Fooooood

          Tonight, there is a baby shower after work, and I’m looking forward to it because, aside from it being one of those lovely, happy, social occasions, it also means that I don’t have to make dinner. This is not to say that in my house, I am always the one to do so— far from it. We both take turns. This is just one of those nights when Brendan is teaching later in the evening and the task would be left to me. So I brought some cheese and a baguette as contribution to this potluck shower, and in exchange I will be fed for the evening with not so much as one greasy frying pan to contend with.

         One of my friends said to me recently, “You always have the best cheese at your house.” I told her that this may have been one of the greatest compliments of my life. I love to go to a local place, try cheese samples, and arrange a variety of sharp, blue, nutty, and soft cheeses. I guess it makes me feel very Parisian or something. Life without cheese and chocolate in particular would not be okay. Often people say to me, "Oh, I don't have a sweet tooth. I like salty things". I never understand this because I crave salty things too. I like salty things, sweet things, sour things and hot things. I just like all the things. I certainly feel a strong passion for eating food, but less so about cooking. I love to talk about flavors and try new dishes in restaurants. I also like occasionally cooking for friends, but the idea of feeling obligated to cook every night simply to feed myself is exhausting. And I live with Captain Hypoglycemic, so we like to keep him fed before he gets "hangry". When we improvise cooking something for myself or just the two of us, we always seem to be missing one ingredient and accumulate a small mountain of dirty pots and pans. And with our schedules we’re often not eating until 8:30 or 9:00, when I am hungry around 5:30 (Yes, I am an old person). We are lucky that we both like dinner salads quite a lot. One of my friends recently reminded me that I really used to enjoy cooking in college. Maybe it was the novelty of being able to serve it to several others every night. As the daughter of two caterers, however, my relationship with the culinary arts seems a complicated one. I learned basic cooking skills at an early age but in our fast-paced contemporary lifestyle, who can even keep up with all the ambitious expectations of the new age foodie?

          One big factor for me and I suspect, for much of my generation these days is societal pressure and expectations concerning health. With nutritional research ever-changing, and confusing statistics abounding, extra control issues are popping up all over the country. Food suddenly needs to simultaneously be non-fattening, all natural, organic, local, grass fed, gluten-free, hormone-free, cage-free, dairy-free, paleo friendly, environmentally friendly—you name it and the list of fears goes on and on. If you can just make it at home, that would solve a multitude of problems with food, right? As a result of what should be a simplifying approach, there is a new cropping up of serious, let’s call them, upper middle class domestics.

          I know that we are living in a nation with an obesity problem and we eat too many processed and high fructose corn syrup laden foods. I am all about eating whole foods, like those of our grandparents, but it can all go too far. In our efforts to get back to basics in food, there is this new homespun, homemade, grassroots trend that I find full of unrealistic expectations, at least for my lifestyle. I suspect that this, like most pretentious, guilt-inducing crazes these days, finds its’ epicenter in Brooklyn. There was a hysterical blog I read recently parodying current foodie fears and obsessions. The fictional protagonist in this particular whole food struggle narrative, distrusting a number of food groups, ended up eating nothing but rabbit, (raised in the home of course), kale, and vitamin D supplements, only to end up with massive kidney stones. The irony here is that the comments section was filled with questions, (mostly from Brooklyn residents), about how to successfully raise rabbits. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for people who work fulltime and have families to take all these extra steps toward putting a meal on the table.

         This is not to say that if you enjoy and have time for activities like raising your own animals and making your own detergent, sunscreen, mustard etc., that you shouldn’t feel free to go do so with reckless abandon. I personally, feel no such inclinations. My old roommate declared excitedly one day that “we” should make our own butter! She is a very good baker, and enjoys the process and the results very much, but I had to inform her that I had no interest. The butter they sell in the store suits me just fine.

