Gardening, listening, creating quiet monuments of narrative experience

Aunt Lydia (from Hulu's Handmaid's Tale), haunts my garden

During the pandemic I've been gardening--a lot. There's really nowhere else to go but my backyard anyway so I might as well be growing salad vegetables and getting rid of the weeds.

After I bought two pairs of overalls to work in, I discovered that I could put my phone in the front breast pocket and listen to podcasts and audiobooks from the library. (Before I had struggled to listen with wireless earbuds or a bluetooth speaker I lugged around the yard). I didn't realize how much time I was spending in the yard until I listened to all of The Golem and the Jinni (500+ pages), followed by Becoming by Michelle Obama, and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood--all in a couple of months time. And that was between listening to different podcasts.

An unexpected consequence is that I now associate certain areas of my yard with specific characters or stories. My strawberry patch is now the Aunt Lydia strawberry patch (I think of her and her perhaps justifiable cruelty when I am in there weeding or picking berries). The new patch of grass that, it turns out, happens to be the dimension of two side-by-side cemetery plots now brings to mind Chang and Eng (from listening to Mo Rocca's Mobituary on the original Siamese twins, while I sowed it). And the stone and brick sidewalk I've been putting in reminds me both of the Southside of Chicago and NYC at the turn of the century...

These are quiet tributes created not as statues or anything permanent, and which only I can see. It makes me realize that anywhere we are, wherever we walk, there is probably one of these silent monuments of experience, whether lived in actuality or through words. There may be multiple monuments, multiple experiences, all on the same patch of land or in the same place. Aunt Lydia's monuments may be found on bus seats or city sidewalks or bedside tables. A stairwell, a flower, a patch of earth, may evoke Michelle Obama's voice because that's where you or I were when she told us about her life.

My garden is filled with plants and with memories of places to which I've journeyed through the sound of voices coming out of the bib of my overalls. It may look like I am growing only lettuce and parsley and tomatoes, but I am also growing memories. Small miracles, freely given, voices emitted from a phone that seldom rings.

On Television (part one)

1. I watch too much TV.  In my defense, so much TV is so good now--or maybe it's so easy to watch. One show runs into the next on Netflix and before I can reach for the remote, the next episode has started and, well, it will only be another 21 minutes.

2. I rarely just sit and watch TV--can I pat myself on the back for that? Most of the time I am washing dishes, or cooking dinner, or folding laundry, glancing at the screen when I can.

3. There are few shows that are "downstairs-worthy," which means I am willing to walk downstairs to the bigger TV and sit down and just watch a show. Currently the only downstairs-worthy network show is "The Good Place"--and it's the only show I watch with someone else. Hubby and I watch it together, otherwise afraid we would reveal any spoilers to each other. It continues to surprise me.

4. Most of the time, we all watch something different, in different rooms. I'll watch John Oliver on YouTube while changing my sheets. My husband will read the paper and watch a ball game downstairs. The teenager will watch something on her phone while doing rote work. A few years ago, before the teenager had so many activities, we set out to watch every episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but we drifted away from it. At least we got to Chuckle's funeral. The disc for Season Six sat in the DVD player for months.

5. After college and living out West a few years, I came back home. My mother would insist that we all watch television together in the evenings. "Come on out of your room and be social for awhile," she would say. This was before you could zip through ads. The sitcoms and dramas would be interrupted every eight or so minutes with commercials for hair products and floor cleaners. Having lived for years in dorms and communal houses without a television set, it was a shock to have all those shows reel before us--people shot, lovers ferociously kissing, actors smirking to a laugh track--and then perky actors insisting I needed products I had no money for. They were all at our command, yet at the same time, captivating us. I often sneaked back to my room to read a book.

Sometimes now, alone in the den, watching TV and folding laundry, I can understand her sentiment, how she thought TV might bring us together, that it could be a common language for us--even if our common language was Dallas or Dynasty.

Dirty, Disappointing Dancing

I could not stop watching the trainwreck that was Dirty Dancing 2017 (though I only watched it in fits and starts while washing the dishes). I was never a huge DD fan, but I mostly watched it because I wanted to see how someone would update/alter it.

