Doors open

Kate in Boston, 2015, visiting Heidi.
(Photo by Heidi Pervin Yamaguchi)

Lunch time in the cafeteria at a suburban Maryland Catholic elementary school (Holy Cross in Garrett Park) where I landed in in 7th grade. Another stop in the bouncing around life of an Army brat (I didn't know that was what I was called until much later) and second U.S. school after three years in France.

At this school, I remember being best friends with Patti Miller, and listening to Sister Mary Paul rant about the Congo. (So, yeah, late 60s.)

Back to lunch time. I'm sitting at a table when schoolmate Sally S., kid of a big Catholic family, squeezes her right hand around the back of my neck. Hard. I don't really remember being bullied, just this one incident. Maybe there was more going on, because I also remember being fed up, so I reached back with my right hand and dug my fingernails onto her grasping claw. That ended it. I was a small person then; I'm sure Sally was too. In memory, she is sallow, with a severe pageboy haircut and a nasty sneer. Perhaps I'm piling on.

I guess I went through a door that day. Not to being a  bravesuperwonderfulstrong  person for the rest of my life. But to being someone who, for a moment, had had enough.

Other doors have opened in my life, thankfully not by Sally's method.

Starting at a new school in France, par example, led me to another best friend, Evelyne Eon (I had a lot of one-year BFs). We called each other "petite" as we ran around the playground holding hands. I remember her fondly. Our little-girl friendship made the constant upheaval of Army life bearable, if only for a while.

At Ohio State, karate lessons opened the door to a lifelong friendship with Heidi Pervin Yamaguchi. You know how some memories are seared in your brain?  I remember a late spring night in Columbus, sitting on a curb along High Street in North Campus with Heidi, just talking. Nothing pressing, just the murmurs of two young women sharing time before we became grownups with responsibilities. Brain may have trimmed this memory over the years, but I love it nonetheless.

I am so lucky to have made good friends during my life. And some of them are not even flesh and blood.

I love the girls of this last group because they all went through doors, too. And more valiantly than me. They are, as my earliest through-the-door friend exclaimed, "Curiouser and curiouser!"

So, you might guess that my first valiant girlfriend is Alice. I do not recall the first time I read "Alice in Wonderland." It might even have been read to me by Mom or Grammio. Whatever the provenance of the story in my brain, I love that Alice embraced the absurdity that came her way. Falling down a rabbit hole? What a perfect time for a nap! Land in a heap of twigs in a long hall with many doors? Then eat cakes or drink beverages as instructed! Believe impossible things? Why not!

“There’s no use trying,” said Alice, “one can’t believe impossible things.” 

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. 

“When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

My second valiant girlfriend is Lucy Pevensie, whose tumble through a wardrobe door during the Blitz starts her adventures in Narnia with Edmund, Peter and Susan. Lucy is special. Her siblings doubt her when she returns to Spare Oom. Edmund bullies and betrays her, yet she never gives up on her new friend, Mr. Tumnus, on her new adventure, or even on Edmund. Throughout the chronicles of Narnia, she is loyal, brave and forgiving. My dad's mother bought all seven of the books for us seven grandchildren and, at least at the beginning, read them to us. I was first, so I got "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe," in which Lucy's story begins.

My third valiant girlfriend is Coraline Jones. Neil Gaiman's heroine, knocking about in a creaky, high-ceilinged old house, discovers a door that leads to her "other" mother. All will be well. Except, when it isn't. Coraline realizes that buttons for eyes mean blinding yourself. For her, it turns out that distracted real Mom and real Dad, are, though imperfect, better than other.

I check in with these valiant girls often. But the door always swings back to reality and my true BFFs. You know who you are. Lots of love.

Pool

The Buchanan family pool.
(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I have splashed through my last laps at home.

My family has inhabited this space for 48 years and it is past time to go. The pool won't be open next year.

So many good memories of parents, siblings, schoolmates, neighbors, nephews, in-laws and friends enjoying this space.

My dad used to swim laps in this pool. So did my mom.

I remember, after coming back home from college, skinny-dipping with friends early in the morning and sharing champagne and strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar.

The pool was part of the scenery and of the reception on my wedding day.

The service for my late brother Chris was held on the deck that he used to power wash.

