ChaiTeaLatte

Quiet (MD)

Don't you love Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus on NR? It's not so much that I agree or disagree with any particular topic he may write about, it's the tone I like. Musing, gentle, skipping from anecdotes, to reader e-mails and letters, to descriptions of events like a visit to Davos, or making a political point. Gentleness in political discussion is welcome relief, isn't it?

Anyway, I've been watching a lot of movies lately - winter is finally here, although the bitter cold of the past few days has passed and now we have warmer temperatures. We've all been working long hours in the path department, but I've managed to see a movie or two on the Sundance channel. Can't be bothered with Netflix. Why, when I've got so many 'free' movie channels?

A day or so ago, I stumbled across Heights, a movie loosely based on a play by Amy Fox. According to the website, Ismail Merchant commissioned a screenplay based on the play. I'm not sure what got me to stop as I was flipping channels; I think it was Glenn Close, so startling and beautiful as a brunette, playing a dynamic and attention demanding actress in New York, with a photographer daughter who is about to be married. The tensions in the film (and how can a film not have tensions?) revolve around these three main characters. For a movie about New York, it sure is filled with hushed silences and quiet moments. It feels secret, not secretive, but secret. All three have secrets, in a way, and we the audience are carried along toward the truth by the end.

How can a movie about New York be so filled with quiet? It's a respite, that's what it is. There's that love of gentleness I have, again, and I was glad to see a little bit of it in evidence in that movie.

I bought a pocket-book, yesterday, made by vy & elle. It's made of recycled billboards, oddly enough, something I did not know when I bought the thing. I just liked the colors and wanted something new to go with the purse I bought this summer, shopping back home in Iowa with my sister-in-law. I often do that - price things in Boston, and if they have the same department store back in Iowa, buy it there. It ends up being cheaper. So, anyway, I now have this funny pink, red, white, blue, orange pocket-book (wallet). It's cute. I wonder what the bill-boards it is made out of used to say?

I have no idea what any of this rambling is supposed to mean, but I like words and I like to write and it feels calming, on a Sunday night, to quiet down with music and words, and get ready for the busy work week. Plus, there was no football on today, of course. A lot of Patriots fans are going to be rooting for the Bears, I think, and as a former sometime Chicagoan, I'll be right there cheering, too. Well, not right there. No tickets to Miami or anything.

*I'm going to see P.J. O'Rourke talk tommorrow night. I look forward to it.

Projections: Luminate (MD)

It's 8 o'clock or so and I'm in the office listening to a song, Luminate, by Projections. It's a new office, the fourth I've had in my four and half years at this hospital. The place has a faint musty odor which is actually quite new: It's mouse powder, laid down along with some mouse traps by service response, or whatever they are called. Well, it is an old hospital and it's the pathology department which is never a high priority anywhere, and there is a lot of construction going on around here. Buildings (tall, bold, rectangular sheets of glass reaching into the Boston sky) surround this hospital now. Plus, it's freezing outside, so maybe that explains the need for mouse powder. Anyway, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned until everything was spotless, right after I moved into this new office and it at least looks clean. I joked with one of the senior doctors that I should get a bonus for rehabbing old offices around the department.

One of my colleagues stopped by yesterday and complemented my office plants. It's a very crowded space which I try to keep minimalist (better to concentrate), but I do have a small bamboo sitting in a blue-green pot on the top of a bookshelf and a potted primrose whose yellow blooms are gently fading, in a friendly keep-me-company fashion, but whose leaves are a robust leafy green.

The number of cases I have to see (well, everyone has to see) has exploded recently. The hospital is pursuing a growth strategy, which is smart and exactly what I'd do if I was in charge, but the growing pains are hard, aren't they? I am going through my cases now (well, not at this exact moment) and organizing them in three 'piles' for tomorrow's work day. The first are cases awaiting additional studies, the second are fresh cases that are ready to review tomorrow, and the third are cases I've looked at already but need a second look. My paranoia cases, I call them, which makes the residents and fellows laugh. I'm pretty sure all pathologists do this. Wake up in the middle of the night, thinking, I should look at that case again before I release the report! Be patient, my dear patients. You may become impatient waiting for your results (and I sympathize completely and sorry for the silliness of the sentence), but at this particular point I am your advocate. You want me to look again, trust me. By the way, I stole the 'I am your advocate line' from a new colleague of mine and she is absolutely correct. That's the way to look at it, isn't it?

