New York in February: Perfect

Before I tell you about my trip to New York, I need to tell you something about myself. 

I am an oxymoron; I am a people-person who loves her solitude. I live mostly alone (my eldest son lives with me, but he’s more solitary than I am), and I work in a classroom filled with the enthusiasm and chaos of teenagers. I am intentional about making time for friends, but I spend long stretches of time alone. My life works for me.

This is why my quick trip to New York last week was absolutely perfect. I spent my days mostly alone, wandering around, eating my way through neighborhoods and generally soaking up the city. I left Kentucky with one scheduled item on my daytime itinerary. Everything else was fluid. My evenings, on the other hand, were booked with good friends. Six of us moved as a group to dinner and Broadway shows, laughing and talking nonstop about everything.

Perfect.

Two of those good friends invited me to tag along to their work conference. Or more accurately, they invited me to tag along to New York. They went to conference sessions all day while I wandered around the city, and then we all went out in the evenings. (A piece of unsolicited life advice: Always say yes when good friends invite you to go to New York or anywhere that takes you out of your daily routine.)

Even the air travel was perfect. Our flights there and back were on time and neither was full. I had a whole row to myself both ways which felt like a luxury. Check out the dude in front of me. He booked one seat for himself and one for his cello. I could see it out of the corner of my eye, and my writer’s imagination turned it into a robot whose head, at any moment, would swivel around and stare at me. (It is a well-established fact that I am both a weirdo and a nerd. I own it.)

Our hotel was in Times Square, and it took us an hour to get there from the airport. There were five of us, and I was squished in the “way back” of the van, but I didn’t mind. The driver, trying to avoid the worst of the traffic, took a circuitous route through Harlem and down the West Side. I suppose a native New Yorker would have hated it, but I saw it as an opportunity. We passed schools and bustling streets with people going about lives that were both different and the same as ours.

Ice balls fell out of the sky on that drive. (It was 74 degrees back home.) By the time we got to Times Square it was just cold rain, but none of that dampened our spirits. This picture was taken at 2:30 in the afternoon. 

We wandered around and decided we needed a snack to hold us over before our dinner reservations and went into the Stardust Diner. 

Our timing was perfect, and we were seated immediately. When we left an hour later, the line was out the door and down the block. If you’re not familiar with The Stardust, the wait staff are all Broadway hopefuls. In between bringing your nachos and drinks, they sing, and when they sing, you know it’s just a matter of time before they make it out of the diner and onto one of the stages nearby. We all spent more on the tip than we did on the food with no regrets. On the way out, Erin said, “I think I just paid $40 for a milkshake.” 

There may have been some hyperbole in that statement, but not much. Our waiter was wonderful! Blogger wouldn't let me upload the video, but suffice it to say he’s great. He was also ridiculously fun. When he realized that we were seeing & Juliet, he got so excited! He’s seen it nine times! We had agreed on Wicked and then waffled between & Juliet and Six for our second show. His excitement got us hyped about our choice!

I am a confirmed terrible selfie-taker, but here we all are, blurry and with part of Tai’s head cut off. 

This is a good time to talk about the shows we saw. They were both reimaginings of classic stories. I love turning a story on its head when it’s done well, and especially when it’s rewritten from the perspective of a female character who has been vilified or marginalized. I won’t say much about Wicked except that it was wonderful and we loved it. It’s been running on Broadway and touring for years, and many of you have certainly seen it. I will say that as I was watching, it put me in mind of both the UKJHF workshop on teaching the Holocaust that I attended recently and several moves by this session of the Kentucky legislature. When you need votes or a distraction to keep the base stirred up, reframe the narrative and create a convenient scapegoat. Happily for her, Elphaba was not powerless, and the story ended well. I do love a happy ending, and we are all happy here.