The problem with DD for me has always been that the heart of the story is kind of icky, if you think about it: Teenage girl helps a pregnant dance instructor after her botched abortion and then, on that same evening, even though she has just witnessed this horrible thing, rushes to Johnny Castle's cabin and begs him to sleep with her (without any discussion of birth control, etc.). And yet, the original was still somehow charming and was campy (like the old ladies who try to dirty dance in the last scene), which took away the ick. This version was stilted and at times grim. And it emphasized the original’s icky elements: Abigail Breslin (despite being 21) looked like she was in middle school while the actor playing Johnny looked like he was in his late 20s. Yes, Baby is supposed to be innocent, but this made it look almost indecent. (Patrick Swayze's Johnny was sweet and vulnerable, which made it easier to see him with a teenager.)  And in the original, Johnny mentions having older female clients paying for private lessons, but it’s mostly implied. Here it shows him with Katie Sagal in a negligee more than once (with whom he had a lot more chemistry than with Ms. Breslin).

I didn’t mind the parent’s marital problems being added in (I assume to help extend the thing to a 3-hour broadcast), mostly because it took time away from seeing Baby and Johnny interact. I also didn’t mind Ms. Breslin’s limited dance skills, as some on the Internet have complained about, because I thought it was a more truthful representation of what someone would actually learn in a week of lessons. But I was hoping she would improve by the end—the last dance was pretty unimpressive and it's supposed to be the wow number.

The worst thing was the La La Land ending. What? The whole idea is that love triumphs. We don't need to be reminded of reality in the last shot.

Oh well, I cleaned my kitchen, etc., so I lost no time on this.

The blog is dead! Long live the blog!

In case you haven't noticed, I've mostly quit blogging. And I'm only blogging right now because I handed out my business card at a conference this weekend and noticed I still had my blog address on it. (For those checking it out because of the card, Welcome!)

I don't think I'm the only one lately to neglect her blog. Blogs are so last year (or two years ago). What are we doing/reading instead? Posting pictures of food on Instagram,  tweeting 140 characters, writing quips on our Facebook pages: more succinct and visual forms of communication. When I'm online, I am so used to scrolling through tweets and pictures and posts now that it's hard to linger on a page with more than one paragraph. (She said in paragraph two).

And we're (OK, I'm) binge watching TV in my spare time. There is so much good TV right now that it's hard to turn it off for even one night. Last week I finished watching "Victoria" on my PBS App. That's the wrong form of the verb--I didn't "finish watching," I "watched" all eight episodes of Victoria in one week. I watched it when I sat down in the recliner after a long day of work and chores. I watched it while I ate lunch alone on a break from at-home work. I like being swept up in historic dramas--the set design, the beautiful costumes and actors, the gorgeous scenery, all contributing to a feeling of resonant immersiveness. And now I'm watching "The Crown" on Netflix, worth watching for no other reason than to see what the $5 million spent per episode bought (e.g., setting up a state dinner party with what looked like 100 place settings of china and silver, and an orgy of flower centerpieces).

As the day get warmer and the yard/garden calls, I will be pulling myself away from electronic forms of communication and entertainment in the next few weeks--but I'm not sure where this will leave this blog. Is it an electronic form of communication, as well?

Too much TV

If only there was a Goodreads for watching TV. If so, I would be a top viewer.

I watched a lot of television in the 11 months I went through cancer treatments. Not just a wimpy sitcom here and there, but dramas that required a certain type of allegiance to plow through them. Every episode of every season, sometimes one, two, even three a day.

Go ahead and call it "binge watching." But I crave a more refined phrase that would signify something important, at least given how much of my day was devoted to it.

In those months, I was catching up on shows I somehow missed or never took the time to get into—"Mad Men," "The Good Wife," "Foyles War." There wasn't much else I could do. The steroids and chemo gave me fuzzy eyesight and ocular migraines, making it nearly impossible to read. I also found that if I didn't sit down and get engaged with a TV show I would be up, trying to get things done, quickly reaching exhaustion. Doing one load of laundry downstairs or cooking dinner was sometimes all I could manage for the day.

