No Such Thing as Bad Press

Hello again.

New York Magazine online posted a weekend getaway feature about Beacon last week. The local response to the article - from what I've overheard or solicited - is that it fails to promote an authentic experience and that there are blatant omissions.

Poppy's does indeed have the best grass-fed beef burgers I've ever tasted. They are expensive and he should stay open later (for the desperate post-commute search for decent take-out that isn't sushi), but Poppy's is right across Main Street from School of Jellyfish (included in the article, justifiably). Perhaps the author felt that the burger joint recently grabbed the spotlight on the Food Network and was no longer in need of buzz. Frankly, I won't ever set foot again in Superfood after paying $6 for a seltzer and after the owner woke up G. very late on a school night. Okay, so the ginger was freshly ground and, uh, well...that's about it. And what about Bank Square? Ella's Bellas make me cry they are so good and their namesake is pretty damn cute. I mean, you practically smack right into this coffee house while stepping off the train. The River Terrace? Really?

I support NYM's editorial catering to the Manhattan mindset. I read this article and I instantly recognize the audience for which it is written. It's true there really isn't anywhere you can go in Beacon for a glass of wine al fresco, along the Hudson. That's what these readers would expect and we don't have many options. The River Terrace seems to be built on a colony of mosquitoes and Amacord is way too expensive (and nowhere near the water). We do have Artisan's weekly wine tastings, which are not mentioned in the article even though tours of Bannerman Island are, despite the fact that apparently they just discovered a live mine there (oh, the futility of those cool looking hard hats). The one secret that really should not be best-kept is that the Metro-North train to Beacon leaves from Grand Central, not Penn Station! This glaring misprint and some omissions make me wonder if the author was ever actually here, or just surfed the internet. I imagine a bunch of potential Beacon fans ending up in Rhinecliff instead, in search of $6 seltzers.

Fact checking. It no longer seems to be a part of the editorial process.

As a PR professional, I am ecstatic about the piece, at least because Electric Windows is first up. Grumbling over these inaccuracies and misprints is like agonizing over a chiron when you're on Letterman. Touted as the "go-to insider guide" in its online media kit, nymag.com reaches 5.7 million users per month. I know that Beacon has been featured in the press before as a destination, with mixed results. Main Street businesses are still struggling. I haven't lived here long enough to comment. I can say that it has been a pleasure to work with local organizations like Local 845 and Open Space, as well as Blackbird Attic, Beacon's newest and best consignment shop.

I look forward to George Mansfield's new visitor's center.

In other news, SWAT finally came back to the Boo Radley house on my block to tow the various disabled cars from the driveway. After a previous incident in which one crazy neighbor tried to kill another neighbor and my entire street was in lockdown, there had been a lot of suspicious comings and goings at the green house, including one kid zooming in and out on his motorcycle to presumably deal drugs from the stoop. At one point, a pit bull was chained up in the backyard, practically suffocating in last week's terrible heat wave. As we like to say, it ain't Cold Spring.

Tonight, after F's Beacon Deserves Better meeting, we'll meet at the Piggy Bank for some live music by Tin Pan. One of my favorite local artists, Catherine Welshman, is unveiling new paintings at an opening on Saturday night at Hudson Beach Glass. The only thing that would keep me away is the opportunity to be poolside in Connecticut. I'll take it where I can get it. Apparently, we're back up to 100 degrees this weekend.

Gratitude

Thank you, friends
I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you
I'm so grateful for all the things you helped me do.
--Alex Chilton




Six months ago I became a permanent resident of the Hudson Valley. I know now that coming here was one of the most important decisions I've ever made. It wasn't an easy transition, and there were days when I really doubted myself, but I have never felt alone.

Thank you, friends:

A big hug to Shannon at Shambhala Yoga Center for the intense chakra work (especially #1 and #4) and helping me get my yoga practice to its highest level in 10 years. Shannon was one of my first new friends in Beacon, and Shambhala has become like a second home to me. Shannon's husband Harrison Cannon's band, M Shanghai String Band, is playing tonight at The Piggy Bank, starting at 8:00 PM.

