"Friday Night Frolic" — When Flying Badgers Roam

Photograph: Ansel Adams

They flew low. So low that they appeared to clip the tall oaks and pines lining the streets from where we first saw them. From the car, we caught sight of two mottled grey lusterless airships as we headed south on Abbott Valley. They—wide-bodied, slow-motion, thunderous-winged bullets—soared nearly side by side as they appeared from the east and throttled west over Bear Hill's ascent.

Lu looked worried, Are we going to be bombed, Mama? she asked.

What a question. But it made me think of 9/11. Of Vonnegut's Dresden. Of Pearl Harbor. Because this is how it works, I think in scenes. But my daughter doesn't have a scene like this. I don't either, not a real one, except for 9/11—which left a deep aching imprint on anyone old enough to remember—which was also the same day, the same morning, that my husband left early for Washington, D.C. out of Rhode Island's T.F. Green via Pittsburgh, and lost contact with me for a good four hours. Nothing. His flight had been grounded in Pittsburgh once it was evident that we were under terrorist attack—wireless signals dead on the idling plane.

Clearly, Tuesday's flying machines were military—similar in size to the ones that used to buzz over the lake in Maine, before Bangor International changed their flight pattern, and nothing like the small, single engine Pipers that land at the towerless North Central airport in northern Rhode Island. I'd seen North Central's asphalt runways, been there with the kids to watch the lighter, sexier planes take off and land (what to do with your children on a Thursday afternoon), a pilot gave them plastic wing pins. Its largest runway is only 5,000 by 1,000 feet. Bangor's sole runway is nearly three times that—more than two miles long.

I read somewhere that Air Force One can land on a 4,000 foot runway so long as it's done with full reverse thrust, hard brakes and full spoilers and flaps. I've no idea what that means, but it sounds violent.

No, we're not going to be bombed, Lu. It was curious though. Planes flying low enough to trigger that ducking impulse. Low enough to take out one of Providence's skyscrapers (if Providence actually had skyscrapers). And the only airport at which they could land was miles away in the opposite direction. They were too low. Prematurely low. Disturbingly low.

Only minutes after they flew from view, as we headed up Bear Hill, we caught the nose of another bus-swallowing aircraft coming from the north and flying south, right above Abbott Run. I could feel its weight. A second plane followed just behind. Now it was more than curious. It was odd. Were these the same two planes that we had just witnessed jetting west? They couldn't have changed their flight direction that quickly.

We drove to the bank, made a rapid deposit, and returned home within ten minutes. As we climbed the deck stairs to the back side of the house we heard another magnificent roar, and from the north, again, appeared a smoky plane. From the deck's vantage point, it appeared to be a cargo carrier, a heavy, beat up old junker lumbering along at low altitude, blue exhaust pluming from behind.

It was no longer odd. It was concerning, as if we were being harassed. I went out to the empty street, expecting to see neighbors peering at the sky, but no one was outside. No one. Lu followed and hugged me with worry. They're in their basements! Call the police! she begged.

I didn't feel like this was a rational thing to do. Call the police. What if we were being harassed, what if terrorists had hijacked the planes intending to use them as shrapnel? What the hell could our town's policemen possibly do? Have another donut quick, guys, it's all over.

So I called the police (truly, I'm not the sort of hysteric that calls the police every time I notice something amiss). Have you, by chance, been getting calls about low flying planes? I asked, feeling as nutty as one might feel when making such a call.

Yeah, the officer answered quickly, we have and we have no idea what's going on. NO IDEA. Sorry.

Oh, really? It's...

NO IDEA. Sorry, he said again.

We turned on the evening news. Trending topics dominated, but it was silent as to airborne assaults, which I thought ought to be a trending topic.

Who does one call for the answer to why a half dozen military planes might have crossed through town a few hundred yards above one's rooftop? I thought about this all night. Would one call the FBI? Would one call 911 (as Lu also suggested)? Maybe one calls the local airport? Or, of course!, the Department of Defense. Or does one take swift, fiery notes and sketch an outline for her first sci-fi thriller? No, that's been done.

