A Butt Shower

When TW came home from Japan last year, she was raving about their toilets. They have this contraption, where instead of using toilet paper, you push a button and a nice warm spray of water will give you a butt shower and then blow warm air on it to dry. Sounds pretty weird to me, but NOS has told me that The B wants one of those contraptions installed on their toilet in their new home when she comes to America. She thinks toilet paper is gross. After seeing the Northwest Airlines toilet yesterday, she has a point.

So, while we were waiting in the terminal yesterday to see if we could get to Seoul on Thursday, TW used the bathroom and came back to report that they had a butt shower in there. I needed to use the bathroom and decided now was an excellent time to try one out.

I won't go into the details, folks, but I'm telling you they don't work. I used the highest pressure, and I made sure to get complete coverage, but luckily, they also had toilet paper available for us barbarians or I would have been up the creek without a paddle, so to speak.

They also had, as an option, the squat down toilet receptacle, which really is a better idea than what we North Americans use. With the squat down you don't have to get cheek to cheek with the previous occupant, who may have left all kinds of invisible cooties. It is not a hole in the floor, at least not in this modern era, it is a perfectly designed porcelain receptacle that you flush after use. I forgot to take a picture, but will try to do so before we leave Asia.

Our hotel has a butt shower in the bathroom, so I did get a picture of that for your viewing pleasure. This one does not have a separate button for spraying a little cologne on your butt after doing your business, unlike the one at the airport. Notice the warning about not trying to use the butt shower unless you're sitting down. Only dumb Americans would need such a warning.

Don't Ever Fly Northwestern

Blogger's Note: Since blogspot lists posts with the most recent ones on top, if you want to read about our Korean adventures in order, you need to scroll down to the first one, "Korea Report: We're Off." Sorry for the confusion.

It turns out 7 is not our lucky number. When we get on the ground, there is an announcement that all passengers going to Seoul on Northwestern Flight 007 should see a ticket agent, there is going to be a delay. We gather in front of the Northwestern counter and wait until everyone is off the plane. There are about 50 of us, anxiously huddled.

The agent is a very nice Japanese man, who has a little trouble expressing himself in English, but when he finally thinks of the word, pronounces it pretty well. The upshot of it is that he is very sorry, but there is a maintenance problem with the aircraft that was supposed to take us to Seoul and they don't know how long it will take to fix it and there is another plane coming and rather than inconvenience us by making us wait around, they have cancelled the flight. We are now booked on a Japan Airlines flight that leaves at 10:00 a.m. Friday morning. They will put us up in a hotel and provide us with dinner and breakfast. So solly. What the ........... ? They can't do that to us. We have people waiting for us in Seoul. We have to go to a wedding. We have other family members flying into Seoul, Son Number Two, and my sisters, Seester, and The Sensible One, who won't know what to do without us.

This is the second time Northwestern has done this to Son Number One. He met his Bride in Japan a week before Christmas, the only time he will have seen her since he left Korea last July and when we get there for the wedding. I dropped him off at the airport on a clear winter day and went to work, only to get a call from him an hour later telling me that Northwestern has cancelled his flight. The next flight would be out of O'Hare the next morning, and it was up to us to figure out how to get him to O'Hare. If we wanted to fly out of our local airport, the next available flight would be in four days. They said it was weather related, and therefore there was no compensation. What the .................... I raged. They can't do that to us. I called ticket agents; I called their supervisors; there was no way I was going to let them cheat NOS out of a day with his B. Nothing worked. I took him to Chicago the next day and we didn't get as much as an apology from Northwestern.

So, I already know that raging won't work. My sister-in-law, BS, grew up in Japan; speaks the language like a native and sidles over to the ticket agent to try some Japanese charm. It is fun to watch her as she is transformed into a Japanese woman, talking shyly, with her hand covering her mouth. She returns to tell us there is a chance for one or two of us to get on a flight Thursday evening. We wait around and wait around and finally are told the only remaining flight to Seoul on Thursday evening is already overbooked, so we might as well go to the hotel and relax.

I have been to the Neruda airport before for the connecting flight to Seoul, but I have never been out of the terminal. Japan, around the airport, looks pretty much like all other international airport terminals. Ugly buildings; garish signs; expressways and parking lots. The Wife thinks the trees look different. Maybe, if you know your trees, you can detect an Asian species, but trees are trees to me. They drive on the wrong side of the road in Japan, and that is an interesting experience.

I have been told by TW who was in Japan several weeks a year ago that Japanese hotels are superior to those in other countries. This one certainly is impressive. The staff is extremely friendly and helpful. TW said when she was here last year, whenever there group left a hotel, the entire staff would come out, line up and wave farewell to them. NOS needs to call The B to tell her the bad news about our trip delay. I figure out how to use the vending machine to buy an international calling card, but NOS and I are not successful in figuring out how to use it. A hotel employee comes over and also has trouble, but eventually makes the connection. The B is not happy, to say the least, but what can we do? When it's Northwestern, don't expect to get there on time.