Sigh. It's the usual craziness and I'm not sure how much longer my path will intersect with the paths around here, but for the duration, I do my best. Okay, now it's Happy Mondays streaming through the computer (Dennis and Lois), so time to sign off and finish sorting. Take care, blog friends.

*Tatyana, out in cyberspace, I promise to provide some links to the songs when I get a chance. I remember you requested that, before.

Chinese Food On Christmas! (MD)

This kid is really talented (I've got to learn how to embed a youtube link within a post one of these days).

Carscapes Exhibit, Copley Society, Newbury St (MD)

Last week I went to see an exhibit by Christopher French at the Copley Society called ' Carscapes '. I'm sure the Blowhards would approve of his paintings: it's not so much that they are literal representations, which they are, as they look exactly the way the street he has painted feels. I get the same feeling looking at his paintings that I get when I read an old blog post of mine, written about some harmless thing that I did on such and such a day, at such and such a time. It just reminds me, you know? And I love to be reminded.

But, I have to say, even more than the paintings (which I loved), I have a perfect image of a Saturday night on Newbury St, early in the evening, 7 or 8 o'clock, with the sky dark and bright lights strung on leaveless trees, the best kind of glittering Christmassy city lights. I met J at a reception that took place at the Copley Society and mingled a bit, looking at the artwork in the small gallery before heading to the back room, where Christopher's paintings hung. There were other pathologists there that I knew (Christopher French is a pathologist as well as an artist) and lots of people that I didn't.

The room is oblong and has white walls; you climb up a few stairs at the front to reach it. The walls are covered with paintings, most small in size, a few collages, one funny bunch of black roses in a cluster, perfectly preserved, set on the wall between square-framed paintings. J liked a minature landscape, painted in oils I think, with a square brown frame almost larger than the tiny painting itself. I liked the collages of course, and a framed brown-and-white photo of a jazz singer, whose name I can't remember. I liked it for it's slight blurriness and sense of life - you could just imagine the room that he was in and the smell of the smoke and the sound of the music. I like artwork - music, books, paintings - with 'spaces' so that you can imagine for yourself what to fill in. I like a little mystery. I met a wonderful couple while mingling at the reception, a doctor (so many doctors are artists! Or try to be, given the constraints) and a third grade teacher. We exchanged phone numbers and promised to call. We all remarked on how hard it can be to make friends in Boston. Everyone is so busy and, every so slightly, reserved.

I left a little early, telling J I had a headache, but mostly, I wanted to walk outside in the fresh air. And, I wanted to be silent. Which is why I haven't written much lately, I think. I am so quiet these days.....anyway, I walked past the subway stop, marveling at the tiny, precise, white lights shining from tiny, precise white light bulbs, hanging in the trees that line Newbury at regular intervals, and gazing at the clothes in the windows. I stopped in Benetton - just ducked in and ran up the white stairs to the upper floor. "You look like you have a question," one of the salespeople says to me, and I answer, with my nose wrinkling, "Are people wearing coats that short?" I swear, some of the blazers looked like they had been chopped in half. I can't imagine any woman under 6 feet tall and over 100 pounds who could carry off those jackets....and then I walked back out, without trying anything on (I did price a quilted down coat for the winter, though), and ran for the subway.

Rambling I know, but it's my mood these days. And how does Christopher French find the time and the space to create such beautiful things? He's talented, that's how.

A Day Out in Northampton, part II (MD)

I'm too lazy to do this properly, so.....

Hi, hi, let's go see the Amherst Public Library, closed, coffee, scarred/marked wooden table, students all around, we argue and talk and argue some more, students at tables next to us look (I'm for school vouchers, how would that work?), let's meet at the Tibetan restaurant, momos, we used to get the best momos in India, a hole in the wall place, lets go back, I call my friends, my ride is ready, I have to go, I have to go now, walk to the door, rushed, promise to call. And, I did.

A Day Out in Northampton, Part 1 (MD)

J and I and two others (residents) were sitting in Jake's in Northampton having brunch last Saturday. I have to say that I liked Northampton, and Jake's. There were lots of students sitting around the restaurant, many dressed in that 'upper-class urchin' way you often see on college campuses, especially the expensive ones. Scuffed and ruffled and tousled and torn, beautifully and expensively disordered. Out of the corner of my eye, through the window, I see this acid-yellow sign with black letters printed on it. A banner says, IMPEACH BUSH NOW! And right then, I noticed the Veteran's Day parade march in front of the mini anti-war protest taking place in front of a church across the street from Jake's. Nothing much happens. A handful of protestors, 'regulars' I imagine, stand silently as the parade passes and a respectable number of parade-watchers dot the side of the road, holding flags and waving.