The real questions, though, the questions that flashed before me like the Vietnamese nail salon's neon sign on a steamy summer evening is who does one call if one is actually getting bombed? What's to prevent those steel barrels from falling from the sky? Why am I even thinking about bombardment? Why do I like that name: Bombardier? It's sexy I tell you, that's why. And why are planes so sexy?

Well, not all planes. Not planes that can be something else. Not the planes flying over my house early Tuesday night—the menacing planes—shame on them for bullying us, for blackening my idea of the airship as magical machine navigating above snowy gossamer pillows, away from the mundane, to some faraway exotic dream.



Fleet Foxes (go visit their website, it's fun—click back on Fleet Foxes after you visit each link) take me back to the days when planes were just planes. When the folk music of the 1960s and 70s was just folk music, like Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Simon and Garfunkel.

Their May 2011 release, Helplessness Blues (click to play the title song—you can also download and share it) is stunning. Gloriously stunning. Above-the-clouds stunning. It soars.

"Friday Night Frolic" - Let's Jam

Here comes the weekend...

She was out in the night, every weekend, to mitigate the pain. Ameliorated by stentorian rock, booze, smokes and contortionist, non-stop dancing. In the mid-eighties, in her mid-twenties, this is what she did. (Pretty much all her twenties, in fact.)  This is what you should do when you're young, she believed. (Or was she told?). To shake it off.

Burning the midnight oil at work, she at the same time was in, what she called, her 'hate men' phase, an overwritten chapter, having had her heart battered more than once—the last with a narcissistic psychologist who messed with her head (how does that make you feel, my screwing around?) while claiming he was nothing more than an innocent man. Men were nothing more than misogynistic jerks, she thought, and she began to tease and torment them, play them for fools, venturing to scrape away their ego. She vowed never to be taken as the fool again, never to commit, never to marry. Never.

She had left New York for Boston and thought it too provincial at first, and perhaps it was. She cut her hair short and asymmetrical, found her own apartment (several actually—I've changed my address, she often had to explain), and shopped at Salvation Army where she bought dusty, used rebel outfits for fun.

Hopping the T at Cleveland circle, imagining she was down in the tube station in a bigger, more exciting city, she scrambled to punkdom at the Rat in Kenmore Square, or to Spit at the foot of the Green Monster, or anywhere else she could go head-banging in the city.  Once in a while, when the lawyer friend, the veritable boy about town, called upon her (sometimes, in the middle of the night in the middle of the week—though this couldn't be right as all the clubs shut their doors by two sharp), she grabbed a cab to Cambridge where they met in a murky, below-ground Central Square club, a black box, where anonymity awaited, where they thrashed in mad gyrations, threw themselves in the crowd, into a whirling sea of leather-garbed, metal-studded, spike-haired opaqueness.

Long hours of Westlaw, depositions, constitutional this, statutory that, endless paperwork and billable hours, were left back at the stuffy three-story, four-named firm on the corner of Beacon and Tremont. Speeding up was their way to slow down. They didn't talk litigation; about the guy who was paralyzed from the neck down while having his hair cut. Who would have known the steel nail of a high powered stud gun would penetrate a shared wall and the nape of his neck. The man in the corner shop, the gun manufacture, the construction company, the insurers, the whole goddamn world, was being sued. Though none of it would remedy the father's incapacity to ever embrace his young children again, living in a private hell.

She shook it off with Sam Adams and sticky, cement floors. A beat surrender.

She liked the chaotic rawness of punk rock, the circus of it all, the release, even though she was already too old for it. She listened to the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Iggy Pop and the Ramones, and especially these boys:



The Jam. That was entertainment. That was her escape. Where all was forgotten.

She went dotty for the Jam's sexy, mop-haired Paul Weller, his anti-complacency, anti-establishment code—even though she suited up daily for the office, and the Jam had disbanded, the punk rock scene quietly fading. And perhaps that was the gift, the sign, a message to move on.

So she broke her vow. Married, had babies and moved to the burbs, where culture was Saturday morning soccer and PTA meetings, and heatwave summers at the club, screaming kids racing around the pool and mother's staring at the burning sky, thinking it a bore. Such contempt and disdain for it all, for each other. Years of dirty diapers and Gerber jars and sleepless nights passed.

