To further remind me of the random wonderfulness of the universe, I ended up last night at a live “coffeehouse” performance of Cassandra Kubinski, a singer-songwriter I had never heard of previously.

Kubinski performed in the initimate and completed unplugged space of The Depot as part of the Milford Fine Arts Council’s 2011 Performance Coffeehouse.

Seeing Kubinski’s two-hour, voice-and-piano-only performance of original work added even more fuel to the fire of my belief that there are many very talented artists and musicians working and making great work.

But not necessarily at the level of so-called glamour and fame we see on “Idol.”

I sort of gathered that Kubinksi, like many gifted singer-songwriters — Lovett, Colvin, Emmylou —  has an intense and committed group of followers and fans.

But she isn’t famous and has no fear of the paparazzi catching her doing squats at the gym for “Stars, They’re Just Like Us!”.

Having browsed her MySpace site and listened to her CDs after the performance, I realize how fortunate I was to get to see her perform in this particular space. Without the aid of a microphone, this audience was able to really hear the true range of her voice– an occasionally tender and sometimes brutal mix of Aretha, Norah Jones, Elvis Costello.

Kubinksi, a pianst, is physically lovely, and brings a intimate sensuality to her interaction with her instrument. But that relationship goes beyond any pin-up girl sweetie pie image. Her music  – both lyrically and compositionally — travels rutted and unmarked roads. Like Colvin, Costello and greats like Springsteen, her songs tell stories in the marriage of lyric, voice, and music.

Songs like “Timeless” and “Cradle the Moon” wrench the heart and give you a place to wander in your own angst. Songs like “Textual Healing” “Literally” and “Just Being Myself” show her wit, and her ability to start with an idea of traditional melody and transform it.

I learned two things last night from Cassandra Kubinski: that trusting the universe is often a fine idea when it comes to experiencing art and music.

And that beautiful music and writing is alive and working — if even in cheerful obscurity– in New York City.

Next show? She’ll be at The Bitter End in NYC on April 7.

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Greenwich Locksmith in the West Village

One of the great things about life, humanity, and America is INGEUNITY: the power of creative imagination.

On “Scouting New York” I found the most amazing post about the little locksmith shop, Greenwich Locksmiths. Be sure you click through and see all the photos.

I love small business like these. Shopkeepers who exude passion for their craft make me happy. This is the intersection of commerce and humanity that, to me, makes consumption palatable. I can ask a friendly, knowledgeable craftsman for a service and look forward to the work being done well, with pride and with beauty.

This is the experience of American life we lose when we shop at Wal-Mart like drones.

To me, lower prices are not worth the loss of our collective soul. A streetside shop, as Greenwich Locksmith demonstrates, is a place of real conversation– not just about the weather or the cut of the key, but about art, beauty, progress, the future, the past and their collision.

I just love this store… I want to run my hands over its facade and say thank you to the inspiration gods who helped the owner bring his vision to the Village.

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.” — Gandhi

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I’m on the train on the way to meet two old friends in New York. A part of me is terrified to put my foot on the platform at Grand Central.

I am a traveller. I don’t stay put. I go places.

Yet in the last 8 years I’ve mostly been with my travel companion, who has excellent sense of direction. He never once panics when he pops up out of the Tube in London, wondering which way to turn my face.

So I know I am not afraid of the city or getting lost.

I am suddenly aware that I love my husband a whole lot and depend on him. Even if I know I can get by for a day without him.

It’s a beautiful sunny day for meeting friends in the city…

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One of Colin’s and my favorite things to do is a road trip.

We are at our most relaxed on the way to somewhere, with him driving, and me organizing whatever podcast or playlist or wrong turn is up next.

Our first road trip, en masse however, had me on edge. I had sweet-fond memories of long car trips with my own brothers and sisters when we were young, but I was a happy passenger. No planning required. I know Colin and his family drove across Canada as well (in the winter!) and arrived with some of the best family memories ever, including the image of their family cat running away across the plains.

It’s different when you are in the front seat. You have a better view, and less likely to get car sick. But on our shoulders is the job of making sure everyone is happy.