I subbed a few times over the winter for Ken Bolton at Open Space Gallery while he was snowboarding. Ken and I go way back. Proprietors Daniel Weise and Kalene Rivers also run a design firm, Thundercut. I recently danced my ass off at one of Dan and Kalene's Next Step parties, a fundraiser to help raise cash for Beacon's Electric Windows project. They are purveyors of cool and a lovely couple with a really cute kid.

Thank you, Artisan Wine Shop, for feeding my addiction. I love your Friday and Saturday wine-tastings and your weekly specials. Without you, I am nothing. I plan to attend this evening's event, from which local comedian (and Artisan staffer) David Rees will be live-blogging. David recently performed at Open Space, where he achieved pure gestalt as Count Andrew Dice Clay. ("Ooh, I am over here now.") Tonight, Artisan is serving wines from the Loire Valley and Campania. Tomorrow, French burgundies are on the table, after which I hope to make it to Greg Slick's opening at Gallery G.

Nicole's new Community Cat Coalition has been making great progress. The little orange tabby who was hanging around my back doorstep, Oliver, is scheduled for neutering and shots later this month, after which he can be adopted. I will miss him, but I've helped find him an existence better than scrounging around for food and risking injury or death. Counter to what I previously posted, do not send donations to P.A.N.T., as they are not at all related to C.C.C. More information is on Nicole's website.

For an "unemployed" person, I have been keeping busy. Kaufman Center's Face the Music youth ensemble has a bunch of performances coming up in the spring, including Merkin Hall on May 27, when they will perform works by Nico Muhly, Paul Desenne and Joe Phillips. I have also been working on a new documentary about the annual Tour Divide mountain bike race, titled Ride the Divide, directed by Hunter Weeks and produced by Mike Dion and my good friend Joe Cantwell. The film premieres at the Vail Film Festival next month and will be available on all media platforms soon thereafter. I've mentioned before my true feelings about bicycles. The personal stories of these hardcore bikers, one of them the first woman to finish the race, are truly inspiring to me.

I've recently hooked up with Stephen Clair, who is Beacon's preeminent music presenter. It's nice to be back in the swing/jazz/rock/blues/folk of things. His Local 845 organization produces gigs around town, including Piggy Bank Fridays. Since last November, Stephen has been organizing events to help benefit Beacon's first-ever Riverfest, including a very delicious pancake breakfast. The free, live concert is scheduled for Saturday, June 26 (Thundercut designed the logo). A digital platform for Beacon Riverfest is TK, so here's a recent post from Stephen from beaconcitizen.com:

For two years, Local 845 has been bringing live original music to the Howland Cultural Center, Open Space Gallery, the Piggy Bank Restaurant, Zuzu’s, individual store openings, house concerts, art openings, the Beacon Block Party, and now Spire Studios. The musicians have been freaking outstanding and they’ve hailed from all corners of the U.S. as well as Beacon itself. A lot of what’s driven it has been the steady enthusiasm from the audiences, who are mostly Beaconites. People say they’re grateful and I believe them. Audiences have also come from as far away as NYC and Albany because the media has even helped out. I’m Stephen Clair and I’m a musician. I have always been a musician. I’m doing this because, try as I might, my family did not move to a MUSIC TOWN when we left Brooklyn three years ago. We moved to Beacon. And I wanted to live in a town where there wasn’t just good live music—but ridiculously good ORIGINAL live music—all the time.

Bands appearing at Beacon Riverfest 2010 will be announced soon.

The big news is that I begin working full-time later this month for a freelance gig at IFCtv, where I will be filling in as VP, Public Relations while Marie and Colin make room for Baby Moore. It is time for me to say good-bye to my carefree part-time existence, although I'm excited to see old friends and looking forward to a regular pay-check. The commute will bear little challenge to my new lifestyle, I hope.

I am also celebrating a birthday this month. It seems like only yesterday we were digging out from under 3 feet of snow and convening on Bank Sq. Coffeehouse for the only internet access in town. Soon I'll be dipping my fingers and toes in Fishkill Creek and smelling the fresh-cut grass in my backyard.

errance/errantry

"Though each love is experienced as unique and though each subject rejects the notion of repeating it elsewhere later on, he sometimes discovers in himself a kind of diffusion of amorous desire; he then realizes he is doomed to wander until he dies, from love to love."