She shook it off with bottles of Pinot Noir or Chardonnay.

And then she found that even Weller had grown up.



Though cynical and always feeling the world had too many brown-nosers and social climbers, too many miserable lawyers, and disaffected mommies living in sallow cultural wasteland, she discovered in the burbs there were still fine people and families, there were safe streets and decent schools, and it wasn't entirely vapid. For the kids, she even joined the club (the bitterest pill)—though begrudgingly, half-heartedly, pacing along the periphery of its boundaries, lounging in long, woven chairs and hiding behind books.

Shaking it off with Chekhov and Beckett.

And as her children grew, she became more forgiving, accepting that everyone had their good and bad moments, dark and light intermingled; the world, not unlike herself, was just a spectrum of ever changing moods...

2011: Prelude (or - My Conversation With Einstein)

Yes, I'm a little behind the eight ball, but I have made a resolution for the New Year as if I had an IQ of 200+ (why not shoot for the stars?): Solve/complete/prove the Grand Unified Theory. Why? Because what I want most this year is the same thing I want every year: peace on earth and less facial wrinkles. The Grand Unified Theory (the merging of three non-gravitational forces into one theoretical framework) as a viable solution to the world's (and my) wrinkles is not pie-in-the-sky, even if purely theoretical, the fact that I'm entertaining it as succor is a major shift in my universe—pragmatically speaking. 

However, I don't have an IQ of 200+, so you see, there are serious limitations to meeting my 2011 goal. It's January 3rd, and I wish I were smarter and younger (but I'm not on both counts), and I've already set myself back by two days. This means only one thing: I need to meet with my old acquaintance, Mr. Albert Einstein. Fortunately, he has graciously accepted my invitation to lunch.

Einstein joins me at my round kitchen table, a large leaded glass bowl of fruit before him, and comments, "'A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?'"

"Oh, about the violin, Mr. Einstein," I reply, "I must confess I don't actually have one. 

Einstein shrugs his shoulders and looks up at the matte-white ceiling. "Humph," he snorts. "At least you've got mango and kiwi," he says, as he slips a slice of the silky tropical fruit through his pursed lips. 

"If you would be so kind, tell me if you would, Mr. Einstein, in layman's terms—if that's possible—more about your idea of unifying your theory of relativity with electro-magnetism, this particle adventure of yours, so to speak. But first, Al," I continue (as if it's imperative I get it off my chest), "I want you to know that my day didn't start so well, with an awful lot of troubleshooting in fact, prompted by a phone call from Shalita the Bully at Bank of America, announcing that my Line of Credit was past due to the tune of $5.77, which, mind you, conflicts with the zero balance noted on recent statements. And did I care, she asked, to ruin my credit rating for a mere $5.77?

"As you can see, Al, BOA has an accounting—not to mention "communication"— problem, which is why BOA is also known, at least by me, as BOAP: Blatantly Ominous Accounting Problems. 'No, it is not me who is delinquent Ms. Shalita the Bully,' I wanted to say to her. Sheesh, it's these types of nonsense events that force me to resort to purchasing expensive moisturizers, Al!"

Einstein says nothing. Looks oddly at me and sucks on a grape.

"So anyway, Mr Einstein, take a look at my face—that's gravity for you. Why is it that we haven't yet solved the problem of gravity? Why is it the BOAPs of the world can operate in outer space, while I'm relegated to the earth? I suppose if the problem at hand were solved, big cosmetics and personal care companies might be painfully pinched by the abrupt drop in Deep Wrinkle Moisture sales."

Einstein shifts in his chair, pulls a compass out of his vest pocket and inspects it. I'm afraid I'm losing him. "Excuse me, Mr. Einstein, I diverge. I apologize, I'm just venting. I understand that gravity is precedent to keeping us grounded. I just don't like it."

Einstein gets up from the table, juggling an orange in one hand, grabbing a piece of chalk with the other, and hacks away at the kitchen blackboard, white powder drifting to the wood floor. "Call me Al," he says. "And it's all right, I'll knock out a few equations for you."

"You know what they say," he reasons, "'If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.'"

