The Prancing Pony

“Since you will be coming in while we are out of the house, here it the drill. The key will be under the mat (I’m really not kidding.) Your bathroom is the first door on left in the front hall. Your bedroom is at the end of the back hall, through the kitchen. Your password for the in house wifi is on the desk. Welcome.)
Barliman Butterbur was the master of a hostel, named the Prancing Pony, in Bree. (If you don’t know where Bree is, please apply yourself to a map of Middle Earth. It is a boarder town, just out of the Shire,) Our house here in Adams Point, Oakland is named for that worthy establishment. But none our windows are round.
Now let’s get this straight. I started the Prancing Pony for the money. Taking in paying guests kept our heads above water in some pretty bad times. I didn’t know what I was doing, keeping the room clean and the beds properly dressed. (Y’all know I’ve never been a doting house keeper.) Once I started having guests, there was dust everywhere, there were spider webs in abundance and who is going to wash those windows? Leaving our bedroom door ajar in the heat of Fall can be problematical.( We still need to put cat doors in three access points.) But with time and well placed criticism, we slowly pulled ourselves together and got in the groove of looking after people.
B & B means bed and breakfast. And I really do offer breakfast, it says so on my page. All I need to know is what a guest might want. But nobody tells me, nobody asks. They just wander through the kitchen on their morning way to the loo. On their way back I ask if they want tea or coffee. Our most recent guests were from South of the border, from Bogota and Mexico City. I do not like coffee but I know how to make it. I’ve been concocting the elixir vitae almost 28 years, for the middle son of the Star of Havana. If you can’t see through it, it’s almost strong enough. My guests like their coffee black.
And then there is the question of water. Many of our guests arrive with water bottles, mostly plastic, and I offer them glasses of water. When they see me open the tap, they are taken aback. I’m from the Pasadena area and we call that water “Pasadena crude.” But the water here in the Bay Area is simply wonderful. On the East Bay side, it comes from the Mokelumne River, which is fed by the snow in the Sierras. San Francisco and the Peninsula get their water from Hetch-Hetchy reservoir, which is fed by the snow in the Sierras. So yeah, our water is really tasty. The Germans think it has too much chlorine. They can be hard to please.
One of our earliest guests were a lovely young couple on the last leg of a very long honeymoon, all over South East Asia. She was graceful and tall as a young linden tree. He was taller, 6’4’’, and when he saw that their bed was a king, he just fell on it with a small yelp of joy. The young husband had been folding his long Finnish frame into beds designed for much smaller people. So far, these folks are why we have a pin in Helsinki on the map of Europe. In our front hall, between the guest bath and the kitchen, are the maps. On one side are the National Geographic maps of the United States and The World. On tuther side is the Michelin map of Europe. On the top shelf of the cookbook library is a pretty crystal bowl. The bowl holds pins with round colored tips. When guests come to the Prancing Pony, they are offered a pin from the bowl and asked to place the pin in one of the maps. I ask them to put the pin in either their current place of residence or the place that they come from. Just recently a guest, looking at the sea of pins in the L A area, chose to put her pin in the Philippines, her mom is from there. Two sweet girls were here from Moscow. One of them was from Sakhalin Island. I’m very proud of that pin. And then there is the small but mighty nation of the Netherlands. There are so many pins between Utrecht and Amsterdam that there isn’t any more room. Is there a trail of bread crumbs from these two great cities to the Prancing Pony? The Dutch love to travel.
There are the places with no pins at all. I’ve only got one in the entire continent of Africa. And let’s talk about Tornado Alley. Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas where the hell are you? Come to the Bay Area, come to Oakland and stay at the Prancing Pony, you will have a wonderful time. Oh and speaking of time, we need to talk. My darling guests come from all over the world and many of the dears can’t read a map. They look at a map of my great state and say to themselves “Hey, there is Yosemite, we can get there and back in a day.” Sure you can sweetheart, you will spend 4 & 1/2 hours getting to the Groveland Gate and then 45 minutes to get to the Valley Floor. It just looks close but it ain’t. The lines you see on the maps are not freeways, they are highways. The 120 is two lanes in each direction, sometimes. When you go up the New Priest Road into Groveland, it is really circuitous and takes about 25 minutes. I am not being fair to those who do not know this state. It is a Tardis, much bigger on the inside than on the outside. And the distances are so much longer and higher and slower to travel than they look.
So they come to my house. They come with international sized luggage all the way from SFO to start a full tour of the Southwest. They come with overnight backpacks to enjoy a concert at the Fox or Paramount. They come for music festivals and to work at Kaiser. Sometimes they check themselves in, sometimes they come in late, just as long as they come. Because I love to look after them and am having a wonderful time.

