Merry Christmas Redux

The Brits have Boxing Day. The Germans have their Zweiter Weihnachtstag (second Christmas Day).

Here? The dang markets are open and so my poor little sister, who works for a major mutual fund company, has to go to work. That just seems wrong! I love the idea of a second Christmas Day and I think no one should have to go to work unless they provide a life-sustaining service. Heck, I'm in favor of all twelve days, even if that song really gnaws on my nerves.

So here's wishing you a very merry Second Christmas Day. In its honor, I give you two of my favorite holiday things: music (at least those songs that don't make me want to shoot someone) and cut-out cookies.

Thanks to my computer's built-in mike, the sound is pretty reminiscent of a music box. And the beginning sounds pretty wooden, since I was watching to see if the technology was cooperating, which only enhances the music-box effect. Otherwise it's a flawless performance (ha!) of Mel Torme's "The Christmas Song," arranged for piano by Philip Keveren. Listen at your own peril.

I can't claim the cookies are in any better taste. Still, the frosting does taste good (thanks to a generous splash of almond flavoring). There's probably enough dyes in them to preserve us for the next 80 years.

The Tiger, who made this one, hearts Christmas almost as much as he hearts sugar.


What's Christmas without a festive cat?


Or two?


And then there's the traditional Christmas rooster.


This guy might slide through as the Ghost of Christmas Past.


Apparently the Blue Man show has gone to the North Pole.


Here's our homage to Charlie Brown's tree.

I'd close by quoting Mel Torme's last line - "May all your Christmases be white" - but darn it, a thunderstorm just rolled into town. So instead, I'll just wish you love, kindness, joy, peace, compassion - and a glimpse of the holiday spirit where you might not expect it, whether in a torrential rainfall or a purple tree.

When You're Up to Your Neck in Effluvia ...

I need some cheering up after yet another sewage backup (the fourth in a year, the second in ten days). Cleaning up puke and sewage within a six-hour span? What did I do to provoke such karma?!?

The city workers who came out tonight promised to dig up the street in search of the problem, and they went so far as to spray-paint a big fat X where the pavement will be breached. I'm hopeful that they'll find the problem. In the meantime, the water has receded and the house reeks blessedly of bleach. I'd trade in for a new epidermis if possible, after that cleaning job, but I'll settle for smelling like a mix of mango body wash and Chanel No. 5. Oh, and the methane appears to have blasted my sinuses clear. I wouldn't recommend it as a remedy; try saline first.

Anyway, back to cheering up. While home sick from school this week, my kids have been enjoying DVDs of the old Muppet Show. This was their new favorite today: a wacky vegetable chorus from an episode hosted by (a now very young) Steve Martin:

A Bearish Birthday, and Nine Years of Parenthood

The Bear turned nine today. We celebrated by going to a concert where his choir performed. (Audio is here for anyone who's curious; if you're plugged into a real speaker you can actually hear some decent music behind the audience's rustling and coughing.)

Afterward, we got together with some dear friends and ate this cake:


Apart from the obvious model, the cake was patterned after some cookies at a post-election party that got devoured before the Bear had a chance to try them. This was my attempt to make amends for that little disappointment. (It was also a design that didn't require any cutting, and since I'm still semi-debilitated, I wanted to keep things simple.)

Contrary to appearances, I'm totally not trying to indoctrinate my kids. I do think that being a parent means you get to try to pass on your values. Very, very high in my firmament of values - ranking just behind kindness and empathy - is critical, independent thinking.

So I've told the Bear he may well vote contrary to me someday. (Secretly I tend to think he probably won't; if I teach him to ask tough questions, he's virtually immunized against voting for the next G.W. Bush.) Way back during the primaries, I asked him why he thought Obama would be a good president. Ending the war in Iraq topped his list. Education was way up there, too.

The Tiger, for his part, just likes to jump up and down and say "Obama winnded! Obama winnded!" He still has a ways to go with both his political consciousness and his past-tense verbs.

---------

Earlier today, I mentioned to the Tiger's father that we've now been parents for nine years. His response? "Ha ha ha ha ha!" That captured my incredulity, too.

I laugh at all the moments of absurdity. Just yesterday, the Tiger turned up with ball-point ink crisscrossing his face, resembling a psycho Spiderman. He steadfastly denied applying any ink to himself.