"So true, Al," I nod. I'm not very good at equations. I look at the slate and see foreign formulas floating from it in 3D, like an animator whipping out a cartoon series. 

"Where are we now?" asks Al. "Oh, yes, the Grand Unified Theory." Al spells it out on the board: GUT (as we know it today). 

"Is this like String Theory?" I ask. "And never mind, Al, that you didn't quite solve the GUT riddle, I think it's remarkable that you even thought it—unifying forces and all."

Al blushes a bit, sits back down, pulls on a grape cluster, and tells me that this theory actually sprung from his fear—or denial—of quantum mechanics. "Very interesting, Al." I cup my right hand over his, which is perched limply on the table, and sympathetically say, "You know this idea of yours lead to an understanding, by our modern day scientists, of high energy electromagnetic and weak forces as aspects of the same force? This ought to bring us closer to the meaning of life, don't you think? Maybe even to everlasting life? So you see, in the end Al, you didn't quite lock yourself into hopeless scientific problems."

Al digs a thumbnail into the orange and a citrus spray erupts, droplets landing on the tip of his large-pored nose, and says that I may be getting ahead of myself, but he's glad we're lunching together; and I agree.

I glance up at the blackboard. "You're telling me that this GUT thing combines three of the four fundamental forces—strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic nuclear force and gravitations force—into one single equation? Why three forces? And what about the fourth force: gravitational force? Wait, don't answer that. My kids would tell us it's because all measurements, all things in fact, come in threes.  Small, medium, large. Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin. Richter, Moment Magnitude, Mercalli. Judicial, Legislative, Executive. Stratus, cirrus, cumulus. Gas, solid, liquid (but they forget plasma). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three wise men. There are three types of lavas and even three types of lava flow. But you already know all that, Al, don't you? If this is true though, can you tell me why the water temperature options on my Whirlpool duet are cold, warm, hot and super hot? And why are the spin speed options low, medium, high and extra high? And why no super cold or extra low?"

Al tells me to call Whirlpool as he fingers a strawberry, and I thank him. "That's a good idea," I answer.

"You know, a chocolate fondue would be marvelous with this," Al suggests as he pops the berry into his mouth.

I look at Al, straight into his dark, dilated pupils, "Anyway," I say, "You have to separate gravity from just about everything else, now don't you? Gravity: it's a force unto itself, Al." I'm not so sure he wants to hear this. He  peels a ripe banana, takes a bite and chomps, a banana bit clinging to his mustache. "Again, just take a look at my face. Physical gravity and mental gravity, both despairingly heavy-handed, don't you think? And you know this is precisely why I need you here, why I called upon you, for a breakthrough. We need to get to GUT, because if we get to GUT, we can throw in the fourth force, gravity, and move on to the next theory: the Theory of Everything!" 

Al sits up straight in his chair, throws the banana peel on his napkin, and clears his throat. I offer him a glass of water and he takes it.

"By the way, have you heard about the cupcake boutique on Rue Saint-Sulpice? You should check it out, Al, you'd love it."

Einstein admits that he really can't explain GUT, or anything else for that matter, in layman's terms. "It's alright," I assure him. "Don't sweat it. I've got my own theory. It's kind of like the everything that goes up must come down thing. Now I know back in October I started my fiftieth year by imagining life as linear, and you may or may not have agreed with that; but I know that life is really a concentric circle, and we're all aiming at the center target. And I also know that no matter how good a thing looks, tastes or smells (Veuve Clicquot and Ring Dings, for instance), eventually it's going to be exposed as foul-scented substance resembling crap. Is this all life has to offer, Al?"

"That's sort of a pessimistic view," says Al, "but you may be on to something there."

"Anyway, Al, It's all relative, so to speak, now isn't it? My gravity is actually different from yours, and the guy seated next to you. Hey, was he invited? At least from my scientific observation point." 

GUT. Alchemy. An eloquent description of the meaning of life. I wish it all. 

"Imagine if the world were unified, and every problem could be solved with one single equation," I remark. "Have I set my goals too high? Is it too much to ask—peace on  earth, good will to men, slow the aging process, and get BOAP off my back?"

