August, after

Thank you, Counting Crows, for the inspiration for the title of this post.

I love August.

The crickets and cicadas buzz and sing at night, having taken over the night air from the fireflies of June and July. The sun is moving lower in the sky and there is a sense of gathering in the world. A gathering of last enjoyments of summer -- even though the warm days will last another six to eight weeks or so. A gathering up in the mind of preparation for winter's dark months. A gathering up of all that has been enjoyed -- quiet talks at dusk, dogs snoozing on the summer lawn, the pleasures (and frustrations) of the summer garden, the sun on bare skin, the cool sparkle of a clear pool-- and the anticipation of enjoying it all again next year.

August.

I think the year should be counted by halves. March to August and September to February. It is a richer way of marking time, and more subtle too, than the artificial observance of a calendar year's passing.


A musical ending. Some years ago, my sister Suzanne presented Carl with a CD by Pete Yorn. It rested, unlistened to, for a while. We have recently pulled it out of the pile, and have been enjoying it so much. He has a new release coming out in September with Scarlett Johansson.

So, we're late to the party, but thanks Pete Yorn. "Music for the Morning After" is tremendous.

Rhythms

There's a small bird's nest, fallen from its perch, sitting in a neighbor's yard up the street. It's been resting there for a few days this week, tiny branches woven into a tiny brown wreath and studded with tufts of white fur. I think it could be Holli's fur, she's shedding so much these days.

I noticed the nest at the beginning of the week, lying on the neighbors' lawn, with a soft indentation for eggs. The dogs sniffed and we walked on.

The weather has been tumultuous, so the nest must have been blown out of a tree during a storm. I thought about it. A home. Parents. Babies, fledglings, new families.

Life on earth. The smallest things reveal how splendid and beautiful it is.

What you want

Today's picture: Bags of basmati rice at Par Ganj market in New Delhi, taken on my last day in India this spring. Lots more food vendors here than in Chandni Chowk. Veggies spread out under tents, but so many flies, and hot. Vendors sitting among their mangoes and everything else. I like how they are sitting on what look like old tins of olive oil. That is so India. In making do, appearance becomes special. Basmati is a staple and it was good: light and a toothy texture. I haven't bought it yet here, but in the fall I'll try some Indian dishes to keep us warm.

Talked to my mother-in-law this evening, who related the slightly sad story of a very dear friend who is living in an assisted living community. Joanne, mom's friend, had not wanted to leave her home of 50 years, but clearly couldn't keep living there either.

Joanne had a stroke a few years ago, and, as you can imagine, her health didn't improve much. She's overweight, widowed and, after the stroke isolated. But she's hale enough not to need to be in a nursing home.

Joanne's story made me think of how passively some people lead their lives, always waiting for something to happen, for someone to help them. Joanne had my mother-in-law as a friend because they were neighbors who had babies at the same time. They stayed in touch after Mom moved (not far) and were part of a larger extended family of neighbors and friends. Yet Joanne still managed to be isolated after her husband's death. She seemed to have no skills for active socializing. Neighbors became friends, but that had nothing to do with any initial effort on her part.

When her husband was still alive and their kids were grown, their leisure activity was to go on cruises and eat a lot. A lot. Ray was tremendously overweight.

I'm sure they enjoyed the vacations, but I never remember hearing anything else from Mom about them except that they went on cruises.

Everyone ages differently. My mother-in-law still travels to family reunions, walks at the mall, has friends from church and from the old neighborhoods (like Joanne). She lives alone but close to my sister-in-law. Tends to mention people who have died a little more than I'd like to hear when we visit, but that happens when you get old. She does have her limits. At 79, she won't travel by plane anymore, though she talks about how she'd like to visit Europe again.

So between two women, you have different paths, though even Mom, I think, is of a generation whose members didn't push, because it was unseemly. You accepted whatever answer you were given and that was that. I'm generalizing, I'm sure, but I wonder if the Boomer generation, with its "Don't trust anyone over 30" mantra may have long ago been on to something. I don't entirely agree with the lack of respect for authority implied in that mantra, but I do believe more and more as I grow older that things that our elders would have taken on faith were set in stone don't necessarily have to be.

