Holiday headrush

Almost two full months since my last post. Sorry, Dear Diary. Though I'm in the midst of end-of-semester grading, I thought I'd take the time to check in. I would feel pretty lame if I let the Christmas season go by without a post from the Christmas City. Things here in old B'hem seem even crazier than usual. Main Street is beyond bustling--a few weeks ago I was talking to a woman who was here on a bus trip from California. Just to see Bethlehem during the holidays. WTF? Colleen and I were just at Barnes and Noble (in the afternoon on a Tuesday), and the place was crazy. Traffic has been really bad, stores are selling out of crap, and I have now bought a total of 1 present. Shizzle. More later, I promise. And if you have tips on what I should get for my baby nieces, leave a comment.

Make up shorts

So, I ask my students to write blogs, and then I neglect my own because I am so busy with theirs (among other things). The irony is...well, ironic. Short comments: I'm very glad the Mets lost, and I'm glad Billy Wagner looked bad and Carlos Beltran flopped when it counted. That may make me a bad person. So what. Wagner is another in a long line of Phillie's traitors (Scott Rolen, too, is looking less like Captain America than he did a few seasons ago when he needed to go to another team); Beltran is so over-hyped it is ludicrous. He's about a .272 hitter with a bit of power (but only from the left side!) and an above-average fielder. He's the kind of player that can be a key part of a winning team, but as a superstar he falls far short. But since he's in New York... blah blah. Anyway, you could hear the disappointment in the voices of Fox's announcers when Molina hit that 9th inning home run--the whole playoff run was covered from a Met perspective in the National League, what with all the get-to-know-him cute little segments and the constant lauding of Reyes and Wright and Delgado. God, I'm a bitter, bitter man. Anyway, glorious Fall is here. I miss the Delaware Canal tow path most desperately now, but I haven't had much time to enjoy the outdoors, so I suppose it doesn't matter much. Right now, the turkey buzzards and red-tailed hawks and goshawks are circling those high rocky cliffs of the Narrows along the river and Rte. 32 between Kintnersville and Upper Black Eddy, those woolly caterpillars are all over the place, and leaves are abandoning their posts in the oak woodlands and in the trees that were spared from all the flooding of the past two years. Celtic Classic was another success, with amazing performances from Lunasa and, of course, the Tannahill Weavers. Nate and Elizabeth and Liz and the luminous Colleen joined me for parts. I had forgotten that Kevin Crawford played flute for Lunasa, so I ended up seeing one of my favorite musicians and finding a new band to really get behind. I allowed myself to buy one CD, as I usually do, and picked Lunasa's The Kinnitty Sessions, which is killer (as we said back in the 90s). The Tannies were as fun as ever, and Colleen found herself getting swept up in the fun. Also, Erin and Brian made it to that show, too; and I got to see some old friends in Chris and Michael, and Doc Wingard. My Irish music enthusiasm--never totally gone, but often in abeyance for large periods of time--has really taken hold since the festival. I don't listen to much else, and I'm currently contemplating spending almost $50 on two CDs from an importer that I haven't found in the US any other way. I still daydream of taking up the wooden flute, but should probably just concentrate on the cheaper and relatively easier boudhran (to learn, not to master--no nasty comments from boudhran players, please). Football season is in full swing, along with fantasy football season. My teams are underperforming, as ever. Go PSU. Go Ragin Cajuns. Go Moravian. Go Lehigh. Go Warriors of Wilson High. Go Hawks (or Bubba, anyway). Tonight is a trip to Reading--my second in as many weeks--for Frog Holler and a little outlet shopping. Woo hoo. Last week was the Rogers siblings' annual Halloween outing, this year a return to Shocktoberfest. I wasn't very shocked--time for a new one. Again, Dear Diary, I'll try to be true to you. But I've got all this work, and it's apple dumpling season, and it's nice outside, and...

CELTIC FEST

Celtic Classic is here--the best festival in the Lehigh Valley. And this year the Tannahill Weavers are returning! And Lunasa is here as well. I'm out of control. If you're around and available, dear reader, you should go. I'll try to write something about it later. Go Phillies--I hope you can win without my watching every pitch.