I just learned the term “jukebox musical” this week. & Juliet is a jukebox musical. All of the musical numbers are familiar pop songs, but they are repurposed to fit the story being told. The writer for & Juliet is David West Read who also wrote for Schitt’s Creek, and the same humor and heart is in both works. The way he used pre-existing song lyrics was genius. This jukebox musical relies heavily on boy bands and pop queens, and for a couple of days the Backstreet Boys owned real estate in my head. Love them or hate them, their songs are singable ear worms that stick. When Juliet sings, “Oops!... I did it again,” she gets big laughs, and contextualized properly, fluffy pop songs become emotional anthems. When the Nurse sang P!nk’s “Fuckin’ Perfect” to Juliet, I felt every word. (Side note: None of us knew the original song dropped the f-bomb because we had only ever heard the sanitized radio version. The unsanitized version is way less fluffy.) 

I love love love this version of Juliet where she decides not to kill herself after waking up from the friar’s potion and finding Romeo dead. She’s sad, but she also wants to keep living, and when her parents threaten to send her to a nunnery, she runs off to Paris with the Nurse and her best friend May, a trans woman. (As one character notes, this is not shocking. Shakespeare frequently played with cross-dressing as plot device.) 

Hijinks ensue, and they are smart. The writer drops out-of-context lines from the original play with perfect comedic timing. Amanda, Erin, and I couldn’t decide if we loved it so much because it was truly funny or because we’re English teachers who have taught Romeo & Juliet soooo many times. But our non-English teacher friends confirmed that it was actually hilarious. William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, are characters in the story, and when Anne told Will that he wrote Romeo as a douche, I cried laughing. It’s true!! Romeo is a total douche, and high school kids always figure it out. Leo DiCaprio’s Romeo is less douchey, but even the greatest actors can’t overcome the writing. (Don’t get your panties in a wad. I’m not ragging on Will. I think he intended Romeo to be a douche. Why else would he have Romeo howling on the ground, saying that flies may kiss Juliet, but he may not? Seriously.)

Anne rewrites a scene, and Romeo moves from girl to girl, repeating, "Did my heart love til now?" It's comedy gold.

So yes, & Juliet is absolutely funny, but it also has heart. Erin and I cried real tears for May and her subplot. And again, those breezy pop songs carried some weight. May sang Britney’s “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” so poignantly it hurt, and when she tried to get the acceptance of a parent with the BSB’s “Shape of my Heart," I realized I was actually clutching my own heart for her.

Final word: Six of us went to see & Juliet, and we gave it 12 enthusiastic thumbs up. If you get a chance to see it in New York or on tour, GO!!

I’m so glad I was with those six people! There was so much to process, and it was a much richer experience for being with friends who share my sensibilities about theater and art and music. But I’m also glad for the time I spent by myself. I am a copacetic group member, but there is luxury in deciding exactly how you’re going to spend your time in a place like New York.

As I said, I had one thing on my daytime itinerary when I arrived: go to a Fitness 305 class in the Village. This is why at least one friend affectionately called me a weirdo, but I’m addicted to my workout. I love dance fitness, and Jazzercise wasn’t an option because of their schedule. A week before my visit, an instructor visiting from DC who had previously lived in New York came to my class. She told me the Jazzercise Center in NY was awesome, but she surely knew about their limited schedule because she told me if Jazzercise didn’t work out, I should go to a Fitness 305 class. So I looked it up. It’s dance fitness with a live DJ and a whole club-style light show happening while you’re working out. I’m not going to lie. I was a little intimidated. In the videos, the crowd skewed significantly younger than me, and when I arrived, there was no question that for most of them, I could be their mother. Most of them. There were three ladies who looked like they might also remember the 80s and that made me feel better. 

Everyone was friendly and welcoming. The instructor made a point to remember my name and to tell everyone I taught Jazzercise (But hey, no pressure). I tried to hide in the back row, and some of my Jazzy friends will laugh at that, but there was no hiding in that class. To start with there were mirrors all over the room. Jazzercise explicitly disallows mirrors in our centers so that people won’t feel self-conscious (Thank you, Judi!). We also use a stage so that everyone in the room can see the instructor. No stage in this room. The instructor moved around the room throughout the class, essentially switching the front and the back. Five minutes in, she was right next to me, shouting, “Come on Kathy, let’s get it!” And we got it. We most definitely got it. I can see the exact moment we got it when I look at my heart rate data for the class.