          Baking is another realm in which I have very little interest in venturing into deeply. There are several reasons for this. The first is that I do not need to develop a habit that is calorically extravagant when usually a small piece of chocolate will do the trick for me. I like cookies as much as the next gal, but cookie batter is an evil I am not able to resist and I end up eating my way through the entire process. As far as cake is concerned, for most of my childhood, there was a perpetual stream of leftover wedding cake sitting in both the fridge and the freezer at home. I am talking classic 80’s and 90’s Italian bakery cake, slathered in bulky layers of congealed sugary frosting. As a result, I have such disgust and disdain for bakery cake, that we won’t even serve cake at our wedding. Anyone who has half a tastebud knows that cakes made from a box are far superior to all other cakes anyway. My grandmother made beautiful Ukrainian breads, lemon meringue pies, and rice puddings from scratch all her life. When my cousin requested her special birthday cake for her baby shower, everyone made a big fuss over “Grandma’s special cake”. When someone at the shower asked her the secret, Grandma replied; “Duncan Hines: Butter Recipe Golden”. It remains my family’s cake mix of choice. Cakes are for special occasions anyway. I say, live a little and consume some preservatives. Cake mix is just fine by me since the act of baking itself doesn’t suit my personality anyway. I am decent at making pie crusts and I like pie enough, but once the thing is thrown in the oven, I can’t futz with it. And futzing is a must for me.

          This brings me to my final topic. For someone who doesn’t enjoy cooking very much, I am very quick to boss others around in the kitchen. Just as I have very strong opinions about design aesthetics in the home, so too, I feel strongly about food sanitation, preparation, and presentation. My parents’ have imparted much of their wisdom regarding these components. I actually have a friend who texts me with questions of how long he can leave a particular food in the fridge or at room temperature before it is inedible. If I cannot reply reliably, I will call my mother and ask. So, I am one of those obnoxious kitchen hoverers, who, even when not asked to help, demands that meat doesn’t get overcooked and that the knife for the raw chicken doesn’t come anywhere near the vegetables. I'll also loudly condemn any items with any ingredients I can't pronounce, so I'm really just as bad as any conflicted Brooklynite. Not that I do anything particularly productive in this process, mind you.  I see myself in a supervisory role. 

          One time the fiancé’s friends called and invited him to dinner. He asked them if I could come along because we were both free that night. They said I could, but only if I promised not to help cook. “She gets too bossy.” I couldn’t even be mad. I know how ridiculous I can get after all. We all appreciated the special irony that the only woman in the group was to stay out of the kitchen.

"Work is the curse of the drinking class" ~Oscar Wilde

A few weeks ago, two friends, my fiancée, and I had the amazing opportunity to be tourists in Ireland with the additional bonus of experiencing an Irish wedding.  Trust me, it is an experience.  I must say that while I was excited to see a new landscape and couldn’t wait to see my dear friend Kate on the occasion of her wedding, my past experiences in the UK had me prepared for bland, fattening food and dreary, depressing weather.  I was really pleasantly surprised by how flavorful every dish we ordered was.  We had robust stews served with hearty brown bread, fresh smoked salmon, garlic and white wine mussels, Bailey’s cheesecake, and plenty of Guinness.  Compared with the entirely white, lukewarm plates devoid of flavor I had continually been served as an exchange student in England, I was delighted.  Considering the reputation of their climate, we had pretty great weather, with the exception of two days- the worst being a monsoon-like situation in Dublin.  That day, we just found a lot of excuses to head into shops and cafes for hot chocolate. 

Hot chocolate is not the beverage of choice in Dublin, mind you.  I was personally struck by how apparent the Irish stereotype was in this city.  At night, the Temple Bar area in Dublin is like Bourbon St or the strip in Vegas.  It’s the hen and stag party central of the UK and with the city center being quite small, it is extremely congested with drunken partiers. Then we’d see people stumbling around drunk at 2:00 in the afternoon in the streets of Dublin— seemingly functional members of society otherwise.  We took a tour of the Jameson factory and our guide once said: “At this point in the distillery process, the alcohol is 80 proof, and tastes extremely foul, but for my money you can’t beat it.  You’re drunk instantly for 40 minutes and hungover an hour later.”  Maybe I am getting to be an old, stodgy American, but that didn’t actually sound fun to me.  I suppose I should give the city of Dublin the benefit of the doubt, because we were there over a weekend.

Our first night’s stay in the Dublin hostel was an adventure unto itself.  The only space available for that particular night was in a co-ed dorm for twelve.  Brendan was on a later flight, so Christina, Rachele, and I were on our own that night and then were scheduled to stay at Kate and Peter’s apartment the second night.  Having stayed in four or five hostels before in Europe and having had no problems, I figured we’d be fine.  We met a handful of gentlemen with whom we’d be sharing a room when we tried to catch a short afternoon snooze.  We’d gotten only about 3 hours sleep on the red-eye.  They were very cordial when we asked if they would please be quiet at four in the afternoon.  We figured we’d better stay out late that night, in preparation for the wedding, but also to give our dorm mates ample partying time.  Surely, they would be in shortly after 2:30 or so.  How naïve we were. 