Highway 12 through the Adirondacks helped. And the snack bag. And Colin’s joy behind the wheel. And easy going kids.

7 hours down. 17 to go.

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P.T. Barnum creates the “Original Family Entertainment”

With the Circus blogtour at MomCentral.com underway, I wanted to make sure I took time to visit the P.T. Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, CT. Ringling Bros. circuses are touring the nation right now, and in just a few weeks, the Ringling show “Bellobration” will be coming home to Bridgeport, October 23-26. 2008 at Harbor Yard.

P.T. Barnum is honored around these parts, not only as a the man who created “The Greatest Show on Earth,” but as a forefather and city developer. Barnum didn’t even enter the circus business until the age of 61. Before he was wrastling tigers, he built his original fortunes with its forerunner, the strange and novel “American Museum” in New York City, on lower Broadway.

The American Museum, sparked two things:

1. it was the parent to Barnum’s circus, a five-story “menagerie house” where Barnum not only promoted a love of music, art, literature, and science, but also dazzled and awed visitors with strange and marvelous feats of nature.

2. It was the American public’s first taste of “public entertainment” which did not exist or was considered “inappropriate” to the average American’s highest moral standards of the time. Barnum presented his lectures and his exhibits as the original “family entertainment.” His shows were the first to begin to attract women and children to previously all-male theatres.

Barnum, Bridgeport and a Circus Today

Bill Brinley's Barnum Circus Model

The Barnum Museum in Bridgeport is as quirky as the man, the circus he invented, and the city it sits in. Bridgeport flounders, still, as a post-industrial urban failure that balances on the edge of poverty and blight in one of the richest counties in the nation. It was gouged by corrupt politicians well into the second half of the 20th century and even with its gorgeous location on the Long Island Sound, miles of brownfields have kept developers, including Donald Trump, from investing in Connecticut’s wasteland along the water.

Barnum, a once-mayor of Bridgeport, believed in the city and built a quirky and exotic building on Main Street where the Barnum Museum now lives. It was to be a Science Museum in his time.  He died before it was completed. In the 1960s, the city packed up the artifacts and put in offices, using the beautiful building as an annex to city hall.

Now it is being restored and is recognized on the Register of Historic Landmarks. Barnum is recognized, too, with an annual Festival and Parade.

Slowly, the city is recovering, hopefully while holding onto its history. If you are in Fairfield County, you and your family really must visit this museum of the Great Showman, P.T. Barnum. For $6 (free for kids 3 and under), it’s a gem and a bargain, one that provides context not only to the history of Bridgeport, but to all public entertainment in America.

A Circus (Discount) Near You

Meanwhile, the show goes on. After Barnum’s death, the circus was run for a time by his partner Bailey, then,  eventually, the Greatest Show on Earth passed into the hands of the Ringling Bros., who have kept the founder’s names, and their spirit alive in the wild and hair-raising shows.

The Ringling Bros’ Barnum and Bailey Circus is on the move, so check out the website for the tour dates. Here’s a few cities, but you can enter your zip code online, for one nearest you.

Don’t forget the 20% discount code for Ringling Bros. Circus. Code: MCC

Grand Rapids, MI – Sept. 18-21, 2008
Denver – Oct. 2-13, 2008
Boston – Oct 8-14, 2008
Bridgeport, CT – Oct. 23-27, 2008
Cleveland, OH – Oct. 24 – Nov. 2
Chicago – Nov. 6 – 30, 2008
St. Louis – Nov. 6-9, 2008
Auburn Hills, MI – Nov. 12 – 16, 2008
Highland Heights, KY – Feb 27 – Mar. 1, 2009
Harford, CT – May 6-10, 2009

(Note to my readers in Iowa and Wisconsin: There’s no tours listed for you on the Ringling site at the moment. Closest location was Chicago. Check back or write letters!)

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A Befuddled Poem About the Fact That I Rode 55 Miles on a Bike in One Day

by Elizabeth Howard

My butt hurts still today,
But not as much as my knees do.
Which goes to show you…
Having all that padding isn’t
Such a bad thing after all.