My late brother Peter fearlessly bounced off the long-gone diving board. (I don't remember using the board, but I do remember doing racing dives off the deep end. Mom was a fanatic about all us kids knowing how to swim.)

There were noodles, inflatables, water guns and lots of hilarity. And so much time spent just sitting on the deck and talking into the evening, the underwater light keeping dusk away.

Originally, there was a wrought iron fence surrounding the pool. I remember spending a high school summer stripping the white paint off of it. A few years later, my parents had the fence taken down and the pool refurbished. It still has the pretty blue tiles from that remodel circling under the coping.

My nephews as recently as this summer came to visit and, in between gaming and practicing guitar, dove in with the casual exuberance of very young men.

The water was cold on Sunday, but the sun was shining. After about 45 minutes, I got out and, even though I had slathered on sunblock, was still a bit sunburned.

The best thing about swimming is that it really gets your heart rate up. You can feel its benefits throughout the day. And you'll sleep well, too.

Thanks for the memories, pool.

Art appreciation

"Era of Cool" show at the Westmoreland.  Art by John Van Hamersveld.
August 17, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

I can't draw. I can doodle, and scribble and do good design. I've even thrown a few nice pots in my time. I'm fine with that.

And yet ... besides wishing that I could sing, I wish, I wish my brain was built for the super-driven creativity and exultation of purpose on display in "Era of Cool,"  now at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

I'm more of a dilettante. I love learning new things, that's my passion and my weird discipline, I guess. Still, when I see cool art like this, I feel on the outside looking in. Why doesn't my brain work this way? I want it to, but ...

Blah, blah. Anyway. This art speaks to me because it is referential, not realistic. That sense of representation is why I love the Impressionists. They took reality and beautifully reduced it to shape and color. This is not to say I don't love the work of painters like Caravaggio or Vermeer. Their art is stunning and sends you deep into pondering the stories of the people they painted. But the artists who can strip off detail and take reality down to its essentials, I don't know why, but their work really does it for me.

In the 1960s, John Van Hamersveld used a photo of surfers, reduced it to its bones and made a poster for the movie Endless Summer that is just as stunning today as it was then. The yellow sun at the center draws you in, and you can see how the surfers converge toward it, chasing the light and the wave.

I had some 90 minutes to see the exhibit on Saturday, which is about my max time for gallery wandering. Admission is free. Plus, I got to see a painting by one of my favorite American artists, Milton Avery.

Here is my Endless Summer image.
Taken at Dormont Pool in Pittsburgh, around 5 p.m.
August 19, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Get busy living

Reading my mom's biography that's she's compiled over the years ... this stands out. She was recovering from the birth of my middle sis.

"Dad brought me 'The Guns of August' by Barbara Tuchman. I somehow managed to finish it in the five days I stayed in the hospital. Probably the last book I read for 20 years. Things got rather busy after that."

Five post-partum hospital days.

Wow.

And reading "The Guns of August" in 5 days.

After birth of kid 4 of 7. And my dad brought her such a weighty book.

Families are interesting, aren't they? (And things got busy!)

Also "Guns of August" is still on my to-read list.

I miss my dad. So many questions I would love to ask him. But he was a pretty private person; guess that's where I get it from. 

 

A summer night in 2019

Late summer is such a drowsy time. The season is cresting and heading downhill to autumn.

The back-to-school ads and commercials have started, but it's hard to take them seriously. All of August lies before us, a last blast of (hopefully) sun and lazy days of kids playing hoops in the street or zooming along the sidewalks on scooters. The fireflies stuck around 'til early July, kind of a rarity these years.

In my neck of Pittsburgh, the last day of July 2019 is hot, with towering clouds and a sky that looks ready to unload, yet again, cosmic buckets of rain. But so far, no showers. The bizarre weather manifests in a rainbow over thunder gray skies as I head home from meeting a friend on the North Shore.

(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Home is drowsy, too. Filled with the murmuring hum of fridge and dehumidifier, the quiet tick-tock of a battery-powered clock. And, even though the windows are closed, I can still hear the steady burr of legions of crickets.

The dining room has a good view of the back yard and while I'm watching in the early evening, a hummingbird stops twice to fill up from the feeder.