"'I have just got a new theory of eternity!'"Al suddenly announces. "But I need to go now. Mind if I take this apple?" 

I sense my eyebrows shifting upwards. That was a little random, I think. Al slowly lifts himself from the chair, shuffles to the the door with the ruby Empire in hand, and nods his head—a silent thank you.

Not another theory to ponder... "Oh, by the way Al," I shout after him, "look what I got for Christmas—remember how I scalded my last teapot?—it doesn't have a whistle but it's shiny and new..."

Al smiles—a mischievous grin—waves his hand in the air, and snuffles, "So lange."  

"Dankeschön, Al," I smile back. "Glückliches neues Jahr!" I cheer, as I survey sparkly particles fluttering in a vaguely organized manner, tumbling into the empty glass fruit bowl.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.  -Albert Einstein

Chimera Interrupted

This morning I took my son to Harvey Uniforms. We both reluctantly strapped ourselves into my car’s front seats for the jaunt to Seekonk, MA—me, because I knew how little this boy-man likes to shop (especially at a uniform supplier’s store); and he, well, because he dreads any event requiring him to try on clothing, his body recoils at the mere glimpse of a clothing store. Thankfully, the process was relatively painless since we were the only customers, and Harvey’s computer system was down—which meant I couldn’t ask any questions about the clothing sizes that I had forgotten my son wore last year, nor did I have to wait around for updated size information to get entered into their system; the clothing would be ordered and shipped to our home address. So there we were, time to spare and hugging the outer edges of Providence’s east side as we plied along our northwest passage home.

“What do you think about stopping in Providence?” I asked the little man. “Walk around downtown, have some lunch?” He had commented on the city’s architecture, and we hadn’t really walked the city together before, not just the two of us, not downtown, not in the now semi-renewed Westminster Mall—New England's first pedestrian mall—where I had shopped with high school friends in the 1970s, taking the local city bus to Kennedy Plaza in Providence, hunting for finds along the Mall before it was abandoned for the Providence Place Mall and suburban strip malls. I wanted to walk him through the Arcade, where I lunched when I interned at the Attorney General’s office on Pine Street during my senior year of college. I wanted to take him up to the top of Westminster Street to see the beauty of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.  I wanted to stroll along the Mall and point out all the historic stone buildings in which I had shopped. Oh, there's the old Tilden Thurber jewelry store, where I only window shopped... And there's the old Woolworth's building, what a great soda fountain it had... Look, there's the former Florscheims, where I bought all my shoes.  But most of all, I wanted to pick up some pungent artisan goat cheese at Farmstead Lunch on Westminster, and I prayed it was still open, hadn't succumbed to these hard times, like many of the shops that had opened within the past few years or so and promptly closed.

“Sure,” was his breezy reply. And so we parked the car on Westminster, near Empire, and drifted west along the street—towards the Cathedral—where it dead ends along with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence and neglected brick apartment and office buildings. At the far right entrance doors to the brownstone Romanesque Cathedral a homeless person slept under a Buzz Lightyear fleece blanket, surrounded by brown bags and a torn backpack. All of the front doors were locked, leaving me unable to show my son its striking interior and the magnificent green marble alter.  We shifted back east and continued down Westminster where I identified all my old haunts, and where we were stopped by several street persons looking for our attention and money. "Mom, who are all these people in the street? Why aren't they working?" the little-man asked. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to my literal walk-down-memory-lane-for-goat-cheese excursion.


If my son had been raised in the city, he probably wouldn't have asked about the street people. And even though his suburban upbringing left him a bit sheltered, he had certainly been to enough big cities—Boston, Chicago, New York, Montreal—to take note of this circumstance elsewhere, had packed enough lunches and delivered them to shelters for his school service hours, had had some exposure, so at least I thought, to this darker, harsher side of life. Hadn't we talked about this? (Which made me wonder if he hadn't meant to ask, "What are we doing here; why aren't you working? We really can't afford to shop in these pricey boutiques, can we?") Clearly, these street people weren't just idle tourists; and although I had been informed or, more accurately, hardened, by a few years of social work, I didn't want to distill the matter into a simple answer—drunks, druggies, lazy, mentally ill. Of course I new the answer was more complicated, and had some first-hand knowledge of the real stories behind these vagrants. Only I didn't feel prepared to deliberate socio-economic complexities with the boy-man, at least not at this moment, not while recreating my youthful fancies. But I can't keep my children in a bubble forever, now can I? Couldn't I keep them cocooned just a while longer? It may be a good idea to keep my daughter in a bubble for as long as possible. She doesn't seem to mind.

