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A few years ago, I bought my husband a DVD compilation of SCTV shows for his birthday.

I think I watch them more than he does. One of my many favorites is a sketch involving the McKenzie Brothers, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. They are trying to come up with a topic for their show, which usually is just about beer and grilled meat. They worry that their show will be cancelled if they don't come up with better "topics." Enter slimy Johnny La Rue, played by the late, great John Candy, and wry hilarity ensues.

There are YouTube posts on the sketch, but I am not going to link to them because the quality is poor. And oddly, the SCTV site has no video clips.

Anyway, the point (besides the fact that Second City has graduated a ton of tremendous comedians and actors including, wow! Peter Boyle, Joan Rivers, John Belushi and Ann Meara)? I needed a topic.

The picture is totally unrelated to the topic. I had brunch with friends in the Strip District last Saturday. Because I was early, I walked for a bit, including halfway over the 16th Street Bridge, which crosses the Allegheny. These bronze sculptures are paired at either end. I think they are tremendous.

Julie Andrews sang for my family

So.

Bookends notwithstanding, Katy's professional Monday wasn't too hot. Result? Blues.

Add in a husband sick with a cold, rainy weather and everything seems really ... bleah.

Solution? Retail therapy! I took a break and walked to Macy's, formerly Kaufmann's. I bought a wallet and a pair of stockings. And came close to tears.

The store Muzak was spooling Christmas music, of course. The piece playing as I browsed purses was Julie Andrews "Joy to the World," from her 1969 Christmas album made with Andre Previn.

In 1969, I was 14 and living at home, the oldest of 7 kids. We listened to LPs back then and one of them, every Christmas for many years, was the Julie/Andre album. Julie's voice and the powerful joyful orchestrations, surrounded my noisy family. I will never forget those sounds. Especially because my family was intact. Mom, Dad, sibs 1 through 7. All there.

I miss my Dad so very, very much; I would love to be able to talk to him about work, life and just generally what's going on. And my brother Chris, so quiet, so stubborn and such a pillar.

Julie sang for all of us. When I heard her today in Macy's, it was all I could do to keep from crying.

Monday bookends

The middle of my Monday can be summed up thusly:

F
Three letters follow.
Do the spelling.

Now that that's out of the way, let me just say the beginning and end, for a Monday, were pretty darned good.

Not in order of importance: First, I broke my rule and ran for public transit and made it morning and evening. Thank you to the driver of the morning train, who waited. Thanks to luck for letting me make the evening train.

Second, a very light blanket of fog greeted the dog and I this morning on our walk, offering a lovely backdrop to the black bones of bare trees in my neighborhood and its park. It was so beautifully quiet, just the clicking of Twist's nails on the pavement. I love the starkness and stillness of mornings like these; the whole is made even more beautiful by the last golden leaves still hanging and the warm greens of pines and hemlocks.

Seedpods, dried goldenrod, moss on logs and water dripping from eaves and over stones. I'm such a crank that none of those are nearly enough to carry me through the winter. For one day, though, they will more than do and thanks to whoever is in charge of creating the scenery that makes me happy.

The picture is of a creation that's totally artificial: The Christmas tree in the street level lobby of the really lovely Fairmont Pittsburgh hotel, taken on the way to a good Monday bookend. The hotel has really pretty public spaces, including a museum-quality display of medicine bottles, porcelain doll heads and other early 20th century detritus unearthed during construction.

The blank page

Imagine a blank sheet of paper in front of you, or a blank screen. It's yours to fill, but with what? In the pantheon of scary imaginings, this scenario ranks maybe a 1. Or less. But it's still scary.

My writing career, such as it is, could be called Katy Interrupted. I go for long stretches with nothing to say. That's because I'm thinking. I'm also reading, admiring some writers and being exasperated by others. Yet they birth words, sentences, essays articles daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. My words gestate.

Despite my erratic output, I've learned the important skill of editing. Here's how I work: I pour everything out, onto paper or screen. Then I read it; maybe keep some or none. Tinkering and more tinkering come next. Then usually a walk, preferably with a dog. Thinking ensues, then maybe a break for coffee or napping, or work. Then comes wholesale revision or reconsideration of concept. B often ends up looking nothing like A.

What else have I learned? A pretty package of words is usually just pebbles in a sieve. Not intrinsically worthless, but not gold, either. Coming up with something precious takes a lot of panning. (Sorry for the labored metaphor.)

I've worked with writers who think their every keystroke is golden. Who think breaking all rules, instead of just one, for effect, makes them fearless and therefore brilliant.

No.

To write when you have nothing to say, to write and be unafraid to discard, that's fearless and approaching brilliant. To write and have a great editor, that's gold.

The photo is from one of my many diaries.

Across Ohio, west and east

This past weekend, my husband and I drove from Pittsburgh to Ohio for a visit with my family.

Over the past 27 years, we've made the journey hundreds of times, the miles dropping past familiar landmarks along two turnpikes. Cornfields, silos, marshes and reservoirs, barns and in more recent years, condos and McMansions.

Along the way on Friday, heading towards the setting sun, we put in a CD that had been sitting in the car for ages, John Mellencamp's 1978-88 retrospective "The Best That I Could Do." I am not the biggest Mellencamp fan in the world, but as we listened, the lyrics sent me soul searching. Because every song, from "I Need a Lover..." to "Paper and Fire"  to "Check it Out" is about dreams realized and frustrated, about desire, and about mortality ever present.  They are the arc of a life, from youthful hopes to the wistfulness of the middle years  and finally on to the solid embrace of a life with deep Indiana roots. The embrace is not always strong, or even welcome, but it lasts.

My Midwestern roots are shallow, having been planted only decades, not centuries ago. But flying by the Ohio Turnpike's flanks for maybe the thousandth time, taking in the umbers, rusts and charcoals of the fall landscape, felt in an oddly solid way, like home.

The picture is dried yarrow in my Mom's garden.

The aftermath of a compliment

Last week at a coffee shop, a total stranger paid me a lovely compliment. He was an average looking person, sitting in a corner, a laptop propped before him on the table. Past that,  I scarcely noticed him and, later, found it hard to believe he had noticed me, in my safe Ann Taylor-ish workday issue.
The most interesting people in the shop to me were two little boys, trying to find the best table for sitting and having their hot chocolate. Fussing, like little old men.

The barista handed me my coffee and as I fumbled with the sugar packet at the bar, these words flowed into my ear: "You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman." I turned and the man at the laptop was there, I hadn't even heard him approach. I thanked him for the compliment, it made my day, and, really what an extraordinary thing to say, touched his arm and left.

Here is what it has made me think about, though. If that man knew me, would he still hold that opinion? If he knew I could be cruel, if he knew how I procrastinate and how lazy I can be, would that observation still hold or would it be tempered?

I know all of those things about me, and more, and they crowd out the nurture I can offer to my good points. There must be a constant guard up against the pests and demons we live with, so that we can maintain a civil and social appearance to the world.

The thing is, though, as I grow older, I am more accepting of my flaws, and more in control of them, as simply part of the sum of me.

I don't think that makes me extraordinary, but maybe it makes me beautiful inside.