Our hostel's vending machine

When we arrived back at the room, there were several people asleep, and no sooner did I get into bed than the man in the bed next to me started to snore… loudly.  He flipped over, and I considered myself saved.  Falling asleep in an unfamiliar bed is an arduous task for me, but I was bleary-eyed enough from the flight to be up to it.  Approximately, every half hour following though, another loud drunk Irishmen would roll into the room and talk loudly for an hour.  Every one of them had a mouth he couldn’t kiss his grandmother with, (and trust me, I’m no prude.  We were told later that one word in particular doesn’t hold the stigma it does in America).  Most of them had actually lost their room keys and just banged on the door until their friends let them in.  The one guy came in crying that his friends had left him and then continued to loudly extol that it didn’t matter because his cheeseburger would be the best he’d ever eaten and would save his night.  He then chewed it very loudly while continuing “Ode to his Cheeseburger” for another half hour until he finally fell asleep mid-bite, aspirating cheeseburger with every breath.  It was shortly after two men started throwing punches at one another above Rachele’s bunk that Rachele and a friendly and sleepy Scottish man in the corner insisted repeatedly that they please be quiet.  I approximate that this was around 5 or 6am.

And then they woke up at 8am, and all started chatting again.  I know it was 8am because I asked Christina what time it was and one of them said: “There’s more than one of you?” (I assume he meant that there was more than one joy-killing America woman in the room.)  “YES!” we all yelled; “There are three of us”.  It was about an hour later, when the chatting hadn’t ceased, when I suggested with no too few profanities, that they find another space among the many common rooms of the hostel, in which to chat.  When this didn’t work, I shouted: “Why can’t you sleep until 11:00 like other drunks?!”

One of them did apologize when he left, but when I also found that they had eaten my precious Galaxy Ripple chocolate bar, we took the bottle of whiskey they’d left, checked out, and hit the road.  We enjoyed a blissful, night of peaceful sleep at Kate and Peter’s that night. 

Furbo Beach- Spiddal, Galway

Our next stop was Galway and I highly recommend it.  Galway City is a great university town and its surroundings are wild and beautiful.  We tried an “Air bed and Breakfast” stay for the first time and our hostess was lovely and animated and wanted to show us all around her town outside the city.  She took us on a local tour of abandoned stone homes.  We would reach a structure where the entire room was the size of our apartment’s living room, and she would say: “The family that left here in 1920 had ten kids and all twelve of them slept right here.”  Travel is often a good jolt to one’s perspective.

Cliffs of Moher

Brendan deserves a shout-out for navigating the narrow and windy roads, in a stick shift, with this left hand, on the opposite side of the road.  Those of us with minimal standard vehicle experience had to bow out of that one.  The drive to the Cliffs of Moher was pretty eventful, and shall we say, stomach tossing, but the view was spectacular and unlike anything you’d see on the east coast.  We also found a pub in a nearby town that Brendan and his family had visited when he was fourteen.  We had to call his parents on our prepaid mobile to be reminded of the name of the place, but we were happy we did.  My cousin who’d spent a semester in Dublin said that all you had to do in Ireland was see the Cliffs of Moher, catch some great live Irish music, and befriend the locals, who are all admittedly, extremely friendly.  This brings us to our next stop on our travels: The Wedding.

We had been warned by the bride that at Irish weddings, they close down the bar at 3am… to restock.  She even said she chose a castle with a lot of couches “so the Americans could rest”.  And so, we trained all week to stay up and party, as if for a decathlon.  As a friend from Galway, now living in Boston put it: “Yes, a decathlon is a good analogy.  There’s the beer round, the whiskey round… Ok, there are only two rounds, but you have to do them at least five times each.”  The ceremony began at 2:30 in the afternoon.  When I went to bed at 4:30am the party was still going. 

The Bride and Groom

First of all, Kate and Peter have a beautiful love story and I would be remiss if I didn’t tell it.  Kate, originally from California, was in her second year of grad school with us at NEC when she was at a bar in South Boston for St. Patrick’s Day.  She literally bumped into a handsome Irishman and the love of her life there.  Peter pursued her that night, telling her that even though he lived in Dublin, people meet for a reason and that that’s what phones and email are for.  So it was after about 3 or 4 get-togethers in Boston, California, and Dublin, that she told us she was going to move over there to be with him.  Her logic made sense.  She didn’t have plans after grad school, she was burnt out with singing, and she thought she would take a chance.  I cried, but then that’s not unusual for me.  I was worried for her.  She said; “If he turns out to be an asshole, I’ll come home.”  That was five years ago and she hasn’t regretted her leap of faith.  Peter has turned out to be every bit as amazing as she deserves.