"Hey, it's the vets!" I say, as we leave the restaurant and give a little wave. We've got some time before we all break up for the day and go our separate ways (I'm meeting someone and J and the others are going to an Amherst reunion football game) so we walk up and down the little main drag, looking at all of the shops. An impressive array of shops for women, as you might imagine. "I could do some serious shopping here" I say to J and imagine myself dressed like some of the students that I see. A small fortune to look like I don't care.

Later in the day, waiting for my friend to show up, I listen to a Veteran's Day speech on Elm Street, I think. The speaker introduces a Gold Star mother who happens to be in the audience. A short time ago, I wouldn't have even known what that was. The speaker goes on to talk about what his office is doing for veterans who are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. He is some sort of politician, I presume. It feels a little awkward, standing by myself in a strange town listening to a politician give a speech about returning veterans, but I stay until the end of the presentation.

When the crowd breaks up, I reach for my cell and try to get through to my friend. I stand on the sidewalk, watching the rest of the crowd march down the street in the opposite direction. I guess there is more to the Veteran's Day celebration, but I have to wait for my friend, so I stay where I am, and watch members of the crowd walk away, the flag that one of them carries getting smaller and smaller.

Searching for Billy Bragg on Youtube.....(MD)

J, the other 'author' of this blog, says I lost because of the election results (in his usual gentle way, of course, see post below), but I don't think so. I agree with Bill Whittle: "America is not only much, much stronger than you imagine; it's much stronger than you CAN imagine." Yes. I mean, the people of spoken, huh? What exactly they said is a little harder to parse.......okay, some of it's not so hard, but you know what I mean.

I was searching for Billy Bragg on Youtube and found this. It's someone's vacation video, scenes of Germany, with a 'soundtrack' of Billy Bragg covering that old Smiths song, Ask. Ask me ask me ask me....doesn't that take you back? I mean, don't you just want to sing along and jump around the room and dance to it? How weird to watch some total stranger on video wandering around Germany and feel like, somehow, it's your vacation video!

I once had someone ask me in the comments section to SepiaMutiny what on earth a 'righty' like me was doing listening to Worker's Playtime, but come on. It's music! That album takes me back to my school days, my late college days, to living in a garden apartment with my friend Larinda, right across from this old hippie-ish pub, I can't even remember the name, the place I went to after a Luka Bloom show, walking along the quiet campus streets on a hot summer evening, Luka along with my friends and me. Lilac. I distinctly remember the smell of lilac.....and that I had a little headache that night because I had pulled my hair back so tightly, scooped it onto the back of my neck. And my earrings hurt, too (dangly silver earrings from India). Funny the things you remember.

Oh, and I've been spending time on this new Bollywood blog, Ugly Ugly Bollywood Fugly. I love Bollywood. I love the running around fields in Switzerland music, I love the color, the vacant-eyed beauty of the actors and actresses, the complete and utter presentness of it. It's full on life-force dressed up in over the top fashions, yaar. Plus (and I'm being all tangential, but what the heck, no one is reading anyway, except: Hi Mom!) the Boston Ritz-Carlton was bought by an Indian group and will now be called the Taj Boston. There has to be a joke about Boston Brahmins in there somewhere.....

Anyway, I promise to post more and to mercilessly critique JLH. He could use it. Kidding, J! Okay, not kidding. You really could use it.....

Election day…Sorry M, I win (JLH)

I voted!  It was my first time at the polls, having finally become an official citizen of the commonwealth (MA) this year.

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Since I don’t drive, I felt no rush to convert my New York driver’s license when I moved here for residency, but then I noticed that 10 years had passed and my dreams of a 2 bedroom, west side condo in a doorman building overlooking central park were never going to happen.

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Although I find American politics and the corresponding media (not news) coverage entertaining, I doubt that my vote has much impact on me. I live a privileged existence with a nice salary, supportive family and friends, good health care coverage, and I’m too old and (my nephew is too young) to be sent to war.  Massachusetts  residents are extraordinarily liberal on social issues, so I feel like issues of homelessness, substance addition, etc. will be debated and considered whoever is in power.

