The Peanut Butter Jam!

DJ Chris Wienk over at WEXT (a terrific independent, listener-supported radio station out of New York) emailed me to let me know that they're adding my music to their regular rotation. Starting with Unclouded Day on The Peanut Butter Jam this Saturday (5/17) at 9am EST. (You can even listen online to their live stream.)

The Peanut Butter Jam is a way-cool kids music show that plays things you would expect:

• Dan Zanes
• They Might Be Giants
• Laurie Berkner

...and things you wouldn't:

• The Cars
• The Clash
• Gram Parsons
• Wilco
  

I love kids shows like this that recognize that kids love *good* music, no matter what age it is marketed to.

I love radio stations like this that break the mold, play outside of the market "rules," and support independent artists.

Thanks, WEXT! Thanks, Peanut Butter Jam!

Toni Morrison: What Color Would You Paint Your Walls?

Photo by John Morgan

That Yael Naim video reminded me of a piece of a Toni Morrison interview that I heard over ten years ago. I came across it on some audiobook series that I can't remember for the life of me, so if this rings a bell and you know where it came from, I'd love to hear from you.

I remembered putting this clip on a mix tape for my friend Amy and liking it so much that I made a copy for myself (ah, remember mix tapes?). So this morning I dug through all my cassettes and actually found it! I figure it must have been around either the 1988 or 1992 election because later in the Q&A, they talk about Beloved, which was published in 1987. Here's the question from an audience member and Toni Morrison's answer, transcribed to the best of my ability:

Question: Times are becoming more and more depressing, um, especially with this election coming up. Do you have…what do you do to, like, maintain hope? (laughter from crowd)

Toni Morrison: Well, I’ll tell you something. You’re right. It’s very dangerous, it’s extremely depressing, and it’s really not funny. On the other hand, you really have to…it’s like you know a few years ago when there was such a build up of nuclear weapons and it was just getting like everybody was armed to the teeth and it was, like, awful…one realized that they had, somebody had imagined that. And it lived. So the problem then seemed to be to unimagine it. Unimagine it. What would it be like if it didn’t exist? What would it be like? In all of its details. In every way. What would it be like if you had it like you wanted it? What would it be?

Can you really imagine living in a world without nuclear weapons? It’s very difficult to do. What would you do differently? Where would you live? How would your life change? Or without all sorts of things. Well, that has got to be imagined in order to prevent the paralysis. Because if we’re paralyzed because it’s unworkable, unthinkable, non-political, we won’t move. That’s one thing.

The second thing is, there are things to do. There are not…if we think in huge numbers about how to save the continent, we’re already whipped. But if you think in terms of one…you know, small things. Six people. One person. One room. One backyard. Not the beach. The highway. You know, “What are you doin?”

And then it works. And you know that you have imagined a world in which you can live. It may be small, as small as your room, but you have imagined it. And then you are in control. That’s not hope, that’s real work. And that’s what’s important.

It doesn’t matter about those other little people. They’ll all sort of come and go, all these little junky people. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that people realize how valuable life is and simply exercise the one thing that human beings have, which is the ability to imagine what it would be like if you had it the way it was supposed to be.

Then what would you do? What color would you paint your walls? And then paint ‘em.

Grab Bag Friday: Linda Urban's Bada-Bings

This week, I came across a recipe for some deeelicious chocolate cookies with a zing. In Linda Urban's smart and funny middle-grade novel, A Crooked Kind of Perfect, 10 year old Zoe's dad has a penchant for mail-order Living Room University courses. One of his courses is in cookie making.

So it may come as no surprise that on Ms. Urban's website, you can find a recipe for Bada-Bings...fudgy, chocolate cookies with dried cherries (or cranberries) to give just the perfect balance of sweet with a tang. Yum!

Kevin and I have been loving these cookies. And they're so rich, that I'm actually perfectly satisfied after one or two. Which is unheard of. Gingersnaps, for instance...I could easily eat the whole pan in one sitting. :)

(We halved the recipe and it still made two cookie sheets full.)

I suggest picking up A Crooked Kind of Perfect, whipping up a batch of Bada-Bings, and having yourself a *lovely* weekend!

As for the book, here's the jacket-flap sum-up:

Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience's applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she'll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall.

But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe's dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn't the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn't the only part of Zoe's life that's off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day.

Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises—and that perfection may be even better when it's just a little off center.

