Waldorf Life – The Hillhouse

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February 10, 2019April 24, 2019 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Elihu's Room, Farm Life, Mommy Mind, Pics, The Studio, Waldorf Life2 Comments

Elizabeth singing with David Amram at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York

There’s no time to write, no time to think, no time to plan. Life at the Hillhouse these days is just running from one fire to the next, one challenge to another…

I refer to my spiral notebook of to-do lists so that my heart will remain hopeful at all of the items that are now crossed out. With so many items checked off the list, why is it that life still feels like a fruitless, Sisyphean maze without a happy destination? Centered folks with a handle on their shit will tell me it’s all about the journey, the process. Yeah, well there are times when I enjoy the ride, yes, but for the most part right now I’m feeling compressed, broke and apprehensive. And honestly, there are so many things I’d rather be writing about than how stressful things are. But I have a hunch that a whole lot of my friends are also feeling the squeeze of life right now too.

I know one day I’ll miss this time. I do, but still… Sometimes, when I realize that I’ve been standing at that same stupid kitchen sink washing the same goddam dishes over and over for a fucking decade, I am overcome with a profound sense of frustration. But then I’ll remember in an instant that Elihu will be in college in two short years… There will be plenty of time then to arrange programs for the Studio, cull the crap from the garage and fix the chicken run fences. Plenty of time for all that domestic shit that just takes time and muscle. (But then I worry all over again; will I have any energy or muscle left by then to deal with it all?)

A week ago I had the good fortune to sing with my old pal David Amram. Elihu and I went to hear him at Caffe Lena, and he invited me up. For that one moment I remembered how it used to feel… Man, there is nothing like it. It felt like I was flying, weightless through space, supported by a warm, loving cloud… It reminded me of the same way I felt when, at 17, I recorded in the studio for the very first time. That feeling of hearing myself through the headphones, lifted by reverb into a starry, endless universe… It was enough to remind me that there is more to life than the to-do list and the dishes. But it’s still not quite within reach. Not quite yet.

I hadn’t planned on writing a post this morning, but now that I’m here at my desk I may as well catch folks up on the current doings here at the Hillhouse…

Elihu is continuing to amaze me; he’s on the mock trial club for his school (they have real trials in a courtroom presided over by an actual judge), he’s learning French now (I’m guessing by June he’ll be considered trilingual), he’s building gorgeous planes and continuing to post his builds on YouTube, and he’s kicking some ass on the tuba. On Saturdays Elihu is a tour guide at the local military museum, a post he enjoys – something that I could never have seen coming a year ago. There is a lot on his plate these days; homework often keeps him up until past midnight, and as a mother, it worries me. It’s always been my goal to keep my child’s life under-planned so that he might never feel undue stress (that will come in time!), so recently I apologized to him for having let his life become so full of commitments, but he assured me that he liked it that way (in his own words he describes himself to be an “aspiring overachiever”!). I’m deferring to his judgement on that. His life is really on his own terms now.

Last week, while driving Elihu to the military museum for his afternoon shift as a docent, we were accosted by an inebriated and angry young man (there was an outdoor festival in town) who, while crossing the street in the middle of the block, screamed as us that I was driving too fast. I waved to let him know I was aware of him, that he needn’t worry. He yelled at me again, and in my endless quest to be understood by everyone, I opened the window and told him not to worry, when in a better version of the universe I would’ve kept my mouth shut, and moved along on my way. My protest enraged him even more, and so as we drove off he swung his hardshell guitar case at the car. There was a loud cracking sound, and the car rocked. Sensing there might truly be damage, I pulled over, assessed the door and then followed him as he tried to retreat, yelling at me that “the pedestrian was always right”. The impact of his swing did make a dent, and the paint was chipped too. A small mark, but enough to compromise the finish and create a crease in the line of the door. To say that my heart sank is an understatement. (Keeping things in check I reminded myself that this is a first-world problem.) I’m grateful that his mother was there too; her peaceful energy was like an eye in the storm. She offered to pay for the repairs and gave me her cell number too, and so after I dropped Elihu off at his job, I visited the police station to file a report. This past week I’ve had to add body shop appointments to my list, and the issue is still likely weeks away from resolution. Ah well. Just gotta keep going.

Not long ago Elihu and I learned that his father was having another baby. It kinda threw us for a loop; Elihu had settled on things as they were (he and I had enjoyed a surprisingly lovely visit in London this past November with his half sister and her mother, and on that front things were very good indeed). Elihu said that it was hard news for him to hear, but suspected it would feel more normal as time went on. It was strange how hard the news hit me. I’d thought all that pain was gone, resolved and for the most part over. But there it was again, fresh; a reminder of how I’d never gotten the chance to have another child, how I was robbed of the possibility of a true family, how my partner had vanished without my consent. All at once the contrast was in my face; I myself was beyond menopause now, and somehow my ex’s wife was still in that youthful window of fertility. The wound opened up all over again. For a few weeks my stomach ached in an old and familiar way. But thankfully, in the month or so that’s passed, it’s subsided. My life won’t change much for this turn of events, and likely neither will Elihu’s. Crazy how stuff happens, and how one must shift one’s thinking to understand it all. Once again the landscape has changed in a way we never could have expected.

Our exchange student Leevi is coming from Germany at the end of March, and the house is topsy-turvy in preparations for our guest. A resident barred owl has picked off several of our hens; a plastic great horned owl sits atop a perch that we must move daily in order to appear a plausible threat to the henhouse predator. The weather continues to present challenges with flooding in our house and frozen pipes at the Studio. I can’t seem to get back on the diet train and feel fat and rather unhappy with it, but for the time being I simply can’t fret over it. There are too many other things to set right first.

So there it is friends, a rather hastily penned update.

Embedded below are links to websites which I recently created in order to hang ourselves a shingle out in the virtual world. Thought I’d try splainin to people what it was that we did in a more succinct fashion. Peruse Elihu’s site, won’t you please, dear friends? A lovely Valentine’s gift might be your subscribing to Elihu’s YouTube channel… (A mother’s thank-you in advance.)

ElizabethConant.com (The main site to which all the others are linked.)

Copterdude’s site

Copterdude’s YouTube channel

Not Your Mother’s Piano Teacher site

Singing70s (and more) site

Elizabeth’s Instagram (hillhousewoman)

Elihu’s Instagram (copterdude)

The Studio in Greenfield’s site

Whirlwinds of March

March 13, 2017March 13, 2017 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Divorce Diary, Elihu's Room, Farm Life, Flight, Mommy Mind, Pics, The Studio, Vids, Waldorf Life1 Comment

This past week we’ve experienced a good dose of dramatic and angry-sounding winds here in our corner of upstate New York; several mornings we’ve awoken to see fresh tree limbs scattered across the property. Daily the coop door bangs shut even after we’ve made an attempt to prop it open, and at night the wind through the forest that surrounds our house can sound like a swarm of enormous jet engines passing us on all sides. It’s been cold too, as in single-digit cold, which can make it feel like an all-out assault mounted against us by the elements. The snow is almost all gone now, due to a few unseasonably warm days, but the game is still on; winter is by no means done with us. Truly, we are exhausted by it, but at least we know that it won’t last much longer. Elihu’s birthday is on April 28th, and by then the snow will be gone for good. Each year at about this time, when our patience is at its very end, we remind ourselves of this definitive marker, which promises us unconditionally that there are just a few weeks left. !

Day before yesterday the air was a bit warmer, the wind had calmed down, and as I was outside fixing the fencing and making minor repairs to the coop I heard a new sound… At first it registered as familiar, but it took me a minute to really get it. The red-wing blackbirds were back! Every year our amazement at the turning of the seasons is refreshed; it’s nearly impossible to imagine how different things will feel in only a month’s time, and even harder to grasp that such a change will truly happen at all! Today it sure doesn’t seem as if anything will ever change, but before too long, a few early robins and a line of turtles sunning themselves on nearby pond banks will seal the deal for us. At the moment, however, I pray that all those dear creatures who presently remain suspended in winter’s torpor will stay there for just a little bit longer, as it is still bitter cold outside. (Also, our snow-less terrain will be changing again soon, as there is a winter storm warning for the next two days promising 12 – 18 inches of snowfall. Oh well.)