Back to work

I've given my students the option of blogging for a grade this semester--in a class about autobiographies--so I guess I'd better start doing a better job with my own blog. [If the person reading this right now is one of my students, good job: you actually took the time to investigate this blogging website. Let me know if you find anything interesting. Or, teach me how to put up links--that would be useful.] As is often the case, the beginning of the semester is crazy busy, especially as this year I am off the full funding and fending for myself. Which means, more teaching and less of my own work. Still, I'm enjoying my teaching quite a lot, and that makes me more hopeful about the career path I've chosen, and could possibly inspire me to get my dissertation done sooner. I'm asking my classes to do a good amount of reading, but I honestly believe that is the best way to foster writing skills, as well as giving them something to think and write about. I'm a tiny bit of a heretic in the writing-as-continuing-process crowd, though I don't discount the process, just the amount of time devoted to each class. I am a believer in reforming the format of college and grad school, spreading it out and taking one class at a time. Impractical, but ideal. PHILLIES NOTES: I'm sorry to the Pujols crowd, but Ryan Howard is the National League MVP. By any criterion. Even if the Cardinals make the playoffs and the Phils don't, they'll have done it by winning--at most--two or three games more than the Phils. And since Albert Pujols didn't place the Cardinals in a weak division, nor make the other teams weak, his actual value to his team is the same as Howards, strictly in terms of wins, which is the final and ultimate statistic. Then when you factor in all the offensive stat categories, Howard blows him away. If making the playoffs is your determining factor in awarding the MVP, you're just using that as a way of avoiding actual analytical thinking. But on to the most important stuff: the team's chase for the wild card spot. A couple of losses over the last few weeks have been hard to take, but overall the Phillies are again playing well when they have to, just like the end of last season. It will come down to the pitching of the team they are chasing (as well as their own, of course, but that goes without saying)--the Padres, in this case--and they are not of the quality of the Astros of the last few years. So, will they make it? I don't freaking know. But I'm enjoying having something to really root for everyday after a hard day at the salt mine.

Comfort culture

It is August, the summer is running away from me at an alarming rate, and I find myself falling into a few regular patterns. It seems that every year at this time I have a strong urge to read and watch Sherlock Holmes (the Jeremy Brett Sherlock, of course), listen to Jethro Tull (which, despite my jokes, I don't spend too much time with as I get older), and think about baseball. Only the latter is of any use to me, since I'm supposed to be working on a dissertation about baseball writing. I'm not sure why this time of year is Sherlock time. I think I was introduced to the British video series in late summer, and it certainly had an effect, but that isn't the full explanation. I think I like the whole escape into Victorian/Edwardian England and its fogs and carriages and pipes and huge whiskers. It seems so cozy. And ordered. And intellectual, but not in the scary way (that makes a lot of sense). In the last week I've watched "The Bruce Partington Plans," "The Musgrave Ritual," and "The Devil's Foot." The final two are particular favorites of mine. I'd like to get more of the DVDs, but they ain't cheap. So far, I only have the "Return of" set. "Adventures" and the movie collection are next, but probably not until Christmas. Damnit. Tull and baseball speak for themselves, I guess. Makes me feel younger. How boring, really. My coffee's cold, work awaits. August isn't much fun.

Dear ESPN:

Please, please consider showing a baseball game that involves teams other than the Red Sox and Yankees on your national broadcasts. Please. You're making a bad problem worse. I grant you, you got some nice publicity last night when the Angels first baseman took a foul ball away from Ben Afflek; I'm sure you'll get lots of mileage out of that clip on those stellar shows "Cold Pizza," "The Horn," and "PTI," but you're killing me and everyone else who actually cares about the sport of baseball. Remember when you used to show sports most of the time, instead of endless versions of fat and/or orange-tinted guys in suits talking about sports? That was interesting. I remember learning something about less-popular games and games from other nations. It is funny how you started producing Xeroxed copies of sports "talk" or "analysis" shows just when you had the money to show more sports, thereby increasing your profits to untold amounts while doing less of what you started out wanting to do. Is there a cheaper kind of show to make on television than one featuring a desk with two guys sitting in front of futuristic graphics, talking? And to make things even easier, you replay them endlessly in loops. I admit, I have to admire your ability to figure out how to make sports entertainment into such a cash cow (if I can use that phrase). Can you imagine what this country would be like if the media allowed as much analysis--and from as wide a range of opinions--of public policy decisions as it does of sports games/business? The depth of analysis is actually quite deep on many sports talk shows, and the knowledge of the intricacies of the business of sports is widely displayed by a large number of commentators and call-in guests. It is just the subject that is shallow. But on political talk shows, the subjects are potentially deep (when the subjects are the policies themselves and not the politics and power-plays that they are embedded in), but the analysis is pathetically shallow. Why do you think that is, ESPN? I wonder, are you partly to blame, or are you just "giving the people what they want"? Your old friend, B

Life's full (if trivial) circle

Hello from the sunroom at the Moravian Book/Cook Shop. This was the first coffeeshop-like space in Bethlehem back before coffee was a pastime, and so it was a place for the artsy and artsy-wannabes to hang out and read and write in our journals (after walking around in Nisky Hill, of course). By the mid-90s places like Java Jack's and the Deja Brew were opening as the southside became more gentrified, and now we have the tiny-but-cool Wise Bean on the northside, the Caffeine Cafe and the aforementioned Deja Brew on the southside, and all manor of Borders/Barnes and Noble/Starbucks/etc. in the outlying sprawl. The Cook Shop has changed since my own early days here (the late 80s) primarily in that it has expanded to about twice its former size, in both directions. And most recently, the sunroom area was amended to include an adjacent walkway between the two parts of the shop, but the greenhouse roof and the plants and old wooden cafe tables are still here. And, obviously, so is a wireless connection for those of us who've finally grown from legal-pad journals to laptops. Maybe "grown" is the wrong word. Perhaps "bourgoised" (as verb, but the spelling is iffy). THE PHILLIES: Are killing me. They blew a three run lead in the late innings last night after another fine outing from Cole Hamels, who may be the only person to jump from nowhere to single-A ball to the majors to requesting a trade in one season, if they don't stop screwing up his wins. He'd have at least three more if not for the bullpen. Some are calling for major changes in the Phils (such as the pholks at PhilliesNation.com), including the ownership group. But I am slow to take up calls like this. Baseball is incredibly hard, both to play and to "control." I don't think the ownership or anyone else in the organization actually wants to do badly. The people who are calling for others' heads now are the same ones who were psyched out of their minds when Pat Burrell came up, and with all the pitching prospects. Now they just can't--CAN'T--understand how management could fail to see the obvious poor judgment in giving Burrell a huge contract a few years ago. They also have a penchant for dissing one of the best players to ever wear the Phillies pinstripes, Bobby Abreu. All he does is hit .300, drive in 100 runs, and walk a billion times a year, every damn year. But to them, all of this is insignificant in that he doesn't look miserable enough when the team is anything but ten runs up, that he glides when he runs instead of looking like a Chevy Chevette on the highway about to rattle itself to pieces like players such as Lenny Dykstra did, mistaking this for some kind of intensity required to give the fans what they feel they deserve: a world series championship. I've been an avowed phan for ten years now (the long story of my conversion from being a Dodgers fan is in the archives of the Elysian Fields Quarterly journal), and the only thing I can say about watching the Phillies as they play in their home city is that the fans of this team have always gotten exactly what they deserve.