But I didn’t die, and I kept up. The choreography was different from ours, but like ours, it’s in repeated combinations, and after a repetition or two, I picked it up. The structure of class was also different, jumping right into cardio without an opening warm-up. Like our classes, there were customers at different fitness levels who knew how to modify the moves to work for them. When my knee started talking to me, and it did, I brought it down to low impact and didn’t feel weird about it because I wasn’t the only one. It was leg day and we did 5-10 minutes of strength moves focused on legs. I wanted the instructor to come stand next to me then because I was back in my comfort zone, but alas, she was getting it with a girl on the far side of the room wearing an “oh shit!” expression. And lest you think I’m mocking that poor girl, I am certain I had that same look on my face when it was my turn to get it. 

This cute girl kicked my butt!

I’m glad I went. It was fun. It was a kickass workout, and it’s the closest I’ll get to an actual club. I’ll never forsake Jazzercise, but trying new things is a rush, especially when they’re out of your comfort zone.

Since I was in the Village for the class, I spent the rest of the day there until it was time to return to Times Square and my people. I went to The Strand Bookstore where I bought two books, a magnet for my whiteboard collection at school, a perfect onesie for Angela’s baby girl and a book bag that I shall carry everywhere because it speaks the truth.

If you don’t know about The Strand, check out their website, and if you’re in New York, check out the store. They advertise 18 miles of books. I didn’t measure while I was there, but it certainly felt like it could be true.

I wandered into a vintage dress shop, ate a slice at Joe’s Pizza, had some gelato and hung out with the pigeons at Washington Square Park.

Spiderman once ate here. 

Mostly, I soaked up the vibe of that part of the city, and time passed faster than I wanted it to. I walked 7 miles that day, a paltry sum compared to the next day.

I started the next day with a trip to the New York Public Library. My friend, Lisa, suggested it (she is a librarian), and it was a GREAT suggestion.

At the main branch on Fifth Avenue, there is an exhibit called “Treasures,” and there has never been a more accurate name. The first thing you see when you enter is a Gutenberg Bible from 1455. It’s gorgeous. Following that are medieval texts from all over the world. The illuminated manuscripts are incredible, and I had trouble pulling myself away.

The Gutenberg Bible 1455

I saw a first edition printed copy of the Declaration of Independence and a draft copy in Jefferson’s own writing. When I got to the handwritten draft of George Washington’s farewell address, I became weepy. Reading the words of a person who is gone allows us to reach back across time and touch them. That feeling is magnified when you are faced with the actual piece of paper on which they wrote those words. The emotion that welled up inside of me was another version of the feeling I get whenever I open my mother’s cookbook and see a recipe in her own handwriting. In that moment, I feel her there in the room with me. And just for a moment, I was standing with the first American to voluntarily step away from the highest office in the nation. There is power in the written word, and preserving it gives humanity a fighting chance against its own hubris.

Printed Declaration of Independence 1776

George Washington's Farewell Address

After a couple of fruitful hours at the library, I found the subway station and headed uptown. During those two days, I traveled all over the city via subway. A mundane daily routine for one person is fascinating to the next. The subway is a whole world unto itself. So many diverse people inhabit the same space. There is entertainment at almost every station. There are people walking through the cars selling candy and chips. You see people reading, talking on the phone, jamming to music, staring blankly into the dark outside the windows and speaking every language imaginable. Once again, Blogger thwarted me in my efforts to upload a video of a woman singing a mournful cover of "Dancing in the Dark" over the rumble of the subway. You'll just have to go to New York and hear the buskers for yourself.

I got off the subway at 81st and Central Park West, right next to the Natural History Museum. My ultimate destination was The Hungarian Pastry Shop on 111th Street, and while I had no intention of walking those 30 blocks, that’s exactly what ended up happening. I had time to kill before my meeting, so I meandered through the park, eventually popping out on the east side at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was tempted to go in because it’s an amazing place, but I have been inside before, and I knew there was no way I’d make my meeting on time if I succumbed to the temptation. So I kept heading north until I got to the reservoir. Then, I took the path that circles it back over to the west side. Circling the reservoir was the coldest walk of the entire trip. The sun was actually shining that day, but it was in the low 40s and a frigid wind was coming across the water. Thankfully, I had a warm woolen cap, and it was bearable.

