the johnson tracker organ

(OK–if you’re an organ nerd looking at this picture, I know this isn’t a Johnson tracker organ.  I just posted the picture to give the general keyboard playing idea…don’t panic.)

I am not an organist.  I am a pianist and, having become a church musician, I am often enlisted to play the organ.  Several fine organists have given me lessons.  Learning the organ, though, is a lifetime commitment and I’m woefully behind.  I could avail myself of a wonderful opportunity if I would just spend time with the organ in the church where I play.  It’s a Johnson tracker organ from the mid-1800s, moved and restored by an organ aficionado in the mid 1900s.  From time to time, flocks of organ nerds descend on the church to marvel at its glory, which I’m afraid is wasted on me.  I haven’t played a lot of organs, true,  but this one really feels like driving a John Deere.

This year I’ve vowed to play it on Easter Sunday, when most of the hymn registration will mainly be LOUD and there will be little need for subtlety.  I’m working on a prelude using only the Claribella stop on the swells.  Very quiet.  I know the old faithfuls of the church will be happy to hear the organ, no matter what or how I play.  It’s interesting to see how affectionate people are toward old organs.

So–two weeks to go and I need to ramp up the rehearsal schedule.  In other words, I need to spend an hour or so checking the registration.  One of the problems with playing the organ is that you have to “visit” it where it lives, which is usually a cold church sanctuary.  I have to admit that it’s kind of nice to be alone with the big brute in a large, quiet room.  The organ seems like a living thing; this one has bellows noise that sounds like breathing.  If it seems that I’m trying to psych myself up, it’s true.

Christ the Lord is risen today…Alleluia

After that, we’re back to the piano.  Amen.

happy st. pat’s day, john field!

There are no more pesky snakes in Ireland!  Yay!

What else are the Irish most famous for?  Of course!  John Field, the inventor of the “nocturne.”  Chopin would have been nothing without him.  Raise a glass!

mardi (not so) gras

It’s snowing those thick, pretty snowflakes and I just don’t want to get the car out of the garage.  I’m going to try to make some kind of Mardi Gras supper, although the prospect of Lent (with sacrifice, penance, and soul-searching) is easier for me to grasp than the prospect of a rowdy bacchanal on Shrove Tuesday.  I’ll try to stick with the traditional NOLA recipes, but I don’t want to drive to the grocery store.  Neither do I want to make a pecan coffee cake (which is my interpretation of the King Cake recipe) complete with toy baby, especially not if the whole deal has to be covered with purple, green, and yellow frosting.  It’s creepy.

So–I settled on making jambalaya with the ingredients at hand.  I sautéed the Holy Trinity (onions, bell peppers, celery) with diced lean pork and garlic.  I made some Creole Seasoning, using Emeril’s recipe, and added two teaspoons of that.  Then, a can of stewed tomatoes.  I decided to brave the snowy walk to the neighborhood market for a Slim Jim, which I used instead of sausage.  So sue me.  It’s all in the crock pot now and later I’ll add shrimp and rice.  I’ll make corn bread.

And, by God, we’ll party.  In that snowy-night-at-home kind of way.  Laissez les bons temps rouler.  No fasting, self-examination, or sorrow until tomorrow.  I hope I can rise to the occasion.

The Christmas Animals

I love the Christmas animals.  The little children’s carol about “‘I,’ said the donkey, shaggy and brown…” is still one of my favorites.  The Magnum Mysterium text meditating on the mystery of Christ’s birth in the presence of animals moves me more than any other Christmas lesson.

Today I am pondering the animals once more.  Why, through all the centuries, have they been included as such an important part of the Christmas story?  Angels, shepherds, wise men, the innkeeper, Mary and Joseph…all beings who have thoughts and feelings about the baby’s birth.  We directly relate to them.  Are the animals just there for a touch of rustic atmosphere?

The animals are at the manger dumbly experiencing the glory of God.  They have no words to say.  They aren’t able to evaluate the event.  They can only offer their presence. 

This Christmas Eve, as on most others, I have reached the point of saturation with carols, cookies, sacred texts, secular greetings, errands, all that.  Most years I feel exhausted by this time and just have to haul myself through the last few hours before Christmas afternoon when I can finally sit down and rest.  This year, though, I feel rested–but still over-full with all the Christmas richness.  Thoughts of the Christmas animals refresh me.  I think I will just sit down and rest quietly in that Christmas barn, smell the hay, listen to the baby’s little sighs, silently offer my presence.