Yael Naim: New Soul

A friend of mine recently sent me this video by Yael Naim. It's been out awhile, so maybe you've seen it, but I really liked how it deals with the act of creating and how lovely and fun the process can be.

It also made me think about how there are so many ways in which we can create our own reality, and how *that* is really like creating a work of art or music or a new space. It starts with imagination. What would you like to see, do, be? And then you can begin to create those things around you. And soon enough, you might just be able to push down the wall and *be* there...right in the middle of things.

Cinco de Mayo: Octavio Paz on Crickets and Stars

In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, here are some characteristically thoughtful, lovely words and a poem from Mexican poet Octavio Paz. I thought they resonated nicely with Rachel Carson's "sense of wonder" that I like to talk so much about.

This was part of Octavio Paz's Nobel Prize banquet speech in 1990. You can read the whole speech, and his entire Nobel lecture (in Spanish or English) on the Nobel Prize website.

"In the countryside one night, years ago, as I contemplated the stars in the cloudless sky, I heard the metallic sound of the elytra of a cricket. There was a strange correspondence between the reverberation of the firmament at night and the music of the tiny insect. I wrote these lines:

The sky's big.
Up there, worlds scatter.
Persistent,
unfazed by so much night,
a cricket: brace and bit.

Stars, hills, clouds, trees, birds, crickets, men: each has its world, each is a world, and yet all of these worlds correspond. We can only defend life if we experience a revival of this feeling of solidarity with nature. It is not impossible: fraternity is a word that belongs to the traditions of Liberalism and Socialism, of science and religion."

Grab Bag Friday: The Six O'Clock Scramble

I've always said that if I won the lottery, the one thing I might splurge on would be a private chef. I can't stand to plan meals. I'm not a great cook (though I can *bake* like nobody's business!) and Kevin and I only have a few standard meals:

• Burritos
• Tacos
• Chicken Soba Noodles
• Soup
  
• And our tried and true fallback--popcorn and smoothies.

Coming up with a unique meal plan for the week and figuring out what ingredients we would need is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

So recently, we've been trying out The Six O'Clock Scramble. It's an online program that plans out your meals for the week and spits out a grocery list to match. We tested a couple similar programs first, but settled on The Scramble because the meals were both tastier and healthier.

Here's the deal:

You pay $1 a week. You have to pay upfront for a year, but if you don't like it within 30 days you can get your money back.

You can choose how many meals you need for a week, and this takes a little experimenting. We've found that for 2 of us, taking leftovers into account, 3 or 4 meals gets us through a whole week.

You can swap out meals you don't like. Kevin hates fish, so anytime there's a seafood meal, we choose "Custom Menu" and search through the database to pick something else.

So far so good. I love not having to think about what I'm going to make for dinner tonight. The grocery list isn't perfect (it may list things twice if you need it in 2 recipies, so you just have to be vigilant), but it still saves a ton of time. We've had a couple meals we weren't crazy about, but overwhelmingly, they've been delicious. And they've added a *huge* amount of variety to our diet.

Here are just a few of the hits we've had in the last month:

• Southwestern Cobb Salad with Avocado Ranch Dressing
• Barbeque Meatloaf
• Polenta Mozzarella Melt with Roasted Red Peppers
• Peanut Beef Skewers
• Fried Rice with Tofu and Snap Peas
• Panzanella (Italian Bread Salad with Salami)

I can't believe I actually made these things. And seriously. They were easy.

So I'd say The Scramble is worth a shot. I'm certainly enjoying dinnertime a whole lot more. :)

Sam Phillips: Can't Come Down

Well the news is out that the new Sam Phillips CD, Don't Do Anything, is now set to be released on June 2nd. Well, that's not February, but I'll take it.

In the meantime, you can browse around her newly revamped website, complete with a couple short, silent films and a blog.

And here's a video of her new song Can't Come Down:

Peter Sis: The Wall (Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain)

I first came across Peter Sis and his intricate, detailed drawings when I was in college. I just happened (thankfully) across Starry Messenger one day while browsing the children's section, and I was instantly hooked. His work is all at once breathtaking and thought-provoking and complicated and unaffected. Each time I read a Peter Sis book, I immediately want to go back to the beginning and read it all over again so I can appreciate all the details I missed the first time around.

So it's no surprise that I was swept away by his newest book, The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. I can't believe almost a year has gone by since this book came out and I just got it yesterday!