It's funny to be writing about what Mom had to say. This afternoon, Carl and I went to see "Julie & Julia." And Julia Child turns out to be just the kind of woman and wife who wouldn't settle for just being a wife, or just a woman without any passions. She didn't set out to be a great cook, but she wanted to do SOMETHING and in searching for what interested her, she fell in love with cooking. But she did the searching. She didn't wait for that passion to come to her.

After the movie, we stopped at Mitchell's Fish Market for drinks and appetizers. Carl wanted Oysters Rockefeller, recently taken off the menu (at a seafood restaurant? Why?!?) and was grousing.

"Why don't you just ask if they'll make them for you?" I told him. He did, and the chef did.

So how hard is it to go after what you want? You just have to know that you can.

I Wish

I wish life had a Control Z.

If life did, I would study French and Art History in college.

I would find a job in New York, love it and love living there.

I would go for my Master's degree right after my Bachelor's.

I would have kept up with ballet and been a dancer.

I would learn a LOT earlier to disregard worrying. To not stress. To not care, mostly at all, about what others think about me. (Side story: Job interview, 1978, after graduation from Ohio State University J-school. Some newspaper editor type. Asks me what I want to do. Me, I say, I think I'd like to try the Foreign Service. Newspaper editor type: Well, that concerns me. Blah blah, can I be committed to journalism? Me: Fumbling and embarrassed for not seeming committed to SOMEONE ELSE'S career path. "Well, uh, I, uh, oh, um." Thanks pal. Nice life lesson and way to just have your cake and eat it too at the expense of a naive 21-year-old.

Jerk.

However, no Control Z on life. So, I decided tonight, while walking the greyhounds, no more wanting something else, as in some vague "What I want from life."

I think I am going to stop wanting. It is too tiring. Rather, I accept that opportunities were missed (how is that for the weasel-i-est of phrasing: my fault? parents fault? advisors' fault?) and now is the time to just be prepared for opportunity. Be prepared in all of the things that I wanted (except dance, too old) and if opportunity arises, great. If not, I like what I do, am paid well for it and shall be satisfied with that.

And that, I think, is a real feat.

Half a mushroom, or, expectations, great and otherwise

Vacation. My husband and I visited my Mom for a few days earlier this month. Quiet, except for the rattle of turnpike noise nearby, and relaxing. Sister-in-law Edye joined us for an afternoon and dinner and told a funny story about her son, Stephen.

He was home, she left out the ingredients for a new meatloaf recipe and suggested he put it together. It had more than the usual amount of veggies.

So, Steve makes the meatloaf, it's delish and then Edye looks in the fridge and sees a package of mushrooms torn open. Recipe called for half a cup but there's barely a dent made in the package. Plastic shrink wrap ripped open and maybe a couple mushrooms removed.

Edye asks Steve about it. Sure, he says. Recipe called for "half a mushroom."

Mom asks son to cook. Mom's been cooking for years and knows how to read a recipe. Young-brained male son willing to try, maybe not so careful reading recipe.

Result? Open package of mushrooms in the fridge with a half a mushroom taken out, Mom totally amused by the whole thing and a family who gets to hear the story over again, and laugh along with her.

Family lore is born.

We ask others to do things for us all the time, or ask questions, or make gestures, based on what WE know. Disappointment, frustration, or best of all, humor, results when requests are responded to based on what the other person knows.

As I've gone through life, and been disappointed by my own expectations and how I've perceived they should have been responded to, (apologies for the clunky syntax), I've also learned that expectations need to be moderated. Especially if you don't have too much control over how your requests or directions will be followed. Or, maybe more important, sometimes people just do things differently. It's not better, not worse, just different.

Really, what's the diff between half a mushroom and half a cup of them? In regards to meatloaf, that is.

The picture, and I hope I haven't repeated it, is of a tiny little courtyard fountain in Pittsburgh, between Boulevard of the Allies and First Avenue. There are Japanese maples and hostas and a few hanging baskets and contemporary wire benches. It is a narrow place, between a parking garage and an historic building. And nicely unexpected. I love walking through it on my summer fountain walks. It is cool, quiet and quite peaceful.

