Floral Sleuthing

There is a new show in town. Everywhere you turn in Durham you see small trees/large shrubs bowing under the weight of vibrant, cone shaped clusters of flowers. They are white, lavender, and all shades of pink from the palest prissy rose to the most garish magenta. The first time I saw them my Midwestern heart leapt in recognition. Lilacs! We had lilacs at every parsonage we lived in when I was growing up. I rushed to the nearest branch ready to breath deeply of that familiar and comforting smell…

Only to discover that at close quarters it is abundantly clear that these are not lilacs at all. They don’t really smell for one thing. The leaves are all wrong too and the shape of the trees… Okay, they are nothing like lilacs. What looked at first like the little starry flowers of the lilac are actually the lacy petals of a much larger flower clustered around a star shaped center. What could it be? I was mystified and so, apparently was everyone I asked. I need a horticulturist friend!

Since I am lacking in that department just at the moment, I had to do a little detective work on my own. You might be surprised to find out that just putting “pink North Carolina flowering trees” into Google did Not instantly reveal the answer. After a number of tries and following some different leads, I finally turned up some pictures that matched what I had seen and discovered that what I was trying to identify was the crepe myrtle or crape myrtle which flourishes throughout the South. Lilacs, much to my chagrin, apparently do not.

Now the distance between Chicago and Durham is 850 miles (by Mapquest, not as the crow flies) and about 13.5 hours by car or 2 hours by plane. But because of the homogeneity of stores, restaurants, cultural experiences and, to some extent, flora and fauna too, I sometimes forget that 850 miles is actually a very long way geographically speaking. No matter how we shrink the world through instantaneous communications and almost instantaneous travel it is still a huge and wonderfully diverse place!

It’s funny how missing a flowering shrub from my childhood can suddenly remind me just how far from home I really am.

Sweet Home Chicago

I miss Chicago. Pout.

It’s not my favorite people that I miss most. You’ve all been so great about keeping in touch that I’m not too homesick.

And it’s not our favorite restaurants. We’ve found a few new ones down here already and have more we want to try. Besides, between Dan’s cooking and my diet we don’t go out much anyway.

And I’m slowly figuring out those crucial things like: where to get a haircut or a cool birthday card or a gift for a friend and where to take the car for maintenance and how to get to the grocery store and back. So it’s not that.

Of course I miss all the fun stuff there is to do in Chicago over the summer but I spent the 4th at a super cool festival with great music and food and art and fun nature oriented activities. It was exactly my idea of a great festival: http://www.enoriver.org/festival/ So I’m not so sad to miss Taste of Chicago and Northalsted Market Days.

No… Way down deep, in the most dark and petty recesses of my heart, the thing I miss the most is…

Watching TV at the gym.

My old gym had TV screens at each and every treadmill and I Loved it. I found that watching Law and Order or back-to-back episodes of Scrubs or The Daily Show, or even reality trash like America’s Next Top Model, I was able to work out for unprecedented periods of time.

With a distracting plot and some eye candy I could do the elliptical trainer for an hour and a half! I could jog, with hills, for forty-five minutes. There were a few crazy Saturdays when I jogged an hour and a half! I was strong. I was fit. I imagined myself quite the runner.

And then the move came and I fell out of shape what with all the late nights at work and all the packing and painting and travel… and all the eating… But I was determined to get back in shape once I got here. Dan and I even went down to the YMCA soon after I arrived and got memberships.

Unfortunately I discovered too late that although they do have TVs at the Y they only show ESPN, a soap opera, CNN and Fox News. None of these things distract me enough to run! Dan has changed the music in my MP3 player to be a more engaging and upbeat running mix and that hasn’t helped. I can barely force myself to try thirty minutes on the treadmill and it’s so boring and painful that I have a terrible time talking myself into going to the gym more than a couple of times a week.

Sigh. I guess what I Really miss is the illusion that I am a fit and physically capable person, the belief that by working hard I might one day enjoy running, may even be able to keep up with Dan. Ha! I now see that this premise is fundamentally flawed and untrue. I miss that smug confidence and self-righteousness that comes from being able to casually say: “I went running today. Yeah, did five miles. No biggie.”

And yet, in my darkest hour I have discovered that I can Read on the elliptical trainer! I’ve never been able to read and work out before because of the bouncing. Much to my delight, young adult books with their reasonably easy to follow plots and large font texts are not distorted too much by the bouncing, panting and pain. They even have pictures! And if I only let myself read these books at the gym I find myself compelled to work out just so I can find out the exciting conclusion to the mystery in Chasing Vermeer or what lies at the end of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

Today I did an Hour on the crossramp elliptical. AND I increased my resistance. Everyone knows that runners are just tearing up their knees anyway...