I wish you all a blessed Christmas!

Blue Christmas

When I was asked a few weeks ago to add a “Blue Christmas” service to this week’s roster, I was encountering the idea for the first time.  Since then I’ve learned that “Blue Christmas” is somewhat a fixture in the Christmas week lineup and that, no, you don’t arrive to play for it in an Elvis costume.  “Blue Christmas,” I now know, is a time for people whose lives have been touched by sadness during the year (death of a spouse, loss of a job, etc.) to come for quiet reflection that isn’t so holly-jolly.  It is a time to acknowledge  personal suffering.

Tonight is “Blue Christmas.”  I’ve been schooled about which hymns to play to set the proper mood.  I’ve found some subdued arrangements of wintry lullabies for prelude and postlude.  I guess I’m ready.  But I’m certainly not sold on the concept.

I understand Christmastime is difficult for people who aren’t happy.  Facing the holidays for the first time without a loved one–not being able to buy children presents because there’s no income–being alone in a strange city after a tough breakup–all make for feeling out of sorts in the festive milieu.  I understand the need for comfort.  But I don’t agree that we need to create a sub-holiday to provide it.

Over the past few years I’ve noticed a trend toward enshrining certain milestones of everyday life.  You can buy beautiful (very costly) little charms for a bracelet to tell the story, in jewelry language, of baby’s first tooth, the day you passed your drivers’ license exam, your first cell phone, on and on.  You can create elaborate scrapbooks with stickers, templates, and archival papers to tell the story, in two-dimensional design language, of your first stolen base, your worst haircut, and the first time you got stitches in the emergency room.  You can stick ribbon-shaped magnets on your car to proclaim your desire to support troops, eliminate breast cancer, and neuter every stray dog.  To me, adding a Christmas tree covered with blue lights for a service of personal lament is in the same spirit.  We’re taking ourselves way too seriously.

Everybody over the age of thirty has had a few painful Christmases, some have had many.  The season of Advent, particularly in the northern hemisphere, pushes one’s psyche hard into the realm of sadness and regret.  Each person who is lamenting the lost spouse, lost job, the cancer diagnosis is probably matched by somebody sick with grief over having an affair, an abortion, beating his wife.  There are some painful events we enshrine, others we have to bear alone in silence.  I think Christmas, the Mass of Christ, offers hope to all who suffer–all who are “burdened and heavily laden.”

The complaint “Blue Christmas” has been promoted to address is that Christmas is too commercial, too family-oriented, too focused on hearty cheerfulness.  I agree there are lots of problems with the way Christmas has evolved.  My proposal, though, is to start correcting those problems and not to add another event, another set of decorations, another enshrining of personal distress.  God decided to join us and live with us in all the messiness of our daily fare.  We prepare for this miracle every year by reflecting on our own failings and losses.  Finally, on Christmas morning, we get another small glimpse of God’s overwhelming grace.  I hope those who suffer will on that day feel comfort and joy.  I hope each will see his own small life in the human panorama where no life is untouched by sorrow and every life is offered light and peace.  Sometimes it’s a relief to realize one’s own misery is not unique, that everybody experiences disappointment and injustice, and that happiness and peace are not the same thing.  I don’t want a “Blue Christmas.”  I want to sing the carols with all the other sinners and allow the old, old story to sink into my bones one more time.

My Secret Christmas Shame…and Hope for Redemption

Marthe, my ex mother-in-law, and I live in the same town and have managed to maintain a cordial relationship over the years.  Marthe is German, the daughter of a Jewish mother and an anti-nationalist professor father who fled the Nazis in 1939 and came to America.  She is, understandably, not sentimental about most German traditions.   The exception is her love of traditional German Christmas cookies, Lebkuchen.  Every Christmas for many years she received a big box of assorted Lebkuchen from a friend living in the Black Forest region of Germany.  She would proudly serve them whenever I stopped by for tea.  She also made her own Honigkuchen (Honey Lebkuchen) by the ton and gave them as Christmas gifts to literally dozens of people.