--"The Ghost Ship," A Lover's Discourse, Roland Barthes

* * *



“What wife?”

My 54-year-old father dropped a bomb in the car. He had just told me for the first time that he was married to another woman before he met my mom. My scattered thoughts were brought suddenly, sharply back into focus by this news. Boxy interior. Dusty vents. Vinyl dash. My grizzled and unshaven father behind the wheel of our old Volvo sedan.

I asked him again, “What wife?”

It was 1986, the summer between my sophomore and junior year in college. My father and I were on our way to Philadelphia to visit my mother in the intensive care unit at University of Pennsylvania, where she was in a coma from an operation on her brain. Her doctor had encountered difficulties during surgery and things did not go according to plan.

“Oh boy, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, his eyes still on the road. “I think your brother knows. He didn’t tell you?” His response so vague and casual it was maddening.

“Everyone knows but me?” My brain flipping back through the years to find maybe one missed word or hint. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered. “No, I most certainly did not know that you were married to anyone other than mom.”

He made the 2-hour drive from New Jersey to the hospital almost every day and sometimes he slept over in hotels. I joined him when I wasn’t selling fresh-water decaf coffee beans and mango chutney at the local gourmet food store, the same hometown job I had before graduating from high school. I was happy to have it back this summer because it provided the flexibility I needed to be near my parents. I was a 20-year old student in an art school a few hours away. Under different circumstances, I would’ve stayed closer to campus. My brother, four years older, was busy working as a non-profit administrator in New York and couldn’t always make the trip.

I looked forward to these car rides with my dad. They were an escape for me, although our destination couldn’t be more real. They were a chance to have him to myself. It wasn’t until this particular day that I saw how deeply distressed and distracted he really was. I managed my fears differently. They were hidden away behind my more immediate concern for this person’s wellbeing. It’s a safer state of mind for me.

We were reminiscing about funny or important moments in our lives together when he seemed to have lost track of his thoughts and introduced his first wife. I felt betrayed. I didn’t know the man sitting next to me. Once the initial shock passed, I asked more questions. He answered them in short sentences. It might have felt like betrayal to him, too.

In the early 50s, my father married his high school sweet heart in his native Youngstown, Ohio. Soon after that, he was stationed away in a non-combat position during the Korean War. The way he explained it to me, by the time he returned home, he was a changed person and no longer in love. Their childless marriage was annulled after four years.

My brain struggled to process this new information. It explained why there are so few photos of my dad from before my parent’s engagement—his previous life banished to someone else’s attic. It added a new dimension to my mother’s crippling insecurities for not feeling on par with my dad’s real-world experiences. On that hot afternoon in August, just days shy of their 26th wedding anniversary, I realized for the first time that my parents were complicated grown-ups with personal histories exclusive of my own youthful narrative.

Memories of the rest of that day are hazy. I wanted to quiz my mother when we arrived at the hospital later that morning. Silent and confused, I sat next to her for a long time. The woman permanently asleep in a hospital bed in Philadelphia—our family matriarch—had suddenly become a strange woman with a mysterious past. She never told me her side of the story. She died a few weeks later at the age of 48. A few weeks after that, I returned to school and nearly flunked out. Ten years later my father remarried. Five years ago, he died at the age of 72.

I never talked about it with anyone, except for a brief recap with my brother. Over time I simply forgot. Life took over and the experience was replaced with new ones. I moved to New York City after graduation and stayed there for 20 years. I survived a string of difficult and disappointing relationships with men. These days, I’m lucky to find a romantic interest who isn’t already married. It’s common that there is at least one former or maybe dead spouse in their life, and a few kids still very much in the picture. Many of my former lovers and close friends are divorced—some of them twice, some remarried now with children. My own parents’ paths crossed and then separated, leaving one person behind (hopefully at peace) and setting the other on a new road.