Smug? Who me?

Jammin’ on the Eno

Oh what Fun I had at the Festival for the Eno! I went for several lovely hours on the 4th and then again all day yesterday (Sadly forgetting my camera… My birthday is soon upon me and clearly age is catching up with me!). Except for about an hour spent there with Dan’s mom and Mike on Wednesday, I could not interest any of my local friends into going so I had a little artist’s date and took it all in by myself. I’m sure glad I did!

The festival is in a wonderful park full of trees with the Eno River flowing through it. There are permanent buildings that are part of the park, houses and barns that are very nicely kept up with gardens and exhibits inside. In addition, each year five beautiful wooden stages with tin roofs and lovely silk-screened or painted backdrops are built by volunteers in various parts of the park. The well over 50 different bands and solo performers range from gospel to country to folk to bluegrass to indie rock. Many are local but there were also groups from as far away as Alaska. There are dancers as well and performances and activities just for the kids.

There are also dozens of different artists and craftspersons displaying and selling their work as well as organizations (mostly of an environmental bent) promoting their services and agendas. And there’s food! Along with the expected cotton candy, lemonade and turkey drumstick stands there are also some unexpected choices like curry, empanadas and crepes. And of course the ubiquitous siren song of the funnel cake… I barely escaped alive.

Logistically the festival is a wonder. Free parking is provided off site and comfy charter buses truck people to and from the festival grounds. Trash is all kept to a bare minimum and sorted aggressively by an army of volunteers so that everything that can possibly be recycled or biodegraded (even the forks from their food vendors are biodegradable!) is kept out of a landfill. Also, there is almost No trash on the fair grounds. It’s amazing.

But the big attraction for me was the music… This was not a collection of garage bands performing covers. Of course there was a wide range of talent but the vast majority of the performers I heard were very good indeed and most performing original material. Now I admit I am a sucker for folk music so I was definitely the right audience for this event. What amazed me though was how often I would go to one stage thinking I would love a certain group, get bored and hear something that would pull me Pied Piper like to another stage where I would absolutely fall in love with a band I had never thought I’d be interested in.

Of course with so many choices there was always the fear that I would miss something wonderful elsewhere and I probably did. Sacrifices did indeed have to be made but I caught as much as I possibly could, especially the best of the local musicians. There has always been quite the music scene in the Triangle and I wanted to expose myself to as much of it as possible.

The following were my very favorites. As you can see they are all over the map stylistically:

Big Fat Gap: Bluegrass just the way I like it. Good solid vocals and smoking solos. Fiddles! Banjos! Mandolins! Guitars! String Basses! And they look like they are having a really good time. Obviously all very talented.

Jonathan Byrd: Singer-songwriter with a heavily country sound influenced by a number of traditional folk styles. I think there’s a quite politically satirical subtext to a number of his songs but the words fly by so fast… Dan has even put his stamp of approval on the CD I brought home This is the New That. Favorite song title ever: “Jesus was a Bootlegger.”

The Never: This indie rock group has just put out their first album Antarctica which is a “storybook record.” It comes with a picture book including text and illustrations by one of the band members. I thought they were a little uneven at the festival but I was impressed by the fact that they had four typical young rockers backed up by the mandolin player from Big Fat Gap and a frumpy tuba and flute player. And the drummer dropped his sticks at one point to play a flute duet. You don’t see that much! I was also intrigued by the CD book so I picked up a copy. I’m quite taken with it and commend the band for trying something so ambitious! The story is sweet if far fetched and the illustrations are very well done. Unfortunately the text is in a loosely rhyming form that I found jarring and at times trite. The music though is right up my alley. It’s quirky and atmospheric with high production quality, good vocals and lots of fun instruments thrown in like mandolin, fiddle and saw.

John McCutcheon: “When pressed for the perfect example of a modern folk musician, it’s John McCutcheon’s name that comes to mind.” Sing Out! Magazine, Winter 2000 John McCutcheon has been a professional folk musician longer than I’ve been alive, which we all know is a very lengthy time indeed! Where other solo performers had trouble competing with the heat and background noise he had us eating out of the palm of his hand. A consummate storyteller and multi-talented performer, he has a wonderful voice as well as amazing skills on the banjo, guitar, hammer dulcimer, auto harp and keyboard. Plus 30 albums of wonderful material from which to draw. I only bought five.