Lebkuchen are spicy, chewy cookie bars made with citron, almonds, and honey; their texture is sort of a mixture of brownie and very old rice krispie bar.  Their claim to fame is that THEY LAST FOREVER.  One recipe site I visited said they were the world’s oldest Christmas cookie.  I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the original batch is still is circulation.  Sometimes Marthe would drop off her yearly tin of lebkuchen and I’d have to throw away the leftovers from the year before to start anew.  For, you see, I don’t really like lebkuchen.  It’s my secret (not anymore!) Christmas shame.  Actually, my full secret shame is that I joined with the rest of my family members to call the lovely cookies “Duckinkugel” (except for the “D” substitute another nearby consonant).

So when I visited Marthe last week and she announced that she wouldn’t be baking lebkuchen this year, I feigned slight disappointment, but offered supportive words such as, “I can understand.  They’re a lot of work.”   After I got home, though, I felt a little bit sad for her.  The one old tradition she really looks forward to–gone.  You know what comes next.

I was first in line at the supermarket this morning, picking up citron.  I hurried home and mixed the concoction [note:  I will post the recipe if anybody wants it], getting it into the oven before my rehearsal at 9 o’clock.  I have to admit that the kitchen smelled wonderful.  Although the cookies are supposed to “age” for at least a few days,  my fellow trio members couldn’t wait, cut several tiny squares for themselves, gobbled them down and pronounced them delicious.  The next step is to frost them, then package them up and deliver them to Marthe.

I just hope she doesn’t invite me to stay and have a few with tea.

Happy St. Lucia Day!

“Wait!,” you say, “isn’t Lucia Day the Swedish holiday when those delicious Luciakattsor [saffron buns] are served by little girls in white dresses with crowns of candles on their heads?”

Well, you celebrate Lucia Day your way and I’ll celebrate it mine.

Weekend Update: Yuletide Mysteries

1.  Why, when I went to put my winter boots on for the first time this season, did I find them full of DOG BISCUITS?

2.  How many times has the set of stainless steel cheese knives (that we received from Patty, the one with the crush on my husband) been “regifted”?

3.  Though I know he plowed the driveway and plucked his check off the back door, I still have never really seen Ronnie Farnsworth.  What DOES he look like?

4.  What is the etiquette for Seasons Greetings these days?  Cheesy Christmas letter only?  Letter in a card?  Card with handwritten note to EVERYONE?  Email?  Nothing?  TEXTING???

5.  Is it really all right to put everybody’s gifts in those cunning little gift bags?  I hate to wrap presents as much as the next guy, but I think all those bags under the tree make the place look like a bus station.

6.  And where IS the tape?

7.  And why do I save all those teensy little 3×9-inch pieces of gift wrap from year to year?

8.  Why does the car always need some kind of major repair two weeks before Christmas? (yes, there is an Ominous Sound…)

9.  How would we ever make it through the winter without all the lights, prayers, and feasting?

10. O Magnum Mysterium:  “O great mystery and wondrous sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in the manger!  Blessed Virgin, whose womb was deemed worthy to bear Christ the Lord. Alleluia!  (Responsory for the Office of Matins on Christmas Day)

Weekend Update: Less is More

How about a Saturday wrap-up feature?  We’ll try one and see how it goes…

This week,  with Christmas bearing down on us, I’d like to feature the Less is More category. 

1.  The Wexford Carol, as recorded by YoYo Ma and Alison Krause (link above) is great studio porn, but besides that, a good example of talented musicians using restraint.  Nobody is showing off.  The cello line is simplicity itself.   BAGPIPE WARNING (though I would call their use “tasteful”…)  BTW:  I’m using a nice arrangement of this carol next week as a prelude.  I love this tune.

2.  There is no snow in Vermont.  At this very moment the sky is gray and threatening.  We’ll see.  Unlike the merry band in “White Christmas,” I am not lamenting.

3.  My ruthless closet-cleaning spree continues.  I bought a new camel-hair blazer and IMMEDIATELY threw the old blazer in the give-away bag.  No bulging drawers, no jammed closet racks.  It can be done.

4.  Though we did spring for a new TV (you had to pound on the old one to get the color from all green to several other hues), and we were briefly tempted to subscribe to a cable service, we have resisted.  I spent a long time on-line with a cable representative trying to find out exactly which channels were available with the various subscription plans and eventually had to admit to myself that I really didn’t care.  So, dear reader, rest assured.  As of today, we still don’t have cable TV.

5.  Walter and I have decided that since we have more than enough STUFF and rarely deprive ourselves of anything we really, really want, we will not buy Christmas gifts for one another this year.  HOWEVER:  my birthday (which is December 25) is exempt from this restriction.  Lavish birthday gifts are always in order.

