.

So what if the Nats can’t seem to sustain a winning streak? The gnats in my backyard have their beady little eyes on the pennant.

I’m hoping that when the cicadas emerge they’ll drive the gnats crazy. And who knows? Maybe they’ll also spur the Nats on to glory.

Only Make Believe

Be your own Buddha

When you tell people you’re a writer the first thing they ask is, “Oh, what do you write?”

Then, after you tell them you write fiction, they tell you what kind of book they read, if they read at all. If you don’t write the sort of book they prefer, that pretty much ends the conversation. Occasionally you run into an omnivore—someone who reads anything and everything. This sort of reader will usually be kind enough to make an attempt to appear interested in whatever it is you write.

Generally speaking, I try to avoid talking about what I write beyond saying that it’s mostly fantasy. This isn’t strictly true, but it makes for a simpler interface with the non-reading public.

I’ve been a daydreamer all my life. As a child I did it to escape the casual cruelty and numbing boredom that fester in the savage wilds of public school. As an adult I’ve learned to channel my daydreaming into imaginary worlds which offer some respite from the daily horror stories that flood the news channels.

Apparently I’m not the only one looking to escape.

These days fantasy is big business. Books in the sword and sorcery genre abound, dragons are a growth industry, and butt-kicking heroines with paranormal powers have become a genre unto themselves. Yet still the fantasies that thrill me are the ones that lurk on the edges of the mainstream fantasy realms. There aren’t many writers like Tom Holt, Terry Pratchett and Christopher Moore, who write wildly imaginative fantasy replete with humor and philosophy.

I’m not a big fan of fantasy in which writers rely on the trappings of violence and creepy gore to make up for lack of imagination and humor.

I yearn for the Buffy factor. What made that landmark show so remarkable wasn’t simply the “girl kills monsters” theme, but the way humor was woven into every aspect of the show, from the romantic plotlines to the apocalypse scenarios. Joss Whedon understood that a good apocalypse needs more than a few laugh lines.

And this is where I draw my own personal line in the sand when it comes to fantasy. I will put up with a lot of gore and violence if I can trust the writer to punish villainy in the fullness of time and to make sure that everyone has a few laughs before the lights go out.

Many very intelligent and thoughtful readers have no interest in fantasy, or even fiction of any kind. They view reality as the whole picture. They consider history and science the only worthwhile detours from the serious business of Life. And, of course, such readers are essential to us all.

But I believe fantasy matters. And here’s the point of the sword: There’s no wall between fantasy and reality. Gravity may seem inescapable here on Earth, but if humans hadn’t imagined flight we’d never have walked on the moon.

It takes courage to be a dreamer in this rough and rude world. Not everyone will respect you for it. But you have to decide if you want to live your own life. You have the choice to be the hero or the villain or the comic relief in your own story. Whether you write it down or not is also up to you.

Be your own hero. You may never make your parents proud, but you can be proud of trying. Whether you walk through walls or into them, the important thing is to keep going. Even make believe wings can give you a lift.

Play’s The Thing

A Dragon Boat team practices under the full moon along the Washington Channel.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

It’s that time again, when a kindlier light shines upon the Earth and, although all is not right with the world and perhaps never will be, it’s wearing its happiest face and making the best of it. So should we all.

These golden days, when the sun lingers longer, when the winds blow softer, and the rains nourish new life, it’s enough to bring out the poet in the most savage soul. For those of us who feed on the thrill of simple sports, these are the days we’ve been waiting for all the long cold winter.

Here in D.C. the return of flip-flop weather has inspired a bumper crop of outdoor enthusiasts. The streets are a-swarm with hipsters and bicyclists. The volleyball teams are leaping and smashing on the fields near the Lincoln Memorial. The crack of bats and the thwock of gloves floats above the baseball fields in the shadow of the Martin Luther King Memorial, and all weekend long the cries of agony and shrieks of victory arise from the tennis courts at East Potomac Park, while the golfers on the adjacent course pursue their goals with quieter resolve.

It’s springtime in our Nation’s Capitol, and for this brief, blissful season politics is not the only game in town.

Plato, we’re told, once remarked that “Life must be lived as play.” Easy for him to say. In the modern world, as we slog or blog along at our daily chores, whether chained to desks or digging ditches, the concept of “play” can be elusive. The human penchant for nitpicking, score keeping, record seeking and trophy hunting sometimes obscures the purity of The Game. But, that’s not something we need concern ourselves with in this bright moment. Today we play.

Another fellow, Guy Lombardo, expressed the notion a bit more blithely in song: “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”

Good advice anytime.

Green is Timeless

This photo by Darius Kinsey taken around 1900 in Washington state shows what a cedar can do when it's got the right conditions.

What could be better than planting a tree to celebrate Earth Day?

Planting two trees? Perhaps.

But if you really want to take the long view, you may wish to follow the trail blazed by the dedicated folks who manage the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive. These guys are serious about replanting the magnificent trees that have been lost over the past couple of centuries due to over-enthusiastic logging and other human development pressures.

Today being Earth Day, the Archive made headlines by launching its Global Earth Day Planting Event, the result of decades of work cloning seedlings from some of the last remaining cells of trees such as the giant sequoias and redwoods of the great western forests. Some of these trees were thousands of years old when they were cut down.

The clones are being planted in nine locations: Germany, Ireland, Wales, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Oregon and California, areas selected to increase the trees’ chances for survival in the face of anticipated increasing stress from global warming.

It’s a bold and optimistic program. To plant trees of any kind requires a kind of faith. To plant a tree with the capacity to live several thousand years requires vision and optimism and a certain generosity of spirit.