The recent weather in our interior lives has been a bit windy and dramatic too. A recent heated exchange with Elihu’s father over his attending the Waldorf School including some angry emails from him prompted me to pen a terse response. I knew, even as I posted my note to him on Facebook (polite, to-the-point and with a small degree of good humor), that it wasn’t likely to serve me in any productive way. Yeah, I knew it. But being told “Fuck you” by my son’s father as I tried to defend the importance of Elihu’s school, man, that was too much. Seriously not cool. In hindsight I can understand that he was stressed, and in no frame of mind to respond kindly. Lots on that guy’s plate: travelling internationally (and with a Muslim name no less in this crazy Trumped-up world), having his time with his son challenged (on account of reducing unexcused absences in high school), having to keep up with his financial commitments. Yeah, I get it. In future I think my own policy should be to wait at least 24 hours so I can cool down a bit before firing off a response to his angry communications. But regardless of the situation, regardless of how carefully I might intend to preserve what remains of our relationship, I will never get my props from that guy – and I think I understand that fully now. No well-written letter, no physical evidence, not even a happy and thriving child will get any witness – let alone gratitude – from him. But that’s OK. I have a full plate, and a happy kid. I had my life with Fareed, and in that wonderful life I made friends, I became part of a very unique family, I traveled, I became a better musician, and I learned things – and in the end I got a wonderful child out of it too. So that relationship fulfilled its role in our lives. Yes, it was a good chapter. (The transitional one that followed, er, uh… maybe not so much!) But I’ve been learning throughout the entire journey, so nothing has been lost. All is as it should be… OK. Next adventure?

Elihu himself has had a magical week. Yesterday he played an adjudicated tuba performance (NYSSMA – New York State School Music Association) and received a score of 97. As his teacher told him earlier today at his lesson, this is a pretty important accomplishment in that just over a year ago Elihu had only the most rudimentary reading skills. (Yes, he knew his bass clef, but finding the notes on the tuba made it a whole new ballgame.) The judge made some lovely comments about Elihu’s interpretation and musicality, and this, although perhaps not entirely surprising, still kind of shocked us both. We’d prepared for some level of disappointment, so this was a pretty thrilling conclusion.

Another magical element to the week was Elihu’s successful and short-lived GoFundMe campaign to raise money to buy a collective pitch/3D RC heli. It’s been a while (in the helicopter world 1 year = 5 years of ‘normal’ time) since Elihu’s had a brand-new heli. He’s fixed up the old ones and done his best to keep everything in the air, but at the end of the day, many of his craft weren’t designed to be fixed, but rather simply replaced. And now that he’s got some skills, he really wanted a craft that could support him as he learned a new, more sophisticated technique of flying. But on a $5 weekly allowance, the $250 heli he wanted (by his 14th birthday) would take a loooong time to save for. I made the suggestion that he could start a campaign – but the content was on him. We posted a couple of pics and he wrote the text. It took about a half hour to create, and in a only few hours’ time after posting it he’d reached his goal. He was running around the house laughing and laughing and gleefully jumping over the furniture (well, he does that anyway, but still…).

He promptly ordered the heli, making sure the guy at Horizon Hobby knew of his past disappointments. And wouldn’t ya know, the box arrived FedEx like 2 days later… I missed the first delivery and had to cancel some appointments to make sure I was here to receive it the following day, but oh how worth it it was. !! A triumph, a moment, a rite of passage. Let’s just hope he goes slow and takes all the advice he’s given. This will take a whole new level of skill. I’m confident he’ll do fine, I just hope it doesn’t take him one broken-up craft to get there.

When Elihu told me at the age of six that he wanted to play tuba, I knew he meant it. But who coulda known just what that would mean a few years down the line? And when Elihu began his obsession with birds, and then in time aviation, how could I ever have known the adventures that would ensue as a result? When he was told he needed to play bass before he could play tuba, who woulda thunk he’d take care of business as he did? Me, I was always a path-of-least-resistance kind of person from the start. I did the bare minimum I had to in order to get by. My kid, he’s not like that. He’s one to face stuff head one, assess it, devise a strategy and then dive in. When Elihu does something, he fucking does it. And he does it with such deep interest, such integrity, and such modesty. And the thing is – he does things with true joy. Not the laugh-out-loud sort necessarily (although sometimes that is how it manifests – like when he’s flying a helicopter or playing his djembe and he just can’t stop grinning), but rather it’s something that’s deeper, more lasting. He spends a lot of time in thought, and a fair amount of time reflecting on all the things he’s learned. He’s a fun kid to have around, and many are the times I’ve thanked him for choosing me to be his mother. I’m learning right along side him, and I’m enjoying myself too.

It’s a good thing that things are going well on the kid front, because challenges abound regarding The Studio these days. Forget about updating the website (one can clearly see that I have indeed forgotten about that!), there are mechanical issues popping up as we pilot our way (we? Make that ‘me’) through our second winter. Pipes are freezing, despite my cranking the super-expensive baseboard electric heat, renters are still enjoying last year’s prices (oy, I started so low I cringe to think), the terrain is either too muddy, too icy or piled too high with snow, and mom is still essentially funding the balance. We had a productive board meeting recently, but until we have a larger board, and until I can start assigning people tasks (I suppose in the real world we’d call those ‘committees’) it’s going to remain just lil old me doing it all. But overall, things are so much better than last year at this time, and I have to constantly remind myself of that.

Over the past month I’ve experienced some personal exchanges with folks who’ve stepped up to tell me they think this Studio thing has been a big mistake, a personal detour of sorts, and that I should just let it go. Some folks have wondered why I don’t just work for someone else and give myself a break from all the stress. I myself had some similar thoughts recently, and it was my mother who quite angrily insisted that quitting wasn’t an option. I suppose an existential crisis is inevitable along the path to creating something new like this. All I need to do is read back over this blog through the past few years to see just how far I’ve come. It’s easy to miss in the thick of it. You know, forest for the trees. This weekend has been another in a series of challenges, and thankfully the renter was very kind about it. It’s all been a huge learning experience. From how to run a business to how to maintain a building – to learning how to deal with a variety of different personalities and expectations. Huge. Learning. Experience. (I’m not such a fan of that “word/period” technique, but it does kinda Make. The. Point.)

Now it’s late and I’m losing my recall for the events of the past few weeks. Now I need to summon the focus to wake bright and early tomorrow and start hittin it all again. Make lunch, breakfast, do the chickens, check in with renters at the Studio, get kid to school, hit the Y, do some fast grocery shopping, prepare for a new student, learn the new score for the kid’s musical, put the groceries away (sometimes that’s easy to overlook!). Then there’s the small matter of tweaking the Studio’s bylaws, CCing everyone on the changes, and a few other Studio-related items which are too mundane to list, but can easily eat up the hour I may (or may not) have left after all else is checked off the list. Not sure I’ll get to the website. My taxes and school tuition assistance forms and the monthly emailing will also have to wait another day or two. A girl can only do so much! Maybe after the kid’s in bed…

You too? Yeah, I kinda thought it wasn’t just me. Every last one of us in this contemporary world is busy, busy, busy. But what an adventure, huh? Just today Elihu remarked that neither one of us tended to do things by “half measure”. When I looked to him for his reasoning behind it, he swept his hand in an open gesture toward our small living room. “You don’t just have a piano, you also have a harpsichord. I don’t just have a tuba, I also have a bass. And I don’t just have an alto recorder – I have em all! And we play all of them, and we enjoy playing all of them. And I don’t just love aviation, I live aviation. You don’t just love meeting new people and experiencing new situations, you live for that. And we don’t just keep a couple of chickens – we actually hatch our own flocks right here in our own little incubator.” As I looked around the room with a fresh new perspective, I nodded in agreement. I told him I hadn’t thought of it like that, and I confessed that I often felt our simple life here had sometimes become way too complicated. “We just don’t do things by half-measure” Elihu repeated. We stood there together for a moment in silence, looking out at our cozy room. “But we love it that way, don’t we?” Yup, I guess we do.

No, there’s nothing half-hearted or half-measured about our life here. And I’m sure my son is probably right. Neither one of us would truly enjoy a static, predictable life – even if it meant all the warmth and sunshine of Florida. And while we treasure our peaceful and quiet time at home, sometimes it’s still a lot of fun to live in the midst of a whirlwind.

The eighth grade class jokes and just kinda hangs out… Elihu, meanwhile is…

Teaching himself Japanese. Not a huge surprise. He’s got a handle on German, so it’s time to branch out.

Back home, Elihu brings Mr. Duck inside for a quick visit with Grandma.

Just look how this kid is growing! See how short both his pants and shirtsleeves have become!

We’ve finally discovered why hens like to park underneath Bald Moutain’s belly: he is covered with a huge number of poultry mites. No amount of topical treatments have rid him of these pests which cause him to itch all over, and without respite. Some hens like to crawl underneath him and pick off the mites as little snacks. I called the local vet and can you believe I have a $156 credit there?? That means that this coming Thursday Baldie will be getting the full-on salon treatment via some internal medication that will put an end to this 8 year old roo’s troubles.

Elihu loves so many animals. This tiny, dime-sized poison dart frog lives with two others of another variety in a vivarium that is self-sustaining. Elihu spent months researching the construction of this sophisticated environment online before putting it together himself. All I can say is God bless the internet, and go YouTube!