Back to the wedding itself, the castle hotel in Sligo where it took place was stupidly beautiful.  It was once-in-a-lifetime, can’t-believe-how-idyllic-this-is beautiful.  Kate told us the church for the ceremony was a small gray stone church on a corner, and we must have passed about four gray stone churches on the road there, (along with plenty of cows and sheep butts).  After the beautiful Mass, it was back to the castle for cocktail hour.  Then, there was a slowly served, but decadent dinner.  “Oh, more potatoes?  But I have potatoes on my plate already,” seemed very funny to the Irish when I said it.   There were several toasts, including a rather emotional one from the groom.  He made a connection to Kate’s Irish great-grandmother and how Kate was now, in a sense home after her family had sought and found a better life.  Then the Irish band played, followed by traditional Irish dance led by children and the teacher from a local school.  And then at about 11:30, the DJ arrived to set up.  At 12:00 they served sandwiches and tea and coffee.  This is a key step in the process for recharge.  We are told that if this does not happen, the wedding will be remembered for ten and twenty years to come as that damned wedding with no sandwiches.  What we realized later in the evening, is that while we were dancing for the first two hours of the DJ’s timeslot, the Irish were resting in between, and so they were able to dance until he stopped at 3:30, while most of the Americans were more or less prone on the couches.

 

And then, the “Sing-song” began in the bar.  Apparently this is a thing.  There's no piano or anything.  Everyone just belts out the old Irish tunes.  Sometimes there were solos, but mostly it was just a group effort until everyone forgot all the words.  Peter’s dad has an ardent love of country western music so there was randomly a good deal of Patsy Cline and Hank Williams thrown in there.  Peter’s dad was also yelling at everyone who was not singing. This is my kind of after-party.  Too bad I started falling asleep in the middle of it.  I nearly wept when Brendan told me the next morning that it was 10:00 and checkout was at 11:00.  The partying continued for several days after back in Dublin, but we were headed in a different direction. 

Next it was off to Limerick County where Christina’s godmother, Joan lives. Upon our arrival, Joan had ordered us fresh fish and chips and she and her quick-witted sisters entertained us for the evening.  The next day we visited nearby cities.  Adare was a lovely, albeit touristy old village full of thatched cottages.  At this point I could barely walk I was so tired, and I was often blinded by my own involuntary tears of exhaustion.  (You may be noticing a theme here.)  Then we headed to Limerick where there was a River Festival going on.  The appeal of legally drinking outdoors in public places never gets old for Americans.

Joan also lives next door to a complex of “Travelers”.  That’s right.  Irish gypsies now essentially own the town of Rathkeale where she grew up.  They have these enormous stone mansions with gates and padlocks, where they keep all their things, and when they are in town, they park their trailers outside of them, where they continue to live.  We even visited a Travelers’ cemetery, because we were told we would see nothing like it elsewhere.  Every elaborately carved gravestone was decorated to the nines with balloons, plastic flowers, handwritten messages, and even baskets of champagne and chocolate.  We were intrigued to see that so many of them had passed in their 30’s and 40’s because of all the inbreeding.  Ever since spending a semester in Rome, (and performing in the opera Carmen), I’ve been fascinated with gypsy culture and how they have remained an “other” for so long.  Apparently today, it is in large part due to the massive amounts of drug money they make.

Our last night there, Joan said we had to get outside for a walk because the Irish air is particularly fresh and we certainly agreed.  I’ll remember the greenness of the hills and the smell of the peat in the air, hopefully as clearly as I will remember our night in that Dublin hostel. 