Once I was back on the west side, I left the park and went two blocks over to Amsterdam. I had not eaten lunch and I was hungry, so I stopped in a Peruvian restaurant and had a couple of empanadas. It was a really good decision. They were delicious, and I tend toward hangriness when I don’t eat regularly. One should never meet anyone hangry, even if one is meeting in a bakery.

Thus fortified, I started walking north again. It occurred to me a couple of times to find a subway station and ride the rest of the way to my destination, but I kept seeing interesting things, and so I kept not getting on the subway. New York is a really cool place to take a long walk, even in the cold. I reached the bakery 20 minutes early, so I wandered across the street to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and gave them $10 to browse through it. I had actually been inside before, but I love cathedrals, and it was a good way to spend 20 minutes.

Finally it was time for my meeting! If you’re still with me, and you’ve been paying attention, you’re probably thinking, “Wait a minute! You said you only had one thing on your daytime itinerary when you left Kentucky, and you already did that.” Good catch, reader friend, but I made this appointment after I arrived in New York. I posted a picture on my Facebook story of the Stardust Diner on the day we arrived, and the person I met at the bakery saw it and messaged me!

It’s Emmaline! She is an ECS Justice Dragon and former student who now attends Columbia University!

The three hours I spent with her were some of the best of the whole trip. She suggested we meet at the pastry shop, and the line outside the door was a sign that it was a good choice. I had the chocolate caramel cake. I was so engaged in our conversation that I forgot to take a picture. When I later mourned that fact to Amanda, she had my back and found a picture from their website. (What? Food is an integral part of the travel experience, and exceptional food is worth remembering in a picture.)

We talked in the bakery, and then we ventured back out into the cold and talked as we walked all over campus. She gave me the entire tour and told me about her studies. I don’t think I stopped smiling and bursting with pride. She has made unconventional moves in her educational journey to build the life she wants for herself, and she did it during a pandemic. I couldn't be more proud.

Alexander Hamilton was on the tour. He is a graduate of Columbia which was once known as King’s College. (Are you hearing “Ima get a scholarship to King’s College, I probably shouldn’t brag, but dag I amaze and astonish” in your head right now? You’re welcome.)

We talked about everything… the research she’s done, the books we’ve read, academic freedom, living in the city, movies, and even poetry. When Emmaline was in my class, I struggled to win her over to poetry. It just wasn’t her thing. Now she’s in the poetry club at Columbia! Of course, it was a specific poet that won her over, and that’s how it goes. You may think you don’t like a particular thing, and then you find one of that thing that blows you away and your whole mindset shifts. (I thought I didn’t like Bluegrass music, and then I heard Mountain Heart.)

I bought a Columbia hoodie in the bookstore. I can legitimately wear it because I have a kid there now. Roll your eyes if you must, but every time a group of students graduates out of our program, we feel the loss. We have them for 3-4 years, depending on when they join us and they grow up with us. I had not seen Emmaline in the 4 years since she graduated. She is still the intelligent, insightful young woman who left us, but she has gained the poise and confidence that comes with education, travel and life experience. When she walked me to the subway station to head back downtown, we had a hard time saying goodbye. One of us would think of one more thing to talk about, and we stood at the top of the stairs talking for another 15 minutes. My eyes were wet when I finally walked down to the platform.

The day had been full and wonderful, and I collapsed onto the bed in the hotel room at 5:15 ready to rest a bit. Amanda smiled and said we were meeting downstairs at 5:30. Our dinner reservation wasn’t until 7:30 but the rest of the group wanted to get out of Times Square and walk around. They had been sitting in all day in conference meetings. I had 22,000 steps. I whined a little bit (maybe more than a little bit), but rolled back off the bed and rallied. By 6:00, I was back on the subway heading uptown, and for the second time that day got off at the 81st street station.

It was dark when we crossed the street and entered the park, but there were 4 of us and we were on a well-lit path… until we weren’t. Somehow we took a wrong turn and ended up walking under a bridge in the pitch dark. We could see someone coming from the opposite direction, and there was a moment of concern, but I was pretty sure the person was pushing a stroller and holding a child’s hand. I don’t imagine many serial killers take their toddlers with them on their killing sprees. It was weird, though, that he walked with them under a dark bridge, and when I stepped on a piece of gravel and it popped loudly, everyone jumped. We laughed, and we also plowed right through the landscaping to get back on the lighted path. 