Elihu and a new craft made entirely of his own design.

It’s a ‘scale’ paper model. Looks nice and flies surprisingly well. Who knew?

This is the constant state of our kitchen table. I’m ok with it now, but check back with me in a couple of months. !!

This is the super-blah looking time of year. Sigh. And still so cold!Ah, but Sunday morning breakfast makes it better.

So does a quick smooch with Alden, Bald Mountain’s son and the father of future flocks.

Sundays around here mean tuba lessons! In this pic Elihu’s magnificent teacher, Mike Meidenbauer, goes over some smaller points regarding the interpretive aspects of the tuba concerto Elihu will be playing at NYSSMA, an adjudicated performance which is graded and requires scales, sight reading and performance. We adore Mike for many reasons, and perhaps top on our list (although he is a highly regarded low brass instructor) is his joyful and humorous way of interjecting colorful language into a lesson. (He also has chickens!) Mike, Elihu and I are cut from much the same sort of cloth. We find his natural, humanistic way of teaching beyond refreshing.

Warming up, Elihu said he felt like “an elephant in an aviary”.

Kid did well, and he wore my dad’s shoes, too. That made us both happy. Hope it made grandpa smile, too.

Who woulda thunk? Neither of us! Wow!!! and Phew!!!

Proud Mama keeps on boasting…

Back at home, I’ve missed the Fed Ex driver once already, and knowing how precious his delivery is, I make double sure he doesn’t pass us by a second time.

I realize that sometimes our ‘doorbell’ confuses folks. The real bell is an actual bell that hangs on the side of the door. It came from my father’s childhood summer home on Paradox Lake in upstate New York, and it was likely used to call my dad and his brother up to the house for dinner. I just love that the same sound is now a familiar part of our life here. So far, however, very few folks have been brave enough to actually use it.

The package did arrive. !!

Here it is!

Suh- WEET!

Elihu has lamented for a while now that he doesn’t have a YouTube channel, but he has so much information to impart, and he thinks his input could be of value to someone out there. Finally, I sat down and got to work creating a channel. We took his first-ever formal “video” of his heli’s unboxing (which I’m told is definitely a “thing”) and uploaded it. He is now probably the happiest boy that ever walked the face of this earth.

Whew! What a whirlwind this March has been!

Link to Elihu’s new YouTube channel: Copterdude

(For some reason the link cuts off the start of the video – scroll back to catch it from the top.)

P.S. Even though you don’t need one more item in your inbox, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Elihu’s channel. Thanks for considering!

Rounding Corners

February 4, 2017February 5, 2017 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Flight, Growing Older, Mommy Mind, Pics, The Studio, Waldorf Life2 Comments

It’s my hope that this blog doesn’t end up languishing in the virtual ether. Some weeks it seems there’s hardly time enough to take a shower let alone upload pics and cobble together some content…. I asked Elihu why it was that years ago, when my mother duties were non-stop, when I taught far more students than I do today, when farm chores and household repairs were mine alone – why in the face of all that, was I able to write more frequent posts, and to be more reflective about them too? These days it seems a month goes by and I find myself all of a sudden in a cold panic that I’ve let so much time pass; by one week’s time so much has happened I don’t know where to start, by three weeks’ time it seems as if a whole year has passed and the temptation exists to just forget the whole silly thing altogether.

I recently heard Fran Lebowitz say that just because everyone could write a book doesn’t mean everyone should write a book. I felt guilty when I heard this. Man. Was I one of those lame-ass, self-aggrandizing folks who thought their story was so compelling and insightful that I just knew everyone would want to read it if given the chance? A Facebook post of a high school friend recently asked friends for advice regarding the fate of her angst-ridden journals from years ago… Most advocated a toss into the fire, as Ms. Lebowitz would likely have endorsed. Me, I told her not to toss them, but to read them from her current perspective. To read them with compassion and curiosity. But that’s just me. I want to hear everyone’s story. (Maybe that’s why deep down I think that everyone secretly wants to read mine…)

Ms. Lebowitz also chides those who would write for the sake of writing alone. She posits that one needs ‘something to say’ in order to write. That a person who would write must have a thorough knowledge on her subject. Those things, I might argue with some degree of confidence, I do have. Ms. Lebowitz also stresses the quality of writing, as well as its uniqueness. Hm. Do I possess a unique voice? A distinct style? Do I write prose of certain quality? Not so much, I’m thinking. There are times when I read my old writing and I think “Man, how naive this person is. This writing is so generic! And man, how self-involved (and likely young) this person is!” And I’ll say this not even realizing it’s my own writing. Proof positive that I don’t have a handle on any of that shit. Alternately, I might read some of my past material (again, not realizing at first that it’s me doing the talking) and think, “Damn, that’s exactly it! This person has nailed it… Why doesn’t anyone else make these observations?” But then again, it’s content alone that I’m responding to. Not style. Cuz really, I’m not sure that I actually have one. The only telltale sign that it’s me might be the reflective use of “but still”…

Indeed I digress, as I don’t intend to delve into literary criticism here but rather get to the action that’s been going on in our lives since the last post. Proof that this blogging effort is really about content, content, content! Quality be damned. Let’s get caught up, shall we?

Between The Studio, The Hillhouse, the aviation endeavors, the performances and the critters, there’s been enough to keep us super swinging busy. As Elihu comforted me the other day, after I’d asked him one too many times why it was so hard to get things done these days, “The Studio is a real thing now. Things are the way they are supposed to be. You’re busy with real things now.” Real indeed. An electric bill that exceeds my take by four times, a property that needs constant plowing and attention, insurance bills that don’t stop, and a roster of piano students that has dwindled to the lowest number since I moved here eight and a half years ago. Some things promise growth, but many others are still in flux – and the next era, while showing some signs of being just around the next corner, is not quite upon us. Not quite. But still…It’s getting closer…

The Studio sign is on the right, at the bend in the road.

Synclaire is a pro host, rapper and producer. Thanks to her, Express Yourself has become a scene.

Charlotte’s a favorite.

Ava (a Waldorf School kid) moved the crowd deeply, reading from her journals. Truly awesome.

Rapping is more a part of this culture than I would have guessed. And let me tell you, it takes real talent to rap “off the dome” as the kids say.

From Open Mic night to a full-on rock show. Things change a lot in 24 hours!

Girl’s feelin it.

Now it’s a younger crowd.

Next week it’s a chill evening for an older demographic.

Light shows play nicely on the angled ceiling. This was a really enjoyable event.

A whole new look for The Studio. I think my dad digs this from wherever he is now. Yeah. He’s smiling.

Bleak Little World sounded great. A fun night.

Late night self portrait in the office. John Cage fans: note the HPSCHD poster in the back left. !

Just six hours later after I left, cars arrive for the next day’s event.

I had to have the floor mopped and dried in time for yoga at 9 am the next morning. Phew!

Kristin is a wonderful yoga teacher. Kind, gentle and in-tune with what her class needs.

Back home our house is fairly chaotic. I do NOT enjoy this state of being.

But thankfully, Elihu is learning how to take over some domestic duties. It makes us both feel good.

Now it’s time for Jesus Christ Superstar. Last time I played this challenging score it was with a band. And, I was 9 months pregnant with lil man. It came back fairly easily, but still, playing this book for an hour and a half straight (sans band) had me a little wiped afterward. Plus I had to keep a couple bags of frozen peas around to ice down my aching and arthritic fingers during rehearsals.

The kid still comes along with me most of the time. He’s pretty good about it, and always I tell him how much I appreciate it.

These kids worked their butts off. Gina, at left, is the most inspiring teacher and director. !!!

The Last Supper.

Sadly, our friend – the light/soundman – fell from a ladder and needed attention ASAP. As of this writing he’s doing well – which is nothing short of a friggin miracle. We all loved our time with Chuck. He’s what you’d call a Really Good Human Being. Hard to imagine, but he returned the next two days to see us through our shows.

Checking in before the night’s performance.

Yeah, I’m pretending I’m a rock star. In case you were wondering.

After the last show we went to Compton’s, the local diner on Broadway. These kids are all so comfortable with each other, so kind and generous. I’m so thrilled for their incredible performances.

Look! I got in the paper twice on the same page! For Express Yourself and our most rockin performance of Jesus Christ Superstar by the Waldorf School Seniors! (At the equally rockin venue Universal Preservation Hall.)

End of an era. Saratoga Guitar closes its West Ave shop. For every chapter there has always been a certain guitar store that acted as a hub for my life. This location was that central hub for my life here in New York. Saratoga Guitar has now moved to Weibel Avenue. As I like to say: ‘Weibel is the new West’.

Sad to see this room of so many memories now almost packed up.