Liturgy

 Imagine if you will, a meeting room, probably in a church. Folding chairs and a table off to one side holding a large coffee urn and paper cups. Once the assembly has been called to order and the request for statements has been made, a tall white haired, white bearded man stands. “My name is Philip and I am a Baptist. I have been clean and sober for 47 years.”

Somewhere in Altadena, Felix is still shaking his head at a memory. We were at Liz & Tim’s and Philip had just expressed his love of the Mass. “But Philip, you’re an atheist, how can you love the Mass??” And that, my dears, is the whole point. How can one love the form and not believe the words? How can a cradle-Baptist atheist embrace the Anglican Liturgy?

lit·ur·gy (lĭt′ər-jē) n. pl. lit·ur·gies 1. A prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.

Ok that’s clear enough and, even better, broad enough to cover all religions. And all religions have liturgies, great services and daily prayers, marking the year and marking the changes in life. Humans not only commune with their gods through liturgy, they celebrate birth, coming to maturity, marriage and death. The Bris is a circumcision ceremony usually done at home (the baby boy is only eight days old) and has its own gentle cycle of prayers. These are usually sung and they make a liturgy. There are many in the Baptist confession who would bristle at their services being called liturgy, but they are. There is an order to their worship and that’s all it takes. It is in this rock-ribbed and foursquare tradition that Philip came up. And which, at the age of 16, renounced.
This West Virginian hard head did not hear the Mass until he sang for the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese of San Joaquin, Fresno. By the time I heard him sing the “Libera me” in the Faure Requiem at Pasadena First Christian, he was already a church singer. And slowly the spell of the Roman Liturgy was cast over a non-believer. The spell was made of history and form (you do know that all good musicians are part mathematicians, don’t you) but especially music.
All liturgies have music, all. By accident of history and geography, the Church Temporal (Christianity in history) has the greatest canon of liturgical music because it is so broad. Starting with the Greek services of the early Church, Christianity moved across the face of Europe, west north and east, absorbing music everywhere it went. (Think of the horn nosed monster in “Yellow Submarine.) Forms of service sprang up like dandelions and so did the music to support them. Since at least the 6th century C.E, monks sang the offices of the day.
Matins: 2 am
                                                Lauds: sunrise
                                                Prime: 6 am
                                                Terce: 9 am
                                                Sext: noon
                                                None: 3 pm
                                               Vespers: sunset
                                               Compline: bedtime
Those are a whole lot of prayers to set to music. And that music was different wherever it was made. In what would become Russia, France, Norway and England, music bloomed in the garden of Christian liturgical practice. And England brings us closer to the original point (you did wonder, didn’t you?) There were multiple rites on that island; York was one and so was Sarum. Before the present, beautiful and now really weird Salisbury Cathedral was built, there was the monastery and church of Sarum and they had their own, highly influential liturgical rite. But when you go to that wonderful place and ask about the Sarum Rite, the docents will blink, smile sweetly and say, “Well, there is the historical reproduction, in the close.” That is all they know. Just try to get a copy of the Sarum Rite, just try.
It was this musical and historic spell that fully hooked the lapsed Baptist. The Canon opened itself to the musician and he dove right in. Now it is possible that William Byrd and Thomas Tallis had something to do with the dive, but I couldn’t possibly say.

“If you throw the lucky man into the Nile, he will come up with a fish in his mouth.”