Nisky Hill

The best park in Bethlehem is a cemetery. Since I've lived in B'hem, I 've often walked around Nisky Hill, just over the New Street Bridge on Church Street, sometimes for hours. It is also my choice for the viewing of the many fireworks displays that get fired off here. The place is large, but what makes it truly remarkable are the trees--lots and lots of large, old oaks and others that have been allowed to remain, rather than clear-cut, as at many other unfortunate final resting places. Why wouldn't all graveyards be full of trees? Who would want to spend eternity amidst the monoculture of a heavily "fertilized" and manicured sun-blind lawn, which is the effect of many cemeteries? I for one want to be surrounded by trees, and underneath as many as possible. Anyway, Nisky Hill is most famous (though that's probably too strong a word) as the final resting place of the Modernist poet H.D., who was a Moravian native of Bethlehem. She has a sturdy, flat stone slab, like many others of her background, among her family members, including her father, who was a professor at Lehigh University and the Univ. of Pennsylvania. Since the mid-90s, people have been leaving shells and other small tokens on her gravestone as a sign of affection and tribute. It currently has many small shells and some stone stars that someone left. Sometimes there are fragments of verse written on scraps placed under rocks to hold them down. It is cherished spot for me. (By the way, for all you Lehigh Valley enthusiasts out there who like to see us get some attention on the world stage, pick up H.D.'s The Gift, where she describes growning up in Bethlehem and southeastern PA. Her description of Christmas in the Moravian tradition is more than a little lovely, if you like that sort of thing.) Another famous personage laid in Nisky Hill just down the path from H.D. is Eugene Grace, the Bethlehem Steel executive that started out with Charles Schwab and ran the business throughout its heyday, pretty much up to his death in 1960. His memorial is unique and much more intended to impress upon visitors his importance. It is a large granite (I think) slab, about four feet square and ten inches thick, with his and his wife's names etched in large letters covering the surface. The stone is surrounded by ivy of some kind, and encircled by a marble rim with a quotation from the book of Micah (I think) that wraps around the whole thing. Encircling half of that is a marble bench, which faces out over the Lehigh River and Canal toward the once-enormous Bethlehem Steel plant just across the river. The whole thing has a diameter of about 20 feet. It seems that visitors are expected to sit on the bench and watch the Steel at work across the river, contemplating the life's work and empire of the late Eugene, finding peace and awe in the vista. Well, that was the case for a little while, I suppose, but now the Steel is quiet and empty, the trees on the bank of the water have been allowed to grow over the view, and the longer historical view of American super-corporations has been complicated by the consequences of their dominance and, in many cases, their demise. I wonder what old Eugene thinks of me as one of his regular visitors. I have actually sat there in the past and watched those huge crucibles of bright molten steel get poured into molds, and it is a sight I'll never forget, especially in winter when snow is everywhere and the city is mostly quiet. But I'm not exactly capitalism's biggest fan, so my pride in Bethlehem Steel was always tempered in much hesitation and shame at the acts of my countrymen. And the arrogance of the capitalist aristocracy has a nice monument in Grace's gravesite, with its use of enough marble to build a pagan temple and its apparently unironic use of the Biblical quote extolling humility. Still, Grace didn't live in New York or New Jersey or Southern California or Texas or Hong Kong or London, as so many world-makers and corporate kings do today. He lived in little Bethlehem, near his company, near the men and women he used to build his industry and reluctantly allowed to unionize, near the colleges and churches he patronized. And he provided an ass-wearying seat for me as I tried to take up pipe smoking just after college, or scribbled in my little journal, or just watched the seasons change and fewer and fewer trains go by. I wonder what Jack Welch's or Bill Gates's or Donald Trump's (though I doubt his actual organic-ness) graves will look like, or where they'll be, or if anyone will give a crap 46 years after they die.

John Adams was a stud

Every summer I go through a little Colonial History phase, and this summer's has been a little stronger than usual, causing me to read several books that take me far from the work I'm supposed to be doing. At any rate, here are a few quotes from John Adams about education and democracy that I like. "You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen." (letter to John Quincy) "Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to humane and generous minds, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant." (from Adams's Thoughts On Government) While I know that the use of the word "liberal" has a specific and--increasingly in these times--historic meaning in that context, it is important to remember that the old meaning and the current one still have some relation to each other, and that those who have worked so hard to denigrate the term denigrate a part of what made the U.S. the U.S. Does a "liberal education" make people more "liberal"? If so, what does that really say?