Ah, but there are more changes afoot too. The house in the field is built and ready. There is still no light, but any day now that will change. And that will be the most profound and saddest change yet in a very long time.

On a walk to the field I looked up and had a hard time comprehending the size and mass of the trees.

Then I saw the tiny fingerlings of seedpods, so small, so close-up. From this contrast I gleaned the idea: Incremental becomes monumental. (Let this notion inspire me as I contemplate yet another diet in my life. !)

A perfect lunch followed the perfect walk in the woods.

Which was then followed by a quiet evening at home.

It’s been a very busy month. We’re not depressed here, just kinda run down. Bedtime is always welcome!

The result of a quiet night at home is this “Penny Plane”, so named because it weighs less than a penny.

May many more pennies find their way to us in the future!! Financially things are still pretty rough these days, but with the help of friends and family, we’ve made it this far, and to all of you who’ve helped us to stay afloat, we thank you with our love and deep gratitude. Honestly, I do think the hardest days are past. It really does feel like we’re about to turn a huge corner on our way to the future.

But still, there are a few challenging hurdles ahead. The photos we post here don’t always tell the whole story. Even so, they do reflect the lovely variety of happy events that we’ve been lucky enough to experience over the past few weeks. Both Elihu and I feel very fortunate to be living this varied and interesting life, right here and right now. And we hope that all of you reading, all of you, the friends we have yet to meet, will also come to meet your own bright futures very soon. Thanks for joining us on our continuing adventure, and we’ll see you around the next corner.

Slaying the Dragon

October 10, 2016 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Mommy Mind, Pics, Waldorf LifeLeave a comment

Around this time of year my son’s school celebrates an event they call Michaelmas. During the course of the day the children, from first through eighth grade, (with the eighth graders acting as leaders) must go on quests throughout the nearby woods, gathering clues, assembling objects, traversing obstacles and learning to work together toward a shared goal. As they emerge from the woods, the leaders carry a staff from which flies a colored banner for each of the challenges they met. When all the students finally converge at the shelter there is a large, outdoor enactment of St. Michael (pronounced “my-ky-EL”) slaying a great dragon. The action carries the metaphor of courage, of surmounting obstacles and facing down fear. A large feast of vegetable soup and bread – made by the older high school students – awaits them at the end of their full day.

In the days of old, this autumnal season of gleaning and preparation for the long, cold months ahead required courage, planning, and a supportive community. All of those elements are represented once a year in this magical and transformative day. This year, my son Elihu was a leader. This year was also the very first Michaelmas for which I was not present: I no longer work at the Waldorf School, and so as a parent and not an employee of the school, I was not allowed to participate. Rather, I had to drop off my child, knowing that this day would be different from all those before. He was on his own now. So too was I. As I watched my coonskin-capped son disappear down the wooded path, I turned my car for home, my own dragons waiting there to meet me.

Those who’ve read this blog from time-to-time will be aware that I have endeavored to start a small business. It’s a community art center which still awaits its proper non-profit status from the IRS, however I have been advised by my attorney and my accountant that I should continue to operate as if I were already a true 501 (c)(3) corporation while I wait for the determination. And so that’s what I’m doing. There’s been a board meeting, there have been open houses, art classes, concerts, jam sessions, workshops, seminars, yoga classes, meditation circles, community gatherings – bills have been paid and the electric hasn’t been cutoff yet. (Well, ok, once it was. But it was one of those ‘crossed in the mail’ deals. It was restored within hours.) It’s beginning to look like it might just work. I’ve known for years that it was my fate, but my stomach was queasy at the notion. I, after all, have spent my 53 years on this globe deftly avoiding anything that resembles a ‘day job’. And here I am, formally still unemployed, and yet with a great job before me.

And until a few hours ago, it looked as if the path might be getting a little clearer. A local historic folk music venue had planned on holding all of their concerts throughout the next two months at the Studio while their venue underwent a renovation, however I am deeply sad to report that today I learned it wasn’t going to happen. And so, after feeling the greatest relief I have felt in a very long time at the prospect of two months solidly booked, I am back in the thick of the woods, feeling the dread once again begin to creep in around me. This is a time in which I need to steel myself against my own dragons. I need to raise my own staff now and win some banners of my own. How this will happen I still don’t know. I feel very much as if I am off the path and merely guessing at my way. All I can tell myself at this point in my quest is to keep putting one foot in front of the other…

This past year I’ve spent a good deal of time in my office; at my desk, organizing, planning, filing, (and stalling) – and eating. The weight loss I enjoyed a year ago is history. I’ve accomplished a lot, yes, but in some ways I’ve taken some steps backward. My hands are much thicker with arthritis than they used to be, and my old broken neck injury is manifesting in some new tension and discomfort. Yeah, things are becoming more challenging than they used to be, and it takes more energy and resolve than I remember to tackle this crap. But this is the terrain I’ve been warned about by friends a decade or two ahead of me on the path. The aging thing in of itself is a quest that requires courage and tenacity. And then there’s the starting of a new business. For me, a musician and free spirit by nature, it’s not something that comes with ease. I’m willing to work at it, but it’s still a little more daunting in real life than I’d imagined.

Guess it’s time to slay a few dragons….

Highs, Lows and Loss

April 2, 2016April 3, 2016 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Flight, Growing Older, Low Vision Life, Mommy Mind, Pics, Retro Post, The Studio, Vids, Waldorf LifeLeave a comment

We’ve had a lot of fun mini adventures here lately. However, tempering the moments of fun and light come the inevitable moments of drudgery, the tasks fundamental to the maintenance of physical life here on this planet. There are very few idle moments around here, and while generally I’m thankful for the brisk pace and new experiences that we’re fortunate to enjoy, it’s the other crap that often puts me in a crabby mood. Taxes must be filed, applications for summer programs must be filled out, applications for tuition assistance, for heating assistance, for food stamps, for teaching proposals, for class descriptions, email addresses must be entered into the database, old ones culled, websites must be maintained, chickens, frogs and fish must be fed and cleaned up after. And a twelve-year-old boy always seems to be hungry. And don’t get me started about dust bunnies or laundry or leaf-filled gutters. Yeah, there is never an end to it all. And yeah, I’m grateful for all we have, but still…

It was my Uncle Paul’s birthday on March 31st, and in that my mother doesn’t keep up with her only sibling and family, I thought it might be a good idea to check in. My Uncle Paul had a stroke a few years back, and so his speech is slow – combine that with Aunt Sandy’s proclivity for endless small-talk and chatter, and poor Paul is relegated to a virtually speech-free existence. Thankfully, it being his birthday, Sandy passed the phone over to him and I had a brief exchange with my only living uncle. I heard him speak long enough to understand a certain gentle humor, as well as a fatigued sense of surrender. This was understandable, as I’d learned (this is a good example of how little my family members communicate with each other) that his daughter, my cousin Janice, had finally lost her battle with colon cancer last summer.

Summer before last I’d insisted that mom, Elihu and I visit the Jackson family, and now I was especially glad that we did. In spite of having virtually nothing in common with my newly re-met cousin, I’d liked her. She’d battled cancer for six years, ever-smiling, ever sweet of demeanor. I’d admired her for that alone. She’d even demonstrated her kindness to me in a thoughtful, hand-written letter at Christmastime. To learn she’d died was, although distantly sad, no deep heartbreak for me. Instead I felt relief for her – because she’d been through the wringer over the past few years, with six-hour commutes once a week for chemo treatments to the daily indignity of living with a permanent colostomy bag. But more than all of this, her death left me wondering once again at the deep level of chronic heartbreak with which so many of my fellow humans must live out their time here on earth. It should just not be that a man should lose his physical faculties, live until old age, and then witness the slow death of his only daughter. Fuck that. No matter whether one believes in destiny, the wisdom of God’s choices or the necessity of working out karmic debt, seriously, how in hell does one make sense of this?

Recently, a local man went out for his nightly walk, suffered a fall, and subsequently died, alone, on the trail in the woods behind his house. His wife had gone to bed just as he had gone out for this routine stroll, and he had likely laid there on the ground, in the cold of night, long before he finally succumbed to his fate. A former president of local Skidmore College, mom told me that he once played harpsichord as part of an event at dad’s Baroque Festival in which five harpsichordists all performed… This morning, as I awoke fresh to a new day of possibility, my greatest challenges being tidying my home and feeding a growing boy, I remembered the news of this man’s death, and thought immediately of his wife. How must she be feeling on this very morning? She had laid sleeping in her bed as her husband, mere yards away, laid on the cold ground, dying. Man. It’s stuff like this that tempers my frustration with the toil of the everyday and helps to quiet my bitchy outbursts as I get back to this precious business of everyday life.