When the Baptist came (professionally and after a stint at St. Dominic’s SF) to St. Paul’s Oakland, he came up with a fish in his mouth.
Someone, it might have been Dr. Mark Bruce, figured out that if you have a small choir (8, maybe 10 on a good day) and don’t have enough money for both a choir director and organist, you throw yourselves on the tender mercies of Tudor choral music. This tradition not only serves the immediate needs of the choir, but it trains the singers and makes them ready to sing Josquin, Monteverdi, Palestrina and the all-father Victoria. No church choir needs a sound system and a band to sing to the Lord. They can simply stand together, listen to each other and follow their director. A Protestant church that is not afraid to hear sung Latin doesn’t hurt. It was in such a choir that the Baptist found his fish.
(Now it is time for a small rant about some of the results of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965.) Just because they said that the Mass should be said in the vernacular didn’t mean that 1700 years of liturgical had to be rejected. But it was. There is nothing wrong with guitars or the vernacular in sacred music. Ramirez’s Misa Criolla and Peña’s Misa Flamenca are only two examples of magnificent, soul-changing music written since the Council. But I don’t have a dog in that fight. Hell folks I’m not even an Episcopalian. I’m just an old Congregationalist who worships and sings at St. Paul’s. Now back to the fish.)
After the retirement of the beloved and sadly late Dr. David Farr, we kind of flailed around looking for a new choir director. During this interregnum the Baptist did a lot of conducting. He also started to write liturgy. That’s right folks, Mr. Clean and Sober for 47 years loves the Anglican Liturgy so much that he is writing it, two full masses, seven motets and several Psalm settings so far. Now that we have Prof. Kula running our choir life, he asked Philip to be his wingman and everybody is really happy.
So the moral of this story is simple. There is no single door to the life of music and all of them are open. If a cradle-Baptist atheist can find fulfillment and inspiration in the Anglican Liturgy, then anything is possible. Now I just wish they would stop baptizing babies.