So 45 minutes with Don Draper was restive. Wondering how Alicia Florrick was going to fare sans hubby helped me forget about my troubles for an hour or two.

Absent of Goodreads (and because a few friends have asked what I watched), here's a list of the TV series I watched in their entirety: [O] = ongoing series

- Wives and Daughters

- Forsyth Saga

- Call the Midwife [0]

- The Bletchley Circle

- Mad Men [0]

- Cranford

- The Duchess of Duke Street

- Enlightened

- Foyles War
- Freaks and Geeks
- The Good Wife [0] *


* Fun fact: the first 5 seasons of The Good Wife = 112 episodes @ 44 min. ea = 82 hours (gulp!)

I became a little obsessed with WWII and post-WWII Britain during this time. Hence, Foyles War, Bletchley Circle and Call the Midwife (in addition to The Imitation Game in the theatre). I found it particularly charming that no matter how dire things were, or how poor they were, the characters always made time for tea.

I also watched a lot of movies (how did I ever find the time?). Maybe I'll list those maybe another day.

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I made the collage above using Union, a smartphone photography app--my first, clumsy attempt, but I wanted something at the top of the page that wouldn't be copyright restricted...

Must Masterpiece Theatre butcher BBC dramas?

"I don't want to be somebody's sweetheart—I want to be somebody!" Denise declares to Sam in the fourth episode of "The Paradise." This is perhaps the purest statement of an ongoing theme* in the series. But American viewers who watched "The Paradise" on PBS this winter didn't see it. It went to the cutting room floor, along with the eight or so minutes that were cut in PBS's broadcasts from the original 59-60 minute BBC episodes.

In its December 5th issue, Parade Magazine explained that the reason for the lag of four months between the BBC and PBS showings of "Downton Abbey" was to allow time for "editing for American audiences." One might assume that this means the disappearance of references to obscure facets of Britannia. But what it really seems to mean is to allow PBS to add ads—Ralph Lauren's anorexic girl-women slouching in their fur hats, rich people enjoying river cruises—along with a Masterpiece Theatre introduction.

Since receiving the original BBC version of "The Paradise" on DVD for Christmas, it has become a game with me to try to figure out which scenes and snippets of dialogue were cut from the PBS broadcast. Party scenes, perfumed letters sent on a tray, old lovers meeting in a park—all appeared for the first time in this viewing. Sure, the series could move along and seem intact without such moments. But some cuts are more egregious than others: the orphan, Arthur, finally being told his true origins by Mr. Lovett (the PBS version had him bring up the question, never resolved); Clara being ordered never to go to Mr. Moray's room again by Mr. Dudley (no reason why she suddenly stopped trying in the PBS version); Sam's more blatant attempts to romance Denise; Miss Audrey talking about "regret" with Mr. Moray, a phrase he will later, significantly, repeat to Denise that  same evening (revealing that Miss Audrey was more empathetic and aware than was seen in her American form).

I know that PBS has to pay for its programming, but I wish there was a way they could do it without resorting to such surgery.

When I was young and in a small town with few intellectual resources, I looked to PBS as a lifeline to the greater world. It is a lifeline I have cherished for many years, even after I moved to bigger towns. I hate to cut that lifeline now, and I won't entirely. But if there is a BBC drama I really want to invest my time in, I know now that I will have to buy it on DVD or wait for it to appear on Netflix if I want to see it the way the screenwriter and director intended for it to be seen.

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* Unlike the female characters in "Downton Abbey" who are punished for trying to rise above their station, or for simply being women.

Romance to the rescue

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I got through the darker months of winter by listening to melancholy music. This year, I've discovered something else to get me through the long nights—romance!

I've never understood why anyone would voraciously read one Harlequin and then another. I was grounded in the real world, thank you, too busy to read such trifles. And yet now I find myself watching episodes of the BBC show, "The Paradise," again and again. I have watched the episodes as they have aired on Sunday nights and then again during the week while washing dishes or folding laundry; or I sneak in a few minutes at a time on my iPad before I go to bed using the PBS app. I go back and forth, watching Episode 7 and back to Episode 3. It has become an addiction—I think I've watched some of it at least every couple of days.