We found our way to Strawberry Fields and the Imagine mosaic. Are you hearing John Lennon in your head? Well banish that thought. We were actually listening to death metal coming out of a boombox. Yes, an actual John-Cusak-over-the-head boombox. A whole group of teenagers had congregated nearby. They didn’t pay any attention to us as we took our pictures, and we didn’t feel unsafe. Maybe because we have all taught high school and know the difference between leave-me-alone and menacing body language. We gladly left them alone. The music was obnoxious. 

Our dinner reservation was on the east side of the park, so we headed that way, and I crossed the park for the third time that day. It was a different experience though. The lights of the city were beautiful in the distance. We were all caught up in the experience enough that none of us took a picture of the lights. I was initially disappointed when I realized I didn't have a picture to put in this spot, but then I remembered the vibe, and I was glad I was in it enough that I forgot my phone. The park was still alive with people jogging, biking, and walking their dogs, and it was an experience we could only have in New York. When we sat down in the restaurant, someone declared that we were badasses for walking across the park at night, and then someone else noted that it was 6:30, and we all burst out laughing.

This is the four of us the night before. No pic from the actual restaurant.

Our adventure made a good dinner even better. The restaurant was warm and cozy and welcoming after our cold walk. When we walked in, I noted that it smelled good, and Amanda declared that it smelled better than the rest of New York. High praise, indeed. The food was good. The drinks were plentiful. And we laughed until our faces hurt.

We took a Lyft back to our hotel after dinner. I didn't want to walk any further than the curb. Amanda took a picture of me trying to tie my shoes. My knee was calling me bad names, and I was returning the favor. Thankfully, this is a picture and not a video. 

I walked 13 miles that day… 30,565 steps. My knee flat out hurt when I crawled into bed that night, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

We woke early the next morning and headed to the airport. We called a car for five people and the one that arrived seated four. Erin sat on Amanda’s lap and worked at not getting carsick. Luckily for them, the trip to the airport is much faster at 7:00am on a Saturday than in the middle of a weekday. The flight was uneventful, and we stopped at a bustling Chick-fil-A in Florence to stave off hangriness before returning home. We chattered happily all way back to Georgetown, and when they dropped me off, I settled into the quiet of my house, happily alone.

Perfect.

If you’ve stayed with me this far, you are a friend indeed. Reading this was surely a marathon. I know writing it was. I set a goal of 4 blog posts this year. I didn’t intend to write them all at one time. But it is what it is. The first quarter is finished with a month to spare. Go me!

 

Don't show your ass on Facebook

As of this writing, I have 223 friends on Facebook. Not a huge number when compared to some of my friends, but a manageable number. My newsfeed is varied and interesting, and even on my busiest days, I can easily scroll through and see what’s going on with everyone. I access FB almost exclusively through my phone, so I can check it anytime I have a few extra minutes. I have a Twitter account, a blog, and I read other blogs daily, a select few religiously, but FB is the social media form I touch most.

I scrolled through my list of friends and broke it down based on how I knew them. Some friends fell into multiple categories, so I placed them in the one where I knew them first.

Family members – 13
Friends from high school – 31
Friends from college – 13
Friends I met thru work – 62
Friends I met in my capacity as a football coach’s wife – 26
Friends I met thru my kids – 22
Former students – 36
Friends I met thru Jazzercise – 8
Friends who don’t fall into any of the above categories – 12

My friends fall all over the spectrum politically, religiously, socially, and culturally. My friends are old and young, male and female, black and white, gay and straight. They are in college, established professionals, stay-at-home moms, in the military, working odd jobs trying to find their way in life, and retired.

One of my favorite things about FB is the diversity of my friends. I love that I never know what I’m gonna see. One friend’s baby pic might be followed in my newsfeed by a pic of the margarita someone else is about to drink. An inspirational quote might be followed by a rant on the rudeness of people in traffic. Last fall, a status praising the example of Tim Tebow was immediately followed by a status mocking the example of Tim Tebow.