The Wall is the story of Peter Sis' childhood and young adulthood in Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Throughout the book, we see the life he lived through his eyes: the book is spattered with entries from his childhood journals, actual family photos, and even his own childhood drawings of tanks and planes and patriotism. But it is art and music that dominate his world, though both can be very dangerous. He paints in secret in his room and joins a rock band (but fails to grow his hair long--the ultimate act of defiance).

I've read some reviews that criticize the book for being too one-sided, too western eurocentric, too America-saves-the-day. Sis himself mentions in an interview that some colleagues in Prauge are disgusted by the book (I'd be interested to read some of *those* reviews). But this is his life as he remembers it from a child's point of view. Of course things are always more complicated than they appear on the surface. To me, this book is more a testament to art and music and the desire to create and be free.

And it is an interesting discussion. I lived in Budapest for six months in 1997, and many of the Hungarian students my age were disgusted with the new capitalism and were nostalgic for the days of Communism, when there were no red light districts, no homeless, no Burger King. They refused to learn English in school, preferring Russian. Their parents, however, were shocked. I saw one parent telling her son how he couldn't begin to understand the constant fear and anxiety she had lived under. That went over as well as the "I walked 10 miles in a blizzard to school every day" kind of speech you'd get from your grandfather.

In his afterword, Peter Sis (who came to the US in the 80s on a short term work visa and stayed) explains it this way:

Now when my American family goes to visit my Czech family in the colorful city of Prague, it is hard to convince them it was ever a dark place full of fear, suspicion, and lies. I find it difficult to explain my childhood; it's hard to put it into words, and since I have always drawn everything, I have tried to draw my life--before America--for them. Any resemblance to the story in this book is intentional.

The Wall is an absolutely fascinating book, and though it is picture book size, I would actually recommend it for adults, especially jr. high and high school students. The graphic-novel, personal narrative style is an interesting way to engage the subject of the Cold War and should incite lots of discussion.

On Peter Sis' website, there is a Teacher's Guide (.pdf) for anyone hoping to use the book in class.

You can also find an interesting audio interview with Peter Sis on the site (click Audio Reading).

Here is the New York Times review with a small piece of one of my favorite images from the book--of Czechoslovakians painting and repainting a wall.

Here is the Fuse #8 review (I almost always turn to Fuse #8 *before* the New York Times :)

Here is an interesting YouTube mashup of images from the book and actual video footage from communist Czechoslovakia.

Grab Bag Friday: Compost Update, Sustainable Household Goods

It's the last day of Earth Week and our town is abuzz with free bike tune ups, cell phone recycling drives, and even a transportation fair. In celebration, I thought I'd give you a compost update and a review of how our various sustainable experiments worked out over the last year.

The Compost Update: All I have to say is, we're ready to go. As some of you know, last year we got a Sun-Mar 200 Home Composter and ended up with zero results at the end of the summer (apparently because our composter wasn't full enough?) Well, we've been adding stuff all winter, and let me tell you, it's full enough. If we don't have compost by June, we're out of excuses, and it was a failed experiment. I, of course, remain hopeful...

The Sustainable Goods Results: Here's where I'll rate the success of our various small household changes and how well we've stuck to them over the year. Click on the titles to review last year's posts:

The Lightbulb Change
We haven't replaced every single lightbulb yet (hence the 4 stars instead of 5), but we love our CFLs. They start out a little dim when you turn on the light, but within a minute or so, they're up to speed. I haven't had to change a single one. They're awesome.


The Yogurt Change
I've been really good about this one. If you remember, the change was to bring a regular spoon to work instead of using a plastic one for my yogurt. I eat yogurt at work at least 3 or 4 days a week, so I estimate that I've saved somewhere between 140-180 plastic spoons from the landfill just since June 2007!


The Sponge Change
These biodegradable pop-up sponges were definitely my favorite change of the year. Because they're so fun to expand! My estimate: we sent 45 fewer sponges to the landfill since June. As I mentioned last year, they don't have the scraping/scrubbing action of the heavy-duty store bought sponges, but between these and a scrub brush, I haven't come across a single thing I couldn't clean.


The Leftover Change
We haven't been the best at this one. We've definitely reduced the quantity of plastic bags and saran wrap that we use, but we haven't been able to totally shake the habit. We do, however, have a ridiculous number of saved yogurt and other containers spilling out of our cupboards, just waiting to be used. Hm.


The Napkin Change
I'd say we've been pretty good about moving to cloth napkins. We use them most of the time. But after a year, I'm not 100% sure about this one. What do you think is worse--the number of paper napkins that get thrown away, or the load of laundry that you do with all the cloth napkins? The cloth napkins seem like the way to go, but then when I'm loading them into the washer, I'm not so sure. Any thoughts?