There is no logical explanation for this. I—who abhors shopping and soap-ish dramas, and who is deeply loved—have totally immersed myself in this 1875 department store world that is full of meaningful glances and sweeping violins. Perhaps I need the escapism since my life is tied up so much now to the computer. And the chillier air is keeping me in more, away from the yard and all the flowers I could be transplanting.

But I think the most compelling ingredient for me is how well the actress, Joanna Vanderham, who plays shopgirl Denise, can convey lovesickness. Just a bob of her head, a tilt of the chin, her eyes widening, and I am convinced that she is infatuated with Mr. Moray, the owner of the Paradise.

How would you write such gestures or describe the emotion she seems to convey in these scenes without making treacle? And how would you write a love scene that would move the reader in the same way?

What about the declaration of love, met and unmet, is so compelling to me? Perhaps to declare one's love is rebellion against loneliness, of being an individual. It is one of the bravest acts we can perform, the consequences life-changing, no matter what the response will be.

Down on Downton

I don't know why I kept watching Downton Abbey this season. The plot was such a disappointment—recurring themes that went nowhere and soap-opera-ish, deus ex machina solutions to what could have been life-changing problems/major plot points such as:

1. We are going bankrupt because of a bad investment decision. We could lose Downton Abbey! My ex-fiancee's father just left me money. I don't want to take it, it wouldn't be right. But, apparently Lavinia knew I was actually in love with harpy Lady Mary and was totally cool with it. So, I'll take the money and give it to Downton. Downton is saved!
2. Mrs. Hughes has a lump in her breast. Could it be cancer? She is very worried. We are all very worried. She is tired. It must be cancer. The test results are in. No cancer!
3. Mr. Bates is wrongly accused of killing his wife. He has to go to jail. Jail is very bad; his roommate hates him. But a former neighbor of his ex-wife remembers that she was making a pie crust the day she died; therefore there is the proof that she killed herself—she put poison in the pie. Mr. Bates is free!

This is bad fiction writing, the stuff of wretched romance novels. It was bad enough last season watching Branson the chauffeur mope after Lady Sybil. The actors looked like they were just hanging around the set waiting for an actual scene to occur.

Scene from a 1988 Calgon ad

And yet, last Sunday night, I felt a sudden emptiness as 9PM rolled by. There was no reason for me to go downstairs and sit by myself for an hour. I realized that Downton had become my Calgon moment, even though I usually spent that hour in the cold basement also sorting socks or opening up snail mail. It was a restive pause in my week. The first few familiar chords of the theme song transporting me to... an unnecessary, yet for some reason, guilt-free indulgence. "I'm going to go watch Downton," was all I had to say and then I would disappear.

Apparently, the lovely costumes and the Dowager Countess's quips were enough to  sustain my interest (or for me to pretend that my interest was sustained) for an hour.

Fortunately, the second season of "Call the Midwife" (plot-wise, a superior show) begins at the end of March, so I have only a few empty Sunday nights until then.

Where the wild things are on tv

In case you missed it, Maurice Sendak did a hilarious, curmudgeonly interview with Stephen Colbert this week. I'll embed it here because I think he made some valid points about children's books and the book industry.

Part 1

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Here's Part 2

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Once upon a time—The End

I actually got excited when I first read about the new ABC show, "Once Upon a Time." Critics lauded it as a return to the family hour, comparing it to the old Sunday night standard, "The Wonderful World of Disney."

That's because there is nothing on TV currently that our family watches together. We usually don't even channel surf in front of our kid in the evenings, since we don't know when a simulated murder, rape, or assault might appear. Of course there is "children's TV," but it's a parallel world/ghetto of silly Disney Channel shows or oft-repeated Sponge Bob episodes—the type of shows that my tween-aged kid despises or is tired of (she outgrew PBS a few years ago). When we occasionally sit down in front of the TV together, it's mostly to old TV shows and movies.