I really love summer.

The photo is from June 21, the  summer solstice, at Randyland in Pittsburgh. A happy place.

Late July

(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

It's late Thursday, the third of three cool, dry days after a bucket-drenching rain on Monday in Pittsburgh. (I'm keeping track on my 2019 desk calendar, and 'bucket-drenching rain' is showing up a lot.)

A hummingbird just skimmed in front of my living room window and front screen door ... I'm puzzled because the lobelia is on one side of the house and the hummer feeder is on the back side, so not sure what that little guy was looking for. Except, now that I have seen this, my front porch pots next year definitely will not be papyrus.

I love June; it is so full of promise and goes by so fast. One phenomenon I've enjoyed this year, really late into the summer season is fireflies. They appeared in the back yard in mid- to late June and kept flashing into mid-July. We don't treat our lawns for anything, so maybe that's why. The back yard has a deep, dark slope and it is really magical seeing those golden firefly flickers late into the midsummer night.

Anyway, we are now almost at the end of July, when the season starts to end. I hate that I can already see September, and that back-to-school ads are popping up online and in print circulars.

One thing I've noticed over the years: Early summer is so quiet. By late July the crickets and katydids are doing their buzz and hum. That's how you know the season is changing.

The photo is of Stargazer lilies, at my mom's house. I think the vase is as pretty as the flowers.

A short future of long days

Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh's North Side,
Summer Solstice, 2019. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

Late dusk on the evening after June solstice. We sat outside, reading and enjoying the long, slanting rays of the young summer sun.

After a bit, we finished dinner and caught the last 20 minutes of "Wedding Crashers." (Why we are watching an at least 15-year-old film is a subject for another night.)

Anyway. Owen Wilson's character is spiraling into despair, and, for some reason, his handsome-ugly face, framed by a dyed blond choppy do, reminds me of rocker Rod Stewart. Then, about 8 to 10 minutes later, the movie is done and the song laid over the final scene is Stewart's "Stay With Me." Not going into what the lyrics of that song mean for the movie, but we started talking about the music of our lives, which included the output of Stewart in his heyday.

We agreed that, as young people, we listened mostly for the music, not the words. And I still love the music — its shape, its beats, its structure —but holy cow, the words for "Stay With Me" are awful.  How much kicking of a woman can you do, while still asking her to stick around?

Which also puts me in mind of "Oklahoma," on stage this weekend in Pittsburgh (the Rodgers & Hammerstein version, not the current-day revival in New York). A good friend is reviewing, we had a chat about that and other things during a nice walk on this rare sunshine-y June Saturday in southwestern Pennsylvania. The music, and especially, the dancing, are gorgeous, but the lyrics to some of the songs ("Everything's Up To Date In Kansas City") and ("I'm Just A Girl Who Cain't Say No") to name two, definitely serve up some suggestions for reflection.

I know these works are products of their times. And I'm not really sure what I want to say about them. In retrospect, I enjoyed the art of these artists, in part, not in whole.

Circling back, there is a short future of long days ahead of us. I'm hoping for a modicum of sunshine.

The following link goes to the scene from the 1955 film, scene of the Kansas City song. Choreography is awesome.
Everything's Up To Date in Kansas City

Thunder and fireflies (and, for a change, rain)

It has been a very wet and gloomy week here in Pittsburgh. The dreary details have to do with something called the northern oscillation, and, I guess, warm Gulf of Mexico air meeting slightly cooler air coming from the north.

Last night, (June 18) after a day of frowning skies and occasional showers, the clouds parted briefly around 6 or so and the blue sky appeared. That was nice. Even nicer was the firefly show.
I stood out on the front porch, mostly just to see the evening blue and guess what, the summer lightning bugs made their appearance in the dusk. There are so few of them these days; I remember catching them in mayonnaise jars when I was a kid. Now, I feel fortunate to see three or four flickering around my yard on a late June night. (Of course, maybe they are drowning.)

A few weeks ago, a sales kid came knocking on the door, pitching a lawn pesticide service, including the admonition "a lot of your neighbors have signed up!" Why is that a selling point? I guess it probably isn't ... just something the door-to-door kids are told to say. But my own idea is that I would rather see fireflies in June than a weed-free lawn all summer.