The other morning, on the way to school and in the absence of the usual polka soundtrack, Elihu began some intense existential rumination. He’d recently noted that every physical thing – outside the natural world, that is – had first existed in a person’s mind before it came to take form in physical reality. While I’d offered this concept to him in the past, apparently the corresponding light bulb moment had only just arrived. “So literally, we are living in other people’s minds. We live in the creations of other people’s thoughts!” He laughed, he shook his head in amazement. He had a half-dozen other threads of thought beginning to germinate too and he struggled to identify them. He’d begun to express his new ideas just recently on the long drive to Schenectady for a flying meet, and clearly in the five minutes of commute that remained there was little time to make headway with any of them. “Yeah, it’s true.” I summed up. “Every structure you see out the window existed first in someone’s imagination.” I paused for a moment, wondering how to bring the conversation to a tidy close. “It does take a while to get things physically manifested here on this physical plane, but in time, and with tenacity,” I said, as much to remind myself as to inspire my child, “just about anything can be realized.” He sat there, quiet, looking out of the window. He was clearly deep in thought, because he didn’t ask for me to turn on any polka music before we arrived at school.

The past few weeks have been a tangled flurry of life, death, simple pleasures and challenging tasks. So far, real heartbreak and tragedy are not ours personally, and for this we’re both appreciative. Elihu has recently met a gentleman that we readily refer to as his new flying mentor, and in the short time we’ve known him he’s already opened up a whole new world to us. So this particular adventure has begun, if you’ll pardon the pun, to take flight. ! From the lowest notes on Elihu’s C tuba to the ceiling of the Schenectady Armory, we’ve had some truly exhilarating experiences lately. And since one never knows when the whole affair may come crashing to a close, we’re savoring the whole shebang – we’re flying along on the current of our life, learning from the highs, the lows and all that stuff that fits somewhere in between.

Our weeks end on Sunday, which is tuba lesson day. Can you imagine that Elihu’s tuba teacher not only lives in our town, but he has chickens? (And goats and horses, and he built his own house, and he has six children – including a set of quadruplets – and he’s one of the best low brass players and teachers in the region. And he’s a super nice guy. Say what??)

Imagine a tuba lesson that starts like this. !!

Yup, Elihu is a lucky, happy boy.

Finally Elihu’s reading has gotten to the point where it’s not the focus of the lesson – but technique and sound are.

We went to the high school’s performance of Bye Bye Birdie, where, as our usual serendipitous good luck would have it, we enjoyed front row seats, in spite of our having arrived late. ! Elihu’s tuba teacher’s eldest daughter played trombone in the pit orchestra, as did an old friend. The fellow conducting and playing keyboards is the music teacher here; I use his classroom to teach my adult ed class entitled “Not Your Mother’s Piano Teacher”. Oh – and one of my piano students did the lighting. An extremely impressive production, as always. Truly, more than top-notch all the way around.

Later on we Skyped with some dear friends in France. Regular readers may remember young Lilas and her mother, Mary. Mary’s the daughter of old family friends from Greenfield – Mary’s mother was an actor and performed at my father’s Baroque Fest ages ago – so it’s nice to keep this connection. Mary also teaches at the Waldorf School there – so we’ve got that in common too.

I have new friends who’ve moved here from Sicily – and they kindly gave us this Easter treat. There’s a boiled egg baked inside! Apparently this is traditional in many European cultures, but for us it was a first.

It seems the Easter Bunny is still visiting the Hillhouse…

Which made one big kid very happy.

Since Elihu sees no color whatsoever, eggs need high-contrast decorations to stand out. Why the blue? you ask. To add some depth, I suppose. Also cuz I thought it was pretty.

A tradition for many years now (and which we skipped last year as he was with his father), we visited what we call “the lightning tree”. Every year Elihu adds a bit to the primitive stone structure at the base of the charred-out tree. I was happy to see the ‘mom and son’ cairns from three years ago had survived the wind and weather. We passed two hours there as if it were ten minutes. So much fun.

A closer look at the rocks… A winding hillside road is off to the left, the woods directly ahead and to the South, our house a bit off to Southwest, and the big field is just out of the frame to the right.

This tree hangs precipitously over the edge of a good fifteen foot drop to the road; you can see the pavement through the roots where the tree has been burned away.

During our fort-making we found several surprises…

Remainders of a time when this was all cow pasture and farm. We also found a garden rake and remnants of a small shack.

Heading home. There’s a break in the stone wall (which divides our property from the field) where the birch tree leans out. Just out of frame (sigh) and to the right is the new construction house, the sight of which still depresses us both.

Elihu regaled mom and me with some pretty funny new jokes during Easter supper.

While out and about I saw this license plate. !!

Got myself my biannual hair cut. Old friends have chided me for maintaining something of an ’80s’ hairstyle, but I argue that it’s best to work with what one has. Me, I’ve got curl. This is my perennial, scrunch-n-go favorite. Think what you will. It works.

Ah, the endless battle against the hardest water known to man. This stain was created in less than two weeks’ time. Yup. Many times it’s been posited that we should bottle the stuff and sell it. Saratoga Water – meh! How about some Greenfield Gold?

My favorite visitor to the platform feeder, our beloved guinea fowl, Austin. He is a real goofburger.

Elihu has a loaner C concert tuba at home (Ed, we can never, ever thank you enough!) and what we affectionately call a “B flat beater” tuba, which we own, and which is kept at school in order to prolong mom’s back health. !! My kid must play in two different tunings – me, I’m immensely impressed by that. Btw – musician joke digest: Guy hears the breaking of glass… Runs to his car…. Finds TWO tubas in the back seat…

We’re at the Schenectady Armory – the huge and gorgeous room where local model aircraft enthusiasts meet weekly to enjoy windless, indoor flying.

And this is Jesse. It’s safe to say that this man has forever changed Elihu’s life.

Jesse’s old school; he’s got a rubber band winder with a 1:15 ratio. That loads a lot of power onto the band. His crafts in flight are something rare to witness; as one circled gently around the room high over our heads on a nearly one minute-long flight, there was simply not a work spoken by anyone present. It is a thing of such magic and beauty that no comment can accurately express the delight one feels to watch as it soars…

Jesse even let Elihu fly some of his RC planes. A gentleman and a wonderful teacher, the trust he put in Elihu was a real gift. It enabled my son to finally get the feel of flying a plane.

Hanging with the new posse. Click here to watch Elihu’s first walkalong glider experience, and click here to watch mom give it a try the following week.

Ok, this almost made my head explode. Elihu loves, loves, loves the German language, and of all things – there’s a German restaurant on the way home… So we stop in for a bite of bratwurst…

…and wait, you’re kidding me, right? There’s a friggin tuba player arriving just at the same time as us!!

This is what lil man has to look forward to… (Let me tell you – a soft case is a walk in the park compared to the hard case I move every Sunday!)

OMG – the charts are even in German. !!

An afternoon of flying followed by live polka music with a tuba player in a German restaurant?!?! WHAT? (Oh – and we learned later that Elihu and Jeremy the tuba player both study with Mike Meidenbauer!)

Recently The Studio was host to an event. A success I suppose, in spite of the fact that the host’s car got stuck in the mud and she needed a tow truck to get her out and now I gotta figure out how to fix the lawn. Sigh. Two steps forward, one step back… Overhead’s still killing me at the moment, but all in due time, I suppose…

Elihu donned his Grandpa Robert’s madras bow tie for his school Spring Assembly for the Waldorf School.

How I wish I had a better picture, but from way in the back this was the best I could do. Elihu and pal Drake performed a tongue-twister sketch which they wrote, the last line of which was “Fancy froggy fanciers feed my farmed, frivolous, furry, frightened, fluttering, flightless fruit flies to phyllobates frogs from Florida forests.” !

A bow-tied man is a man of good character, no matter the age. (The fellow on the left even plays tuba. !) A fine performance, and a fine conclusion to a fun and full couple of weeks.

All That Jazz

March 8, 2016March 8, 2016 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Vids, Waldorf LifeLeave a comment

There are a few things my son will likely remember me for long after I’m gone; a handful of annoying habits, some exaggerated facial expressions and hopefully, a couple of unique and insightful locutions.

Starting when he was teeny, I have always strived to condense matters, facts and various life lessons into concise, easy-to-remember phrases that when spoken will instantly conjure the matter at hand and remind one of the lesson to be learned. One of these such sayings is “Everything is a thing.” While its meaning may not be instantly gleaned by the reader, I think you’ll understand it easily enough if I expand a bit: I offer that within every seemingly commonplace thing or event, there exists a huge back story belonging to that thing; an industry, the thought and careful consideration of many human beings, and certainly the investment of time and money. To some certain folk, the mundane things we so easily take for granted may be the very cornerstones of their lives and careers.