A couple of things today. I am writing this on my new, cheap-ass, little notebook computer, what I purchased not 'alf an hour ago (well, not really, but who can resist a little Monty Python reference). Gnarley. Now I have to work on my dissertation more regularly--I have no excuse. Also, the Phillies are unbelievably depressing this year--giving up every one-run lead they get the very next inning, having one starting pitcher after another get shelled or get arrested for domestic assault, having a catcher that strikes out on three pitches more often than any player I ever remember watching. I was way too optimistic going into this season, and I still hold out some hope for this year if they can just get a little decent starting pitching, but things are bleak, bleak. And while I hesitate to blame managers and general managers as heartily as others often do (Ed Wade deserves a lot more credit than he gets), I think the Phillies would have been better off choosing someone other than Charlie Manuel two seasons ago. That's all for now. Stay tuned to slightly more timely postings, including one about a person who lurks in the background of many of the events detailed here, but who has been neglected in print. You know who you are, Wigs...

Music for the American mania

Well, it ain't world-shattering, but here's an entry: I recently replaced a favorite old cassette tape with its CD version. The tape in question was one of my favorite car albums, back when I had the coolest ride in PA--an '89 flat red Toyota pickup with a dent in the back fender and a tape player in the tiny, tiny cab. I called it my little red sled. Anyway, in the spirit of "High Fidelity," it got me thinking about my favorite riding music. So here's a list, heavily influenced by the time in my life when I was spending a lot of time driving between the Poconos and Coffeetown and Bethlehem, i.e., the late '90s. 1. "El Corazon" by Steve Earle (the one I just replaced) 2. "Colossal Head" by Los Lobos 3. "Satellite Rides" by the Old 97s 4. "straightaways" by Son Volt 5. "Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later On Tonight" by Marah 6. "Bethlehem" by the Original Sins 7. "It Ain't Easy" by Chris Smither 8. "Utopia Parkway" by Fountains of Wayne 9. "Storm Windows" and "The Missing Years" by John Prine 10. "Yes" by Morphine; "My Aim Is True" (with extra tracks from the time) by Elvis Costello; "Minstrel In the Gallery" by Jethro Tull; "Muswell Hillbillies" by the Kinks; "Mirror Blue" by Richard Thompson; and a handful of mix tapes made by and for me, usually blues, jazz and zydeco There. Add your own, but don't whine to me about mine. I've noticed that since I have a CD player in my new wheels, I don't have favorite car music. It has now become an extension of my home listening, which I'm not sure is a good thing. How much more often can I listen to Frog Holler, after all?