I rarely get bent over anyone’s political or religious views because I was raised to respect divergent points of view. I teach my own kids and my students to respect divergent points of view. I don’t choose my friends based on their political or religious points of view, but rather on the content of their character.

Unfortunately, nothing reveals the content of a person’s character like politics and religion. Most people are able to express a point of view reasonably, without shouting and vitriol. I know this doesn’t seem true based on what the media shows us daily, but think about your personal experience. Do your friends and co-workers rant like assholes on a regular basis? Mine don’t. But here’s the thing. Even a rant can be accomplished without showing your ass. I understand that sometimes, people feel so passionate about something or so disgusted by something that they need to rant. I get that. I really do.

The rant is by definition, emotional. You rant because you FEEL. The trick is to feel and convey that feeling without divorcing yourself from your rational brain. Passion is most effective when combined with reason. When passion overtakes reason, there is a significant danger of your ass falling out and revealing itself to everyone within hearing distance.

When your ass falls out on Facebook, “hearing distance” grows exponentially.

I have seen my FB friends’ metaphorical asses from time to time, and I’m aware that once or twice, I’ve shown mine. Mostly, I shake my head or laugh and move on because I realize that it’s coming from a place of exuberant youth, or drunkenness, fear, or loss. I can forgive those things because we’re human, and I’ve been there too.

What I will not forgive is willful ignorance and bigotry.

Last night, I had 224 FB friends. I was watching the NCAA championship and scrolling through the joyful posts of my friends cheering on the Cats. Right in the middle of the celebration was a post that made my jaw drop, a steaming pile of crap in the middle of a banquet table. It was so unexpected and out of place, that at first, I thought it had to be a joke and I somehow wasn’t in on it.

It wasn’t. I won’t repeat the status she posted, but it was ignorant. A mutual friend called her out on it in the comments section, but was drowned out by a chorus of voices who saw that one bigot had showed her ass and were now vying to get their asses front and center as well. My friend texted me and asked me if I thought the post had racist overtones. I said no. There were no overtones. The post was blaring racism through an air horn.

I unfriended her. The friend who texted me said she would unfriend her too as soon as her daughter showed her how. None of the bigots in the comments section who raised their heads like vile little gophers thinking the coast was clear were my FB friends. They never will be.

My former FB friend was not a former student or one of Bruce’s former players. Those young folks have more sense than that. She was not a friend from high school or college that I haven’t seen in ages and have very little in common with anymore. She was someone I thought I knew.

The whole incident made me feel sad and sick and slightly disillusioned. I’m not stupid or naïve. I’m too old for that. I teach public school for heaven’s sake. I guess it’s more that someone in her position would not only espouse such a hateful point of view, but express it publicly and inspire others to join in.

I can’t change the world, although I’d like to think I’m trying to change my own little corner of it for the better. I can absolutely change our friendship status, both on FB and in real life.

This morning I have 223 Facebook friends.

If you're snooty, you lose

I attended The Festival of the Bluegrass last weekend. My friend, Linda, has been trying to get me there for years. Her family organizes and operates the whole shebang. As much as I love Linda, I don’t love bluegrass music, so I’ve always begged off. This year, I caved, mostly because I decided it would be fun to hang with my friends regardless of the music playing in the background. And it was. This particular group of friends makes any Saturday night fun.

The sun was setting when we arrived, and the hot day softened into a warm June night. We set up our lawn chairs close to the back of the concert area and relaxed with our favorite beverages. Someone succumbed to the aroma and bought a funnel cake, and we took turns brushing powdered sugar off our clothes. (Those things smell so much better than they taste.) We laughed, shared stories, and made friends with the folks around us.

A funny thing happened while we were sitting there. The music became more than background noise. Bluegrass musicians are storytellers, and I love a good story. A good storyteller compels you to sit up and pay attention. I started paying attention when the lyrics made me laugh.

Grandma bought a hog
Grandma bought a hog
If yer thinkin’ bout bacon
Yer sadly mistaken
Grandma bought a riding hog

How can you not pay attention to a song about a Harley-ridin’ grandma? That gem was followed by “I Met My Baby in the Port-a-John Line.”

