A Dinner Party

I hosted my first dinner party last night.

I've hosted jointly before. But this one was in my Mansard roof, in my kitchen. For my new Cornell lab group and boss.



Perhaps it was not a standard dinner party. It was mostly brassicas. And the justification of this party was a Website Launch Party. Specifically, one of my first tasks as employee was to revamp the website, hosted by wordpress. I got rid of the tall office buildings of text, the stacks of links, unburied the interesting photos lost in the depths and brought them accessible. I bugged my teammates for details about their projects and made little profile pages for each. I learned how to navigate wordpress platform and read countless well-designed blogs about designing blogs well.

(Please visit our site! https://scslabcu.wordpress.com/)

I was wrist-deep in bike grease and crud on the front porch, changing my rear flat, when Professor Boss arrived lugging two potted plants and plenty of beer.  How strange it is to have one's boss out of context like this. And good. So we opened beers with a bike tire lever and talked about things that weren't perennial grains, rolling soybeans, or collecting soil samples. I bumbled around my upside-down bicycle and he remarked how nice it was to have an expansive porch.

Then the rest of my lab group arrived. I am extraordinarily blessed by getting to work with a group of clever, motivated, interested and interesting young people. Their partners are lovely too. Tall Sophia arrived with her big plume of hair, wearing heels and saying she refuses not to not wear heels because of her height. Sweet Mariah told stories of the cats at the humane shelter where she volunteers. We laughed about the brassicas, gossiped a bit about some faculty and local growers, and dreamed of agronomy conferences held in Puerto Rico.

And it was indeed brassica night. "P.S. Remember it's Bring Your Wok To Work Day" I'd reminded my boss in the bottom of a logistics email; I was needing to borrow his wok so I could make Sichuan Pepper cabbage stir fry. Everyone leaned around my kitchen, talking animatedly, beers encased in my strange coozie collection, while I sprinkled and poured ingredients in the wok, making up a cabbage recipe. Professor Boss chopped a kohlrabi (more brassica) and Soil Master Chris had brought a kale-lentil salad (the final brassica).

I felt duly-dinner party-ry because I served my cabbage stir-fry in my cut glass bowl (gift from dear generous Aunt Marge) AND I had enough chairs and plates for everyone. We fit around my estate-sale special table.

It takes me halfway through the meal, however, to remember to offer out yellow cloth napkins (gift from dear Grandma June). Oh well, better late than never.

I noticed later one of those napkins sticking out of Soil Master Chris's back-pocket, exactly like the soil sampling rag that had been back there this morning.

Having them in my Mansard Roof was a pleasure; I'm learning I thoroughly enjoy hosting people. And I got to "play" (i.e., "sound") the organ bed and introduce everyone to Oliver the Fish and his efficient little cleaning service (algae eater). I had Celtic music playing on my Dad's boat-sized ancient boom box and evening sun cascaded into my Mansard. It was lovely.

The First Ride and A Good Sing

Two excellent things happened this weekend. But I should say these were normal happenings, perhaps, but the canvas for them was the weather for the past week: a dungeon of sodden greyness, turbulent wind, shrinking into hopeful spring coats that weren’t nearly warm enough. The skies were monochrome, unceasingly deep blankets under which we were all hidden and morose. Occasionally a maverick cloud might dart uncharacteristically quickly past its role of sun obscuring, and a weak ray of gold would grace us. But then, after 15 seconds, snow would begin on some sort of cruel whim.

And there’s a deeply concerning draught in California. (oh climate change)

But coming back to the local. Today. Today was Spring. Glorious sun leapt me out of bed, permanent sun, sun all day. My quads and lungs and soul have been waiting for this day. Waiting to go bicycling. Bicycling in celebration, not in stoicism. Not a rainy buzz out for eggs or soymilk, but a glorious revel of exploring new places.

Cleaning my chain, pumping my tires: it was like getting ready to go on a date, all eager and anticipating and a little nervous maybe. How would it go? Would I still have it? It had been so long, so long since I’d roared off on two wheels; which shoes do I normally bicycle in? Which shorts fit the best? I had to step back and remember these things.