The room is interesting. The front desk has given us the common-looking plastic card to use as a room key. After several tries, we get the door open and push the light switch but the lights don't go on. We try several times and nothing happens. Finally, I notice, beside the light switch what looks like a receptacle for the room key card. We insert the card and voila, the lights come on. What an interesting way to make sure room occupants don't leave their lights on when they're not in the room; plus keep track of the room key in the detritus of their luggage.

We have checked two bags, and are not given access to the checked luggage. That is being held at the airport for the flight tomorrow morning. Luckily, we had travelled enough to know to insert an extra pair of underwear in our carry on luggage. Unluckily, because of the hassle with getting liquids through security, we did not try to carry on any toothpaste, shampoo, etc. Not to worry, Japanese hotels have you covered. Besides the standard shampoo and conditioner in the room, they have a full set of toothbrushes, hairbrushes, and the tiniest tube of toothpaste I have ever seen. They even have an extra Q tip for you.

Asia uses 220v for its electrical equipment and we have packed several converters for TW's hair dryer, my computer, etc, but the converters are all in the checked luggage. But wonder of wonders, this room has 110v. power. I'm getting suspicious -- maybe this hotel does nothing but cater to travelers from North America who have been stranded by Northwestern. I'll bet they do very well.

It's 9:30 p.m. here; 7:30 a.m. in Illinois. I feel like I've been up all night, which I have and go to bed.

Crossing the Ocean

Our plane leaves Detroit for Tokyo just a few minutes before the scheduled 5:30 p.m. I've never been on a 747 before, even though I've crossed the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans several times. This sucker is huge. There's even an upstairs for first class passengers. It holds 403 passengers. The main cabin has 3-4-3 seating, which isn't too bad. The last time we went to Korea, the middle section had five seats, which means the poor person in the middle of the middle section was pretty much stuck for 13 hours unless he wanted to crawl over his neighbors.
TW, NOS and I are in a side section, near the front of the steerage. BM and EIEIO are four rows ahead of us and HPC and BS are across the aisle from us. NOS isn't much of a reader and immediately starts getting bored with his old parents who enjoy the time plane travel gives them for reading. He wants to play scrabble with BS, but she's not in the mood.
"Does anyone want to talk?" NOS asks, but after getting nothing but uncommunicative grunts, he wanders off to find some more congenial company. When he doesn't return for a long time, we start looking around for him and spot him in an animated conversation with a young man several rows back. This goes on for several hours, before he finally comes back to check on us. This is truly amazing to TW and I. NOS used to be painfully shy. Neither of us are extroverts. When did NOS have a gene transplant?
At 5:30, the stewardii are wheeling out supper. Like typical airline food these days, it's not very good and there is so little of it. I opt for the beef stew and biscuit. It is actually not that bad, considering my expectations. The meal includes a little container of iceburg lettuce with two somewhat tomato-y looking slices on top. I'm not sure the salad counts as a vegetable in the reality-based world, but I'm recording it as a vegetable. There are also a few newly-thawed shrimp, which if you can get the sauce packet open, can be turned into shrimp cocktail. Besides the biscuit with the stew, there is a carbohydrate-looking something or other, which I finally figure out must be a roll, although when I finally get it out of its plastic wrapping and bite into it has all the taste of a baked hockey puck. There are actually two desserts; a package of dime-sized chocolate chip cookies, which make a nice chaser for the hockey puck, and finally, the piece de resistance, a little piece of chocolate. I could go for about 15 more of the chocolates and consider it a pretty good meal.
After supper, everyone heads for the lavoratories. By the time I get inside there is paper on the floor and overflowing from the waste receptacle. I don't know how many nationalities we have on board but not all of them are skilled in the use of sit-down plumbing. I doubt that you really want to hear any more about the lavatories.
About 7:00 p.m. (EDT) the stewardii decide it is time to settle the kids down, so they make us pull the shades even though it is still light outside and it's interesting to look at the patches of snow on the ground. We're over northwestern Canada, coming up on Alaska. It turns out we don't have to go to bed yet, they're just dimming the lights so they can show movies. The first one is the recent one with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore about the aging rock star and the young song writer. I saw it in the theater and, although I have plenty of time to waste, don't bother to turn my headphones to the movie channel. I read until I fall asleep, then sleep for a few minutes, then wake up and listen to some music, then walk the aisles, then read a little more. The next movie is The Freedom Writers with Hilary Swank, which I haven't seen and try to watch. I give up after half an hour. How many movies have already been made about innocent young teachers thrown into wild classrooms who, then, somehow, manage to come up with a way to reach the critters? Too many. Too bad for Hilary who has made some great movies.
The movies are over and everyone settles down to try to get some serious sleeping. With NOS still having abandoned his seat for chatting, we have three seats for two people so there is a little more room to try to get creative about the placement of limbs. It would be a lot easier if they were detachable.
It is now 2:00 a.m. EDT. I have done a lot of tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable. I have discovered why old women wear shawls. They help keep you warm. The cabin is way too cold for my liking and even with wearing a sports jacket, I was shivering until I put the flimsy cloth they call a blanket on my head and now I am sitting here typing, wearing what probably looks like a burkha to the sleepy-eyed inmates shuffling past. We've been in the air now for 10-1/2 hours so the worst is over. Another couple of hours and we'll be landing in Japan. I can do this.