As Nelson Henderson famously wrote: “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

Of course, in that sense, a tree represents a lot more than a spot of shade. But if global warming lives up to the scientific predictions, our great-grandchildren may be truly grateful for any long shadows we leave behind.

In The Pink

Everyone's Invited to the Pink Party

Last week we planned to take a peek at the peak of the pink down at the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

We set off after dinner, figuring that the crowds would be diminished at the end of the day, on what had been widely predicted to be one of the last best days for viewing, since a petal-smashing storm front was expected by the end of the week.

When I was growing up in Falls Church, Virginia,  the Cherry Blossom Festival was a minor blip on the D.C. social calendar. The marketing machine hadn’t yet sunk its  teeth into the event. There was little publicity, no posters, no T-shirts, and no city-wide campaign to lure tourists from across the nation. The general attitude seemed to be that the city had enough tourists as it was. The Cherry Blossom Festival was a little hometown event.
Not anymore.

As we inched through the strangled traffic heading anywhere close to the Tidal Basin, we heard on the radio that the Nationals’ game was experiencing a delay because the umpires were stuck in traffic. The announcers, forced to adlib for an unexpected fifteen minutes, seemed to find it hard to believe that the traffic could be that bad. Trust me. It was.

So bad, in fact that we punted on the expedition after we arrived at the intersection leading to the shuttle parking and discovered that both lanes were blocked by a broken down shuttle bus.

It might seem odd that a city famous for its power players and political agendas can lose its head over a few hundred blossoming trees. And yet, there it is. It’s a pink thing.

The Jefferson Memorial floats in a floral frame.

I went back the next morning on the metro, determined to get my pink on. The soft sunlight filtered through the fluttering trees cast a glow on every face. People of all ages ambled around snapping photos and smiling like children at a lavish birthday party.

There’s a lot of history behind the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. Those with an interest in history may see it through that lens. But for most of us, it’s enough to see it in all its fragile, fleeting glory, a living poem that blooms and then disappears overnight.

Let a thousand cameras bloom.

I Can See Clearly Now

Here's lookin' at you, kids.

I got my first pair of glasses at the age of eight, the price of being a precocious bookworm. The frames were made of red plastic with a brick design. I thought they were really cool.

At the time I was blithely innocent of the social repercussions that came with wearing spectacles. I’d never heard the then-popular maxim “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses,” and even if I had, I doubt that I’d have understood the term “passes.”

By the time I was sophisticated enough to understand the complex cultural and social stigmas surrounding the wearing of glasses I was mature enough to realize that boys had problems of their own, and my glasses had nothing to do it.

Still, like many a socially awkward child, I took comfort from stories of the ugly duckling genre. Once you start to recognize the signals, you see Cinderella everywhere. And being someone with an overactive imagination, it was a short hop to the candy shop to convince myself that one day I too would fling off my glasses and dazzle the multitude. Or as least Dennis Crawford in the sixth grade.

I don’t know what became of Dennis, but for me life changed focus once I learned to wear contact lenses. This was back in the pioneering days of contacts, in the early ’60s, when many people were skeptical about the concept of putting a small piece of plastic on your eyeball. There weren’t any soft contacts. It was hardball or nothing.

Determined as I was to lose my duck feathers, I endured the discomfort and terror of the process. And lo, on the first day of high school I was able to walk into a classroom incognito. Suddenly I understood why Superman could fly. All he had to do was take off the damned glasses.

And for a while, I flew. Serenely soaring above the crowds I enjoyed a brief period of self-confidence that taught me a lot about the power of illusions and personal myth-making. Football players asked me out on dates. Guys who had looked right through me the year before started staring at me. It was a strangely empowering sensation.

But, like so many strangely empowering sensations, it wore off, and I found myself preferring the company of my old friends: my books.

These days, in the peculiar way of all fashion, glasses, once the trademark signifiers of the uncool, have become a trendy fashion accessory. Kids wear them unabashedly, movie stars sport them to underscore their intellectual appeal, people who don’t even need glasses wear them to add panache.

If only I had those red brick specs now.

Slow Burner

Every tree contains stories waiting to be told.

On a recent episode of “The Big Bang Theory” Raj Koothrappali, the cute astrophysicist who can’t utter a word to a woman without an alcoholic drink in his system, surmounted the challenge of talking with an equally shy woman by arranging for them to meet in a library for a face-to-face texting date.

It was adorable.

But what I liked about most about the episode was how it illustrated the way bold new technologies that seem to diminish the need for human contact can also be used to create new and imaginative ways to connect.

With that in mind, I’ve finally overcome my resistance to e-publishing. As a lifelong book lover, I was slow to warm to the idea of electronic pages. However, the tree lover in me can see the virtue of virtual pages. And now that I’ve embraced the world of self-publishing, e-books simply make too much sense to ignore.

So this month I’m launching into the epub world with a will, starting with a new edition of Alice and The Green Man. This restored edition includes portions of the original book that were edited out of the first edition in a misguided attempt to qualify for “Publisher’s Choice” designation, an honor supposedly designed to open marketing doors.

This time around I’m driving, and the trip may be a little longer, but for me it’s worth it for the scenery. Call me a control freak. Or just a freak. The point is, in the last six years I’ve learned that no one else will defend my work if I don’t. So I’ve restored Alice to its original giddy green luster and sent it out there to play with the other e-books.

True, there was an e-book version out there before, if you hunted for it. Trust me, the second edition has more spring in its step.

And now it’s available on Kindle. It may take a while to catch, but I’m already feeling a warm glow.