The legacy of that car ride with my father only recently became clear to me. It seems we live in a different time now, when enduring love is exceptional. Never having been married at this age is considered a red flag rather than a virtue. I was recently accompanying a close friend to a jeweler in a nearby town, where he would be returning his ex-wife’s engagement ring to be re-appraised and sold. Driving up the highway that afternoon in early February—a blur of snow and cold air outside my window—I drew a final connection between my family’s intricate past and my present-day encounters with love interrupted, knowing early in my education that it’s possible for it to be born again.

* * *

For animal lovers: Please consider making a donation to P.A.N.T., a grass roots, all-volunteer organization committed to resolving the stray and feral cat overpopulation crisis in Dutchess County. Nicole has launched a new blog for her Community Cat Coalition, which is dedicated to addressing the problem locally and educating us about "humanely and effectively reducing the free roaming stray and feral cat population via the Trap Neuter Return (TNR) method." There are at least 7 stray cats just on my block who hang out on my stoop. A stunning photographer and tireless public servant, Nicole has been working on this since moving here last July, raising awareness, building and distributing shelters in high-volume areas, and developing a volunteer task force. She has made a lot of progress in a remarkably short period of time, but is still in need of funds, volunteers and donated space.

For art lovers: The painting is by Catherine Welshman. She has organized a Valentine's Day group show at Spire Studios, opening on Saturday.

Accentuate the Positive

Updated 3:03PM: I was going to write about how I had nothing to write about. I have been intimidated by missives I am reading on New Year's resolutions. Indeed there are issues in the world that call for right relations -- like last night's devastating earthquake in Haiti -- but I've been too far into my own head these days to get on the bus. I was planning to address the year ahead, looming large in front of us. Then Eugene posted a link this week that has kept me awake at night.

WNYC's Brian Lehrer recently hosted a guest named Jerry McGill, an artist and a paraplegic. His memoir, Dear Marcus: Speaking to the Man Who Shot Me, is a letter McGill wrote to the person who shot and paralyzed him at the age of 12 -- a man he has never met. The link was followed up by another link to a brief interview in The New York Times with Barbara Ehrenreich, whose latest book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, is an indictment against blind optimism.

Also of interest is a friend of mine who recently rediscovered Don Hertzfeldt's animation. My friend particularly identifies with Mr. Fluffy, who hops around singing "Yay! Life is good...this is fun..." only to end the song with "My anus is bleeding." I can't explain why this is funny, but Hertzfeldt discovered his own creative coping mechanism for malaise and it makes people laugh.

I think they're all on the same track, despite the surface differences. McGill is testifying that he learned to subvert his anger into positivity in order to survive the attack and live an emotionally healthy life. In his interview, he says that the incident changed his path in life and showed him things in it that he may not have otherwise known were positives. As he says in the interview, "nobody has done anything great out of a place of anger."

Ehrenreich criticizes people like Oprah Winfrey for promoting a false sense of positivity and the worst kind of self-help. The author believes that "mind over matter" is not a proven cure for mental or physical illness.

Oprah is an effective guru for an LCD audience. Her faith and positivity are very real, but packaged for and re-appropriated by a public looking for a quick fix. This is what makes her very rich. The wellness industry has been relatively successful at promoting physical fitness and a good diet as cures for depression, but it is far surpassed by the psycho-pharmaceutical industry in market share. As I write this, I am listening to a segment on the radio about a book titled The Cultural Shaping of Mental Illness: The Globalization of the American Psyche. The author is discussing GlaxoSmithKline's distribution of Paxil in Japan. 50 Steps to Simple Happiness is #6 on the Most Popular Stories list on The New York Times website.

You need only to open your eyes and look around you to see that life is not good. There is indeed a lot in the world to be unhappy about. The holidays, which are mercifully now over, bring a persistent and unshakable cloud of "the old ennui" that is fueled by an over-abundance of cheer. Yesterday I was in a local shopping mall and it felt like the most dismal place on earth, and living proof that the economy is far from recovery (the only way I could afford to be there was because stores are practically giving away their merchandise, a great opportunity for someone in need of retail therapy on an extremely limited budget.)