Korea Report: We're Off

We're on our way to Seoul for the traditional wedding of Number One Son. Our plane from Champaign was to leave this morning at 10:15, meaning we needed to get to the airport by 9:15. We were picking up NOS at his townhouse on the way to the airport, and, The Wife needed to pack his suitcoat,so we decided to give ourselves plenty of time by leaving home at 8:30.

Usually, I'm the clock police, but this morning, TW was pacing at 8:35, while I leisurely went to the bathroom, and checked the house for forgotten items, redeeming myself (at least in my eyes) by conveniently noticing the suitcase still on the floor in one of the bedrooms. TW was getting worried because several phone calls to NOS's house were getting no answer. When we got to NOS's townhouse, about 8:45, there was no immediate response to our knocking on the door. Pounding with increasing franticness eventually brought a sleepy-looking NOS to the door in his underwear. His alarm had malfunctioned and his phone hadn't rung loudly enough to wake him, but deciding that getting on our way was probably more important than giving him the full shot of recriminations that he deserved, we packed his suit coat, washed his dishes and tidied up for his new wife while he got dressed. I was not that worried because we had built in enough time that we were in no danger of missing our flight.

By 9:15, we were in the check-in line at our little airport, well ahead of the rest of our crockhead group. The rest of the group traveling with us are the Humble Philosopher/Carpenter (HPC for short;) his wife, BS (no explanation necessary); the youngest crockhead who is popularly referred to as Baby Milton (BM) and his wife, EIEIO.

We were on a small jet from Champaign to Detroit; everything was fine and on time, and, after paying $7.95 for internet access, I've been checking my email; checking in on my favorite blogs and reading Everlasting Flower. When everyone returns to the gate, I'll try to take a picture of our intrepid group and post it.

News Flash: Fire Your Cleaning People

This is an actual article from our local "newspaper" yesterday. In all fairness, it is a reprint from the Akron Beacon Journal, so at least two editors had been drinking at work:

"Rather than dusting the top of the refrigerator periodically, cover it with plastic food wrap that you can peel off and replace every few months."

My first thought, after I stopped laughing, was why stop with the refrigerator? All those wooden surfaces that we are paying big bucks to have dusted every week could simply be covered with plastic wrap and the plastic replaced every week. I hope Mary Beth Breckenridge who came up with this idea hasn't patented it. I see a new career for my old age -- thinking up new surfaces to cover with plastic wrap. I'm pondering right now whether it will ever be necessary for me to have my shirts laundered again. I'm thinking plastic wrap around the collar and under the arms, and maybe down the front just before I sit down to eat, and voila, no more laundry bills.

I Got Them Wedding Blues - Part Two

I remembered again tonight why I talked my bride into a small family only wedding in the back yard when we got married 36 years ago. It was all those picky little etiquette things that no ordinary amount of common sense could possibly get right.

I picked up the mail tonight and saw it included a "regrets" RSVP from our next door neighbors. We see and talk with them almost every day. They're good neighbors and nice people. We have left our house keys with them when we're going to be gone in case someone needs to get into the house. We pick up their newspaper and hold it for them when they're going to be gone. The Wives consult each other on plants. The Husbands consult each other on how to get out of yard work. We are completely friendly with each other -- no formality.

So, I remarked to The Wife when I brought in the mail, "This is odd, Joann sent us a 'Regrets' in the mail."

The Wife looked at me uncomprehendingly, "So?"

"Why would she mail us her regrets instead of just tell us, or hand us the card?"

Indignantly, "That's not how you do things."

"We didn't mail the invitation to them instead of handing it to them, did we?"

"Of course."

Sigh.

The mail man literally goes from our mailbox to their mailbox. But I doubt that he is allowed to just pick up the invitation from our box, drive 20 feet and put it in their box. No, Emily Post would object. He has to pick up the invitation, take it to the processing center five miles away, dump it in the postmark machine, sort it, take it back out to his truck and then drive past our house to the neighbor's house and put it in their box, reversing the process when they RSVP. Anything simpler would be impolite.