And then: oh, it was like reconnecting with a love after a long time separate. The previously delicious comfortable things now unexpectedly new and exciting. How my feet fit in the pedals, the balance and grind of standing into the handlebars to climb a hill, the brakes that do squeak, darn it.

I opened the Tompkins County bicycle map and arbitrarily chose to head towards Dryden. A small town separated from Ithaca by fields and trees and shabby houses and hills and streams. I took Whispering Springs Actually-A-Killer-Hill Rd, or something like this, and began to climb. And climb. I down-shifted. I took off my over shirt. Then rolled down my knee socks. Then took those off completely. I was doing something I hadn’t done in ages: I was sweating in the sun. Digging into my long-lost legs. Chipping the crusty layer off my lungs. Suffering and glory all churning together. It was amazing.

And, after rounding many forested turns---believing to finally be at the victorious crest only to thwartingly find there was more---I did reach the highest bit. One of those yellow road signs of a truck riding down a triangle indicated it would be a great descent. And oh my: that descent went on long enough I got to move past the adrenaline of it, to sit with this descent, to be in it for a long delicious time. The unexpectedly long climb was winter, which when I was in it I never believed it to end (must work on Faith), and this descent was the giddy glory of spring.

The descent was so fantastic and jostedly that I noticed an undue amount of clatter happening after I landed. Upon inspection, I realized my bicycle had lost a bit of hardware connecting my back-rack and rear-fender to the frame. Poking tentatively around Dryden, I realized this town failed to have content on a Sunday, and I had to be all clever with a bit of wire scrounged roadside and some electrical tape purchased at Walgreens. But this mending held and I was pleased.

The descent into spring. It took me all the way to that valley.

28 miles. My First Ride of the season. I feel so happy. I have mild sun addiction, perhaps, and when I get a fix life is so much improved. I’ll see how I am once I inventory the legs tomorrow morning.

The other excellent thing was music. The Christian Scientists have a soloist instead of a choir, and as organist my task is to learn their piece and accompany them. This week a soprano. I was expecting some flimsy demanding blonde thing, but this girl, Miss Spunk, was tall like me and indeed a presence. She was young, irreverent and driven, quick sense of humor, fast to laugh; we hit it off immediately. We had just met and were creating music together, like a dance.  Rehearsal Saturday morning, though it was technically “work” I suppose, was really fun.

There was a bit where she got all high and belting and I was playing smooth arpeggios beneath. To hear this striking operatic voice, resonating these wide notes, “aahhh”—rolling up into the registers—“aaaahhh”—all like an aria—“ahhhh”—and here I was accompanying under it!—“aaaaahhhh”—and then: “aahhhh-shit-aahhhh” as she expressed some unwanted musical aberration. I started giggling, then laughing, then had to stop playing. Then in my agile keyboardist grace I flail out and knock over my metal thermos, which is a veritable gong. To have such a crash follow her operatic expletive sent us both into a full train wreck.  We had a blast.

But oh did we do well Sunday morning. I was giving myself chills while she sang.

In Warm Rain

Forgive me as I write about Spring....at least a whiff of Spring. This was from last night.

The world smelled of warm rain, a delicious smell indeed.  One of those smells as important as Grandma’s Cookies. I felt that flutter of spring, the rising of that beautiful thing which is human hope. I was the bike-riding version of a fawn prancing among crocuses.  Only in the dark. And the rain. Coming back across town from the organ church. It was that affirming feeling, maybe there were still piles of filthy snow, maybe the reminder of the weekend’s weather was grimly gruesome. But it was that affirmation that you could remember this feeling, what spring was. Feeling the feeling of the feeling, if not the feeling itself. Like feeling how it felt to be in love, remembering what that felt like, even if you weren’t actually in it. But faith that it—spring, love, whatever—will happen.

This feeling made me want to DO THINGS: bake cookies, host parties, go hiking, ride my bicycle many miles, have guests, go dancing, eat more Thai peanut sauce, adopt a cat. 