"Once Upon a Time" promised to bring fairy tales to life, with storybook characters exiled to modern-day Maine. I imagined it was going to be a TV version of "Enchanted," which we all found charming and funny (though just a tad scary at the end).

But E-girl watched most of Sunday night's episode behind a blanket raised over her face. She couldn't stand seeing the hunter kill the deer, or the queen tear out his heart, or the mayor/queen crushing the heart of his modern-day sheriff counterpart.

And then there were the nightmares afterwards... I dreamed of deer being slaughtered, of hearts ripped out and dripping blood, of people chased by an evil presence—the type of dreams I rarely have and certainly never relish. E-girl is still upset about seeing the queen murder her own father a few weeks ago. It has affected her dreams, though not as a nightly occurrence.

Of course, we'll get over it. Neither of us will become serial killers as the result of watching this show—the argument that always seems to be trotted out whenever a parent or anyone else tries to explain why they are bothered by screen violence that (they or) their kids are exposed to: "TV violence doesn't correlate with real-life aggression..." And real-life is full of violence, blah, blah, blah.

But why should I want my tenderhearted child to become callous now (or ever)? Or why would I want her to watch something before bedtime that will give her insomnia?

With a title like "Once Upon a Time" you keep hoping for a happy ending at the end of each show [and not at the end of a five-season series—although, given that its producers also did "Lost," there may be no real resolution]. But each episode has seemed increasingly grim (pardon the pun).

So we'll go back to our DVD player and our Netflix Instant queue. As E-girl put it at the end of it, "I think I'd rather watch 'Rocky and Bullwinkle'."

Bertie Wooster plays the blues

I gave my hubby the complete PBS "Jeeves and Wooster" series on DVD for our anniversary earlier this month. We just watched the episode where Bertie (Hugh Laurie) plays "Forty-Seven Ginger-Headed Sailors" (excerpt above).

Then, only a day later, Laurie appeared on the "Today" show playing a song from his new blues album. (I couldn't link to it directly, so enjoy the YouTube video that Blogger only allowed me to link to):



I have nothing significant to add here—I just liked the contrast between the young and old man, the simpleton and the serious blues musician. And I'd like to express my admiration for Laurie's ability to reinvent himself in a different country, with a different accent and different dramatic intent. (Still, I have to admit, I really miss Bertie Wooster).

Where The Wire was

The Onion's AV Club is posting a two-part series on locations in Baltimore used in The Wire. Given my reluctance to visit Baltimore (post-Wire), I'm not sure I'll be making this particular pilgrimage.

If the video doesn't show up above, go to: Baltimore: The Wire locations, part one

Too many TV shows with predictable outcomes

My spouse was watching a movie a few weeks ago (on the small TV in the kitchen that we use when washing the dishes), in which a group of teenagers were riding a school bus on their way to an non-school event. I could hear them making mindless chatter from another room of the house. I wondered why he was watching such a silly movie until I walked in the room and saw the Syfy logo in the bottom right corner.

"Oh, they're going to be attacked by aliens," I said. "Or ghosts. Or the hotel bathroom is a portal to another dimension. Or all of that."

If it had been Chiller I assumed the blonds/cheerleaders among them would be murdered by the end of the movie, probably by a backwoods miscreant. If it had been Lifetime, one of the girls would be pregnant and determined to raise the baby on her own. If it was CBS (other than on one of the nights it shows silly sitcoms), one of the boys would murder one of the girls or one of the girls would murder another girl and the bulk of the show would be about the murder investigation, with gruesome details. On Style, they'd be going for a group, pre-wedding makeover.

There used to be a time when you could be surprised by the outcome of a movie on TV, when labels/logos weren't stamped on every screen. TV has become so predictable and so segregated now. I have access to hundreds of cable shows now and yet I rarely watch TV (unless I am washing the dishes)—none of it really appeals to me anymore, perhaps because I am rarely surprised or excited by anything there.

Rediscovering the charm in "Charm City"

As I confessed in an earlier post, I am slightly terrified of Baltimore, based on its fictional portrayal in David Simon's TV shows. Yet I know its reality is far broader and more welcoming than that narrow, menace-filled vision.