You can take just about anything that is fashioned by the hand of man and find this to be so. The upshot of this idea? That one should take nothing for granted; the toil and thoughtful consideration of many of our fellow human beings are represented in every imaginable thing we enjoy or use. It’s easy to overlook how much was involved in the making of the chewed-up pencil which lies long-forgotten in the detritus of your junk drawer. But someone owns the factory which makes the little metal band which holds the eraser in place. Someone had to buy the materials to make the eraser, someone had to insure the trucks which drove the materials to the factory, and so on. One can take this tack with virtually everything on this earth which is not naturally existing, without the influence of man.

Years ago, when I was in the barfly chapter of my life, there was a charming neighborhood tavern I frequented in which a handsome young man with long, gently-curling, red-blonde hair tended bar. (He himself was not a drinker, and I often wondered how ridiculous we hard-drinking, hard-smoking patrons must have appeared to him as the night progressed.) It was a small thrill to watch him at his work, and as he was a kind and intelligent fellow, I wished I’d had a better opportunity to speak with him outside of the bar environment. One night I got my wish, and the young man agreed to join a small gang of friends whom I’d rallied to meet up after hours at the Green Mill Lounge. With live and top-drawer music every night of the week, there was almost never a bad night to stop in.

The bartender looked quizzically at me. He wanted a bit more information about the proposed destination, so I tried to explain. “It’s a jazz club. There’s live music.” He looked at me, appearing unsure of my meaning. “You know, jazz.” A light of some sort went on in his head and he responded, almost incredulously; “Is that the place where they do all that improvising?” Yes, yes, that was it! I agreed with great excitement by shaking my head; yes, that was it precisely! He looked almost pained at my confirmation. He shook his head to decline the invitation. “No, I’m not going. Nooo. I don’t like all that improvising“. I didn’t press the matter, the crowd was moving, and he couldn’t be talked into it. There was so much I wanted to add – I wanted to explain the context, the framework of the music so it might have made more sense to him, so he might’ve taken interest. In that moment I realized something: even though people may have some things in common – perhaps even a lot in common, culturally speaking – they can live in radically different private worlds. Jazz was a foreign country to him, but it felt like my home town. Something that acted as a cornerstone and primary identifier for my life was nothing but an annoyance to this guy. There wasn’t any point to trying to sway him, so I took my new lesson as a consolation.

From that point on, I have never taken any of my experiences or values for granted. And even though I may overlook things, or never truly demystify them for myself (case in point: I still have no idea how the game of football works; to me it just looks like a laborious, injury-prone and war-like game of chess which takes way too long), I still give these other worlds their due. When someone tells me they’re into something, or they collect something or play some game I know nothing about, I have a certain amount of respect for all that that might represent. It’s easy to take for granted all the time and energy that things take. Hobbies and careers alike require a lot of behind-the-scenes investment. And I try to make sure that Elihu recognizes that too. Thankfully I think I’ve been successful imparting that to him. (I myself have a lot of my life invested in that kid for sure, and lest anyone toss off the role of mother as a sidebar to a ‘real job’ – my child would certainly prove otherwise on that account!)

But not everyone does fully appreciate the value of another’s skills or accomplishments. The other day I had an adult piano student with whom I had the most unusual experience… He arrived at his lesson with an amp, a guitar, a huge boom box and a bag full of CDs. That much wasn’t so crazy; he was primarily a guitar player and wanted a chance to learn how to play on piano what he did on guitar. I got that. Seemed like a lot of work just for an hour’s lesson, but I’ve moved more gear for shorter jobs. But then the ‘lesson’ began to drag on, and almost three hours later I’d hardly given him any instruction, but rather we’d spent the time playing small parts of songs along with the CDs on the boom box (I had my own boom box, but it wasn’t substantial enough in his estimation). We’d essentially just been jamming on half-bits of songs, piddling around, getting nowhere with neither one of us learning much in the process. (I did learn that one of these country artists he liked chose to play a lot in Db, which I found curious.) He’d wanted me to have the boom box – on which great rings of red light flashed like an annoying karaoke machine in a bar – and he’d been most enthusiastic about giving it to me. I said politely that it was “too generous”, at which he agreed and said that we could just call it a trade. My heart sank to my feet. Food stamps were two weeks out, my ex’s payment was late, and I had a $50 tuba lesson in a few days’ time. What the fuck was I going to do? And how could I politely refuse this horrible machine that made it look as if a small spaceship had landed in my living room? I smiled my way to the end of my wasted afternoon and saw him out.

When you play an instrument – and you play well enough to join in pretty much any situation – but you don’t play like a virtuoso – I find it’s easy for people to take your skill for granted. They might think “you’re talented”, or “you’re lucky cuz it comes easy to you”, so therefore it’s no big deal. Something like that. As if you hadn’t spent hundreds of hours supporting that talent or skill. As if somehow, since what you did was “fun”, it wasn’t worth as much. It wasn’t in the same category of the necessary services like litigating, filing taxes or cleaning teeth. Here was a guy who’d somehow thought that because he was having such a good time, and because I was playing along so effortlessly – that somehow my time no longer had as much value. I don’t quite know how a person can come to such a conclusion, but how else to account for his oversight? He even left me with the request that I learn some of the songs on the pile of CDs he gave me. I lightheartedly suggested that he get a gig for us, and then I’d gladly learn them. He reasoned that you need to ‘work up the material’ before you book the gig. He was a nice guy, but he was missing something here. Everything is a thing. And this was my thing.

After stewing over it for a while, I ended up sending him an email. Cuz I honestly feed my son with my teaching income. I couldn’t overlook it. Happily, the fellow had had some similar thoughts in hindsight of our lesson, and he was more than gracious enough to not only pay me for the lesson, but to also tip me $10. That was very kind of him, and I told him how much I appreciated it. I got a little lesson about my self-worth through this experience, and I think he did too. Yup, sometimes there really is more to the story than one thinks at first.

I’d like to get myself a piano single gig this upcoming tourist season, but there’s a pretty good chance it won’t be happening. I’ll give it a try, but I have a good idea of what I’m up against now, and I’m still unconvinced I’ll land a job. Last year I’d made a pretty good effort, but in hitting the streets after so many years, I learned all over again how involved the whole process was. Again, there’s so much more to getting a job as a pianist and singer than you’d think; you must have dozens, if not hundreds of tunes ready to go. That means charts in your key (or charts on a tablet – that’s light years beyond my capabilities and budget at this point), it means gear, sometimes it means childcare (thankfully I’m out of those woods now!) and it means chutzpah, tenacity and salesmanship, not to mention the hours of playing and learning technique and theory. And these days, it usually means you need a nicely produced video of your performance too. Videos from over a decade ago won’t cut it, nor will your story about ‘taking time out to have a baby’. Nope, none of this will buy you an easier entree into this elusive world of the single, working musician. I suppose eventually one breaks down the barrier through sheer tenacity and a relentless drive – that seems to be the missing element in my method – but as of yet, I have not.

Nothing is every as easy as it seems upon closer inspection. Me, I’ve only ever been just good enough to play; I’ve admittedly used my ears and natural talent to cover me when hard work may have been lacking. And while I can sing and play, albeit in a rudimentary fashion, what we often call ‘jazz standards’ (which are really just pop tunes from the 20s thru the 60s which jazz instrumentalists have improvised over) I am not a jazz pianist. I can fake my way through some 2-5-1s (the chord progression upon which much of popular music is written), enough to get myself through a hotel lobby gig, but to hold that post all night at a singalong piano bar – I’m not so sure I could do that with unyielding vigor for a full three or four sets. Yeah, I could get there, and I suppose in a pinch I could possibly sub – but again, there’s a lot of infrastructure and time involved. Right now, my time’s needed in other places; I don’t have the time to make the proper investment.

There’s a joke about musicians that goes like this: How many musicians does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: 100. One to do it, and 99 to say ‘I could have done that.’ ! Next time you hear a musician, stop and try to imagine yourself doing the same thing. Hell, next time you see anyone doing anything that you don’t currently do yourself, and ask yourself how you’d fare at the task. How comfortable would you be? How long would it take you to do the same thing with moderate proficiency? It’s easy to say you’d do it better than the other guy – but honestly, would you? Everything is definitely a thing. You can play guitar in your living room, but try doing it in front of a room full of people. Completely different. It takes skill to do anything well, no matter whether it’s cutting a lawn or writing a computer program. Everything is a thing – including all that other, unfamiliar jazz.