I’m brain fried, 24 hours later,
With zero comprehension
Of time or distance,
Though I can remember the bridges
and the hills that led up them.

There was Brooklyn in the morning,
And Pulaski later on,
All the stairs we had to walk up
And down, carrying the bicycle
On the Triborough from Queens back To Brooklyn.

And finally the steep green grade
At Randall’s Island, passing by the
Horseback riding school, and the
Chance to split off and ride for a Century.

I am numb, on a Monday, 55 Miles
Further Along in my life. There was that
One last bridge and eight long blocks
To a lukewarm Central Park hurrah, and I can’t
Decide what I’ve achieved, if anything.

Snippets of time instead, hang off me, like
Christmas ornaments– the Coca-Cola billboard as I
wove through Times Square; wooden bridge planks, the same
Trod by escaping New Yorkers, on 9/11;
Nathan’s Hot Dogs, by doomed Coney Island haunts.

Two Hasidic Jews, reaching for an abandoned tire
In the street. Grey man mumbling in Spanish on
The gated walkway of the Triborough bridge. Girls in dressage
in Prospect Park. The swish of the urine the portapoddy
Urinal.

55 miles further along, and I am not sure
What to make of my ride, of how it happened,
How I made it. There was a start and a finish
But there was no beginning or end. Just a block of time
… surrounded by ellipses …

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Last night, I went to see A Catered Affair at the Thomas Kerr Theatre on Broadway. This was a fluke: one of the board members where I work called and said she had spare tickets for that evening, so I was off on the train to the city a few hours later.

Tom Wopat was a featured performer in this particular show, a fact that made me suddenly nervous. I mean, I was going to be sitting in the 6th row after all– it was going to practically be just him and me! After all these years!

My sister, Ann, has always had claim on Tom. I was was a Schneider girl. But John and I haven’t seen each other since he stopped in Kansas City to perform “Will Rogers Follies” at the Starlight. That’s eight years gone now– I think it might be over between us now. Am I allowed to move onto a theoretical brother?

Wopat.com

There’s something about these men, my first loves. They are as varied as their 1970s and 1980s TV roles: Hardy Boy Parker Stevenson, Riptide‘s brunette Joe Penny, Tales of The Gold Monkey pilot Stephen Collins, KITT’s sidekick Michael Knight, played by the legendary David Hasselhoff. And, of course, the grinning, sinning, always-winning Duke Boys.

And while Wopat is no Hasselhoff in his cult stature, he’s still got a following for sure. At Wopat.com, you can catch up on the actor’s stage life– Chicago, Glengarry Glen Ross, 42nd Street, Annie Get Your Gun– Wopat has been singing and dancing his way up and down Broadway since the celluloid version of himself hit syndication.

Making the Leap
Actors gotta be fluid creatures– be able to take on a persona, squeeze it dry, then leave it behind. Not every actor is made of that ilk (see: David Caruso). But what Wopat has got is that everyman persona, a blank canvas of manhood, rough and soft in turns.

In A Catered Affair, he slid into the sullen, exhausted husband-provider as if it were his favorite pair of well-fitted Levi’s. It hurt to watch him, but it hurt the way it should; Tom Hurley was living on that stage, while Wopat the TV icon receded.

It’s a natural thing, a lovely thing–watching a man make something look so easy. Reminded me of a certain pair of brothers, so charming, who always managed to escape from the law, who always managed to get across the state line just in time… who could always coax General Lee to leap across some insurmountable obstacle– and land laughing.

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I got down with my pen and laptop at the 2008 NY Writers’ Coalition Write-a-Thon yesterday. Here is a sample of some bits I wrote–the RESULTS of the Send me a Writing Idea Competition! (selected by independent judge C. Phillips).

Runner Up – T. Mallie!

haiku for T. Mallie
lace panties annoy
the sort of girl who prefers
paper to plastic

Runner Up – Suzanne Peters!

haiku for Siouxzan
more letters make Jaiyne
a special girl, smarter girl–
Mahm and Dadd should know!