In my own life, the topic of positivity is dear to my heart. It is a fascination, a hobby and something I struggle with all the time. Ultimately I am a happy person, but I am capable of becoming very seriously depressed. And life has handed me several occasions to be so. Like a lot of people right now, I am again facing a particularly challenging moment in time. What I have been contemplating over the past few weeks is the two possible ways I can go about dealing with my immediate future: 1) with soaring expectations, or 2) with an open but tempered mind.

No matter how much you hope for it, life does not always work out for the best. The higher you set your sights, the harder your disappointments will come crashing down around you. What softens the blow is perspective, which a lot of "wishful thinkers" don't really have because they are too narrowly focused on one outcome. It is an act of liberation to acknowledge that life is endlessly unfair and there is a lot of real things to be sad about. To do so is to free yourself from the "tyranny" of happiness. And the result? You guessed it!

So, rather than struggling to create a list of resolutions for the new year--which I think in itself is an act of negativity and possible defeat, I will instead set a few small intentions for 2010. Some of them have already begun, like making and spending more time with family and with old and new friends. I concur with McGill that anger serves no purpose in life and the best way to subvert your fear into happiness is to surround yourself with people who love you. I intend to drink less alcohol but enjoy it more when I do and I will pay closer attention to the origins and purpose of the food I eat.

I intend to stay open to multiple paths in front of me, with the idea that one of them might be a better opportunity for happiness than what I might have expected. Should I achieve my intentions, I hope to be able to share the resulting positivity.

Addendum: A friend of mine in Beacon, Catherine Welshman (a fellow Williamsburg transplant), is part of a group show opening this Saturday here at the Van Brunt Gallery. The opening is on January 16 from 6 to 9 PM, and the show runs through the end of February. Their website has not been updated, so here are some images of Catherine's recent work, which I love.

Know Thy Farmer

After a few failed attempts over the years, I finally made it to Blue Hill at Stone Barns for dinner. To say that it was a memorable dining experience is a glib understatement. It's culinary Gestalt...a locavore's master class. Nestled in New York farmland just north of Sleepy Hollow, Blue Hill is an eco-gastronomic temple.

Opened in 2004 at the renovated Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, Blue Hill is the brainchild of David and Dan Barber. The entire compound is a working farm and non-profit institution located in Pocantico Hills' Rockefeller State Park, with a mission to teach and advance community-based agriculture.

It started out like any other Saturday. J. and I had planned to check out the Live in HD performance of Les Contes d'Hoffmann, but neither of us would commit to the 4-hour running time. Besides, the worst snow storm in ten years was due to hit at any moment. I was listening to the live opera broadcast on the radio -- the clouds rapidly forming outside -- when L. called to say he had canceled his flight home to Chicago. Alone in the city, he offered to treat both J. and me to dinner at Blue Hill...if he could get a table (it normally takes months of planning).

L. is a man who knows a lot of people. In what seems like another lifetime, we lived together in a storefront loft in Williamsburg. I met him years ago when he was just mapping his way toward success -- a fresh-faced graduate student with two passions: music and money. Following a lucrative career on Wall Street, he now lives and works in the Windy City. Last fall, L. put me in touch with J., another transplant who had recently relocated to Cold Spring.

By noon that day we had a 5 o'clock reservation. By 3 o'clock, I was on the train. By 4 o'clock, with J. and I making our way down Route 9 toward Tarrytown, the snow began to fall.

The gates at Blue Hill at Stone Barns resemble the entrance to a health spa or spiritual retreat, the first indication that we would eventually leave not only sated but enlightened. The restaurant itself lies within a cluster of stone buildings inside the square-shaped compound. Upon being seated inside the ambient-perfect dining hall, we were greeted by what I then called our tour guide (but now I think of him more as our professor), because his role is to prepare diners for the experience directly ahead of them and to explain Chef Dan Barber's philosophy and techniques.

For example: one does not order a la carte from a traditional menu, one is presented with a list of seasonal provisions and chooses between a 6-course or 8-course presentation (4 or 6 savory; 2 sweet). I should note that we were given some options. When I informed them I would not eat lamb's neck, they served the brain instead -- lovingly sauteed with miniature spinach ravioli. The wine list is exempt from the local rule so I enjoyed a nice glass of Finger Lakes Riesling followed by a healthy pour of Burgundy red.