Being Moravian

[The following is about being part of the protestant denomination of Moravians, and attending Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, PA, which was founded by the Moravians in 1742, as many of you know. Central (the building, not the congregation) is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year.] There is a moment during today's crucifixion service that is very affecting. After about 45 minutes of reading the gospel story of the crucifixion and singing some hymn verses, we suddenly stand as the pastor reads out Christ's last words and the description of his death. This serves to heighten the drama, as it were, and to wake us up. But right after this, we kneel (or hunch over in our seats) and are silent while the church bell tolls out above us. It is at this moment that I feel connected to the history of this town in a way that doesn't often happen. As I listen to that bell ring out of a belfry that has loomed above Bethlehem for 200 years, I can picture it happening year after year, tolling to empty fields and houses (everyone's at church, after all) in 1806, tolling to the expanding city through the 19th Century, tolling to the iron works and its skeleton crew just across the river in 1900, tolling to the rapidly growing city on the south side with its many nationalities and religions and the steel mill beginning to dwarf the original Moravian city, tolling to the joined entities of north and south Bethlehem and its massive city-within-a-city of blast furnaces and rolling mills and machine shops, many of the executives of which are in the church as their workers manufacture a Navy fleet during WWII, tolling to the forest of other steeples and belfries now spread throughout a diverse and hardly pausing town, now with just the shell of the Steel sitting quiety along the river. Mostly, I admit, I think of the old German Moravians setting up the immediate surroundings of the church, and when I leave I can walk out of the northeast door and walk toward the cemetery and almost everything that falls into view is much as it was for those town fathers and mothers. And now, in spring, the trees on the church lawn are in bloom, the grass is greening, and the air is sweet. How does one return to work after that? I am not good about going to church regularly, but I am very good about going to Holy Week services, for the reasons described above (and others--I'm sinfully proud of our choir, and the music they make at this time of year is killer). Just before I went over to the churchhouse, I was reading about more current events in the region of Jerusalem, and it was hard not to reflect upon them as I listened to the Passion story. Especially when members of the House of Representatives describe meetings with the President about attacking Iran, saying, "The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision [of his role in the history of the Middle East]." Encouraging, no? I'm sure Jesus would have used nuclear bunker-buster bombs, had he had the chance. PHILLIES NOTES (2006 edition): Well, they've won two in a row for the first time this season. The team looks pretty solid, but it is going to come down to how consistent the starting pitching is. Lots of potential, but the collective negative vibe that shimmers off of Philadelphia "fans" and the press may be enough to prevent any momentum from building up. Listen to WIP, the sports talk radio station down in Philly, and be amazed at the anger and sense of entitlement that comes through from the hosts and callers. Every fielding mistake, strikeout, poorly thrown pitch, is a personal affront to these people. They are convinced that they deserve better. I have trouble agreeing.

Phillies

The season is here, and so is my agony. The Phillies are 0-3. Good grief.

Frog Holler

Frog Holler is a wonderful band. While this is slightly out of the purview of my little Lehigh Valley blog, it still speaks to a special fidelity to a region of Pennsylvania--one that's not so far away. And it is about great music. Frog Holler are a collection of ex-bluegrass musicians organized around the songs and voice of Darren Schlappich. They are definitely a part of that loose conglomeration of bands labeled alt-country (and, I admit, I first heard of them in the pages of No Depression), so that tells you that they're a guitar band with fun extra stuff like banjos and mandolins and lap-steel guitars. But they're from PA, so the twangy shit isn't as prevalent. They've described themselves as a "song band," "Pennsylvania Dutch rock-n-roll," "indie/alt-country," and probably some others. What strikes you as you listen to their records is how life in this particular part of the country has been captured and reflected back out in a totally relatable way. Granted, I'm a 30-something Pennsylvania Dutch dude from working-class, rural southeastern PA, so it is pretty easy for me to relate to Schlappich's songs, but Frog Holler's growing popularity--especially with the ladies out in force last night (more about this in a bit)--seems to indicate that the songs are speaking to a range of people. And they have their share of fun bar songs about shooting the shit and gettin' out of town and crazy hicks and just being proud of where you're at, which also carries along a record and a show. What you notice after spending some time with the music is that the simple nature of the melodies and the singing and the musicianship belies some real thought and creativity and tenderness that is unique to really great bands and writers. As they say at the end of the liner notes for the second record after thanking the people that helped them, "Alright then, the song is King." On Saturday, Frog Holler played a CD release party/show at the Silo in Reading. I've always wanted to see them play a home game, so this was my chance, and I was fortunate in that Colleen (also acting as a much-appreciated designated driver) and Eileen Crack were willing to come along. The new record, Haywire, is another little step forward in the band's progression from bluegrassy bar band to varied and interesting Americana rock band. At first, I was a little resistent to its charms, but the songs have really grown on me, and the musicianship--subtle as ever--only reveals its nature to me over time (which is probably my own fault for being an impatient listener). It is a characteristic of their music that I notice its attributes in stages, which isn't that common for me. I like to think this points to Frog Holler's depth and quality, but I could just be slow. You can decide for yourself. The Silo is a large club, with one of those official five-foot-high stages built into the wall with amp stacks on each side and a fenced-off pit in front for standing/staring/dancing/moshing/??. Actually, in keeping with the Berks County country nature of things, the fence around the pit was a very nice wooden banister. If the rest of the club was as nice as the stage area, the Silo would be fancy-schmancy, but it ain't. Which is fine--this is rock-n-roll, after all. The audience was surprisingly female, especially for the alt-country universe. As they are described in the Wilco bio by Greg Kott, these kinds of shows are usually populated by sullen, well-read guys in baseball caps, so the large number of obviously enthusiastic women points to either the growing popularity of alt-country, or the wider-ranging appeal of Frog Holler specifically. The band was in excellent form, which may be a bit surprising since this was their first show in several months. They played most of the new record, naturally, and many of their most recent songs (they played for around two-and-one-half hours), but several of their old favorites were skipped over, such as all songs from Adams Hotel Road, and "Pennsylvania" and "Choose a Path" from Idiots. This is not a complaint, though I was disappointed in that my companions didn't get to sing along to "Pennsylvania" as I had promised. The sound was generally great, though the lead guitar was lost in the mix too often, which is a shame since John Kilgore's work comes in surprisingly intense bursts in a handful of songs, and those moments are often quite effective and exciting. The new material blended seamlessly with the old, which is interesting considering one generally feels a change of tone from record to record. Hearing the new songs live had a lot to do with my coming to happy terms with new CD, I have to admit. If you have a chance to see Frog Holler live, do it. They put on a good, laid-back, musically interesting show. And the lyrics are worth the trouble of listening, too. [Though skimpy in the actual reviewing section of this review, I'll post it as is, since it is so late and I'm going to see the band again this weekend. Dont want to get the two shows confused in my wee mind.]

