Halloween 1983: annie lennox.

Age 19 / junior @ University of Chicago / big into make-up / new waver / liked men's clothes / brand-new super-smart boyfriend (now husband & father of our 4 kids).  

The last three things are still true.  

Bringing light to dark times, from Amma.

"Don't be discouraged by your incapacity to dispel darkness from the world. Light your little candle and step forward."

Words of wisdom from Amma:  they ring true independent of creed or dogma.  Hat-tip to Suzan Stern for passing them to me.

Consider this a hug from me to you - and consider paying it forward today.

http://amma.org/

music: Is "Wonderful Christmas Time" really worth $400K/yr?

This post is trivial by any measure relative to recent events, and I may write about recent events in the future. 

At the moment, however, this fact enrages me:  Sir Paul McCartney has been raking in four hundred thousand dollars per year from "Wonderful Christmas Time."  He has earned, according to Wikipedia, approximately $15 million from this one craptastic-yet-catchy song.

If you like it, I'm sorry.  No, you know what?  I'm not sorry.  It's a shitty, soulless song.  It's the Michael Caine of Christmas songs*, a where's-the-check performance that relies on one annoying beeoom-beeoom-beeoom-beeoom synthesizer riff, candidate for one of the worst earworms in music history, plus a dreadfully repetitive chorus, all relying on our love of his voice to carry the day.

What's a good Christmas song?  How about David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing The Little Drummer Boy?  Worlds collide in an unexpected, grace-filled way. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADbJLo4x-tk

 *Caine's recent performances have redeemed him; I speak of him in the long middle section of his career.

music: Isn't it time for a little Hardrock, Coco and Joe?

Yes it is!  At once nostalgic and freaky, a staple of Chicagoland holiday TV since dinosaur times, this 1951 stop-motion animated short takes me back to pre-verbal days.  Great chorus.  Enjoy.

Hardrock, Coco and Joe:  The Three Little Dwarfs

Music: RIP Ravi Shankar.

We all know about the sitar influence George brought to the Beatles, but I didn't know about Ravi Shankar at full tilt until about two weeks ago, when I caught him and his companions in this trippy, 20-minute long, ecstatic turbocharged jam at the end of Monterey Pop.

Mind Blown.  High-speed joy.  He and his drummer stay perfectly in sync while the rhythms keep changing.  It is a trip and a half.

Thanks, Ravi - and thanks to George Harrison too, for bringing Ravi to the Dick Cavett Show and the world's attention.

music: how to get your groove on.

Kid1 plays cello and has to videotape herself playing it to a metronome for school.  It's a trial all around.

Metronomes are Satan. Here's why:

• The relentless ticking sends me straight back to fifth grade, with Mrs. Schnierow standing behind me hammering a divot into my right shoulder with her bony claw, saying "ONE-and-two-and-three-and-four" while I struggled through my sonatina (God! those red, red lips and her turtlenecks that smelled like cigarette butts); and...
• No metronome has ever been helpful to me in any way.  Or even polite.

How happy I am, then, to discover this great post by musician Adam Rafferty, a strong anti-metronome advocate.  He writes that dancing is a superior tool for developing body rhythm. 

Plus, his effortlessly funky fingerstyle acoustic version of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" is just the thing to listen to right about now.
 

http://adamrafferty.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/dont-use-a-metronome/

Memoir: Kala's Tree, part 6

Kala's tree

Memoir:  Kala's Tree, a ongoing memoir of our niece Kala Hardy, can be found in its entirety by following the Kala Hardy cloudtag at right.

Every year it hits me afresh.

Sean says, "It's December 7," over his tea at the kitchen table.

"She'd be twenty today,"  I say. "Oh, that makes me sad!"

I cry and hug him for a minute or two. We both blow our noses. Then we move apart and get ready for the day. I hug and kiss Sean and the kids, and head out the door to work.

Happy birthday to your spirit, dear Kala.  You live in our hearts and we go on.

In Memory of Kala Marie Hardy Facebook page

4/6/08 MySpace tribute

4/12/08 blog post by one of Kala's schoolmates 

5/30/08: Rest In Peace Kala Hardy (1,173 views) 

12/15/2008:  YouTube Kala Hardy RIP (9,000+ views)
Sysoon (online death information site)

Music: RIP Dave Brubeck.

I loved "Blue Rondo A La Turk" so much that last year I determined to teach it to myself on the piano.  Got it all down except the blues part in the middle.

Thanks, Dave.  You will be missed, but what a fantastic legacy you leave.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faJE92phKzI

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-dave-brubeck-appreciation-20121205,0,848294.story

Live from Toronto, part 2: 6 more reasons I love Canada.