6.  I have cast a critical eye on my Christmas baking plans.  With the advice of my dear daughter, Sonika, I have come to realize there are Christmas cookies I bake every year that nobody likes.  The 7-layer Bars, Marzipan Bars, and anything that might contain raisins have been removed from the lineup.

7.  I’m done experimenting and looking for “weekly specials.”  From now on, this is a Starbucks House Blend ONLY household.

8.  The Christmas card list is being relentlessly pruned.  I will focus more on writing some meaningful letters and less on the bulk mailing business.

9.  {see #6, above}  Nobody likes fruitcake, either.

10.  This is the toughest and is still “fluid”:  I’m lobbying for a pre-lit artificial tree.  Neither of us is physically able to wrestle with a Fraiser Fir this year and there is no way we could dig through the attic for the “shit of Christmas past” (as Sonika calls the decorations).  This morning Walter is still muttering about “garlands for the front porch,” but I can see that I’m wearing him down.  I only had to mention step-ladder morbidity once or twice before he got the picture.

All is calm, all is bright…

Have a merry week!

Turkey, Day 6 (and other holiday thoughts)

 

My mother’s method of Thanksgiving preparations can be analyzed several ways:  she used paper plates and pre-cooked turkey because she was practical OR she used paper plates and pre-cooked turkey because she was cold hearted, unsentimental, and couldn’t be bothered with the Real Thing.  For years, I nursed the latter point of view.  I wanted the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving:  turkey carved at the table, gleaming silverware, clink of glasses, shining smiles all ’round.  And, by God, that’s what I’ve done since the feast was mine to make–at least twenty-five of them or so over the last thirty years.

Now, on Day 6 of turkey, I’m moved to reassess.  There are still neat piles of china plates on the sideboard, waiting to be put back into the china closet.  There’s a basket of white linen napkins and a huge damask cloth that should be ironed before I put them away.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with the last blob of mashed potatoes since I’ve already made potato bread, potato pancakes, and heated them up in the microwave to “use up the gravy.”  And so on.  Somehow over the years I’ve managed to ignore the enormity of  the Thanksgiving I create, but this year it’s catching up with me.

I still love each gesture of the holiday:  the careful shopping;  the excessive, semi-competitive baking (this year I produced four pies, a dozen rolls, a loaf of bread, AND a cheesecake–what about YOU?);  fussing over the table setting and seating arrangements;  making the centerpiece;  ironing guest towels, touching up that huge pile of napkins;  unfurling the perfect white tablecloth.  I love to open the silver chest and see the gleaming knife handles, straight as soldiers above piles of spoons and forks.  I love choosing the wine, composing h’ors d’oeuvres plates, setting my grandmother’s butter knife on the Boda plate as I’ve done so many times before.  This year, for the first time, I felt the cumulative effect of these gestures and it felt like work.  I’m still exhausted.  How did I do all of this when I was working full time?

Well, for one thing, I was younger and busier.  Somehow, being busy makes even huge efforts seem all in a day’s work.  The more you have to do, the more you’re able to do–at least for a while.  I’ve been slowed down by age and circumstance.  Being slower means having more time to reflect.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe there are options.

My first impulse is to declare next Thanksgiving a Chinet-football-turkey pizza kind of event where I do nothing more strenuous than hang up the coats.  I imagine a rolicking time in a dirty house with huge plastic garbage bags at the curb the next afternoon.  Or I could become cold hearted and unsentimental, cook the turkey ahead of time in a foil pan, leave my china in the cupboard, and play a little Montivani in the background (thanks, Mom).  Or I could look at the whole business as greater than the sum of its parts, a production worth the toil, a beachhead against the erosion of civilized behavior.  I could just give thanks for the accumulation of memories, good and bad, garlanded all around that gleaming table.  I’m ambivalent.  But Christmas is right around the corner…

In the meantime, here’s my recipe for a turkey salad that I believe makes everything else about the leftovers worthwhile:

 Turkey Salad

4 cups chopped cooked turkey

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup toasted slivered almonds

1/2 cup chopped dried cherries

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. dried tarragon

1 1/2 cups mayonnaise

3 tbsp. white vinegar

3 tbsp. sugar

2-3 tbsp. milk or cream, to make desired consistency

Mix all ingredients and chill before serving.