Mummers, finally

OK, I'm just going to say about the Mummers that it was more meaningful to me than I expected it to be. There was an atmosphere of actual holiday, in the somewhat dangerous (and I use that a little lightly, but not totally inaccurately) vibe of a city being something other than what it normally is, if even for a day and night. It reminded me of Mardi Gras in Louisiana in that boundaries are definitely weaker, behavior is not judged in the same way it normally is. And disguises are definitely a part of this, even if only some of the people are dressed. The rest of us are just in various states of tipsy-ness. Or simply swept up in the mood of the community. It is also interesting to me that there is such a similarity between the costumes of the Philly Mummers (the Fancies, particularly) and the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. I hope the Indians can make a recovery from the flood--they are among the lower economic classes of the city. I intend to go back for the Mummers next year, and maybe every year. And I've even begun to like that "When You're Smiling" song.

Pennsylvania New Year

1. The Peep On Bethlehem's north side, the Just Born candy factory makes all of the world's marshmallow Peeps. And so, to honor that accomplishment, our fine city drops a giant, illuminated Peep at midnight on New Year's Eve. We, the residents of the Christmas City, swell with pride. That's the plan anyway. What happens is, they pry the yellow peep off the top of the Just Born Peepmobile (one of those new Volkswagon Bugs), stick some lights in it, and dangle it off a crane about 80 feet above the city center plaza. At 11:59:30 the countdown begins, and someone tries to let the Peep down as smoothly as possible, but we are talking about a big construction crane here. It's a lot like the special effects in a high school play. Despite the goofiness of the actual experience, my companions and I were sufficiently moved (I believe I heard one of them sniffle, but I'm not sure). The flask of whiskey was passed, we watched the fireworks display with the rest of the crowd, Colleen got a close-up of the glowing Peep, and I tried to get as many New Year's kisses as possible from the people assembled (final score: 0). And then, a New Year's miracle happened. As we were walking back to Liz's place, we saw something lying on the sidewalk in the glow of a streetlight, which turned out to be a box full of give-away Peep smores (a sandwich baggy with a tiny square of chocolate, two pieces of graham cracker, and a frozen Peep) that someone apparently decided to leave on the ground rather than give away. Well, our mammas didn't raise no fools, so we snatched that box up off the soggy ground and had a little lovefeast. When we brushed the crumbs from our chins, it was 2006. [Part 2, regarding my trip to the Mummer's Parade, is forthcoming.]