And I felt happiness to be in Ithaca….not just resigned or tolerant, but actively happy. Maybe because I was on a bicycle. (You can keep your little hardy northern mouth shut, Sylvia Klassen, but I was too blasted by this terrible winter to ride my bicycle.) And being on a bicycle again, finally, was as delicious as that smell of warm rain.

Today I took the scenic way home from Cornell, curving around the roads in the Plantations, sitting tall and looking delighted and gazing off into the trees. I became duly muddy after some off-roading activities thanks to a slightly disorienting turn, which seemed appropriately fitting.

Spring makes me stupid with glee. I end up grinning at passersby and bum-bumming to myself. Add to this the bliss of relieving release from the world’s tallest basement (my office building), and the extended frisson of flying down THE HILL on bicycle (not just a single hill, either, but it comes in stages, so you have moments of being present before the next ripping descent) at the end of a productive workday and I could quite possibly become airborne by the time I’ve reached downtown.

I reached downtown Wednesday and bought myself a charming little epiphyte tillandsia plant to keep me company in the kitchen.

Otherwise, it’s The Fish And I, living in this Mansard Roof.

I was wearing as many clashing versions of teal and green as my wardrobe would allow (disregarding the neon pants): teal sweater, neon green vest, blue-teal scarf, my sister’s every-color-teal-blue hat. Two clashing colors is unaware; more is intentional. It felt playful and good.

So I came into my apartment after playing that beautiful tracker instrument, just now, remembering with fondness how my organ music was sitting primly in boxes, all organized. Even though some of it was being deployed and was in circulation, left by the organ at the church, not in my prim boxes. 

Then I made a metaphor joke in my head, so nerdy, yet so applicable to my personal circumstances….remembering from Soil Fertility class how soil organic matter has an active fraction and a passive fraction (i.e., not biologically active, aka humus) and how my pipe organ matter was likewise. The books that actively transferred between apartment and church, de-composing (oh dear) and then the books that were not available to soil organisms for consumption.

The previously unexplored world of curtains

Finally it is time to write.

I have my first Big Girl Apartment.

To think that last year this time I was in Vietnam somewhere (probably between Ho Chi Minh City and Hue), with not even the slightest foretaste that I'd be now in Ithaca, with a third-floor apartment right downtown, with a job at Cornell. The thoughts on my mind are no longer Oh Joy This Pho Is Only $1! and We Are Very Lost And It Is Very Sunny And We Can't Read The Road Signs. Now the thoughts are about area rugs and color coordination and an overwhelming need to unpack boxes and where-the-growl-are-all-my-writing-utensils. 

I am forced to write because I cannot make tea, I cannot vacuum or iron, and I can see nothing past 7:30pm in this new apartment of mine. There is no electricity at the moment. So I went out for electricity, and a latte, and here I am with a laptop watching the street go by.


My fridge items are squatting on my fire escape and my freezer items are becoming weepy. I bought them some ice today and shall hope for the best.

I needn't detail why I am devoid of electricity (I happily and un-gratefully experienced it when I first moved in, at least), but the nuggets and nubbins of it are: there was a crossed wire, erm as it were, with the previous occupants, and also NYSEG doesn't take Same Day Requests.

But electricity aside, this is the most thrilled I have ever been about an apartment. I'm not cloistered to just one bedroom in a shared house; I'm not living alone in a wheat field with upside down packing boxes for side tables and an air mattress for a bed; I'm not sleeping on a box spring; I'm not sharing a dark green hole with a grumpy roommate who refuses to speak to me; and I'm not in a college room in a busy dorm. The dirty dishes will be my dirty dishes and I have my very own living room. I've never had a living room before. And I'm deciding to be a bit more tasteful and grown up (what does that even mean?) thus I donated my pink plastic lamp and shall not hang anything that is unframed.

Various mother figures in my life have given me couches and dishes, table clothes and candlesticks. My Daddy made me an organ bed (with four wooden pipes that Actually Play--rather, make noise--and it is a mighty presence indeed in my bedroom).