I marvel at how the time could go so slowly and so swiftly all at once. Those near-sleepless nights and endless tantrums seemed to expand into eternity. And yet, looking back, I wonder what happened to the mini-Bear who'd throw his beloved stuffed animal, Mama Bear, out of his crib, and then bellow with fury that she was no longer snuggled up against him. Wasn't that just a few weeks ago?

I still wonder why I thought I was qualified for this job. No one really is, are they? It's all on-the-job learning, and if you screw up, there's a whole world hanging in the balance. Hmmm ... it's not so unlike the presidency, in miniature, when you think about it.

The Bear has extremely keen hearing unless he's being asked to clean his room. Predictably, he overheard my comment about nine years of parenthood. His response: "What does that have to do with anything?"

What, indeed, my darling little Bear? Nothing, of course, from the center of a world in which I've always been his mama, in which I'm as taken for granted as oxygen and his still-beloved Mama Bear.

And yet everything - more than he can possibly know unless he too someday becomes a parent.

Song of Three Concerts

However superstitious your mood this close to Halloween: It's not just bad things that come in threes. I got to hear three concerts this weekend - a triplet, a triad, a trio, so to speak.

Saturday evening, friends took me to hear David Bromberg play with Jorma Kaukonen at Jorma's Fur Peace Ranch. The Fur Peace is a haven of latter-day hippiedom in Appalachia (we knew we'd found the turnoff when we saw the Obama/Biden sign) and a guitar camp for musicians who are already pretty darn good. Oh, and luckily for me, it's only about a 15 minute drive from my house.

The Fur Peace has a small, rustic performance hall that seats maybe a couple hundred guests. I'd heard Jorma play a Hot Tuna set out there with Jack Casady. But I'd never heard David Bromberg play before now, and boy was that an oversight. He was wonderful! He wasn't just a guitar virtuoso; he was also a rousing blues singer with a wry sense of humor. Somehow he managed to play the blues seriously and yet poke fond fun at their woman-done-me-wrong clichés. He and Jorma played for nearly three hours - all acoustic, often half-improvised - and at the end no one was ready to go home.

But don't just take my word. Listen to his sly self-deprecation on "This Month," which I heard on Saturday (this clip comes from a 2007 show in Philadelphia, with his band rather than with Jorma). The lyrics made me laugh. They also made me wince at the times when I've been as much a fool in love (or lust) as the poor fellow in the song.



David and Jorma also played a treat for me and all the other Deadheads in the audience: "I Know You Rider." This clip of a similar version from the mid-1980s features David with Hot Tuna:


And no, none of us looks quite the same as we did half a lifetime ago. Jorma is downright unrecognizable - except for his voice and his playing.

I don't have any cool video for the other two concerts, and they weren't quite as professional, but each was a pleasure in its own way.

Saturday afternoon was my little Bear's debut performance with the Athens Children's Chorus. They sang outdoors, which is never easy when it's gusty and the music tends to be borne away on the breeze. They did a nice job anyway. I got a little misty-eyed but am saving my serious sentimentality for when the acoustics are good.

The last concert (actually the first, chronologically) was Octubafest at the university. You haven't experienced real absurdity until you've heard both Tchaikovsky and "The Wabash Cannonball" played by a dozen tubas and six euphoniums. As my husband said afterwards, violins and other treble instruments were invented for a very good reason.

Photo by Flickr user celesteh, used under a Creative Commons license.

But tuba players do need to go wild once a year. If you always have to play the "oom" part in oom-pah music, a complex melody involving sixteenth notes is pretty sexy. I used to play French horn, and we got stuck playing "pah" to the tubas' "oom." So I can totally relate.

The great thing about hearing all this music is that even though a performance is transient and ephemeral, it sticks with me for a while afterward. It's like someone has pressed the reset button. It's as though I got a little taste of equanimity, and the memory of that is helping keep stress at bay. With the election looming a scant week away, the economy collapsing like elephantine dominoes, and my back trouble migrating southward, a whiff of equanimity is no small gift.