So it was with gladness and relief that I attended the American Visionary Art Museum's Kinetic Sculpture Race on Saturday. There I saw families and friends working together to pedal and push giant creations across the city of Baltimore and into its harbor (on a short circuit to prove the seaworthiness of their crafts). Racers were dressed in wacky costumes, matching their sculptures, such as the Amish racers wearing suspenders and fake beards, pedaling their float-able buggy away from the water (below).

Six people dressed in lab coats, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, piloted the Lobe Trotter (below).

And the museum brought out its Fifi le Poodle—a sculpture on permanent display in one of the museum's annexes—to race again.

Many in the crowd dressed with the same panache. There were men and women in tutus, glitter pants, colorful wigs, and wacky hats. There were more normal types, too, parents and kids, couples, groups of friends.

Even as we walked around Canton, the nearby neighborhood, there wasn't a Stringer Bell or Marlo in sight. Just people walking, sitting on park benches, drinking beer, eating Italian pastries. It was all so normal—and beautiful in its normalcy. It made me realize that any fictional description of a place or time is always going to be limited, no matter how many characters or scenes its features.

Two recent electronic pieces on The Great Gatsby

 Like everyone else my age, I read The Great Gatsby in high school and thought, at the time, that it was OK. It took many years, and much more reading on my part, to realize how brilliant it is. (Maybe it's hard to appreciate genius until you've otherwise read a lot of crap—and it's hard to love a book you're required to read.)

A Studio 360 podcast I listened to a few weeks ago (originally broadcast last November) perked up my interest in Gatsby again:  American Icons: The Great Gatsby. An hour well spent.

This morning, CBS Sunday Morning did a segment, The end of an era for the "Gatsby house", about the demolition this weekend of the house on Long Island that inspired Fitzgerald's story. The segment offers just the right splash of clips from the Gatsby movie (thankfully no glimpse of Daisy/Mia Farrow), a little narration from the book, and archival photos of the house in its former glory.

The non-virtual books that will remain

In a recent post, I gave my five arguments about why (some) books should continue on paper. But the reality is that the non-virtual books that are likely to survive may not be the picture books and beach paperbacks I advocated for, but books for collectors.

This week CBS devoted a Sunday Morning segment to Taschen Books, which publishes large and beautiful books, sometimes costing thousands of dollars. (Their limited edition Muhammad Ali book costs $15,000). The books are sold online and in their dozen Taschen bookstores. 

Until someone figures out how to create value and exclusivity in e-books (which I can't envision happening ever), art/collectible books—and comic books—will continue to be published on paper.

Tripping over the ottoman into a male fantasy world

Suddenly my daughter, E-girl, can't get enough of "The Dick Van Dyke Show." She begs to watch an episode of it whenever she has any free time (it's easily accessible on Netflix Instant watch).

While I applaud its sharp writing and witty dialogue, there's one character that makes me a little uneasy: Laura Petrie, Rob Petrie's subservient, sometimes anxious wife.

It's hard for me to imagine/remember a culture where smart women were destined to wait on men hand and foot: making breakfast just for them, accommodating uninvited guests with a smile, serving dinner in a spotless kitchen without the presence of children—all while wearing high heels, false eyelashes and tight capri pants. I suppose the high heels and glamor were a screen writer's fantasy, but that makes me dislike this part of the show even more, that it perpetuated an unachievable standard for the average woman.

The Mary Tyler Moore character I'd rather she watch and emulate is the older, wiser and independent Mary Richards (on the "MTM Show"), who works at a TV station among interesting colleagues and dates whom she likes.

And yet, I realized as I started to write this, I am more like Laura Petrie than Mary Richards. I had the apartment and lived alone as a newspaper reporter and I hated it, perhaps because I didn't work among interesting colleagues but in a windowless bureau office by myself, in a town where I knew no one. I craved companionship more than anything else then.

Now I am married. I work at home, by myself most days, not polishing furniture but polishing copy as a freelance editor. I usually have dinner on the table by the time my husband comes home, though he's never found me at the stove in high heels and makeup. The house is unapologetically chaotic most nights.