In apartment hunting, I was a victor in finding this one. I'd seen the overheated slanted flat about the Chinese restaurant (inescapable smells of brown sauce, anyone?), a dark spot in college town with a view of someone's Party Litter backyard, an apartment in a building where there'd be nowhere reasonable to store my bicycle.

But this space is the entire top floor of a huge old house right near the center of town. Windows face all directions, there are wood floors and a sweet set of shelves built in above the stairs, which have a beautiful big wooden railing. I have space for huge kale projects in the kitchen, and I don't pay for heat. And oh I shall have parties!

I am happy to be living for the first time in amongst an urban center (as urban-ish as Ithaca is). I can walk in a few minutes for coffee, to shops, to the library, for a pint, for live music. None of this driving-25-minutes-nonsense or even biking a few miles. Because Ithaca feels like predominantly winter, being able to survive in the north will happen because I can tramp out in the snow just a few blocks and find light and warmth and other humans. (this doesn't stop me from missing the trains and ferns and mildness that is Seattle, though)

The help I received last weekend in setting up made me so grateful to have loving parents and easily-called upon friends. I was ramped and prancing from the excitement of seeing the space being filled.  Four different work-groups of friends at different times, in fact, helped me carry a mattress upstairs, clean the cabinets, and ferry endless caravans of boxes. It all went so fast, and I was gloriously happy to have the help. And my parents were so dear with their cleaning supplies, and trailer, and executive ideas about things.

But I had no idea I'd ever become so captivated by things like buying rugs. But here I am. Setting up this place is an exercise in aesthetics and decisions and design and it is quite fascinating. I feel very new and exploratory and am realizing that setting up an apartment is self-expression, just like choosing one's wardrobe.

There are so many decisions, decisions I didn't even know could exist, that germinate when one has to sow life freshly in a new space. Do shoes go in the entry way or bedroom? Do I want to have my scarves hanging or folded? Do spices go on the rack or in the cupboard?

Speaking of spices. One also learns truths about oneself, when one's life is extracted out of boxes and exposed in this way when moving. I realized I have an intractable penchant for spices. Cardamom in two forms, turmeric enough to stain an army, fenugreek, zatar, both multicolored peppercorns and plebeian peppercorns, allspice, French tarragon I harvested myself.....I tapped and spooned and puffed all these spices from Mennonite bulk containers into my unmatching eccentric little spice jars, then sneezed so violently I blew a few window gaskets.

(In addition to spices I love the scarves, the earrings, and the mugs.) 

I still feel very new here in Ithaca, but look forward to getting out from under my rug decisions and becoming a part of the community.

And now I need to stop writing and go think about curtains.

I went to my first estate sale with my Dad, and he did the amazing maneouver of backing the trailer right up to their garage.

Here my Dad sets up the Organist Bed. That tube is part of the bed.

I guess I like labeling things. Some of these boxes I packed over a year ago, before moving from Washington State to Geneva NY to my parents to my aunt's and uncles....

Church flavors

In the past week astonishingly new things have occurred for me. I am wearing new glasses instead of contacts, and I have a smartphone (or, at least a Moderately Intelligent phone).

Also: I am going to be accompanist for the Baptists. 

I've never played for Baptists before. Not a single song at their choir rehearsal tonight was familiar to me. But I don't think I've ever seen such a happy and perky choir rehearsal; the music was simple with just one or two lines, repetitive, and full of reassuring Jesus Loves You messages. One of my favorite ladies was bouncing markedly in her chair every time she laughed, and there was plenty of laughter. During the funniest bits Mrs. Bounce winked at new little me sitting off by the keyboard, all inclusive.

This area is positively blossoming with organists/accompanists, so positions have been a little hard to come by. This opening with the Baptists is a new development.

Playing for the Baptists might be of the same caliber of Newness as the glasses and cellphone, however. I'm used to music of the Episcopals (complex and sacred), or the Presbyterians (much-loved history and grandeur), or even the Lutherans or Methodists (accessible and boom-chunky), or the Christian Scientists (reflective and devoted). The Baptist music (contemporary and upbeat), brought to mind musical theatre, summer camp, maybe even the Muzak in the waiting room at the dentist's.