Token sheep butt shot

The Secret to Longevity

          A few weeks ago, my Mom’s family lost its matriarch, my great-aunt Mac, or Macdalena in German. She was the remaining sister of my grandfather— the second oldest of six children, and she managed to outlive them all, at 103 years old. She would have been 104 in July. She was legally blind at this point, due to a hereditary disease where the peripheral vision degenerates, but she was lucid, and for a 103 year old, she was pretty independent. She wasn’t cooped up in a nursing home, but in the condo she and her husband had bought years ago. She had a devoted caretaker, Marie. Aunt Mac’s dignity always being maintained, Marie was never referred to as a caretaker by the family, but first as her “driver” and then as her friend. As her obituary so nicely stated, she retained her sharp wit and accurate memory right up until the end. Several people have remembered the way she left my dad’s 70th birthday party in July. She stood in the doorway and waved saying: “See you next year!” You may recall that when she found out about my engagement, she immediately quipped: “He was supposed to ask me first”. She was so sharp in fact, that just two weeks before she died, she told me a story I had never heard about my great-uncle George getting arrested during prohibition because my great-grandfather, (owner of Rapp’s Restaurant), was making liquor in the bathtub and telling his sons and daughters to serve it to patrons in coffee mugs.


           My family has acknowledged that the death of a 103 year old is not a tragedy. It’s not unexpected. But we really will miss her and it does mark the end of an era. When I was young, my mom’s family, my grandparents and aunts and uncles would all meet at “the dairy”— DiMauro’s Dairy and Diner in Shelton, CT— every Sunday after church. It was a rotating group of extended family. My aunt Betty would do the rounds of calls, and she’d let you know if any cousin in particular were visiting from out of town or home from college. It was one of those places where everybody knows your name. The waitstaff reserved a large table for us in the restaurant’s one room, where the pink and blue country cow décor never changed, and aside from weekly breakfast specials, the menu never did either. We were loud and we made our frequent patronage known, but no one else ever seemed to mind, and most friends from days gone by knew where to find my great aunts and uncles on Sundays. My great-aunt Betty was the youngest and probably would have lived the longest of her siblings if she hadn’t been in a car accident. After she died, we didn’t get together as much and shortly after, the dairy closed its doors. It’s all very Fried Green Tomatoes.

          Food and humor were of the utmost importance to my great aunts and uncles.  One example was when my great-aunt Josephine lost her sense of smell after a head injury in the 90's.  She greatly lamented her inability to smell chocolate specifically, but I also remember one brunch, when she was saying that she had recently almost forgotten to turn her gas stove off and she obviously couldn't smell it in the air.  "Then", she was reasoning, "it wouldn't be such a bad way to go.  You would be eating your sandwich and your head would just slowly fall to the table."  Her sister, Aunt Mac said; "And when we found you, we'd say 'At least she finished the sandwich...'"

          When you asked my Aunt Mac about the secret to her longevity, she would tell you it was restaurant food. She grew up over a restaurant, took over that restaurant’s management, and later, ate lunch out at restaurants five days a week, even up until the week before she died. This side of my family— the Rapps’, also left a food service legacy in the Housatonic Valley not to be forgotten. There was Rapp’s Restaurant, Rapp’s Paradise Inn, and Rapp’s Grassy Hill Lodge. My German ancestors were tavern owners all the way back to the 1500’s and there must be some kind of gene for it, because I have a few cousins who ended up in the food business even when their parents had other careers. Even though I grew up in a neighboring town, I am still often recognized as “a Rapp” when I run errands in the Valley. When this happens, I am always proud.

Some bunny loves candy...

          I have a notorious and hereditary sweet tooth, as noted in another entry. The fiancée does not. So here is how occasions like Valentine’s Day and Easter work in our new household now. My mother mails us each an equal amount of candy. I devour all of mine in 1.5 days. Then, Brendan’s half of the candy sits out on the dining room table for almost a week, torturing me at every moment I am home. While we are sitting on the couch, I squirm for an hour while he nonchalantly goes about his business on his laptop, until I finally cry out: “ARE YOU GOING TO FINISH YOUR EASTER CANDY??!!!”

          He then says, (after a good chuckle), that it’s his and I am not supposed to eat it. He says this, not because he is particularly interested in the candy, or because he is territorial, but because he knows that if I eat it all, I will feel guilty. “THEN YOU HAVE TO HIDE IT!” and I am serious. Today he took his chocolate bunny and remaining treats with him to his office, or at least, I hope he did. If I come home and they are still sitting out, I am going to lose my mind, or eat it all. I can’t say which would come first.