Dillon Beach

the kata of Dillon Beach

Herbert Howells 17 October 1892 – 23 February 1983
Just a heads up, most 14-voice church choirs do not sing the work of Herbert Howells. They are huge, dense pieces of essential 20th-century choral music,  debuted by  Gloucester, Winchester  and Christ Church, Oxford. Now, let me tell you what we did this weekend.
Last summer it was Placerville. This year it was the dreamy, foggy shore of Drake’s Bay. St. Paul’s Choir went to Dillon Beach, West Marin County for our choir retreat. This retreat is a weekend away where all we can to is eat, drink, talk and sing and sing. It is our version of an all-day sing with supper on the ground. Our first rehearsal call was for 4:30 pm on Saturday the first of September. From Oakland it takes about an hour and a half to get there and it’s worth the drive. And it is a drive through the cattle on a thousand hills of West Marin. At this time of year, these rolling coastal hills are soft gold dotted with cattle and black green live oaks. You get to my old love, Petaluma, and take a left. It is
We were late. We are always late and P was very grumpy. But with a splendid reading of the Missa Solemnis on the car cd and a lovely ride, we got to the base of operations. There were three houses, described by Vicki as Papa (the base) Mama (our digs) and Baby (where V & R and were). The rehearsals were held in the kitchen of the Papa Bear house. I was responsible for supper that evening so was working behind the kitchen island as the rest of them sang. Ok, how do I describe this. It was a kitchen with what could be an eating area on the far side of the island. (If it was a very small table and only two chairs.) Into this space was forced an electric piano and enough seating for ten, most of the sopranos standing, and we rehearsed. So I was behind the the island making quiche. The leeks were prepped, all of the cheeses were shredded and the dough was made. Oh I was so organized. Except I didn’t bring flour to roll out the pie dough. Why did I think that a perishable comestible would be available at a beach rental property? But then, through my panic came John’s voice of reason: “Just crush up some crackers and use that.” What you need to know is that John is a musicologist, sings baritone with us and is blind. His service dog Joelle is the smartest, mellowest, sweetest pup in the whole world. John’s wisdom saved me and made for rather tasty, crunchy couple of quiches.
(It might be useful to know the make up of this choir in this tiny space. We are talking about ten Episcopalians, two Congregationalists, two Reform Jews who helped us and brought the perfect baby, one cradle Catholic and a still in recovering lapsed Baptist. Now, may I address the above mentioned perfect baby. His name is Zephyr, he is 6 months old, he has almost no hair and is the very best party boy in the world. He can sleep through any amount of singing.)
We rehearsed on Saturday and sang Sunday morning service for the sweet folks at St. Stephen’s Episcopal, Sebastopol. As we do so often, the rehearsal was for shit for the morning service. Why is Christopher so forgiving ? But we pulled it together, it being the Byrd Five-Voice mass, the first movement of the Howells Requiem that we are slaving over for All Souls Day and our old favorite, “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree” by Poston (I do love it so). We sang for our new friends, had an interesting theological question (look up the word “filioque” if you want a really good time) and shared coffee with this very welcoming congregation. But we had important business at the Gravenstein Grill, which was the only local that could accommodate a party of rowdy Episcopalians. They put us in their side patio, well enough away from normal, proper Sunday brunchers that our noise would not impinge on the other diners.
We were very comfortable, with a wonderful flamenco guitarist and a great lead waitress. It was she who suggested the house gazpacho Bloody Marys and these were simply the best of that drink I have ever had. Oh my dears, you gotta go to this place, especially in tomato season. We ate, talked, drank and ogled the perfect baby. Have you ever watched 20 adults try to pay on only five checks? Joshua became our banker and with Paypal, cash and other apps we were able to make it work. (Note to restauranteurs: separate checks are simply not that hard. In this particular case, Joshua wanted the milage points, but still, it ain’t that hard.)
We went back to the various digs, changed out of our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and wandered back to the smallest choral rehearsal space in the universe. Really my loves, there are walk in closets that have more space than where we crammed 14 singers, an electric piano, a totally mad choir director and don’t forget the baby. I was sitting next to John, he of the perfect service Joelle and elegant baritone, with Joshua (my section leader and co-first tenor) behind us. It must be understood that I do not sing solfeggio. If you tell me the key a piece is in, it simply does not matter to me. What I have is tone matching directly from God, through Robert Parker Jenkins, and trained by six years of playing the violin. Director Christopher now thinks I can read music. No boss, you can read, Philip can read as can many in this miraculous choir. I listen to Joshua and make the same tone. So if he makes it incorrectly, we both go down the rabbit hole. I just copy the tone and the spaces between the notes fill in the rest.
But back to Joelle, who was sitting patiently between John and me. After about 45 minutes of singing Herbert Howells, she set her beautiful head on my knee. I gave her ear scritches and a few pets then her father explained. “She does that when she’s bored. What she is saying is ‘Aunt Elizabeth, please take me outside where I can find some interesting thing. Please Auntie, be nice to your Joelle, I am so bored.’” This went on till we broke for dinner. Sausages were grilled, salads were made and the normal St. Paul’s Choir party ensued.
Monday morning we were all breaking up, breakfasting and I was wild to get on the road home. I do not know why but, when the road points home, I need to be on it. I will say travel well to everyone else and run to the car. Vicki and Richard wanted to see our digs so we met them on our way out and gave our dear friends sketchy instructions into the house so they could look around. I hope they saw what they wanted but I so needed to be on the road. Once all were hugged and loved and bidden farewell, the little Blue Opera House took its road to Oakland. And that’s where the voice on the phone comes in.
Two years ago Philip and I traversed Portland under the direction of a map app. She, unlike Siri or Alexa, does not have a name, so I will call her Hecate, the one who stands where two roads cross. She tells us how to get where we want to go. Now I will agree, there is no direct road from Dillon Beach to the 101. It is possible that Hecate has noticed the way we like to travel. When going Up The Hill, we like either the 20 or the 4, informing our travel advisor that we like backroads. Thus she sent us over the hills and far away from Dillon Beach to the 101. Rather than sending us back up to Sebastopol and to the 101 directly, we went out the Dillon Beach Road and thence to Tomales Road. The roads got narrow, sometimes just two lanes, through the beautiful dairy lands of Western Sonoma. There are all of the cows who make our cream, milk and cheese. Finally Hecate brought us to the southernmost exit for Petaluma and onto the dreaded 101. The goddess of the crossroads does not like the 101 and avoids it until the very last minute. So we drove through the golden hills behind Petaluma before we joined the great highway.
When Christopher first suggested a choir retreat I did not understand why. Retreats have always had a corporate team-building vibe and I don’t like corporate. Now, after the second St. Paul’s Choir retreat, I understand. It was a kitchen, it was really cramped and we sang a whole lot of Herbert Howells into each other’s ears. The retreats separate us from our regular lives and focus our hearts on music. That we have such a good time with each other is pure gravy. Ok Christopher, you were right. We needed a weekend at the beach.  