WINNER of the IDEA CONTEST (probably slightly biased since at this time we have a very cute cat living with us): WENDY FRY PALMER!

Ode to Betty

A cat reclines
in poster board stickers
ignominiously on my bed.

A cat divines
the latter day remnants
of glories soft and dead.

A cat reminds
the casual looker
of day lilies bowing their heads.

In the season of spring
a cat refines
its derelict secrets
like butter thickly spread.

As spring moves away
A cat turns to play
In the blue light that moves night to day.

A cat defines the sweetest sours
Time whittled splinters
Seconds from hours
The flesh of life
in the downiest flowers–
Legs and tail diverted
By uncontrolled powers.

A cat resigns
Tongue licking at arsehole
Without a word said.

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Who doesn’t love a hero? And after a gorgeous performance in Super Bowl XLII, Eli Manning deserves to be one.

So, with 2008 marked already as the Year of Green, I can only humbly ask that our first hero of the year, Giants quarterback Eli Manning, give BACK to Cadillac the keys to their hybrid Escalade with a thanks but no thanks.

Why? Because this so-called “improvement” is like rubbing snot on dry chapped hands and hoping that will make it smoother and silkier. This conspicuously huge road-oxymoron– a luxury SUV? — boasts that it will now get you “50 percent better fuel economy.” It said so even during the multi-million dollar ad campaign.

But unlike its humbler non-hybrid co-campaigner, Ford Focus, it didn’t mention what that fuel economy was.

It’s 12. You get 12 miles per gallon with a traditional Escalade. Yep. That’s right. You can’t see around them on the highway, they don’t fit in ANY parking spot, you NEVER see them scurrying around in the mud or towing a trailer of chickens. And they get 12 mpg.

So, 50 percent better, for you math dummies (I had to use my human calculator, Colin), is 18.

18. Miles. Per. Gallon.

The Ford Focus wasn’t shy in mentioning that its 2008 model gets 35 miles per gallon. It’s not even a hybrid. Imagine the possibilities.

The Manning Conundrum

Now, I know that Eli has some questions to face this morning as he gets up, not the least of which is: how do I do this? His brother, Peyton, is already the funny one, the handsome one, the first one. Argh. What’s left for Eli?

Eli Manning, Here is what you do! Grab Matt Lauer live. Tell him this: I give up my Escalade because it isn’t GOOD ENOUGH. Toss the keys away is disgust. Then walk over the nearest Ford dealership and get you a snazzy five-speed Focus. Or maybe go hogwild and get an electric car.

Be the rebel. Be the upstart, be the unpredictable, wild one who pulls one out of his hat for the big win. REALLY earn Most Valuable.

Because Most Valuable doesn’t just have to be for the Giants and NFL. It can be for celebrities and regular people too.

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For Denny, who ran the marathon yesterday

Not every To Do list has value, even in completion.

Accomplishments fill time. They tire you to your bones, make you sleep better. But they are just done things, sometimes.

Stand in this group if you run in circles to wear yourself out, to alleviate the boredom.

Come over here by the machine, if you move your feet back in forth, in place, to relieve the pressure valve.

Sit here and rest your weary bones if you are worn out from staring at the flickering screen, tired of worshipping its edgelessness.

That room filled with stacks of books is packed full of time made worthy.

This room where I nurse my fears is full of time degraded.

It’s that mass of human flesh, I hate, pressing forward in the cliched crowd, like 26 miles were nothing. Like in one aerial photo the cattle will manuever their way across the Narrows bridge toward another of my failure boxes. Tick tick, the thousands go by.

How I rather see them, one by one, like their sweatdrops. Hands reaching for water. Shoes dragging on pavement. Through Queens and Brooklyn:the quiet halls of where Hassidic Jews glanced up and away. The shrieks of clamouring song raised in triumphant return– two or three voices for each runner — along the color-soaked park.

Where should I go now, to survive the empty day?

Lined paper, even filled with tasks, stagnates without this animated pressure.

Not in place. Not waiting. Not moving in mere circles.

Forward momentum should carry me. Even when the finish is spectral, brutal or far in the distance. 

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