Here is a front yard in my hilly neighborhood. No grass, lots of plants, shrubs and trees and hopefully no need for lawn poison. Really pretty.

(Photo by Katy Buchanan)

P.S. Flash flood watch this afternoon at 3 p.m. til 5:30 p.m. Clear from 6-ish on to about 8. But thunder and downpours have returned as we roll towards midnight. More of the same expected Thursday. Ray Bradbury's "Long Rain" was extraordinarily prescient.

Up early and what a racket!

Sunday morning. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

One of the ways life changes with age is the diminishing capacity for sleep. (Note: I am not saying need for sleep, just capacity. Big difference.) That diminishing capacity means wakefulness during hours, that, in youth, I would have been thoughtlessly enjoying sleep. That diminishing capacity also means that, that same wakefulness blesses me with the gradual noise of early mornings.

The 3 a.m. quiet, with cat sitting at an open window. Me at my laptop, checking email and newspapers. Then an increasing racketing of bird song, so that by 5 a.m.-ish the world outside is a symphony of chirps and calls. (Cat has abandoned window by this point and is snoozing in his basket.)

It's prime bird time and I would not be alive to it were it not for the fact that I can't sleep. I think there is some irony involved here. Birds are wide awake, but that's because it's their job.

Anyway, I love the before-dawn chorus. It really is a racket, and I can hear layers of songs, some close, others a bit farther away.

As an aside, one night last week I watched swallows dipping and diving in the 5 p.m.-ish sky, near my Mom's house, chasing after bugs for their evening meal. They are pretty birds. Glad I noticed, but could not help but wonder what a small number of them were flitting about.

Pretty sky in Pittsburgh this morning, too.

Limits of toleration and a discussion of copy editors

As we say en Français: Plus ça change... 

Photos by Katy Buchanan

From page A-2 of Aug. 28, 1981 Boston Herald American, saved from my honeymoon. (Not saved for the news, but for the Red Sox score, since we went to Fenway. These photos show the reverse of the HA's front page mast with the Sox-A's score, which, to forestall any questions, I do not remember and I'm not turning over the page to find out. (So there 😀)  I just saved because I was young, in love and keeping every scrap of paper from our week in Boston and Cape Cod.

Looking at these also made me feel: a) Nostalgic for UPI (one of my former employers) and for the many U.S. daily, weekly and community newspapers that have gone to their graves since then, and 2) Grateful for the training I received from them as a young journalist.

As an aside, I believe journalism needs more well-read, intellectually adventurous copy editors. I know the trend is to centralized desks where the editors are far from the reporters and the stories they are filing, but that shouldn't preclude good editing (excepting, perhaps, in stories involving local geography). A copy editor's best friend, as far as I'm concerned, is the phone. Confused? Unsure? Call the reporter. I know reporters who have already gone a few rounds with their direct editors can get cranky when copy editors call, and I don't blame them, but the whole point is to be correct and factual. One of my worst memories from my copy editor days was the time an assistant city editor suggested I didn't have enough to do when I questioned an education writer's math in a story at the Pittsburgh Press. The reporter's math was wrong. And math is not my best subject. (And do not get me started on dangling modifiers.)

Getting back to the first sentence in the previous paragraph, please see this delightful piece from the New Yorker's 'Comma Queen.' Greek To Me

Notre Dame: Breaths of other humans

KaLisa Veer/Unsplash

Today is April 18, 2019. Nearly seven years since I have last been under dusky light that shelters worshipers and visitors inside Notre Dame.

Until Monday, when Notre Dame burned, I thought (when I thought about it) that the whole structure was stone. I know differently now. The roof was a forest of ancient oak. And the spire was wood coated with lead.

The times I have entered Notre Dame, although they are far from me now, bring me the memory of the quiet ... of the breaths of so many humans before me.

The quiet is the interesting part.

You go in to the church. There is the long nave, filled with pews and the scent of incense. The ceiling is so very high, the air still, the sun's rays gently streaming in through ancient windows.

I love the quiet.

I love and have loved, sitting in contemplation, in a place that has been welcoming, and surviving, for centuries.

Je reviendra quelque jour.

Go figure

The accountant. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

It's tax season.