kata of salad

the kata of salad
(a song for Gene)

Definition of salad for English Language Learners. : a mixture of raw green vegetables (such as different types of lettuce) usually combined with other raw vegetables. : a mixture of small pieces of raw or cooked food (such as pasta, meat, fruit, eggs, or vegetables) combined usually with a dressing and served cold.
Liz and I were dining with our our divine hostess Gene in a Manhattan restaurant. The salad was served and made of romaine. “Why are all the salads in New York made of romaine?” I asked with innocent guile. Gene laughed and said, “Because it comes from California on the Salad Bowl Express.” This was a train that used to bring fresh greens from CA to NY. When Gene would grace us in Alhambra with her sweet presence she would request two things: a ride on a big freeway (well that was easy, because I picked her up at LAX at least once), and to go to the grocery store. Not just any store but a supermarket. Gene (Genevive) wanted to stand in front of the lettuce aisle of a Vons or Albertsons or Hughes and just look. I, being a spoiled rotten Californian, simply did not understand.
Growing up in plenty, being used to seeing its pastures on the 5, the 101 or even the dreaded 99, I have taken it for granted that in California, there is no season for iceberg, greenleaf, butter, or any other lettuces, they are always in the store. With three lettuce-growing seasons a year in the Central and Salinas valleys, I cannot imagine a grocery store without at least five kinds of lettuce, cabbage (napa, savoy, bok choy, red and white) four types of onions (green, white, sweet and red), carrots, celery and all the rest. Being a Californian this is not a birthright it’s just normal.
Which is why the existence of food deserts in this most blessed state is not just wrong. It is evil.
Oil and vinegar, salt, pepper and some other flavors, this is all it takes to make salad dressing. I, being a lazy slug, use Good Seasons Italian as my base. One of my salad stories is from the “Cooking with Claudine” series by Jacques Pepin. Claudine is making salad in the French style, the elements of the dressing going into the bowl first. As she mixes her father opines, “You put in too much vinegar.” To which the daughter of the great man pertly responds, “Not for Mom and me.”
And ah, my dears, there is the rub. How much oil, how much vinegar is the eternal question. The ancient adage, “Be a spendthrift for the oil and a miser for the vinegar,” just doesn’t work . I know what I like, close to half and half. I put the contents of the G S envelope into my jar and add tomato paste or mustard or anchovy paste, depending on my mood and what I’ve got in the house, and granulated garlic and Old Bay. And finally it all comes down to what’s in the bowl.
I love this time of year because it is peach and tomato time. I am a terrible tomato snob, only buying them fresh in August and September. Philip goes to the Saturday Grand Ave. farmer’s market late, about 1pm. The vendors are packing up and don’t want to haul the leftovers back home and are ready to deal. There is a guy who comes all the way from Sanger (the anvil of the Sun) and he has the best tomatoes. The perfect husband comes home with flats of these tomatoes and I go precisely hog wild. Raw tomatoes are in every salad but there are also sandwiches, you know the ones with just good bread, mayo and sharp cheddar cheese, and there is marinara. The big baking sheet comes out, the oven set at 350° and the tomatoes are cored, set on the sheet with onions, everything gets roasted, then into the food processor then into the freezer. It never lasts long. A couple of suppers or a Compline Dinner and the marinara is gone. We just eat tomatoes till our mouths are raw, tomatoes are gold.