Equipped with props like an over-sized "egg shell" made of bread cracked open to reveal the baked rutabaga inside (bringing to mind more than a few science-fiction films), the professor -- flanked by several able servers -- explained the preparation process for each course. I particularly admired the three-dimensional clear glass bird's nest, lined with real hay.

For three hours, as the snow piled up outside and the wind blew new flakes across the Christmas lights in our window, we indulged in the most exquisite, painstakingly prepared cuisine: dehydrated kale flash-fried with salt, beet sliders, fresh runny eggs with lentils and curry, big eye tuna sushi, marrow with caviar, face bacon, Hudson Valley venison, homemade ice-cream, and chocolates. Oh, and don't forget the little lamb. Even the coffee was exceptional.

Throughout the meal, we marveled at the complexity of Blue Hill. It is more of a social experiment than it is a restaurant. A holistic joining of food, design, science, culture, and the earth itself. I don't think I've ever had a dining experience like this when food tasted exactly the way it should -- the way you imagine it will when it's laid out in raw form in front of you.

But the convergence of old and new friends is what made this evening as remarkable as it was. An unexpected, totally impromptu event precipitated by one very generous man. Three people connected by the past and present, sharing an unforgettable meal on a cold winter's night. I can't think of a better way to share the holiday spirit.

For more information on community-based farming and slow food, Anne Dailey writes about agrarian culture for a variety of publications. Edible Communities publishes a network of local food magazines nationwide.

"...the hearth's fundamental glow."

Whether anybody was home meant everything to a house.
It was more than a major fact: it was the only fact.
The family was the house's soul.
The waking mind was like the light in a house.
The soul was like the gopher in his hole.
Consciousness was to brain as family was to house.
Aristotle: Suppose the eye were an animal--sight would be its soul.
To understand the mind you pictured domestic activity, the hum of related lives on varied tracks, the hearth's fundamental glow.

Jonathan Franzen -- The Corrections (2001)

Last week, in an email exchange, I asked my friend if he was coming home for the holidays. He responded, "where is home?"

It was both a rhetorical and literal question. He does not have a permanent place to live. He claims ambivalence toward Christmas, and I don't care much for it either. I think this is because our familial plates shifted years ago, when we were forced to rethink the notion of home and to differentiate between its place on a map and its undeniable emotional significance. This all comes to a head(ache) during the winter holidays. No matter how one rightfully or honestly feels, home is our North Star and every year we hone in on it like a flock of frenzied pigeons--or we avoid it at all costs.

I have not been home for Christmas-- soulfully speaking -- for more than 20 years. I am always with family but, up until recently, in different places each time. The lack of geographic consistency used to really bother me and for a time I held a grudge. Of course we all know what that gets us: nothing but coal in our stockings.

There have been several pleasant surprises over the years, like the time I spent Christmas Eve at a dinner party on the Bowery. In true Dickensian fashion and in probably the city's most appropriate location for a houseful of orphans, our hosts cooked a delicious roast duck and gave us all presents. There was the time that I lost my ride to my dad's house in Philadelphia on Christmas Eve. I was so pissed that I wanted to entirely skip the next 48 hours. In response, my dad offered to leave home that night and drive all the way up to Brooklyn so I wouldn't be alone. I didn't let him do it. The next morning I woke up in my apartment to the sound of absolutely nothing. The rooms were completely void of holiday vibrations, but the city itself was covered in pristine virgin snow.

Last year at this time I had a job. It was in consumer products, a sector for which the 4th quarter holiday season is crucial to year-round financial stability. The stock market was spiraling and thousands of people were losing their jobs. It's old news now but, at the time, there wasn't a headline that didn't cry out for mercy. In one week, two prominent entertainment companies laid off more than 2,000 people (including many friends). One telecom firm let go of 12,000 people globally in one day. Our company laid off a third of its staff. Part of my duties was to gather daily business news and circulate these items via email to department heads. It got to a point where I could no longer bear to be the messenger of such dismal, heartbreaking news and I stopped doing it.