Vive la vie de bohème! (Insert shameless plug here)

I am in the middle of a very exciting run of La bohème.  There are several reasons why this run is so exciting.  First of all, the production and staging have been very well done and have been very well received so far.  For me personally, it is my first time reprising a role that I have previously performed.  The character of Musetta, with all of her fiery narcissism could never be boring, and ultimately she reveals her good heart.  The first time I performed as Musetta was in Italy, and every strain of Puccini’s melodic score takes me back to some memory of eating pizza in a small hilltop village.  I also remember when the elderly gentleman who was hosting us in his upstairs apartment saw me on the staircase of his home after our opening night.  “Musetta!” he yelled and stretched out his arms to hug me. We’d probably had only one or two conversations in my poor Italian up until this point, but it was clear that he knew me as Musetta, and I thought that was just fine.  This time around preparing the role, however, the stress of it diminished considerably.  Musically, it is like coming back to visit an old friend. 

There was a time in my undergrad studies when I thought Puccini was rather low-brow.  The libretti weren’t heady enough or filled with enough psycho-Freudian interpretations for my taste at the time, and those very melodic strains struck me as indulgently pandering to the masses.  It wasn’t until my semester in Rome, when I attended a lecture by the famous Italian tenor’s son, Tito Scipa Jr. that I started to change my tune. 

He analyzed this one musical gesture in Tosca.  Puccini writes the strains of a church bell just before the music shifts and Floria Tosca receives the news that her lover is sentenced to death.  The church bells resume in the orchestra after that musical passage, indicating that nothing has changed outside, contrasted with everything that has changed for Tosca.  It is this rather simple, but still very specific and compelling musical language that makes Puccini great.  He does not usually grapple with the cosmos, but seeks to find, in musical terms, heightened emotional moments reflected from real life.  At this past Sunday’s lecture before the opera, we learned that Puccini purposely did not leave space for people to applaud after many arias, because he wanted the realism of the momentum of character interactions not to be interrupted or lost by the audience’s reactions, (which in Italy are very enthusiastic and expressive).

I further fell in love with La bohème specifically, after a masterclass in grad school featuring “Donde lieta”, Mimi’s third act aria.  Puccini not only writes the aria in staggering phrases to emphasize the way Mimi is trying to stall the end of her relationship with Rodolfo, but also to reflect the staggering breaths of her tuberculosis.  And the disease is written into the final act of the opera.  There are bouts of euphoric singing in Act 4 that correlate directly to euphoric stages of the progression of TB. 

My own snobbery seems laughable, as I am such a huge fan of this opera now.  In my mind, it is not perfect, but Act 3 is about as wonderful as it gets.  As she tells of her relationship struggles to her friend Marcello, Mimi’s music is beautiful and cathartic, and her stoic breakup with Rodolfo is brilliantly contrasted with Musetta and Marcello’s more aggressive parting of ways in the same scene.  These are the moments that make it understandably one of the most popular operas of all time.

There is another reason this is an exciting production in which to be involved.  Sadly, I wish that this particular part of the equation were not the case.  The city of Boston took a blow this year, with the surprising recent closing of Opera Boston.  The shock to the singing community cannot be exaggerated.  Many of my friends lost a great deal of income and opportunity, not to mention the administrative staff and the arts community at large.  Really, an opera about struggling artists could not be more palatable in this current climate.  The record attendance we have had at La bohème, we hope is some sort of affirmation that opera can survive in Boston.  If you have a chance, come see what audience members and reviewers are calling a charming and elegantly staged production of Boston Opera Collaborative’s classic La bohème.

"I'm trying to find a quotation, but it seems like people like animals..." ~Rachele, trying to help me with a blogpost title

           The funny thing about living in a place like Jamaica Plain, which may very well be the hippie and dog-walking capital of Massachusetts, (although Northampton may trump it), is that people constantly look up at you expectantly when their dogs try to sniff your crotch. I have seen that look on a dog walker’s face more times than I can tell—the one that says Don’t I have the cutest dog in the world? When this look is directed at me, it is inevitably followed by a look of disappointment on the dog owner’s face. I consistently fail to coo at and delight in their dog’s presence, but rather just look confused as to why they have let their animal get so close to me. I seem to be missing a gene that allows me to find cuteness in the face of a dog or any animal over the age of say, six months. To quote Tina Fey in Bossypants:

          I don’t hate animals and I would never hurt an animal; I just don’t actively care about them. When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.