Peaches, some of you might not think of them and salad, but I do. Only in these months of cheap,
freestone peaches do I indulge. These slightly green fruit are perfect with ham or any other leftover pork. When not in peach season, apples will be very nice and even raisins. But let us discuss a simple salad. Only recently have I turned my bowl to single leaf salads and that was, as usual, by necessity. How does romaine or greenleaf or even iceberg taste? Romaine is slightly bitter and deeply green. Iceberg does have flavor and it is delicate, but its primary attraction is the texture. There are many who badmouth iceberg but I do love it, probably because of the way I was raised. You cannot have wedge salad (ala Scandia, of blessed memory) without iceberg lettuce. Just eat it because you love it.
So finally, we are simply blessed. We are blessed to be children of California, to live in this state of 3 to 4 growing seasons a year. There is no salad green or cabbage we cannot have. And greens are the cheapest vegetables available. Put the leftovers in it, cut the fruit up in it, fry the bread cubes in duck fat and throw them in. Feta, cheddar and Monterey Jack, just shred or cube them up into the mix. Salad is the easiest and best thing to make for supper and Gene loves salad.

Compline

the kata of Compline

  Compline: prayer for the end of the day. From the Latin meaning ‘completion.’

We had a lovely mother-and-daughter team staying with us for a couple of nights. Airbnb has space on the review page to leave a private note to the host (that would be us.) The daughter of the duo was very kind and gently suggested that if we were going to throw a big party, we might want to warn our guests. Well, yes, that is very true. But we didn’t throw a big party. We just had some people over after Compline. We do it every month.

Slowly, at the age of 63, I am beginning to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t live the way I do. Compline dinner is automatic. I send out a group email to find out how many will be here. Celeste says she’s out of town, the Larsons are going up to Yosemite so they can’t come. And I forgot to ask Christina and Aaron but they know when Compline is and that the door is always open. And anyway, I counted wrong and ran out of pasta. I’m feeding children and have to remember how they can eat. Lauren doesn’t sing Sunday with St.Pauls any more but she still sings Compline. She left us for a paying gig at St. Mary Maytag (called that because of the way it looks.) But she and the precious Derek come just because. Friends ask very politely if they can bring their sweeties. When the Larsons aren’t with us, this crowd is 20 to 35 years younger than the hostlers of the Prancing Pony. And it’s all because of the service of Compline.

Within the Protestant confession of the Church Temporal many have Sunday evening services. The Baptists, some Methodists, Pentecostal and so many others come back to church on Sunday evenings for prayer and song to end the day. (Philip’s old home church, Bellepoint Baptist in Hinton WV, served the Lord’s Supper at the Sunday evening service.) Such is the service of Compline, one of the oldest offices in Christian liturgy, prayer at the end of day. With three chanted Psalms, collects (designated prayers spoken by the priest) and communal prayers, this ancient service is a balm to the soul and a cleansing for the mind. No one is going to ask you to confess, there is no altar call and you don’t show any bona fides at the door. Just come, sit and be. So why ain’t I there? Well..... it’s complicated.

I loved Judaism before I confessed Christ. And, as I always do, I went over the deep end in my understanding of whose text belongs to whom. Deep in my heart, dear, I would have Christian services completely devoid of any Hebrew scriptures. The Church Temporal have misused our Mother’s Scriptures for so long, I just don’t want us to use them. (I must state here that both Stephen Saxon and David SchIosser insist that there is plenty of Hebrew Scripture to share. But I do hold a grudge, and this one is against my own church.) It was in this frame of mind that I sat in the narthex (front hall) of St. Paul’s, listened to three sung psalms and decided that I didn’t like the Compline Service. But I like to cook and to serve through cooking. From this impulse came the monthly Compline dinner. 

So they walk in, come straight back to the kitchen, grab a glass from the collection under the Altar, pour themselves some wine and start talking. “What have you been doing?” becomes “What have you been singing?” Tonia tries to explain the story of the opera she is currently singing. (I humbly asked if it made more sense than “Forza del Destino,” and my very favorite soprano said, “Destino doesn’t make any sense at all.”) That’s how it goes at Compline Dinner, a whole lot of music talk, some politics and even horse racing, just a whole lot of talk and eating. Perhaps this was what concerned our overnight guests was a bunch of folks drinking and talking and making a certain amount of noise. Perhaps our guests dinners are more decorous. I never mean to offend.