Sheesh.

Jeremy and Lydia -- A Looong Time Ago

I have enjoyed getting acquainted again over the last several months with one of my readers, Lydia, from Boston whom I knew nearly 30 years ago when she lived across the street from us on Anita in Grosse Pointe Woods, MI. I don't know her email address and we have communicated by leaving notes on each other's blogs. Last night, I was looking at a scrapbook The Wife is compiling for Jeremy and Bomina and came upon this picture. With the blog turning Jeremy-o-centric for the next several weeks because of his upcoming wedding in Korea, I thought it appropriate to share the picture with the world, but particularly with Lydia. On the chance that she doesn't remember, the people in the picture, from the left, are: Jeremy, Shannon, Becky (not the Anonymous Becky who sometimes comments on this blog) and Lydia. The picture would have been taken sometime in 1978 or 1979.

Korea Report: The Final Countdown

Only 11 days left (June 6) until a flock of crockheads head for Korea to celebrate the traditional wedding ceremony of eldest son, Jeremy, and his new wife, Bomina. We'll be there a week and then come back, bringing Bomina with us. Ten days after that we'll have a reception here, the Lord willing and the restaurant doesn't lose our reservation again.

We'll have plenty of reinforcements in Seoul. Besides The Wife and both sons, we have Two Brothers, Two Sisters and Two In-Laws traveling with us. Chris is flying out of San Diego; the Two Sisters are flying out of Washington Dulles; the rest of us will leave from our local airport; transfer in Detroit and then head north (yes, north, not west as we go up over Alaska, the Arctic Circle and then head back down south on the other side of the world. Amazing, the way flat maps distort our perceptions.)

Our longest time in the air will be 13 hours from Detroit to Tokyo, where we will change planes for the short hop (2 and 1/2 hours) to Seoul. It will be close to 24 hours from the time we leave Willard Airport until we arrive in Seoul, although by Seoul time it will be more like 36 hours. (Since we cross the International Date Line, on the trip back, by official time we get here four hours after we leave Seoul.)

A day after we get there, we will have the traditional Korean ceremony on the grounds of a palace in Seoul. I'm a little surprised that although our new daughter-in-law and her family are devout Catholics, there is apparently not a requirement that the ceremony be in a cathedral, or even that a priest participate.

We will spend the weekend hanging around Seoul and then have an overnight at a Buddhist monastery on an island off the coast of Korea. Some time during our stay in Seoul, I want to visit the DMZ, although no one else in our party seems interested in the idea. I'm not sure why my fascination with the DMZ, other than I've been reading about it all my life, and our president has labeled it the most dangerous place on earth. (I doubt that statement is any more true than thousands of other lies he has told in the last six years, but I want to check it out for myself.)

I have a new laptop on its way from Dell, and, assuming it gets here on time, will try to give a day-by-day, if not hour by hour account of our trip for the blog. So, stay tuned. I'm getting excited.

Theater Report: Parasite Drag by Mark Roberts

Mark Roberts is a home town boy who has made it big in Hollywood. He grew up in the little bedroom community of Tolono, got involved in the community theater group, The Celebration Company at The Station Theater, worked locally and then in Chicago as a comedian, and then surfaced in Hollywood a few years later as a writer and actor. Now he is a writer and executive producer of the Emmy-award-nominated Two and a Half Men, and has acting and writing credits for a host of other television shows and movies.

Like a salmon returning to its spawning grounds, Roberts keeps coming back to Champaign to introduce new plays he has written. Welcome to Tolono, introduced at The Station Theater several years ago as a play, and now about to premier as a movie was his first effort. It is about addiction in a small town and does a wonderful job of combining humor and pathos. I thought it was a masterpiece and can't wait to see the movie. A year ago, Roberts introduced here another new play,Rantoul and Die, Rantoul being the name of another area small town. This effort was less successful, and I panned the writing, which sounded too Hollywood-sit-comish, the acting, the set and the directing. Other than that, I still didn't like the play.

Roberts is back this year with a new play, Parasite Drag, (the name is an aeronautical term referring to drag by airplane parts which are not lift producers) and it is not only his best effort, but a masterpiece that I predict will get attention outside this small area. It reminded me most of Tennessee Williams's classic Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, which won a Pulitizer Prize 50 years ago. This play is in that class. I realize I'm gushing, but I have to tell the truth. (Interestingly, the next production at The Station will be Cat on a Hot Tin Roof starting June 14th. I definitely want to be there and compare more closely that play with Parasite.)