This year I am unemployed but I'm not worse for wear. I'm not going to work every day with an axe hovering over my neck. I no longer have to listen to hushed, senseless speculations or people crying at their desks, on the phone with their spouses who probably lost their own job earlier that week. "I'm jealous you don't have to work here anymore, it's SO miserable. I don't know how we'll survive without you." You will find a way. Merry Christmas.

That said, I won't be disappointed if Santa leaves a job for me under the tree (figuratively speaking, as I have decided to go "green" this year and not buy one.)

Christmas Eve is the absolute best time to be in New York City and that's where I'll be. When it comes right down to it, I want to be where it feels most familiar. On my list are the Red Book, Kandinsky, and "The Lovely Bones." Archetypes, expressionism, surrealism, insanity, and death. These are my themes for this holiday season.

"There were the Useful Presents"

My mother was obsessed with family tradition, but she was a freak about Christmas. There has been so much ritual in my early years that I eschew most of them now in my adult life.

Every holiday season she organized a different color, pattern and theme for decorating the house -- almost never to be repeated. One year in the 70s, she put the house on the "Holly Trail" tour. It took frenzied weeks for her to plan with the other ladies in town and, for one excruciating day, we were all living in ersatz Victorian England.

She knitted us stockings with an image of Santa climbing out of (or into) a chimney, with real angora fur in his beard. My brother's stocking had bells on it, mine did not. Every year their contents included, among mini utilitarian items, Droste chocolate fruit. They came wrapped in colorful foil in a holiday box and you could eat them in sections. They don't make them anymore. I still have the stockings.

I get misty when I think of the annual Christmas pageant at our little country church at the bottom of Stanton Mountain. If it sounds ridiculously quaint, that's because it was. As older kids at midnight mass, we sang the new-fangled hymn "Pass it On" while systematically igniting our congregation candles and filling the room with a glowing light. "It only takes a spark to get a fire going..."

We were prisoners of "family time," including the decorating of the tree, dinners, the annual Christmas Tree Hunt, Dickens Days, the Nutcracker at the high school, the Messiah at Clinton Presbyterian, and lots and lots of church. Coordinating our own social lives around Mom's rigid schedule became increasingly challenging as we grew older and more self-involved. It seemed as though every move we made during those times was carefully choreographed--perhaps my mother's effort to re-write her own foggy childhood.

Every Christmas morning, like millions of other American children, my brother and I sat at the top of the stairs and waited for our parents to amble out of bed. What was unique about our ritual was the "finger thing." My brother invented it. He would put his fingertips together in a sort of nucleus and I would do the same, then we'd join our finger-nuclei together into a "mad scientist" burst of uncontrolled excitement. You had to be there to fully understand, but it was one of his many brilliant little pantomimes.

In lieu of the ubiquitous "Top Ten" lists of cool gifts always littering the inter-web this time of year, I thought I'd share a favorite literary version:

There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why.

--Dylan Thomas, A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954)

As for the here and now, it's been slow going but I finally broke down and bought some scented candles and decorations 50% off from Rite-Aid. Being in a house now, it felt only right that I should exploit my first-ever grown-up staircase by wrapping the banister in a string of white lights -- although I won't be sitting at the top on Christmas Day.

December Second Saturday:

Being the gift-giving season, Open Space will be hosting its annual print and zine show, with affordable limited-run art prints (opening from 6 to 10 pm.) The ongoing Local Artists' sale features paintings, prints, pottery, jewelry, and sculpture (6 to 8 pm, with live music.) Shops on Main Street are now open late on Thursdays, too, for holiday commerce and good cheer. I think there might even be house tours here next week.

If I don't get around to posting again soon, it's important to mention that I will finally be attending one of this season's "Met Opera: Live in HD" performances. I worked at the Met when it launched this incredible and incredibly successful audience development initiative. I was directly involved in the publicity and marketing of the series -- an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life. These are absolutely live opera performances from the Met's stage via satellite. It's the next best thing to being there and much more affordable.

Les Contes d'Hoffmann is playing on Saturday, December 19, at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie and somewhere in Fishkill, although I can't find the exact location on the inter-web.