Perhaps I am a combination of both women. Except that I'm not sure that either of them ever spent the day in sweat pants.

Baltimore: Life on the streets

Thanks to David Simon, I am terrified of driving to Baltimore.  As an avid viewer of Homicide: Life on the Street, and now The Wire, I have come to think of Baltimore as a thug-infested, open drug market, full of people who would just as soon kill me as not.

I know this isn’t (entirely) true. Baltimore has neat museums and shops and restaurants, but I hardly ever go to any of them unless someone else wants to drive me there. This puts me in a dependent position I was hoping I’d outgrown.

I have always been deeply affected by violent movies and TV shows, so it was sometimes a struggle to sit through all 122 episodes of Homicide and 60 episodes of The Wire (though I sometimes watched particularly violent scenes in The Wire behind a screen of closed fingers). But the writing on both shows was so good, I fought my involuntary panic at the first note of ominous music or flash of a gun (though I was sometimes trembling by the time the final credits rolled).

What made those shows more convincing is that they were shot in identifiable places, often with local people, not on some California set dressed up to look like the inner-city with beautiful, smudge-faced models pretending to be drug addicts. It’s is a real place I can drive to in under 40 minutes—not some distant, inaccessible fantasy.

I’m afraid if I tried to drive there and took a wrong turn, I’d soon be in the midst of Avon and Prop Joe and Marlo, separately or all together. Rationally, I know this is unlikely, but I can’t shake that fear from my unconscious mind. It doesn’t help that our car window was busted out the last time we were in Baltimore last November, parked on a busy street in front of expensive condominiums.

The only way out of this predicament, that I can see, is to review episodes of The Wire, trying to figure out where its worst characters are unlikely to be and to head to those areas, convinced of my safety. Maybe if I’m lucky, though, I’ll run into Omar.

Stephen Colbert's advice on saving the publishing industry

In case you didn't see it a few days ago, The Colbert Report vividly described the last, desperate option available to the magazine industry.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Cosmo Is Available in Mongolia
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Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> March to Keep Fear Alive

Follow-up: The unbearable briefness of a dance career

When I wrote about dance as an ephemeral art recently, I talked about how a dancer's career is shorter than a writer's because the body ages out of it. But I failed to mention the possibility of injury cutting that career even shorter. The near-constant possibility of injury makes dance even more precious and fleeting—something that viewers of So You Think You Can Dance have recently witnessed. Alex Wong, my favorite dancer from the current season, was injured last week during a rehearsal for a Bollywood number. He leaped and then crashed down, his Achilles tendon ripped.

The next night, Alex stood on crutches while judge/producer Nigel Lythgow told the audience that Alex will have surgery this week, which is predicted to be "80 percent effective." Then Alex must recuperate for three months. That means three months without work for Alex, who left his post as the principal dancer with the Miami City Ballet to be on the TV show and, in so doing, was told by the company's director not to come back. There's a 20 percent chance he may not be able to dance again, anywhere.

The audience gasped at the news and Alex wept, tears streaming down his face.

Alex was in two of the best dances in the past few weeks: a modern dance routine to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in the first competition broadcast; and a hip-hop number, amazing because he is a ballet dancer but still acquired hip-hop so quickly. (I can't embed the dances here because Dick Clark Productions is continually forcing them off of YouTube; I've done my best to find them on the SYTYCD web site, in the links above, but the clips I've found may not be exact. Each clip is probably also, unfortunately, preceded by a 25-second ad on their web site).

What if these are Alex's last two, best dance performances? Is it enough that they were seen be a national audience for those few precious minutes? Will they be the sum of his body's artistic work?

I remember what Joni Mitchell said in her "Miles of Aisles" live album: "No one ever said, 'Paint me another Starry, Starry Night, man'," referring to the impermanent art of the performer (perhaps one reason she retreated to painting).

If everything I wanted to say as a writer could be compressed into a three-minute dance, would I risk dancing it if it meant I couldn't express myself again? Of course not—my fingers ache nearly every day to say something, to put something down. But most professional dancers must face this question, however subconsciously, each time they perform; any dance could be their last.