Despite meticulous record keeping over the year, preparing our returns always involves lots of paperwork, receipts, etc., spread out over the dining room table. (No room in the office ... so, why do we have an office? Question for another day.)

The cat is always pleased to contribute to the prep (just not financially).

Any refund will be used for kibble.

Almost done. Then, it will be time for a nap! (Or a bath.)

Of Oz and Wonderland

With apologies to Lewis Carroll

"All in a gloomy afternoon
Full fearfully we hide ..."

I found the Mad Hatter's chapeau in my driveway this morning, perhaps flung there by the Queen of Hearts. Or to claim a Wizard of Oz metaphor, dropped there like a house by a tornado.

(What? Oh, sorry. Back to Wonderland. Hatter interruptus.)

I like to think that the Hatter, the March Hare and Alice are continuing on with their very mad tea party this evening. Because, really, how else can one deal with this ridiculous February weather?

Besides going down a rabbit hole, I mean.

A walk through ancient mythology

Almost every day, I go for a walk in my neighborhood, for about 35 minutes. Usually the same route; but sometimes, I vary it by taking it in the opposite direction. No matter which way, it's good exercise because my neighborhood is especially hilly.

There's a middle school nearby, which normally doesn't signify because I'm mostly out and back by 2:30 p.m.

Got a late start today, though, so passed by lots of tweens lugging giant packs on their backs, or carrying cases with musical instruments. Or both.

At one intersection, I'm heading downhill, and the cross street, to my left, heads down as well.

Here is what I witnessed.

To my left, top of the cross street, three tween girls be-backpacked and bunched together, screaming at a boy child fleeing them down the street and across the intersection. Their words were "And don't ever bother us again!"

As this boy fled, he passed, to my right and across the street, four other boys, much bigger than him. Eighth-grade, I guess? Totally oblivious; from the bit of conversation I overheard they were making plans for the evening.

So I'm calling this tableau "The Harpies, the Mortal and the Young Gods."

Through thin paper, or Reflective, Yes, but Up to a Point

Pages 15 and 16, New York Times, January 27, 2019, through the sunlight.

On a very cold Wednesday, I was catching up to the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section of Jan. 27, 2019, holding it between fingers, the pages spread wide (me wearing my readers). The day was sunny for a change, and light brightened the living room through the picture window. At page 15 of the 16-page section is a story about 21-year-old rapper Kodak Brown. Two photos, one a portrait the other a performance shot, accompany the story. Flip to the next and final page, 16, and there is a story about 78-year-old painter Pat Steir. Four photos, a small portrait, a large image of her "Barnes" series and a couple of detail shots, flesh out the story.
I skimmed both articles, the one about the painter last, and held up the last page to see the Stier photos more closely, then flipped back.
Turns out, newsprint and the ink used to make newspapers, have some magical qualities. One is transparency (and the irony of using the words newspapers and transparency at this particular point in time is not lost on me, but I'm not getting into those weeds right now).
When the paper is held up to the light, the images meld together.
I think the headline for the story about Kodak Brown, "Reflective, Yes, but Up to a Point" captures what happens when the photos from pages 15 and 16 meet in the sunshine.
Here are the pages as they look unreflected.

The original photographs were by Gerardo Mora and Ike Edeani.

Of Bradbury and Bukowski

Stopped on the way home Tuesday night at a beer warehouse. Not crowded, which is unsurprising for a warehouse place in a tiny, rush-hour strip that has a Subway and Advance Autoparts. Took my purchase to checkout and noticed the clerk had two books, splayed spine side up and resting on top of each other at the checkout counter. "Farenheit 451" by Bradbury and something by Charles Bukowski.

I raised my eyebrows and he laughed, saying sometimes he needed to get out of the darkness of Bukowski and into the ... more easiness (paraphrasing) of Bradbury (?) Also, guess it's boring waiting for customers.

Both books, by the way, looked pretty dog-eared. I've read lots of Bradbury, no Bukowski. My Bradburys are pretty dog-eared, too.

Not even going to attach a pic of Farenheit 451 ... because this guy's copy was clearly vintage. Wish I had asked if OK to take a photo, but I was tired and in a hurry (though I couldn't help but notice his reading material!)