The End of the World as We Know It

I'm not a very apocalyptic kind of gal, but as the world economy crumbles, it's hard not to wonder how it's gonna end. I'm also not a huge REM fan but I've always liked this song, and when I heard it on the radio last night I thought it was an anthem for these times.

That’s great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn - world serves its own needs, don’t misserve your own needs. Feed it up a knock, speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height, down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn’t coming in a hurry with the furies breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population, common group, but it’ll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves it's own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty psyched.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o’clock - TV hour. Don’t get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning, blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh, this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mountains sit in a line. Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam, but neck, right? Right.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...

(It’s time I had some time alone)

(Lyrics found here.)

The Most Unexpected Pleasures of Parenting

I should have posted this over the weekend, when this was fresh and the Tiger was in a brilliant mood - not today, when he was testily ignoring anything that any adult said to him. But maybe today's the perfect time to remind myself that I don't just love him, I actually enjoy his company when he's not so cranky.

Upon becoming a parent, you expect certain pleasures. You know you'll melt when your child says he loves you, not suspecting it'll be his favorite topic-changer whenever he's about to get in trouble. You look forward to that first "Mama," even if it comes weeks or months after he cooks up a name for Grey Kitty (aka "Mau"). You realize you'll get teary at the first day of kindergarten and school plays and really any milestone, no matter how trivial.

What you could never anticipate is this. The Tiger recorded his first song this weekend, written and performed by his silly self, at the callow age of five. I think it could be a big hit among the three-year-old set.

Here are the lyrics:

I love chickety poop
chickety poop chickety poop
I love chickety poop
all day long.

If you figure out what "chickety poop" is, let me know.

Song of the Earth

I don't have much to say for myself tonight because I spent the day trying to finish a translating job and then went on an actual date.

We heard Mahler's Lied von der Erde - Song of the Earth - played by the German Youth Orchestra at the Konzerthaus (which I will always call by its old name, the Schauspielhaus) in the former East Berlin. The orchestra was just a bunch of kids, really, aged 14 to 19. They blew away lots of older, more professional musicians.

Interestingly, in light of how long Germany's top orchestras were male dominated (the Berlin Philharmonic still had only a handful of women 20 years ago), the youth orchestra was predominantly female. I'm curious to see how they'll transform the music landscape over the next 20 years.

I know Mahler isn't everyone's thing. People fall into two categories, I guess: those who adore Mahler and think he expresses the whole range of human experience, and those who think he's just noisy, overblown, and in bad taste. (Well, I guess there's a massive third category, those who don't give a shit about classical music, but they've stopped reading by now.)

I love him partly because music can be heard as pieces for French horns (sometimes small armies of them) accompanied by orchestra, which - as an old horn player - is how I listen to them. I think Mahler manages to capture joyful angst and angst-ful joy. He merges beauty and despair. I didn't just get tears in my eyes; my nose turned a charming shade of blubbery red. Luckily my date knew that about me before he married me.

One of my daylilies from mid-July - it doesn't quite capture the spirit of the Lied von der Erde, but it'll have to do.

The Melody of Language

I've been interested in language acquisition ever since my first baby started to talk. In keeping with the theme of this blog, one of his very first words was "mau," referring to Grey Kitty. In fact, "mau" predated "mama." I didn't care bit. I thought watching him learn language was one of the coolest parts of parenthood.

That changed with my second son. I was just as excited about him learning to talk - but it didn't happen for a very long time. Worry displaced joy. At age two, when most kids are combining three words into crude sentences, the Tiger had just a handful of words. He didn't even say "no." Now, three years later, he's mostly caught up, following a little speech therapy, a lot of terrific help from a support group online, and the simple passage of time. And believe me - he has learned to say no!

So I was fascinated when Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily (Science Blogs) reported recently that music apparently helps in language learning. A research team headed by Daniele Schön had students learn a set of six nonsense words; it took them 20 minutes to learn where one word ended and the next began. Schön's team then mapped each of the six words onto a unique pitch. They found that the musical association dramatically increased learning. (Their abstract is here; since the full text of their article is not accessible on the Web, the following graphs are courtesy of Dave Munger's post.) The graphs show the test subjects' accuracy after seven minutes of hearing the nonsense words paired with a unique musical note:

Munger observes:

The dotted line in each graph represents the average score for all listeners, and each square is the average score for an individual listener. As you can see, in the speech-only experiment, listeners did no better than chance. But in the second experiment, nearly everyone did better than chance, and the average score was 64 percent correct -- significantly better than chance performance. Simply associating each syllable with a musical note improved performance.