Cat was a story of a Southern family in crisis; Parasite is a story of a Midwestern family in crisis. The crisis in Cat, comes to the forefront when the family gets together because Big Daddy is dying of cancer. In Parasite the family has come together because the sister is dying of AIDS. Cat pushed the boundaries 50 years ago of what was acceptable in theater in terms of language and sexual situations. I don't know if there are any boundaries anymore in theater, but Parasite pushes the bounds of socially acceptable language and behavior; in fact, one word that was used is not socially acceptable, and gets people fired from radio stations.

Although the family has "come together" in physical space, it is far from "together" emotionally. Two brothers, Gene, played by Gary Ambler, and Ronnie, played by Roberts, have taken entirely different life paths. Gene works at the University and is about to be ordained as a minister. They haven't communicated in many years, ostensibly because Gene disapproves of Ronnie's lifestyle, which is heavily into drinking, drugs, sex and cussing. As the play unfolds, one quickly sees that the "good brother" and the "bad brother" are not who we initially thought. Joi Hoffsommer plays Susie, Ronnie's hot little wife who can't believe that Joellen, played by Anne Shapland Kearns, hasn't had sex for eight years. (The audience can't believe it either because we have just witnessed her on the kitchen table with Ronnie, in a rather graphic scene for local theater.)

The dying sister is never on-stage but as we learn about her from the other characters, we see that there is a reason for her wasted life and that reason is the cause of the brothers' estrangement. The play is very intense, made bearable by Roberts's use of humor, but the humor is used more deftly than it was in Rantoul. Thanks to the humor, this is a serious play about a serious subject, for mature adults, but it is not maudlin and it is not depressing.

The audience on Friday night when I saw the play was an older audience; way more than half older than 50, but it was not offended by the language which was about as raw as anything I have heard in the theater and on television. It leaped to its feet for a standing ovation when the final scene went black, not like those standing o's where the friends and family of the actors get up after the first curtain call, and then gradually, one by one, the rest of the audience begrudgingly finally give a standing ovation.

The set is interesting. It is a very realistic glimpse of part of the living room and kitchen of the inside of tens of thousands of Midwestern homes. It was designed by David Harwell, who teaches theater at the University of Alabama. He also did the design for Rantoul that I panned last year. I am not sure the forced perspective used to give more depth to the small stage was really necessary, and the odd angles look odd.

The audience recognized, as the reviewer for our local newspaper, The News-Gazette, recognized that it had seen something special; something that we will remember and want to be able to say years in the future, "I was there." Roberts has certainly proven to me that he is more than a Hollywood sitcom writer, and I hope he gets the recognition that he deserves because of this play. I gave this play 5 out of 5 stars.

I Got Them Wedding Blues

As regular readers know, our oldest son is having a wedding in Korea on June 8th. We (8 other crockheads and I) are going to Korea for the traditional Korean ceremony and then we're all, including the bride's family coming back here for a reception on June 22nd. My wife, peace be upon her, is taking the opportunity to plan the reception we never had. (We got married under the weeping willow tree in her parents' back yard 36 years ago with only immediate family present, ate a meal cooked by her mother, and then left on our honeymoon trip to Toronto and Montreal to get on with the good stuff.)

I haven't been much help with the planning and preparation since it's mostly humbug to me. But my wife, peace be upon her, has spent a lot of time checking out reception possibilities, dresses, flowers, getting invitations made and sent out, and a million other things that I know nothing about. (Peace be upon me.)

So, in late summer last year, after visiting or talking with every possible place in our twin cities to have a wedding reception, my wife, peace be upon her, settled on the very elegant and lovely Kennedy's at Stone Creek. She went there several times with my sister-in-law, peace be upon her, figuring out things (don't ask me what; I don't even know what needs figuring out.) (Well, I know once when they went there they figured out how to help the staff get a snake out of the foyer, but I can't imagine what else would need so much figuring out.)

On Tuesday of this week, my wife, peace be upon her, and my sister-in-law, peace be upon her, went back to the lovely and elegant Kennedy's at Stone Creek to make the final menu selections. There was a slight problem. The woman they had been working with was no longer there. The new person knew nothing about our wedding reception and had booked the banquet hall to another party. There was no record that we had ever spoken with them. Things started getting a little tense. Invitations had already gone out several weeks ago. RSVPs have been coming in. About 100 people, maybe 120 people are thinking they have been invited to a wedding reception at Kennedy's at Stone Creek.

But, luckily, my wife, peace be upon her, found her receipt for a $500 deposit. And, Kennedy's, peace be upon them, agreed to do the right thing. So, they're closing the restaurant for the evening and we can have the reception in there. The restaurant is nicer than the banquet hall, anyway. Both have nice windows overlooking the golf course, but the restaurant has more character; and will set up as a nicer place for the reception, or so my wedding planners, peace be upon them, tell me.