My eyes were a-floatin’ with love on my mind
I met my baby in the Port-o-John line.

As we were chuckling about the lyrics, Rachel told us her dad had been in a bluegrass band, and so she has a warm place in her heart for bluegrass music. She told us stories about traveling to gigs all over with him when she was a kid. Not a bad way to grow up, meeting new people and listening to amazing musicians.

The lyrics weren’t all silly. The bands I heard played songs about love and loss, joy and pain, faith and hope. The crowd loved them, and if I didn’t love them, I certainly let go of the snooty disdain I had secretly fostered when we first set our chairs down.

Then Mountain Heart took the stage. Holy cow! To say that I enjoyed their music would be a huge understatement. They were flippin’ incredible! Their music was as high octane as anything I’ve ever heard. I couldn’t sit still. I had to dance. On Linda’s suggestion, I moved with her to her reserved seats on the front row. Bluegrass fans are different from rock fans in that the staid old people have the front row seats and aren’t much for dancing. Security insisted that we stay seated so the staid old people could see. (Maybe they weren’t all old, but their insistence on church-like decorum made them seem that way.) Luckily, there were plenty of fans of all ages in the middle aisle who felt the music like I did and needed to dance. I was embraced by those folks and danced my little heart out.

Linda told me later that Mountain Heart wouldn’t be back next year. Their music is just different enough from traditional bluegrass that a lot of the hard core Festival-goers don’t like them, so they are rotating them out, and then bringing them back the following year. Apparently, some of the fans actually left the concert area in protest and didn’t return until their set was finished.

I was dumbfounded. While I heard other good bands, none of them brought it like Mountain Heart did. They actually made me say out loud, “I think maybe I do like bluegrass music.”

I let go of my snooty attitude when I sat and listened to live bluegrass, and then I embraced the music when I heard Mountain Heart play. Unfortunately, the next person won’t get that chance, at least for a couple of years, because a core group of fans has an equally snooty idea about what bluegrass should be.

How often do unyielding, preconceived ideas about what is good get in our way? As a romance reader and writer, I run into it all the time. If it’s romance it must be trashy and poorly-written. Romance fans know that snooty idea is wrong-headed on so many levels, and yet it persists.

My friend, Nick, posted an Esquire Magazine article on Facebook that listed Kentucky as one of the most stylish states in the Union. The comments on his post ranged from incredulous to derisive, and we live in Kentucky. The snooty stereotype that we’re all a bunch of overall-wearing rubes runs so deep, we’ve internalized it ourselves. I haven’t worn overalls since the 80’s when they were stylish for five minutes.

I’ve resolved to be less snooty about things I think I don’t like, especially if I don‘t really know anything about them. What else have I missed out on because it doesn’t fall into a Kathy-approved category?

If you don’t know Mountain Heart, check out the video below. It’s good, but it doesn’t hold a candle to hearing them live. For my Owensboro friends and family, they are playing this Friday night at Yellow Creek Park. Go check them out. I promise you won’t regret it.

Yeah, I'm a Fangirl. So what?

Jessica Andersen, paranormal romance author, molecular geneticist, and all around rock star, has a new book out. Storm Kissed is the next Nightkeepers book, a paranormal series built around the Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prophecy. In honor of her release day today, I'm reprinting part of my Day Four blog from last summer's RWA conference.

I met Jessica three different times that day and actually had a real conversation with her at the Rita awards dinner. So, yeah, I'm a total fangirl, and I make no apologies. She's awesome.

from RWA Day Four
The coolest part of the NAL/Signet autograph session was meeting Jessica Andersen. She writes the NightKeepers, a paranormal series about the Mayan 2012 myth. I already had the book she was giving away at home, but I took another copy because I wanted her autograph. I gushed like the fangirl I am and asked specific questions about the book. I knew Jessica was a good writer, but I didn't know she was a freakin' rock star. Seriously, she looks like Joan Jett, but prettier.

I was more impressed when I went to her workshop called "Crime Scene Imagination." Jessica has a PhD in molecular genetics. She is not only a rock star, but she can run a DNA test. The heading I wrote across the top of my notes said "Cool. As. Hell." And oh my god, she is. My Jessica story gets even better. At the Rita Awards, I discovered I was sitting next to her publicist. Jessica stopped by and we talked again.