          This sentiment really sums up how I, as an animal neutral person feel in a town and society full of dog lovers. I am often moved by cherub-like babies who pass me in strollers and have bonded with a cute kitten in my day. I can even see the appeal of a tiny, fuzzy puppy in a toilet paper commercial, but once the animal is grown, I feel literally nothing when looking at it. And don’t think that I haven’t contemplated the thought that this makes me a terrible person. I have.

          When I was on my semester abroad, I had a roommate who was a Wicken and animal activist, (not to mention a born-again Christian living in the same flat, but that could be an entirely other blogpost). When she invited me to volunteer with her at the cat shelter in Rome, my complete indifference toward the idea of volunteering in this way actually disturbed me, and yet, I could think of one hundred other things I would rather be doing. I thought of at least one, because I never did go with her any of the times she went. At the time, the experience of living in an apartment full of differing world viewpoints was constantly calling into question my own beliefs. As one of the most liberal in the apartment I kept thinking: “If I consider myself a true liberal, doesn’t that mean I should have a love for all of the world’s creatures?”

          And I guess I have reconciled this question to myself. I think that people who willingly abuse defenseless animals for their own pleasure are sociopaths. It’s just that prevention of animal abuse is not a cause I feel strongly about. I also believe our culture has arbitrarily divided animals into those we love and care for and those we eat. If you are a passionate animal lover, trying to gain my support for your cause, you had best be a vegetarian, because otherwise I will consider your argument moot. I, on the other hand could never be a vegetarian. My love for bacon is also a passionate one.

          In any narrative I have read which tracks the relationship between a man and his dog best friend, as in a subplot in Water for Elephants for example, I am moved. Mostly though, what moves me is the story of the person who has been so mistreated and rejected by society that he turns to an animal for comfort, and that animal represents everything he has left. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien tells the story of a man who mercilessly kills an animal as a symptom of his trauma while serving in the Vietnam War. The author points out that when he has told that story, (and I’m not sure how this would come up as cocktail party conversation), someone will inevitably express grief for the murdered animal. O’Brien is quick to point out that they’ve missed the point and I agree with him. Maybe that makes me deficient in some way but I can’t help it. The story of the man who would be driven to do such a thing is more disturbing and poignant to me than that of the death of the animal.

          Recently at work, someone’s pet died and we all made a donation to an animal shelter in its memory. I participated not because I felt particularly compelled to donate for the animals, but because I could understand what it meant for this co-worker to lose her dog and this was a reasonable contribution to her consolation.

          I have a wonderful fiancée, (yes, using the new word as much as possible), who understands my animal loving deficiencies despite being a dog lover himself. For now, neither of us has time to care for a dog. This is something he realized when sitting for a friends’ dog for a week. When you have a work, teaching, and rehearsal schedule like we do, it’s just not fair to any animal. But perhaps someday he will want a puppy. I have already made sure to make my viewpoint clear in advance. If he chooses to get a dog, it will be his dog and he can take it for walks and pick its poop up in a bag.

          I once took an online quiz regarding my “real age” and my longevity. It suggested I get a dog to increase my lifespan. Pretty sure that getting one at this point would only take away sane years of my life.

Moonlight (and panic) in Vermont

          There are two types of people in this world- those who love to drive and those who don’t.  If you are a person of the former persuasion, you remember the very first time you were in a moving car by yourself as one of the most amazingly liberating experiences of your life.  That first weekend you got your license you drove everywhere just for the sake of driving.  That was when you realized that a car was so much more than a car.  It could take you anywhere on the continent.  A car is freedom.

          For me, that essential love for driving has not changed.  Nothing beats a summer day behind the wheel with the windows rolled down and the long road ahead of me.  I do however, have mild heart palpitations thinking about making trips to Vermont in the middle of winter, and this is because of a seven hour panic attack I like to call my trip back from Mt. Snow two years ago.  The weather report had predicted one inch of snow in Boston.  We actually got eight inches, so by hour five of what should have been a two hour drive I was threatening to pull over and camp out for the night.  Fortunately, I was not alone.  I had my friend Molly to calm me down every five minutes, and every time we saw another car crashed on the side of the Mass Pike.  It went something like this: “I’m starting to panic again! Talk me down Molly!  TALK ME DOWN!”