After arriving home from that near fiasco, which turned out okay, my wife, peace be upon her, decided she better double check with the music guy, to make sure he's still lined up. He wasn't. Oh, yes, he remembered talking with my son about the reception; oh, yes, my son had sent him a playlist of songs, but somehow he had not written down a reservation. That, too, turned out okay because he did not have a competing booking.

So all's well that ends well. (Except this thing hasn't ended yet.)

Ask Aunt Tillie: Do You Love New York?

Blogger's Note: Since this blog is somewhat Amishcentric, I get questions from time to time from readers about Amish life and culture, which I refer to my Aunt Tillie, an opinionated, but humble Amish woman. Here is a recent question and answer. Please leave a comment or email me if you have questions you want me to refer to her in the future.

Dear Aunt Tillie:

As you know I went to New York City a few weeks ago to see my son perform at Carnegie Hall. One of my readers thought I should offer to take you along. But, since we were flying instead of taking a van, I knew you couldn't be talked into it. But I do think I remember you telling about visiting New York once. Have you ever been to New York City? What did you think of it?

Signed, Amishlaw

Dear Nephew:

You're right, I did visit New York City once, a long time ago, before I was married. I went to see my sister, your aunt, Emma, who worked in New York City as a registered nurse. Emma always had a wanderlust, going off to pick cotton in Oklahoma several summers before finally leaving home for good to go to nursing school. I still don't know exactly how she wound up in New York City, of all places, but I guess she probably wanted to prove she could make it in the big city and they don't make cities any bigger than New York, at least not in this country.

Emma would come home with her clickety little high heels and tight skirts and flirty little comments when any man was around, which some of my sisters didn't appreciate, but I didn't mind because I knew she wasn't after any of the slow-talking men in our community. She used to tell me that I should come visit her, so one fall after we had the corn shucked, I told my father, your grandfather, Obed, that I was going to take off a week and go to New York City.

Surprisingly enough, Obed didn't say too much against it; I guess probably because when he was a young man, his father let him visit New York City and it sure didn't corrupt him. Obed's father, Andrew, gave him $2,000, which was a lot of money in 1915, to go to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to look for a wife. He decided he was going to see New York while he was out east, so he took the train in and got off in Grand Central Station. He walked out of the station, looked around at the big buildings, said, "There's nothing here that I want to see," and went back and got the next train out, on to Lancaster.

(Obed wound up corrupting the Amish young people of Lancaster County, as it turned out. After he returned to Illinois, the bishops in Lancaster sent a letter to the bishops in Illinois, asking them not to send any more of their young men to Lancaster. They were upset because he had taught their young people how to dance.)

Anyway, I spent a little more time in New York City and had way more fun there than Obed, probably because I had Emma as a guide. She met me at the station and took me to her house in Queens, and then took me to see all the sights. We went up on top of the Empire State Building, where I bought a little commemorative medallion that I still have somewhere around here, and we took a boat ride and saw the Statute of Liberty, although we didn't climb up inside.

Emma wanted to take me dancing, but I was afraid that I would look foolish because I really didn't know how to do ballroom dancing. The dancing the Amish young people did was more what you would call "square dancing." Emma got to be pretty good at ballroom dancing,and would enter and win dance contests. (Dancing turned out to be Emma's downfall, but that's a story for another time.)

Even though I wouldn't go dancing, Emma and I had a good time in New York. She took me out to eat in an Italian restaurant and a Chinese restaurant. We didn't have those kinds of restaurants when I was growing up, and even if there had been any in our little Midwestern town, there would be no reason to eat at a restaurant when we had plenty of food at home, and besides who had money to pay for restaurant food.

I could see why Obed didn't think much of the place, with all those tall buildings, you didn't see the sun until about 10 o'clock in the morning, and with all the cars honking their horns and people shouting and running around like ants in an anthill that a cow just stepped on, it was pretty nerve-wracking. But it was interesting to look at the strange people, and I guess they thought I was strange too because they were looking at me, just like I was looking at them. I wouldn't mind going back some day if my health holds up and you can find a train that goes there, but I don't think I'm ready to be squeezed into a van for 10 or 12 hours, or however long it takes to drive there and I know I wouldn't go up in an airplane. But if your son goes back out there to play his fiddle again, you let me know. I might just figure out a way to go listen to him.

Aunt Tillie

Bus Driver Report: Mind Taking My Poop?

Paul, my early morning walking buddy for more than 15 years, recently took a part time job as a bus driver. He doesn't blog, so unless I relate the story he told me this morning, it would be lost to the larger world, and that would be a shame.