So I promise that, from now on, when I have guests staying, I will warn them about Compline Dinner. I will say, “There are some folks coming over for dinner after an evening service.” That is all the warning they will get. This isn’t a big party, it’s just dinner and a lot of talk.

learning to read

learning to read

a kata for Janet B.

How does anyone learn to read English? this impossible mess of five different tongues: Anglo-Saxon, French, Danish, Gaelic, with some German thrown in for good measure. You layer these one on the other through consolidation and invasion like some linguistic pastry. Oh yes, then throw in a huge vowel shift in the middle of the 14th century CE and you get the beginning of English. Once folks start to write this madness, then we get to duke out the spelling. Kit Marlowe, Will Shakespeare and their fellow Elizabethan poets and playwrights just made words up. They spelt stuff the way words sounded when spoken. By the tine God’s Secretaries put their glorious minds to translating the Bible for James the First, agreed-upon spelling for English had calmed down a little. But grammar had not. Hell, we didn’t get a dictionary until Sam Johnson in the mid 18th century and the Oxford English Dictionary is still a work in progress,

So, considering all of this, how does anyone manage to learn to read this mad amalgam? To be very simple and rather cruel, by putting our heads down and learning by rote. There is no rule of spelling or grammar or syntax that is not changed or outright broken. There are so many diphthongs that phonics is a bad joke. (Just look at that word, diphthong. It comes from the Greek and means “two sounds or tones.” Yes, a Greek word in English. And how are we supposed to know how to spell the damn thing?) I came up in the transition between whole language to phonics. I didn’t read with any facility until I was in third grade and still read rather slowly.

But there is a key to these many locks and it is human speech. Talk to the baby, the toddler and all the other small people. When you are putting up your coat when you come home, tell them what you are doing and how your day was. When you are making supper, put an apron on them, stand them on the kitchen stool and tell them what you are doing and why. (If they are really little, put their bouncy seat on the counter.) When they are sitting in your lap, read to them, read to them, read to them. And here is the the dark secret, it really does matter what you read to them. The more different words they hear the better they will read.

Years ago I have said in this space, “Don’t ask two-year-olds which book they want.” You don’t ask them if they want a sweater because you are the parent and you know how cool it is outside, and that children would run around buck nekkid if they were left to their druthers. I repeat myself but it seems necessary. The first thing they want is the sound of your voice; and the second is content. They are bringing you the Barbie or a Thomas Golden book because that is what they know. But you know so much more than you think, read them what you want. Read up! and up must include poetry. Rhyme is the servant of memory, speak the rhyme and they will remember. It starts with the divine Sandra Boynton, “One hippo all alone, calls two hippos on the phone;” and then moves on to A. A. Milne, “George found a pen but I think it was the wrong one. And James sat down on a brick.” With Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses we get into wonderful story telling and vivid word painting: “Dark brown is the river, golden is the sand. It flows along forever, with trees on either hand.” These worthies and their co-conspirators will teach English to your child and keep your brain from rotting. (Don’t forget Jack Prelutsky’s The Dragons are Ssinging Tonight.)

But one does not learn to read on poetry alone. So what prose does the proper parent read to the perfect child? Again, don’t read down. Save your sanity. Read old stuff. Read Edward Eager, E. Nesbitt and, I’m really not kidding, read Rudyard Kipling. Yes, he has a bad name because folks my age think of Kipling only as an imperialist. I fought with my father over Kipling when I was in high school. (By the mercy of Christ I was able to tell him that I finally knew better before he died.) The Kipling to read to young children is Just So Stories. These are animal creation myths and the language is a rolling river. How did the leopard get his spots? How did the rhinoceros get his wrinkled skin? And how did the kangaroo get his back legs? “Not always, oh best beloved, was the kangaroo as we now behold him. But a different animal entirely.” This language is as rich and complex as dark chocolate and it will prepare those young minds for what is to come.

I can hear you right now: “But they don’t like that old fashioned stuff.” They don’t know what they like and cannot like what they don’t know. It breaks my heart to see a lovely 11 year old boy, smart in so many ways, who doesn’t want to read anything more demanding than Wimpy Kid and Big Nate. That boy should be reading Asimov, Heinlein, Conan Doyle and so many others. But no one read him anything real and he was never asked to read anything real. He should have read Treasure Island and Haroun and the Sea of Stories in fourth grade so he will be ready to read Shakespeare in high school. “As long as he’s reading” simply doesn't work. It doesn’t turn him into a reader; it turns him into someone who can take the damn test without knowing the glories of his mother tongue. It is bad enough that all the girls in his class read faster and more deeply than he does. 