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I enjoyed the experience of this election nonetheless. Problems with the local economy, housing prices, school reform, big dig and national issues (the war) have harmonized the voices of Massachusetts into a chorus singing for change; and the democratic victory was so massive that the feeling at the poles was one of a celebrating community rather than of a mob marching on the statehouse.

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The last election I actually cared about was in 1980. I was in 7th or 8th grade and revered Jimmy Carter as the only honest voice in Washington; a man demonized by gas guzzling, slogan slinging, blame mongers. Looking back at the narrow victory against Ford and his team’s brashly arrogant approach to politics and legislation, I realize this highly intelligent giant hearted man had no place in Washington.   Regan turned out to be an excellent president (Iran Contra … and his successors aside).

It was the beginning of the PC age and I had organized my geeky friends to set up our junior high computer lab (Radio shack TRS-80s) for outcome predictions based on exit polls. We planned to stay up into the night entering the numbers from the TV networks, but it was a short depressing evening.

VCR nostalgia (JLH)

I don’t usually buy into “slippery slope” paranoia [slippery slope from gay marriage to the end of the family, from selling wine in grocery stores to rampant alcoholism, from health insurance reform to socialized medicine…], but I’ve been sliding out of control into the consumer electronics market since I bought my Macbook Pro this summer.

I just spent so much money at Best Buy today that CitiBank was ringing me to question credit card fraud as I entered my apartment with my purchases- a 26” Samsung flat panel TV and Bose 321 surround sound/DVD system.  I now have widescreen and stereo under control of a universal remote. It’s not a shopping addiction since I literally felt sick while trying to decide which system to buy while being blasted by hip-hop and lectured about resolution and rebate plans by salesmen who could not comprehend my sense of woe - I hate change. Nor is it any need to compete with my Phat friends. 

Ironically, it was my frugality that overrode my thriftiness. 

I had been living with a boom box, analog television (coaxial cable input only) with mono-sound, and a VCR. My sister had bought me a DVD player, but it was a pain to hook up (required a RF converter), did not give me the same control over movie viewing as the VCR (fast forward is not the same), and didn’t allow recording.  I watched only 3 discs in 2 years.

I wanted to play music from my new computer through a stereo so I could expand my listening choices beyond commercial CDs, I figured I would upgrade the TV so it could play through the same system.  The TV picture is mediocre with analog input (including VCR), so I feel like I’m headed for digital cable and TIVO.

The trappings of Hell (JLH)

The title refers to the 5th annual 'Iron Pour' at the Mass. College of Arts this past Friday night (rather than the facilities of my department)
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Minimally supervised college kids gathered to pour molten iron!
This is the mid-semester project for two groups of students; one that is interested in casting (i.e. sculpture), the other in events planning. 

The ticket girl drew a ghost on my hand

and we entered a courtyard set up for a party. A loud heavy metal band energized the crowd while iron-workers (IWs) stoked 2 furnaces with bags of coke, a low-smoke derivative of coal.  The sky lit up with fireworks of ash and a brilliant glow.

Campus security thought they were helping by dragging out a garden hose. Obviously, everyone feared a Johnny Tremain moment, but a trickle of water was not going to make a difference at 3000 degrees.

A student in medieval costume swigged some lamp oil and began to blow fire at us as the IWs, wearing asbestos coats and silver face paint, began to hammer the clay plug at the base of the furnace.  A massive two handled ladle was brought near, and the glowing molten metal flowed like the rivers of Hell. Distributed by two brave casters, it oozed down wooden troughs onto burning pumpkins, and dripped onto logs creating a cloud of sparks that enveloped the crowd.

As we waited for the second pouring, trying to stay warm by drinking coffee, I was amused to hear a girl with a sweet tooth say “nice night for a cookie.”

In my head....

My expectation for the evening had been either a scene resembling  Meatloaf's 'Bat Out of Hell' album cover or a play called Cellini.  It’s a rather meladramtic memoir of Benvenuto Cellini, the Renaissance Florentine artist famous for his sculpture of Perseus standing on the corpse of Medusa and holding her head aloft. The bronze casting in the second act is very much about the finished piece and the reputation of the artist; a highly choreographed event with as much of the artists’ ego as metal being poured into the mold. ‘Iron Pour’ is about creating community in the moment of an exciting and dangerous event. I may need to get to a Cirque show in Vegas to top this.