I'm willing to put this not-so-great picture of me out here because she just rocked. I wish you could see the pants she was wearing. Cut-outs ran all the way up both legs. A molecular geneticist who writes steaming hot paranormals and dresses like a rock star...freakin' awesome!

Jessica did the crime scene workshop with her best friend's daughter who is a senior at Sam Houston State. She is a biology/criminal justice major and works on the body farm there, one of only four in the US. A body farm is where scientists study how the human body decomposes in a variety of situations. So we learned tons about decomp and DNA. Guess what? CSI is a pack of lies. They get almost everything wrong. On some level, I knew it wasn't realistic, but I didn't realize how wrong they got it.

So go buy Jessica's new book! Heck, buy them all! Her heroines are strong. Her heroes are hot, and her stories engage both the heart and the head. It doesn't get better than that.

If Your Nerve Deny You...

Warning: I generally try to keep the language in my blog posts PG-13, but I'm quoting another source which I refuse to censor, so today, it's R.

Twitter is a great place for discovering interesting tidbits, and today, I came across a wonderful new place to lose a few hours. The Rumpus is a place for all things literary. You will find the usual book reviews and author interviews alongside several columns, comic strips and news of the weird. Two features in particular proved to be a worthwhile time suck this morning.

1. The National Poetry Month Project: Each day in April, The Rumpus will post a previously unpublished poem solicited from a wide range of current poets. If you click through, you will find a link for last year's collection as well. I read, re-read, and then sat and stared at the Day #3 poem, "Why I did not Make Love to your Dead Body," by Kirsten Kaschock for a long time. Wow.... I'll be adding this site to my Interesting Reads links on the the right side of the blog.


2. Dear Sugar: This is an advice column for writers. The first two entries I read blew me away. You should definitely click through and read the whole question and answer, especially if you are an artist of any kind, but I felt compelled to post a couple of her comments below.

From "We are all Savages Inside"

I know it’s not easy being an artist. I know the gulf between creation and commerce is so tremendously wide that it’s sometimes impossible not to feel annihilated by it. A lot of artists give up because it’s just too damn hard to go on making art in a culture that by and large does not support its artists. But the people who don’t give up are the people who find a way to believe in abundance rather than scarcity. They’ve taken into their hearts the idea that there is enough for all of us, that success will manifest itself in different ways for different sorts of artists, that keeping the faith is more important than cashing the check, that being genuinely happy for someone else who got something you hope to get makes you genuinely happier too.

From "Write like a Motherfucker"

How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

Go...read, explore, be inspired by this site. As for me? I'm off to write like a motherfucker.

Never, Ever Piss Off a Writer

I texted the title of this post to my friend, Pam, just last week. I was being facetious at the time, but the story I just stumbled across via Liana Brooks' blog is proof positive that it's true.

Cooks Source Magazine, a for-profit publication, lifted a post from this writer's blog and printed it without her knowledge or permission. She contacted the magazine and got this response from the editor:

But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!

Wrong answer. Aside from the fact that lifting someone's writing and putting your name on it is plagiarism, my blog and everyone's blog is protected under copyright law. While most folks don't mind being quoted or linked...we do want readers...you may not take my writing and print it for profit without my permission.

Writers on the web are an interconnected bunch, and this gem of a response from Cooks Source bounced around from blog to blog, including John Scalzi's blog (one of my personal favs) which gets approximately 10,000 hits per day. Blog readers reported it to several watchdog organizations, and then it blew up on twitter.

@neilhimself (Neil Gaiman) retweeted it. He has 1.5 million followers.

People found the Cooks Source Facebook page and flamed it mercilessly. I'm sure they'll be taking that page down any moment now, but check it out if it's still there. Wow...just wow...

Edward Champion did some investigating and discovered that Cooks Source has made a fine living reprinting content from the Internet without permission.

Any money Cooks Source might have saved by stealing from mostly unknown writers will probably now be paid ten thousand times over to lawyers. Honestly, after following this thread from link to link, I'll be surprised if they're still in business this time next month.

Never, ever piss off a writer.