Paul is driving north on Vine Street in Urbana earlier this week, when a young woman with a dog flags down the bus. The dog is clearly not a seeing-eye dog so she is not going to be able to board the bus with it, but Paul stops anyway, assuming the woman must be in some kind of distress. He opens the door and notices that she is carrying a plastic bag with dog poop in it. She doesn't try to board the bus, but gestures toward the bus's trash container with the dog poop and asks, "Do you mind?"

"Yes, I mind," Paul replies and closes the door and drives off.

The writer, Ian Frazier, has a funny essay in the May 7, 2007 issue of The New Yorker about the difference between being an idiot and idiocy. Idiocy can be committed by people who do not meet the technical definition of being an idiot. So, I will leave it to my readers to decide -- was this an idiot, or merely idiocy?

JACK Report: The Reviews Come In

Friday night, JACK performed locally in the Music Building Auditorium. This was a different program than they performed at Carnegie, despite the U. of I.'s breathless news release, which got some facts wrong. (JACK did not perform the same program at UIUC that they did in NYC, and they were not the winners of the Kronos Young Artists Concert.) This was a program more designed for academic musicians, with less mass appeal than the one in New York City. "Deconstructionism," one of Chris's former piano teachers was heard to sniff.

They played Eclats Cycle by Aaron Travers and String Quartet by Aaron Cassidy, both young composers in their early 30s affiliated with Northwestern University. Cassidy was present for the concert. They also played their signature work, String Quartet No. 3 "Grido" by Helmut Lachenmann, the German composer who is in his 70s and who is a self-proclaimed "believer" in JACK. Cellist Kevin McFarland wrote in the program notes that this piece is JACK's raison d'etre, because JACK was formed to perform this work at a festival in Mexico. The title, "Grido," is derived from the first names of the then members of the Arditti Quartet for whom it was written (Graham, Rohan, Irvine and Dov.) They joked at the time that had the piece been written for them, it would have been titled, "Jack." The last work was Tetras, by a dead composer, Iannis Xenakis. That was my favorite piece of the night, mainly because the virtuosic violin solo at the beginning reassured me that all my money for music lessons had not been wasted. Some of the other pieces, which involved playing with the back of the bow and every surface of the violin, had me wondering whether all those drives to Chicago for lessons were really necessary.

My friend and Chief Critic, PG was there with his wife and emailed me a review, which he gave me permission to use (along with their pictures.)(You can just call my photography "Deconstructionism.") Here is their review unexpurgated:

"Event: JACK Quartet, Music Building, University of Illinois, Friday, May 4, 2007

Program:
Aaron Travers, ECLATS CYCLE
Helmut Lachenmann, STRING QUARTER NO. 3 "GRIDO"
Aaron Cassidy, STRING QUARTET
Iannis Xenakis, TETRAS

Program notes: Voluminous and ponderous

Critics: Lee, the midwestern Bjork, and her spouse PG, the Matthew Barney

REVIEW #1, by Lee
"It is like our house, the washing machine and the dryer, squeaky things, the basement. You know, sort of dysfunctional environment music."

REVIEW #2, by PG
"This concert by Chris and friends totally rocked. The only way it could have been better would be if they had performed a la Charlotte Moorman and, at the end, kicked over their music stands a la The Who."

(Extra notes not incorporated into the reviews: the question of intentionality in the performance; the look of the score; the quietness that allowed for audible intrusions in the audience of chairs squeaking, face scratching, and farts; the ability to differentiate between styles in the composers, we could do it but we did not know how.)"

JACK performed at Northwestern University on Thursday night and that performance was reviewed by Marc Geelhoed, in his blog, Deceptively Simple, (scroll way down) The money quote: "JACK’s fearless performance of Xenakis’ Tetras is something I won’t forget soon, given that they played with a great deal of energy and, even, expressivity."

Third Day Book Report: "A Changing Light"

This month's Third Day Book Report is on A Changing Light, by Nora Gallagher, which is set in Los Alamos, NM during the mid-1940s when scientists there were inventing the atomic bomb. By coincidence, at the same time I was reading Changing Light, I was listening in the car to Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which deals with the early 1940s, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II. I really liked both books, but they're completely different, except for their time periods and the subject of World War II.

Changing Light looks at the little picture, the relationship between a New York artist, a Georgia O'Keefe type of painter, who has moved to New Mexico because of the perfect light for her art and to get away from her domineering husband who envies her success, and a Hungarian Jew who took to Einstein his idea for an atomic bomb and is having second thoughts about what he is doing, as the bomb nears completion. There is a love story, told delicately, but passionately, like an O'Keefe painting of a pistel and stamen.

Roth's novel imagines a big picture that could have, but didn't happen. He writes about what could have happened if Charles Lindbergh, an admirer of Hitler, had run for the presidency in 1940 and defeated Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although written from the point of view of a boy,The Plot Against America is more about the country and the latent anti-semitism that runs rampant with some encouragement from the political powers that be.