So read to him, read to her and read good stuff, real stuff. We have saddled these beautiful young minds with the most difficult language to learn. It doesn’t make sense, it breaks every rule it makes. But oh my dears, English is a thing of surpassing beauty and, with it’s vast vocabulary, it can describe the width and depth of the human imagination.

“Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention”

Henry V: Act 1, Prolougue.

Die Fledermaus

Dear Lord I cannot write,

What shall I write?

Cats are impossible to draw. Dürer couldn’t do it, Da Vinci couldn’t do it. These worthies were so hung up on the complexity of feline musculature that they could just couldn’t get the skin or fur right.

Long ago, at his place in the Creamery, Bodega, Wally Hedrick gave my father a spectacular compliment. “Rudolph was the best draftsman I ever knew.”  Yes, my bad Daddy could draw like God and here is an example. This is a watercolor of a neighbor cat named Chacoo and it was painted in the late 1970’s. I will stand flat footed and say, “This is the best thing of his I own.” The story of why the early intimates of Robert Parker Jenkins called him Rudolph is too long to go into now. 

There she is. It’s 2:30 am and there she is with her wet little nose and a purr that could wake the dead. Rosalinda wants attention. She wants skritches and belly rubs and she is going to get them. No aloof haughty feline is our girl. She wears a diamond necklace and sings the Czardas at the bedroom door when it is closed against her. For the first three months she lived here, we could not touch her. Hell, we couldn’t touch any of them. Usually cats in this house don’t get their war names until they have lived with us for a while. (Our precious Rocket J Baby was not with us long enough to get a war name. I was pushing for Red Sonja.) But these three got their real names right away.

It was time for kittens so last early June we went to the house built by PeopleSoft for the Humane Society, just off of Hegenberger. It’s where we got Geoffrey and Jōshū. It is where we got Ramses the Charioteer, son of Seti the Great. But now Ramses was gone and I needed a new black cat. And he came with a package of two sisters. The three of them were part of a litter of 13 and they were pretty feral. Gabriel is not all black. He is a tuxie and his black is denser than any cat I’ve seen. (Even Pirate Jenny looked brown in full sunlight.) So we bring these three crazy kittens home and I put the carrier on the counter. I open it up to check on them and Gabriel von Eisenstein comes flying out, like a bat. Well, if he is Die Fledermaus (the bat) then his sisters must be Adele and Rosalinda.

(Please find three impossible kittens. Adele is on the left in tweed and Rosalinda is in the white opera gloves. Gabriel is in the middle and butter would not melt in his mouth.) These guys were nuts. At first they hid, then they learned to romp and slowly, very slowly they decided we were kinda ok. Rosalinda has to be kept out of certain rooms because she still can make messes. She really didn’t want me to tell you that.

Dogs are loyal, brave and helpful. They will take the medicine from Anchorage to Nome. They will wait for their masters at the train station, they will spend their nights on the graves of their lost ones. They have hunted with humans since we were humans. The bond between us and them is undeniable. So what is it about cats? Yes, they control vermin, think of Dick Whittington. But cats have always been suspect. They are accused of being witches’ familiars and through them, in league with the Devil. Yes, in Egypt, Bastet, the lioness/cat goddess, has been worshiped since 2800 BCE. But they are sly and slinky and insinuating. They require very different care than dogs and will they say thank you? No they will not. In fact when they can be gotten into the carrier to take them to the vet, they will sing your funeral all the way there. But they are furry and cuddly and very purry. They tear ass around the house in the middle of the night, either alone or in pairs, for no apparent reason. They will sing the songs of their people loud enough to wake your guests. Yet no house of mine can be without a cat.

So we love them, we can’t help it. I can’t help it.They are so very hard to draw or paint. Tomorrow morning, there she will be, with her wet nose and purr that would wake the dead.