But in real songs, syllables aren't always matched with the same notes. Sometimes different syllables get the same note, and sometimes the same syllable is sung with a different note. In a third experiment, Schön's team allowed the notes to vary with each syllable. Again, listeners could identify words at a rate better than chance (though they weren't as good as in the second experiment).

Schön and her colleagues don't go so far as to argue that music is a requirement for learning language, but they do make the case that the extra information provided in music can facilitate language learning. They also suggest that other information, like gestures, might be equally helpful for learning a language.

But there is additional evidence suggesting that music plays an important role in language. Similar areas of the brain are activated when listening to or playing music and speaking or processing language. Language and music are both associated with emotions. And of course, we know that children -- especially small children -- really like music. This study offers another bit of evidence that the link between language and music may be a fundamental one.

The cool thing about this, from my totally anecdotal persepctive, is that I saw exactly this in the Tiger's language development. (I should be embarrassed that every time I cite something from Science Blogs, I end up sullying it with non-scientific thinking. I guess I'm not embarrassed enough to desist.)

The first time I heard my Tiger utter multiple words, he was singing "Ring around the Rosie." He'd hum the first part, then repeat the last line over and over:

Ash-ah! Ash-ah! Da da dow!!

Granted, that's the sort of phrase that only a parent can appreciate - especially when it's on endless repeat. But the cool thing is that the tune helped him put the syllables together when he couldn't otherwise get beyond single-syllable utterances. He was maybe two-and-a-half at the time. Equally great, I was able to understand him, thanks to the melody. (He has a great natural ear for music, and that was apparent long before he was talking.)

All fired up, I took this information to our speech therapists. Oddly, frustratingly, they didn't know what to do with it. Now, it seems to me that Schön's research suggests fruitful new approaches. Though I'm no longer in the trenches with late-talking, and I'm not a scientific expert by any means, I am a tuned-in mother who learned a lot about how to encourage language. And I'm guessing that late talkers could really benefit from the therapist using more music - not just prerecorded songs, but melodies sung aloud to help kids acquire new vocabulary.

The photo shows my piano; that's me making noise at it.

The Day the Music Burned

I realize there are worse tragedies happening in the world. No one got killed in this one. I'm still really sad about it.

Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters; I swiped it and hope no one will mind.

Today the Berlin Philharmonic hall suffered a severe fire, which apparently started while welding work was being performed. The International Herald Tribune reported:

Musicians described a frantic evacuation. Sarah Willis, the 2nd horn player, said she had been in the warm-up room when she "smelled something like lunch was burning."

"A few minutes later, someone burst in and said we have to get out now," she said, speaking on her cellphone as she watched smoke billowing from the building. "Double basses were on stage and many valuable violins and cellos were in lockers. The stagehands were allowed to take them out." ...

"It's really sad," she said. "It's the best acoustic in the world. We just don't know what it's going to look like."

She's not exaggerating. I was lucky enough to hear probably a few dozen concerts in this hall when I lived in Berlin. The acoustics are astonishing. Even the "standing room" seats behind the orchestra are fantastic.

For me, this is also personal. The Philharmonie has been almost a character in my life. I met my husband at the Schauspielhaus in East Berlin in 1991, when the Berlin Philharmonic had to relocate during asbestos removal from the Philharmonie. A concert at the Philharmonie was our favorite thing to do on a date, and we almost always scored inexpensive last-minute tickets. I went there with dear friends and relatives when they made the trek from California to visit me in Berlin. I heard Mahler's 7th at the Philharmonie while I was hugely pregnant with the Bear and thought I was going into labor early. Apparently he was signaling enthusiasm or exasperation at all the Sturm und Drang. (He likes Mahler now, for what it's worth.)

I hope the roof can be repaired in a way that preserves the acoustics. I hope it can happen even though the city of Berlin is in the direst of financial straits. And I hope that, while the repairs are being made and the orchestra is again displaced, some other young couple will find each other while waiting for the music to begin.