Then I realized, or so I thought I did, that my son wasn't just asking what these folks were up to, why they were parading along this particular street, he was asking one of the great existential questions of mankind (well wasn't he?!): What are they doing here? What are we doing here? What is this all about? But I didn't want to get all Kierkegaard, and it was too hot and I was too tired, so I said, "Out of work, laid-off maybe."


We continued down Westminster to the Arcade where several businessmen in white shirts sat devouring their lunch. As we climbed the old mall's wide staircase we observed its deserted recesses, and on one of the large glass doors a white paper sign with black type read: "The Arcade is now officially closed." Officially. I wondered what it had been before it was officially closed. Had it been unofficially closed? Had its freeholders forgotten to give this historic gem—the first enclosed mall in the country—a fitting ending, and later rectified this faux pas with pomp and circumstance, parade, balloons, fireworks which they also forgot to officially announce? Was it not evident, conspicuous enough, by its own appearance that it was, indeed, closed? I looked at the unimpressed little man, and growing weary I suggested, "Well, yes, picture this place thriving with shops and restaurants." Through its transparent doors, he looked into the empty space, commented on its Greek revival architecture and the enormous Ionic columns on the exterior of the building. "I used to love having lunch in there," I smiled faintly.

"Interesting, Mom, too bad it's not open anymore," the little man said.Yes, well, I'll take you by the old A.G.s office, too. And, as with all of the other places that had either closed or relocated in this stomping ground of my youth so had the Office of Attorney General; crossed over to the more pristine South Main Street. By this time I had grown officially weary, my memories tainted by the vacant buildings, the confrontation at every corner by jobless, homeless street folks begging for spare change. And while downtown is no ghost town—there are some surviving trendy boutiques along Westminster, mostly high-end, like Clover and Hier Antiques, and a couple of hip restaurants, a crafty type store and  Symposium Books (great prices)—juxtaposed by such abject squalor, I wondered what the shop owners thought, felt guilty for considering a purchase, happy my son stopped me at the windows even if my intent was really just to poke around. And then there was that question...

We circled back to the car, but first ducked into Grace Church (where more street folk took refuge from the heat). We dipped our fingers into the enormous marble font, sat in an old wooden pew, meditated a moment, a thankful moment, and then quietly descended its stairs, crossing the street to Farmstead, where I ordered a quarter of a $28.00/pound of creamy French goat cheese—my only indulgence at this pedestrian mall.

As we walked back towards the car I asked, "Shall we head home now? Or have lunch here?"


"How about we have lunch at the Indian place on Hope Street?" the little man grinned. So we drove to his favorite place near Rochambeau—Not Just Snacks—and filled our empty bellies with spicy and aromatic pork tikka masala, chicken biryani, beef kabobs, basmati rice with peas, warm naan, and cold, refreshing mango lassi.


With our Downcity expedition almost forgotten, I prodded my little man to clarify the meaning of his street folk inquiry. "Well, Mom," he explained, "I just wonder why these people are roaming the street, and begging, why aren't we helping them? Why can't they get jobs? Shouldn't we be helping them?"


"We do try to help them," I replied, "We do what we can, we have state programs, job training, welfare, shelters, food pantries. It's a complex issue..." The boy nodded his head in agreement, yes, complex—as complex as the distinct and varied spices in our deliciously pungent Indian food. But as I said, I was hot, and tired, and the little man was full and satisfied, and drifting off somewhere else. Maybe we would have to save politics, social economics, and that philosophical conversation about existentialism for another time. Or could it be that this little man had already figured it out for himself? He sure looked content in his imaginative little bubble of a world. Yes, we would have to save humankind's perplexing matters for another day... Perhaps when his eighth grade uniform is delivered, or when we decide to cut into that goat cheese.