Changing Light is Gallagher's first novel, but she is an experienced writer and this book is written with a deft hand, almost a painterly touch. Roth is not subtle, and although he writes passionately, it is not a love passion but a political passion, at least in this book. I have really gotten to enjoy Roth the last few years, particularly Sabbath's Theater and Everyman. The plot of The Plot Against America gets a little farfetched at times, while Changing Light also has some improbabilities. I really enjoyed both books and gave them my highest ratings of five stars each.

JACK Report: A Carnegie Smash

Okay, here is my unbiased report on the Kronos Young Artists Concert at Carnegie Hall on April 28th.

Carnegie Hall is a cultural icon. It was built in 1890 with money from Andrew Carnegie. Everyone knows the joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall (practice, practice, practice.) The Young Artists Concert was on one of three stages (Carnegie's website says, "Three Great Stages; One Great Hall,) Zankel, the medium sized auditorium that holds about 600. It was about two-thirds full, so I would estimate that there were 400 people in attendance.

Kronos is an icon at least as revered as Carnegie, among devotees of modern classical music. It has been playing together for more than 30 years, but still maintains a youthful persona and vitality. They consistently sell out Krannert when they play locally. More importantly, the quartet members are generous with their time and prestige, commissioning new works by young composers and holding events to promote young performers, like this particular concert.

Four young quartets, average age under 30, were chosen by audition to participate in a week of coaching by Kronos, culminating in the concert on Saturday night. All of the music was very listenable, although I did not like each piece equally.

The others to perform were EnAccord, based in the Netherlands; the Pangea Quartet, based at Stony Brook University; and the Afiara Quartet, which is in residence at San Francisco State University. Each of the quartets had four 1-1/2 hour sessions (a total of six hours a day) with rotating members of Kronos every day last week. They played various pieces and then were assigned by Kronos what to play on Saturday night.

JACK was in the third spot on the program. Its first piece was "Escalay (Waterwheel)" written for Kronos by Hamza El Din, an Egyptian composer who was living in San Francisco at his death in 2006. He is quoted in the program notes as trying to create the sounds and images of the ancient society of Nubia, in southern Egypt. He describes the music system as Afro-Arab, "a bridge, musically and culturally, between Africa and the Middle East." The piece was hauntingly beautiful.

The second piece was a string quartet called "Oculus pro oculo totum orbem terrae caecat (An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.)" It was written for Kronos by Alexandra du Bois, a 26-year-old composer now living in New York City. She wrote the piece in 2003, and my wife and I heard it that year at Ravinia in Chicago, played by Kronos. It is very sad and we took it as a commentary on the war in Iraq, although I have not heard Ms. DuBois state that as behind the piece. There are places in the composition where one gets an overwhelming desire to weap. Ms. DuBois was in the audience and came out and kissed each of the quartet members when they were taking their bows.

The third piece was a light-hearted composition called "Twilight in Turkey," written by Raymond Scott and arranged by Randall Woolf. The program notes state that although Scott never wrote specifically for cartoons, his music is best known for its adaptation to accompany Warner Brothers animation. It has many playful melodies. The arranger, Mr. Woolf, was present and took a bow with JACK. At the end, everyone came out and took a bow.

Afterwards there was a reception, the entrance to which was guarded by a sad sack doorman who didn't have our name on his list. Unfortunately, he was trying to guard an entrance 10 feet wide and while he was poring over the list on one side of the doorway, people were pouring into the reception area on the other side. I wasn't about to be kept out of a reception after traveling all the way to New York City to hear my son play, so I intoned the magic name of my son, who was on the list and while he was carefully checking that name off, I swept my entourage in behind me. Because of the tender sensitivities of my wife, however, I stayed away from the free sandwiches and wine until we were sure there was enough for everyone. (We did stay until the very end and since there were lots of big fat brownies left, I had two big fat brownies.)

All of the Kronos people were there. Here is a shot with one of their violinists, David Harrington and son, Chris. We started talking with a friendly couple about our age, who were telling us about their twins, just younger than Chris, and it turned out to be Fred Kaplan, whose political writing in the on-line magazine, Slate, I have long admired, and his wife, Brooke Gladstone, who is an editor and co-host of NPR's On the Media program. Harrington is a friend of Kaplan and Gladstone, and calls them up whenever Kronos is in town to go get matzoh ball soup at the Carnegie Deli.

I am not qualified, either musically or emotionally, to make any critical judgments of the Young Artists concert. I was impressed, but then I was bound to be impressed. Whether any of these young quartets become the new Kronos remains to be seen, but they certainly got a strong boost to their careers. And I got a strong boost in my parental pride (although it probably didn't need any boosting.)