Right here in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Nanny States

I have been reading about the turmoil in Tehran and throughout Iran following the recent election in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. I have also seen the video of the young woman shot by the paramilitaries in Tehran.

Tehran is supposed to be a beautiful city. And Iran, a complicated place in Asia. Muslim, but not Arab. I would love to visit someday.

I don't know anyone from Iran. In fact, I have no aquaintances whatsoever in Iran, Iraq and/or all points in that direction.

I admire the idea behind the protests. What is the point of an election if the results are not fair, transparent and public? What is the point of an election with hanging chads?

Tough to be an American and criticize the results when our own recent history is not so stellar.

Yet

As one single American, I wish for a peaceful and just resolution to the turmoil in Iran.

Turning guns and batons on your own people is wrong, and, if you take it to its logical conclusion, quite stupid. That goes for North Korea, Zimbabwe, Myanmar and others.

Don't kill your citizens. Let them speak. If you cannot do that, your silence speaks volumes.

Pittsburgh and G-20

The Group of 20 will meet here in September. I guess the buzz-o-sphere has been all a-twitter about it. There were letters to the editor in the Post-Gazette shortly after the announcement from local readers complaining about the snickering in the Washington press corps after the announcement was made.

How boring.

When I first moved to Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, and then moved back in the mid 1980s, the city was exiting its first Renaissance. It was much more beautiful than it had been 20 years previously. The air was cleaner, new buildings had gone up (unfortunately at the expense of some beautiful old ones) the sports teams (except for the Penguins) were winning.

Cleveland, on the other hand, was just starting to see a boost in development in the Flats, but Downtown was dying. Higbees, Halles, May Co. were dying and/or about to disappear. The Browns and Indians were losers and played in drafty Municipal Stadium, which at least had the cachet of having been built as an Olympic venue, rather than an ugly cookie cutter multi-use stadium like Three Rivers here or Riverfront in Cincinnati.

Cleveland had the Rapid. Pittsburgh still had creaky trolleys. Cleveland had a dirty river, Pittsburgh had three of them.

For all the similarities, there was a lot of snide comparison in Pittsburgh about the Mistake on the Lake, and then, in the mid to late 80s, Pittsburgh was named one of America's most livable cities, which prompted tons of provincial crowing. Cleveland, feeling inferior, began a thankfully brief, and incredibly embarrassing PR campaign that had this slogan to offer:

"If New York's the Big Apple, Cleveland's a Plum."

Why? There was and is no basis for comparison. Why would you put yourself in that ridiculous position? Pittsburgh is the same, provincial and insecure and hence all the crowing, and indignation about being dissed, over G-20.

I like it here. I've lived in a lot of places and I think the near-Midwest, I guess you could call it, really has a lot going for it. Low cost of living, proximity to the East Coast. Good pro and college sports for the most part. Museums, bike trails, lots of great state and local parks. Nice, if underused, airports. If we had good inter-city train service, we'd be set. And Pittsburgh really needs light rail transit from the airport to downtown and from Downtown to the university center in Oakland. That's been talked about for at least as long as I've lived here, if not longer.

Still though, pretty here and pretty in Cleveland. We should support each other, not snicker. We both have a lot of great amenities and truthfully, it's a lot nicer living in a smaller city than a larger one. People are friendly and mostly more laid back than those who live amid the crowds of New York, Washington and Boston. Mostly.

I think the world and the Washington press corps will be impressed with Pittsburgh. If we did have a light rail from the airport to Downtown, the Romare Bearden mural at the top of this post is the first thing they would see once they got off the train Downtown.

I never fail to be absorbed by how it shows history, the passage of time and beautifully uses the repetition of shapes and patterns to make its point.

This station will be closed soon for two years as construction continues on a light-rail spur to the North Side and the mural will be taken down for repairs. I'll be looking forward to seeing it again in its old spot. And hoping that new eyes will see it, too.