Here’s a link to Elihu’s performance of Ghost from Hamlet, which he performed last week at school, and again over the weekend at the Greenfield Talent Show, where he won third place for the same monologue. This too represents a good deal of unseen work. I myself don’t have a clue how or when he learned his lines. But I know they didn’t learn themselves! Proud Mama am I…

Sonnet

November 21, 2015November 28, 2015 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Elihu's Room, Mommy Mind, Pics, Waldorf Life4 Comments

frog in pond

If I learned how to construct a Sonnet in my school years, I certainly can’t recall it now. Elihu, however, is in the midst of a creative writing block in school, and the form is very much on his mind. So are frogs. Yesterday the seventh grade recited Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60 for the school assembly. All of these elements combined have resulted in this work…

Sonnet:

The Wide Variety of Frogs by Elihu Conant-Haque

There are so many different kinds of frogs

They jump, change color, swim and even fly

Frogs live in woodlands, rainforests and bogs

But frogs need clean, warm climates or they’ll die

The Wallace Frog with hands outstretched, soars high

His skillful twists and turns no frog can match,

The distance of his fall is what he flies

Below him treefrogs climb like acrobats.

The Golden Treefrog speedily doth climb,

How graceful is he sitting ‘pon his log

And tho’ they didst for naught to help my rhyme

We’ll note the Pickerel and Leopard Frog

And whilst I stand for my anuran friends

If e’er you hated frogs, please make amends.

May Past

June 4, 2015November 25, 2015 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Growing Older, Mommy Mind, Pics, The Studio, Vids, Waldorf Life3 Comments

We’re just a few days into June, but still, May seems eons ago now… Lilacs have browned and withered, the trees are all completely leafed out, and our thoughts turn now to graduations and picnics… I wanted to remember the recent events before too much time went by. A day or two in our modern culture can seem like a month, and I worry that the most recent weeks will be lost if I don’t document them now. As of this writing, I’m aware that this is all old news, but please indulge me as I share with you the events of late May here in Greenfield.

Much is changing in our lives these days; we’re soon to lose Martha – as well as the last remaining open fields in our small hamlet (several new “For Sale” signs indicate more new construction may be here very soon), my son is on his way to seventh grade, the wildflowers alongside our road have succumbed to their annual cutting from the town’s over-zealous campaign to keep the landscape looking as tidy as a true suburb, and at last the discomfort in my knee is no longer something I might simply be imagining – it’s been diagnosed and the verdict returned: I too, am getting older. Arthritis has made itself at home in my very own body. Nothing is as it was.

Every few years in one’s life there comes a time of sameness – where you fall into a little groove in your life; you see the same people, you do much the same thing, you eat the same things, watch the same shows, sing the same songs. And – you even look pretty much the same as you always have. For a year, maybe a couple of years, maybe even a decade – life gets into a comfy little routine, and while there are times when you might find it confining and a bit too predictable, still, it feels nice. After all, your life is familiar. You know where you are in relationship to everyone else. And things are just fine the way they are. You might even wish things could remain so until the end of your time here on this planet. Only thing is, it can’t stay that way forever. Nothing in this particular universe can remain static for long. And so…. one moment you look up and find that the landscape has changed. Friends have died, places have changed, and your body no longer looks or feels like the body you thought you lived in. There comes a critical mass of evidence from various sources, in and around you… and then in a flash, you get it.

There may still be many wonderful adventures ahead in your life, but that doesn’t soften the sting. Things have changed. The landscape of your life is all of a sudden very different. And so you pause for a moment, cuz it’s heavy stuff. The path you thought you knew well has taken a turn, and you weren’t prepared for it. So yeah, you can’t help but grieve. But still, at some point, you’ll have to move on. Even more change than this is yet to come, whether you like it or not. So you gotta get up, take a breath in, and relax into the new life ahead…

Hard to believe that 12″ of elevation made all the difference between life and death. The grapes on the bottom tier suffered from a couple hours at 32 degrees, while the vines only a foot higher up were spared. Sadly, Michael’s lost four years of growth overnight with this late-May frost.

The leaves and tiny baby grapes just crunched to dust in my hand – and less than twelve hours after the freeze! Devastating news to Mike, who’s worked tirelessly for years just to finally glean a modest crop or two of fruit.

See the tiers of wire? Vines on the top level did not freeze – those only inches below did. Amazing.

A happier sight: Friend Jo (who grew up the next property over through the woods – only we never knew each other!) rides her Mustang Sierra to the Studio to check out our new ‘trails’ out back. She rode to our place a couple miles through various trails through the woods to the north, where she has her stable.

I’ll have to savor this view; soon the property across the road will be sold and likely developed. Something I never, ever in a million years thought would happen.

The trails were kinda rough. We may need to let the debris settle and ‘cook’ for a year. Then we can pack down the softer material and begin to flatten it. For now, it just offers a nice pathway through the trees.

This will be a nice parking lot when the time comes. In the extra space beyond, we’ll have a grassy area with picnic tables and concrete pads for sculpture exhibits. (The trails extend out into the woods from the far end of the open area – upper right corner of pic.)

Twelfth grader Dan came over to show Elihu a couple of chords on the mandolin. He made the instrument the focus of his senior study – and went from knowing next to nothing about the instrument to becoming quite an expert mandolinist!

This was just what Elihu needed – now he’s off and running.

Elihu draws his signature cartoon character “Stanley” on the board in his medieval cloak, as he awaits his classes performance of monologues.

Mr. Esty encourages the children to add more physicality to their pieces by doing so himself…

A beautiful job by all. But I did have a favorite.

As I had to take over for Elihu in the pit orchestra (tambourine w/Mr. Esty on violin), I missed the very beginning of his monologue, and the end was a bit short too. My kid, if I may say so, was the most animated of the bunch.

Grandma was partial to “Giles” as well..

Back at home, relaxing with those he loves most.

Nothing so restores the soul as a quiet moment with a gentle hen.

My version of chick rock.

Oops! Every now and then it happens.

The penny kinda gives some perspective. This egg was really more like a pigeon egg.

Elihu uses a shield made in 5th grade during their Greco-Roman studies block. He is deflecting the awesome power of a four-week old chick. !!

He will not relent! (The chick looks confused.)

What??
Oh well. Defeat!

My young Icarus.

We’ve decided to empty the garage of all our past costumes. The mice have wrecked so much, it seems futile to keep holding on to them, regardless of the hours and hours of work they represent.

Here’s the Ben 10 character Wild Vine, attacking helpless Elihu.

With the kid inside it looked even cooler.

Time now to give some of em up to the fire gods. Elihu often says I have something of a Jim Carrey-esque vibe to my facial expressions. Guess I see what he means.

Here it begins…

Dust to dust… (Extra points awarded to those who can spot the Caddyshack reference.!!)

…it starts kinda slow…

…then roars into a short-lived inferno.

No biggee for the kids, who ran back to the trampoline almost as soon as the flames started.

After the initial burst of paint-fueled flames, we topped it off with some wood and then roasted marshmallows over the fire.

Goodbye, dear neighbors! Always love to have you stop by for a visit.

The sixth graders before leaving for a two-day excursion which will conclude their Medieval studies block. It rained the whole time, but they had a wonderful experience even so. It’ll be a trip they’ll never forget.

This is my new post these days; long hours spent at the farm keeping Martha company. Lately she’s become quite angry and belligerent with mom and me. I don’t take it personally – it’s got to be frightening to lose control over one’s life. Hopsice requires having someone in the home round the clock, and Martha’s still not thrilled with having people in her home all the time. Can’t say I blame her. We’re all doing the best we can.

On a happier note (pun slightly intended), dear friend Ken stopped by for a quick visit. He gave me a little demonstration of his Viennese Harmonium – from the back of his rental van.

How much fun is this?

Ken and his daughter took us Conants out for a lovely dinner. That’s my hermit-like brother Andrew on the left. A rare sighting!

Spring is marked each year by bedside bouquets of lily of the valley, and a few chapters of our treasured Bird Book for Children. We finished the book on the last eve of May. Til next year, Mr. Burgess.

When all is past, there lies pure comfort and peace.

Fifty One Finished

May 6, 2015June 15, 2015 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Growing Older, Pics, Waldorf Life4 Comments

Some folks with an eye on the more esoteric spiritual news of the world may be aware that 2015 promises to be a year of remarkable and sometimes heretofore unexperienced opportunities. As I reflect on a very important year of growth and new possibilities in my own life, I can’t help but wonder if this might be true. Many readers and friends no doubt will think this all bunk; that things happen as they will, actions bring about consequences and it’s as simple as that. But me, I believe there is something to this 2015 being a year of unprecedented possibilities. This is the last day of my 51st year, and just recently, I had something of a minor revelation…

Recently, I was in the garage, swearing under my breath as I sorted out all the chick-raising paraphernalia that needs to be unearthed once a year, cleaned and brought into the house in order to temporarily house these fuzzy newborns in our living room. My eyes landed on an old licence plate nailed to the wall; one of the last mementos I’d kept from my growing up in Wilmette, Illinois. My father had chosen the plate – long before chosen numbers were considered vanity plates (or required extra fees). The plate read “ELI 51”, a reference to both Elias Clark, a mentor of his from college, and also a nod to Elihu Yale (the philanthropist and fellow who paid for Yale’s first building, hence the name of the institution itself). Rather than choosing his graduating year, dad had for some reason opted to memorialize his freshman year there.*** As my eyes landed on the plate, I had a thought. I was 51. It too, was my freshman year – the year in which I’d begun to rebuild my father’s Studio. The year in which so very many things were beginning anew – from career, to my duties as a parent, my social life, even my health. My name, of course, was also referenced on the plate. And if I took 2015 – and made a simple reversal of the numbers, it revealed my current age in this transformative year. I’d tossed so many of our old license plates – yet had saved this one. And now, it seemed almost a sign of confirmation. This, my 51st year, had been huge in many ways. Wish I’d realized it sooner, but better late than never, I suppose.