Oh, but I forgot the first leg of the trip, on our way to Vermont, when it was also snowing and we were skidding on ice every few miles.  This was before I had a GPS and our online directions took us down an unlit, snow-covered, one lane road with a 90 foot drop to one side of it.  I think I drove about an inch a minute on that one.  All I could think about was how we were going to skid and go careening off that cliff and Molly’s parents would never forgive me for killing their daughter. Of course there were no houses to be seen anywhere in case of an emergency.  Have I mentioned yet that I now refuse to drive in Vermont in winter?  (See also: Maine, New Hampshire and parts of Western Massachusetts.)  I am a very bad New Englander.  

          For me, like many people, being in an untouched, deserted, natural spot has great appeal.  I just prefer that it be an untouched, deserted spot with no threat of blizzards, high winds, or ice of any kind.  In those cases, I want there to be people around, preferably in droves.  Given my experiences in the last few years, I let Brendan drive on our trip to Stowe this past weekend.  I can’t even say that the trip was uneventful.  I was all but hyperventilating from the passenger’s seat the last hour of our journey up there in the snow.  Another night, our friend Dana found herself and her 4 wheel drive vehicle lodged in a snow bank after hitting a patch of ice on the road where we were staying, which most likely has still not seen a plough since.  Fortunately no one was hurt and with a little help from AAA, the car was rescued.

          As far as events on the mountain this weekend, there were some pretty spectacular tumbles and nosedives amidst our group of twelve, or as I should call it, “Opera Singers on Skis 2012”.  But again, no one was hurt there either and a great time was had by all. 

          I am sad to say that being chauffeured may be the only way I will willingly venture to the great state of Vermont from January through March.  And with my current schedule, next season will probably be the nearest chance I have of going anyway.  Curse those Vermonters taunting me with their beautiful mountains and delicious cheese!  Let me know if you want to go skiing sometime next year.  Drivers welcome.

“…and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” ~ Molly Bloom's Soliloquy, James Joyce

         So, although one of my resolutions for 2012 is to blog more often, I have been slightly MIA. This is perhaps because creativity doesn’t flourish in times of happiness. What does one have to say if one is not incensed about something or in a general state of thoughtful melancholy? In fact, I am often quite prolific in January because of the end of the holidays and the bleak New England winter ahead of me. This year is different and if you don’t know why, well then you probably haven’t been on Facebook or talked to my mother recently.

          On the day after Christmas, Brendan mentioned that I should pack a bag for the Cape for that coming Friday, December 30th. It was after dinner that night when he wordlessly turned on his right blinker and brought me to the top of Fort Hill in Eastham and overlooking the marsh and under the stars, he asked me to marry him. I said yes of course. I wasn’t that surprised— we don’t usually take off for the Cape in the middle of winter the night before we have people over for New Years’. But completely and utterly delighted? Yes. It was a day in August when he had first surprised me and said: “I want to show you this place,” and the image of the clouds casting fast moving shadows over Fort Hill has burned itself into our shared memory and we talk about it often. That he chose this place to ask me that question— well, it was great.[i]

          Also great, was calling friends and family that evening to share the news. My parents, amusingly, didn’t answer their phones for two hours, even though they had been made aware of the plan, because they were out seeing the new Mission Impossible movie... They obviously weren’t worried about what my answer would be. That’s when I heard the backstory about how Brendan’s mother and my mother met for lunch in Sturbridge Village to pass off the family diamond. They also apparently each came bearing a tray of Christmas cookies.

          When I called one of my best friends that night, she said: “Oh my God, your wedding is going to be so amazing… Oh my God, your mother is going to drive you so crazy planning it.”

          And my mother already had big plans for the weekend of the proposal. At their annual New Years’ Day “Open House” party, I was forced to hide my ring for two hours so they could announce the engagement. My 103 year old great aunt and family matriarch’s reaction to the news was pretty memorable. “He was supposed to ask me first,” she said. Her daughter told me that in actuality Aunt Mac had “been praying for it” for months. Her comedic timing has stayed well intact over the years.

          Hopefully, my sense of humor will stay intact in the coming months of wedding planning. I must remind myself that my mother’s sometimes zealous opinions not only emerge out of her years of experience in the wedding business, but also out of how excited she is to welcome Brendan to the family. I myself think that I have made a most excellent decision in saying yes. With my head in the clouds, I haven’t been writing much and I may not have responded to each of you for your well wishes. If you sent them, I want you to know that we appreciate every one. We are very much looking forward to our future together. And I’m sure I’ll have sufficient material for blogging for a good while now.
[i] As I said to Brendan while composing this: "Oh God, this is so cheesy— now that I'm done talking about the story itself, can I go back to writing jokes about my mother?"