For me the quintessential experience of the festival was sitting in the shade, watching the dragon and damselflies glisten the dusty air and the sun spangle the leaves above me while singing harmony to John McCutcheon’s “This Land is Your Land.” There were toddlers playing in front of the stage and I imagined myself as a toddler at just such an event right at the beginning of John McCutcheon’s career, 30 odd years ago. My mom in her waist length braid and paisley dress and my dad in his long seventies beard and plaid bell bottoms sitting in the shade singing that very same song as I played happily in the grass…

A Blessing in Disguise

How boring it must be to stride through life shielded by rock solid confidence, ultimately poised and comfortable everywhere and with everyone. Never to taste the zesty tang of self-doubt or the earthier more full bodied bitterness of self-loathing? How dull! I am, most fortunately, not one of these sad, colorless people. I am a quintessential specimen of the other type. The never quite comfortable Anywhere type. A Paragon of Anxiety. An Unparalleled Champion of Second-Guessing. Trumpet Fanfare: It’s Worry Woman!

My old boss Neal is one of the confident people. He’s unshakably sure of every decision he makes and able to feel comfortable interacting with all manner of folks from corporate CEOs to rock band roadies. He can tell you one day that the sky is orange and the next that it’s purple without ever feeling the need to rationalize such a radical change or probably even registering that it Is a change. Poor guy… How on earth does he fill up the time he’s not spending rethinking everything he does?!

Now a life full of self-doubt… That’s exciting! A true pro like myself can wring drama out of the most innocuous of situations. Take this example: Recently I was amiably chatting with one of my dearest friends and she made a casual comment about my quirkiness. (Quirkiness? ME?!) It was actually meant as a compliment and a less talented neurotic wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Planted in the fertile ground of my neuroses, however, it lead me to think that she probably has just been putting up with me all these years and only asked me to stand up at her wedding out of sympathy and do you remember that embarrassing thing that happened during the reception? I bet she hates me for ruining her reception! How could I have not realized it before?! I probably should just not e-mail her or call ever again and save her the trouble of kicking me to the curb...

I know your might be skeptical that I am That good but I swear I actually thought all that before realizing that I was probably being a Wee bit ummm… What’s the word? Crazy? Yes, that’s it. Crazy. With a little Quirky thrown in for good measure.

If my best friends can cause me to despair in casual conversation, just imagine the majestic and craggy peaks of paranoia I ascended in preparation for the announcement that I was moving. Can you picture me walking quaking into Neal’s office to tell him that after 9 years I was going to be abandoning him? I was petrified! I had girded my proverbial loins for some sort of negative outburst, some painful interaction of some kind, only to be greeted by an exclamation of happiness and a hug! I could not have been more shocked. Then one by one I went to all my closest co-workers and everywhere I found the response was the same: Honest happiness for me mixed with an acknowledgement of sadness and loss for the office. It was a mind-blowing experience. Where was the anger? The incrimination?! Hello people, I’m abandoning you…

And all my friends at church were so kind. People I thought I barely knew invited me out to lunch to say goodbye. People refused in jest to acknowledge that I was leaving because they would miss me too much. Our pastor led an impromptu laying on of hands and sending forth by the entire congregation my last Sunday at church. Everywhere, everywhere so much love and happiness for me, excitement and sadness and support.

All this for Me? It made me nervous…

And it’s not over even though the move is now in the past. People are, much to my amazement, Keeping In Touch! There has also been a great outpouring of welcome from Dan’s friends and family here too. (And they never even mention what a bad person I am for having broken up with him!) I have been so unnerved and gratified by how excited they all have been for me to be down here. The offers to spend time together, the really great conversations and e-mails are all so affirming. I feel that they are all my friends now too, not just Dan’s friends and family humoring me.

This feeling of acceptance really hit home the other day when I was at a late night improv show of Dan’s. His teammate Jeffrey apologized that his boyfriend had been too tired to come. I laughed and said that I couldn’t imagine James would come all the way out to the show just to see Me. Jeffrey responded to my disbelief quite indignantly, “We Love you!” I was so touched…

I’m not sure that I’m ready to hang up Worry Woman’s lasso of “What did they mean by that?” or her bracelets of "Did I just totally put my foot in it?" just yet… but maybe it’s worth giving confidence a try. Just for a little while. I can always go back to my exciting life of doubt if things get too boring...

Sometimes, I guess, it takes turning your world on its ear and shaking it to see just how much you are loved. How many lives you have unwittingly touched. Thanks to each and every one of you for teaching me this humbling lesson. I hope I will take it to heart and remember it well the next time I decide that:

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I'm goin' down the garden to eat worms
Long thin slimy ones, short fat fuzzy ones
Ooey gooey, ooey gooey worms!

Silly me.