I grabbed the plate off the garage wall and brought it in the house. For some reason, it lived on my kitchen table for a few days while I began to ponder more deeply just exactly what 2015 – and my 51st year – had brought me. For one, it was my first year without my father. And second, it was the year in which I began to address the reconstruction of his Studio in earnest. At first glance, it might not seem like such a great year; events began to appear just when I stared to despair that this was all a horrible misjudgment of mine to think I was equipped to take on such a project. Panic attacks resurfaced with a vengeance, I began to put on weight, and there was less money coming in than ever before…. yet still, other things began to happen which offered some hope that maybe, maybe things weren’t as terrifying as they seemed at first glance. My 51st year has been a strange and internally turbulent time, but no matter, it’s been a time of growth. It’s been the first year in my nearly seven years here – since my surprise divorce, and the intense heartbreak and betrayal that came with it (not to mention the cross-country move and separation from friends and places I loved so well) that I’ve begun to feel as if there might actually be a happy future yet ahead of me.

Tonight I played piano for the eighth grade play. We wrapped up an intense month of rehearsals and performances. I’m so very proud of all the kids, in awe of their teacher who directed and produced the whole affair, and very relieved it’s over. It leaves me tonite feeling happy, satisfied and full of inspiration for all the creative experiences yet to come in the years ahead here in Greenfield.

All that being said, I’m not going to pretend I’m down with this aging stuff; I’m more than disappointed that age is beginning to show itself in my body, and I’m a bit pissed off that my neck is starting to look like someone else’s. But all in all, there’s so much more to be equally jazzed about, so tonite I’m not quite as nostalgic and backward-looking as I usually am on the eve of a birthday. I’m over the symbolic half century mark, and my days of youthful beauty (and that certain power that comes with it) are behind me now, but it doesn’t sting quite so much. There’s so very much to look forward to, and I’m grateful to the stars for all the opportunity ahead.

Kinda crazy that I carried this thing with me tonight, but here it is. Last night of Elizabeth being 51.

From my dear, sweet piano student Virginia, who sang beautifully tonight. She got me flowers! So humbled.

Here she is, this wonderful soul.

I love love love flowers. The kindest gift, given in love.

He came nine days before the 7th, but I still consider this child my best birthday gift ever.

***Post Script: Mom’s told me that my blog has crossed into the realm of fiction as I’d related that our license plate had been a choice, an early version of today’s vanity plate. In fact, it was purely coincidence that provided the Conants with ELI 51, and it was only after the fact that they’d tried to assign meaning to it. I still find it interesting – and meaningful – that such a plate was randomly assigned. And my dad, although he received his MA in 55, did not attend school in 51 – and in fact, that was the one year of many during which he did not attend school. Ok. That should make mom happy. Regular readers will hopefully understand that it’s never my goal to create fiction here. Things are crazy enough without embellishment! (Ok, so now I’ll also add this absolute non-sequitur that mom herself suggested I post – I suppose because it is the absolute truth, unlike the fanciful embellishment of my story: both Robert Scott Conant and George Herbert Walker Bush were in Yale’s 1948 graduating class. That’s your interesting but maybe-not-so-terribly-useful piece of trivia for the day.)

Preparation

April 25, 2015April 25, 2015 Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Growing Older, Mommy Mind, Pics, Vids, Waldorf Life1 Comment

Such a strange mix of life and death going on here in Greenfield. Elders passing, babies expected, pets dying, chicks hatching…. And yet not for a moment does it slow. Every day life presents its obligations without fail; students must be taught, supper must be made, rehearsals must be prepared for, and dust bunnies nestled comfortably in the corners of my house grow steadily in size, reminding me that they aren’t going to vacuum themselves. The wind blew the porch door open this morning and the entire flock decided to take shelter there for a few hours, leaving generous-sized poops all over a formerly clean-swept floor. I could cry, but at least it’s a sunny day, and good for starting all over again.

Tomorrow is Elihu’s twelfth birthday party, and there’s so much to do before then. Meanwhile, Martha lies in the hospital, getting nearer to her death. She’s certainly fooled us all before, rallying from her hospital bed to her post in the farm’s kitchen, but it won’t be happening this time. We who love her have even finally conceded that she will not be dying at home as we’d all very much hoped for. It’s simply not possible; Martha is far too weak. This time there will be no rehab. A bad UTI has had her in and out of reality the last few days, and that was a shocker for all of us. We had never seen the indomitable Martha like this. Signs of fear and agitation reminded me of my dad in his final days. I knew it was mostly due to the infection, but still. We’d turned a corner.

Last night, after Elihu’s school spring assembly, we’d gone to visit Martha. We were relieved to see her much restored to her old self. Elihu sang for her, and mom and I made small talk and related news of the day. (I’d been to see her earlier that day and enjoyed the privilege of singing her to sleep with “April Showers”.) When we left, Elihu leaned in to kiss her, and he told her he loved her. “I love you too,” she answered, and then offered “You are one unusual child.” We knew what she meant. I myself had been honored the day before – in the midst of an infection-induced episode – with the only open acknowledgement of affection I would likely ever hear from Martha… I told her I loved her, and she responded “I should hope so!” She’d also told me to ‘stop being a sissy’ and help her out of the bed. When I told her it just wasn’t possible she’d scolded me, telling me I’d better help her because she’d known me since I was ‘one young girl’. Even in her altered state, she was all Martha.

When we left her last night, she was still all Martha. When I asked how she’d felt, she admitted to me that she was tired. Very tired, all the time. On this bright and sunny morning when a new chick has begun to peep from inside its shell and a new life is ready to appear at any moment, I’m so keenly aware that just a few miles away, Martha lies in her bed, waiting for her own transformation.

This little gal/guy came a few days early. (Each year we time it such that the eggs in our incubator hatch on the day of Elihu’s birthday party.)

Mom shows Elihu the grave in which she and Andrew buried their cat only moments earlier. Ginger had to be put down without warning in the wake of a cardiovascular trauma. Such a shock. Mom doesn’t need more loss at this time. Neither does my emotionally fragile brother.

Little Annie, now at least sixteen, follows Elihu and Mom. We’ve all told Annie she’s not allowed to die. ! She acts like a kitten; those who don’t know her all assume she is. She’s a precious spot of joy in mom’s world.

Mom, Martha and Elihu, a few days before she took a turn for the worse. She was very present at the time of this photo, and very much herself. Even got a little vid of her reciting a poem she’d written years ago for a childhood friend (who died just last month. This life/death stuff is getting intense. Ich.)

Martha used to write little ditties like this for special occasions. Here’s her poem:

It was May 1st, 1922, now that you’ve come to ask it

That Mrs. James of Chatham, Mass

Got Viv in her May basket.

Not the selfie I’d like to see, but I had to take it.

Can’t remember ever holding Martha’s hand in my adult life. She even told me she was afraid. This is a woman who has never, ever shown vulnerability. I assured her things would be ok. And they will.

Elihu played Simple Gifts on his alto recorder. It’s her favorite song.

At first he was reluctant to play, as Martha shares a room, but he did – and see how Martha enjoys it. Glad he played.

And then he says goodbye and tells her he loves her.

Ending the night with a very fine performance by Mr. Esty’s sixth grade class at the Waldorf School’s spring assembly. They sang a song from Schoolhouse Rock about interjections. Wow! A big hit.

Here’s the performance. Worth a listen. Some may remember this from Saturday mornings long ago.

I’m crazy-sentimental about everything, and this turning twelve stuff has me – and my lil man too – a little nervous. This relentless marching forward of time is certainly a mixed bag. It’s easy to get nostalgic and long for earlier days, no matter what age you are, and yet there’s still so much ahead to be excited about. I think the best way to prepare for the future is simply to enjoy the present day to its fullest, for one day many years hence, these too will be the good old days.

The Hillhouse

The Journey of a Mother and Son

Category: Waldorf Life