Well, that's where we stand. Over the next few weeks, I'll try to remember to post some other successes, failures, and discoveries we've made on the sustainable goods front (for instance, our disastrous experiment with earth-friendly dishwasher detergent).

If you've tried any sustainable solutions that are working in your home, please share!

Rosanne Cash & Joe Henry: So It Goes

My friend Carter sent me a link to the new Measure for Measure series on songwriting over at The New York Times. It's a very cool blog with posts by musicians Rosanne Cash, Andrew Bird, Darrell Brown, and Suzanne Vega, who each post a song and discuss the songwriting process that went along with it.

I found Monday's post by Rosanne Cash, So It Goes: How It Went to be a fascinating read. She writes about the process of co-writing with Joe Henry and even posts the emails they sent back and forth with various iterations of the song. It's a great glimpse into the way a song comes together, and super fun to be able to listen to the final product.

Here's an interesting bit on her feelings about co-writing:

A note: It is not in my nature to co-write; I would rather go deep into the underworld alone, like Persephone looking for the pomegranate. The solitude and the simple satisfaction of having my own phrases laid out like beads on a necklace, while fine-tuning my melodies, suits me entirely. But I have pushed myself to be a co-writer more often in recent years and to force myself to forgo both the arrogance and the insecurity of the solo voice. My songwriting style is a synthesis of my strengths and my limitations, and occasionally it behooves me to borrow from someone else’s strength, and offer a key to the locked door of someone else’s limitations. I had to give up the pride of thinking myself only a journalistic songwriter, in order to become a better writer overall.

What a cool idea for a blog. I'll definitely be working my way through the archives on this one!

Poem of the Day: Learning to Speak by Liz Rosenberg

As part of the Poetry Month celebrations over at Academy of American Poets, you can sign up to get a poem a day (selected from new books published this spring). I have to say, I'm not a big fan of the pill-box image for the Poem-A-Day page...I don't like to encourage the poetry-as-medicine (it's *good* for you!) metaphor, but that's a discussion for another day. :)

Pill-box aside, I enjoyed yesterday's poem by Liz Rosenberg. Also, check out 30 Ways to Celebrate Poetry Month.

Learning to Speak
by Liz Rosenberg

She was the quietest thing I'd ever seen.
It was so restful, being in her company
For hours, neither of us uttering a word.
I'd read the paper, look up, and she would smile,
Her lips half-pursed, just tucked up at the ends
As if holding a blithe secret.
When I fed her, she'd silently nod and smile,
Like immigrants you see
In train stations or in the movies,
She'd take the bowl from my hands
And nod again and smile again
And neither of us would say a word
From sunup to sunset.
When son and husband came home,
Both talking at once, both talking
With their mouths full,
My daughter and I could only look at them
With our dark quiet eyes.
Siddown, she says now.
I sit down
Without argument.

Grab Bag Friday: Another Secretary Gag

Back in September, I confessed my love for a certain goofy television series and mentioned a Woody Allen bit that I couldn't find on YouTube. Well guess what I found? I *love* this woman's reactions to his dictation. Ah, high comedy.



(If you're reading from Facebook, here's the link)

Today Is Operation Teen Book Drop

Today is Support Teen Literature Day and Operation Teen Book Drop.

Are you dropping a book?

I've got Lois Lowry's tear-jerker, A Summer to Die (*man*, what a great book!) all bookplated up and ready to go.

Now I just have to decide if I'm going to drop it on a table at our local movie theater/cafe, ice cream shop, library, skate park, or the DVD rental store. Hmmm, what do you think?

(I'm leaning toward the ice cream shop because, hey, as long as I'm there...)

Doris Day: Good Blues Tonight

My mom and I were just talking about how much we love Doris Day and her clear, no-frills delivery. My favorite Doris Day songs are the ones that she sang with the Les Brown Orchestra in the 40s, and my all-time favorite is My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time (iTunes link update: Strangely, iTunes has this song labeled "Parental Advisory/Explicit Lyrics" which, in case you were seriously wondering, is an error...and a pretty hilarious one at that). Sadly, I didn't find a version that I could post here, but you can also find the song on the 2-disc Columbia Records Golden Girl collection.

Instead, here's a 1946 recording of Les Brown's Orchestra with Doris Day singing "Good Blues Tonight":