1.  Best sentence overheard all week:  "Miguel, may I borrow you for a male wanding please?"  (TSA at Vancouver Airport).  Nobody else even smiled but I wanted to laugh out loud.

2.  The Angry Birds theme in a string quartet arrangement, overheard in the Royal York Gold Lounge.

Shouldn't Miss Piggy be made of lard?

3.  A clutch of tallow sculptures depicting holiday scenes festooning the Royal York's lobby, created by its head chef.  Because nothing warms the heart at Christmas like scenes from holiday movies carved from beef fat.

4.  Speaking of beef fat, spiky chef Guy Fieri, who headed toToronto after the horrible/funny  New York Times review of his new restaurant in Times Square, being interviewed in the lobby for TV about some charity where he plans to donate cheeseburgers to needy kids.  Not really.  But he was here.

5.  Justin Bieber's concert across the street last night, which filled this hotel with thousands of girls radiating Bieber Fever girl energy.  They are traipsing in to breakfast as we speak, still in their pink sequin shirts, clutching their plush bunnies, escorted by relieved moms waiting to go home.

6.  An absolutely enchanting party last night to celebrate friend Jenny's 50th birthday, which thankfully did not go until 4 in the morning.  What a gift to get to be here with her, her husband, and son.  She's 50 years old on the outside and 17 on the inside.

Live from Toronto: seduced by life on the Gold Level.

I've had sort of an Inception trip to Canada this week - a business trip nested within a pleasure trip. 

Tuesday I flew to Toronto to meet dear friend Jenny and her family and was treated to an exquisite, serene birthday dinner at The Globe Bistro.  Then a pre-dawn flight Wednesday to Vancouver for an amazing executive education conference (UNICON).  What a city!  Got to know the team better, met lots of great new exec ed colleagues from all over the world, and was served the freshest sushi ever by the cutest Japanese waiter ever (sorry but it's true).  Then back across the continent yesterday to Toronto for aforementioned friend's 50th birthday party, which happens tonight, and back home tomorrow.

Hotelwise, it's been an all-Fairmont week.  The convention was at the Fairmont Vancouver, my own hotel was the Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver, and at the moment I have been hogging a wing chair all morning in the Gold Level Lounge at the Fairmont Royal York here in Toronto (Chicago's closest correlate would be the Drake).  Candice has just brought over an unsolicited pot of tea and a macaroon.  Oh, and now she's handed me a recipe for the macaroons which have evidently been made here since 1929.  Proper old-school macaroons with about a 5:1 ratio of coconut to sugar.  Classical music is playing, it's nearly empty in here, and the only thing that would make it perfect is my husband sitting in the other wing chair nearby.

Rough life:  To do list = ice the champagne.

My most pressing task today following through on the foolish promise I made to procure a bathtub's worth of ice in order to chill the 30 bottles of Veuve Cliquot Rose champagne that have been purchased for the party tonight in the Governor General Suite.

In my former life as a consultant, I frequently had the opportunity to travel this way (minus the champagne, unless John Stanek was along).  It has been many, many years since I have been treated in this manner for several days in a row.  Not surprisingly, it is extremely comfortable, relaxing, and pleasant.  So seductive, in fact, that you begin to question why you shouldn't have attractive, friendly people bringing you tea and macaroons and bacon all the time.  You can see how, over time, this might skew your Weltanschaaung. (1)

Although I haven't been away from home this long on my own for a very long time, I do like to take advantage of forced solitude to do things I wouldn't normally take the time to do.  Or sometimes, NOT doing anything, which is nicest of all.  It's been a great week and will be capped by a wonderful birthday celebration tonight, in a beautiful place, with people very dear to me.  And tomorrow, I will be aiming all my energy straight out the front of the plane as we aim toward Chicago where my heart seeks its answering call in Sean and the kids.   Here's to taking opportunities when they arise, being grateful for them, and then being able to come back home with a similar sense of gratitude.

(1) I am trying to shoehorn "Weltanschaaung" into common parlance since it makes you sound obnoxious and is really just fancypants for "worldview."  Also "zeitgeist," "germane," "converse" (not the shoes), and "corollary."  I would LOVE to start using one of my friend Tracy's pet words primarily because of its rhythm in German - "Kraftwagenanlage" - as soon as I can determine what it means.  But it might be fun to just start peppering conversations with "Kraftwagenanlage" just to see what happens.  Conversely, I would like to encourage people to ramp down usage of "plethora."  There are, in fact, a plethora of people of saying "plethora," and it's really gotten old.  Time to pick some other obnoxious words.

PS - A guy who looks pretty much exactly like Salman Rushdie just came into the Gold Floor lounge and made himself comfortable.  Wonder if he likes champagne?  Maybe he could crash the party.