They're not using their organ, instead preferring an electric keyboard. So I won't be busting out Bach this Sunday, instead out shall come the sentimental Celtic hymn arrangements, the 7th-chord gospel richnesses. I do enjoy matching my music to various congregations. For most of the choir pieces, instead of someone accompanying at the keyboard, they use......a CD accompaniment track ("that just adds more interest for the listeners," explained Mrs. Choir Director earnestly) with soaring violins, bim-bim-cha drums, and sparkling sparklers.

So it was the easiest choir practice I ever attended. I played the melody line a few times to help people find their notes, and then sat and started writing this entry in my head.

There will be "Praise and Worship" music this Sunday, too. Practicing it, I've never seen so many dotted quarter notes in one sitting. I think this shall be fascinating this Sunday.

But a little pipe organ bird tells me that I might end up playing the historic tracker organ for the Christian Scientists in Ithaca. Because, amazingly, just today Mrs. Christian Scientist Organist offered me most of her Sundays from now until the summer! So, clap your hands clap clap your hands praise Jesus my lord wooowooowooo I think I'll be on their bench. This is just in time before I signed on full time with the electric keyboard and accompaniment CDs.

7:00am OF, or: On Winter

This morning, as I waited for the bus, the sign outside the bank flashed "7:00 am OF" and I wondered what the "of" was about. Then I realized: zero degrees Fahrenheit. Oh my.

The boutique has bunnies maddeningly in the window. The only thing bunny-like these days is my new-thrift-store Angora sweater. Which is very warm. These days really the only thing we can think about is Warm.

We will have earned Spring. An area-wide jubilation and victorious cheer shall ring out: no equivocating or debating sides on that one. In the huddled and shivering area of central NY, this has been the coldest winter on record.

We are bonding over this cold. We always have something to say to each other. Whether riding the bus, changing at the gym, or waiting in the post office line. "Did you see Thursday's forecast?!", "Stay warm out there!", "Gee my hands hurt, how are yours?

I never thought I'd be saying this, but when 27 degrees happened today it felt astonishingly balmy. I unzipped my coat and left my ear-flaps up. Which is the equivalent of practically ripping off one's layers and prancing about in skivvies.

It is too cold even to bicycle the 0.8 miles to the bus stop in the morning. I tried once, and upon arrival the cold had drilled into my thumbs till they were no longer mine; I reverted to a thumb-sucking toddler to reheat. The Bicycling (Very Cold For Short While) vs. Walking (Moderately Cold For Long While) debate in this case becomes the Insurmountably Cold for all activities and hands must be contained in a matryoshka doll manner of gloves>>mittens>>pockets. And one cannot utilize pockets on a bicycle.

But even with the Call To Warmth, I only drive my car if my aunt gives me That Look and wields her presidential veto power to keep me warm.  But I prefer to be out in the truth of this winter, actually, and I am protected thanks to my brigade of wool and puffy coat and hat-that-makes-me-look-like-a-lamb.

And so a crunching cracking grinding swishing walk it is in the mornings, and I am lulled by the bundled movement and gaze out into the frozen rainbow sunrise sherbet which is the world. This is beautiful. And walking home at night, with the half-moon reflecting in the black ice and the points of stars pricking sharply, is also one of those times where I actually would rather be nowhere else.

But only because I have my hands in my pockets. 

Figure 1. Angora rabbit.

"She has music on her legs"

Ithaca is not devoid of organists, it turns out.

I did what I routinly do when I arrive somewhere and that is to google and email churches and introduce myself and see what comes back. But Ithaca is brimming with well-educated musical people and very unlike the organist-starved small towns where I've previously stomped. "We already have an organist and a list of substitutes" were the replies, "but you're sure welcome to worship with us!"

Ho hum.

But the Christian Scientists want me for substitute, at least. AND, amazingly, the lofty and venerable First Presbyterian church downtown responded saying that although they do have a full time choir directer/organist he would like someone once a month so that he could conduct his choir AND have them accompanied. And a mighty fine choir they are too. And a mighty organ. I blew myself off the bench when I played it after my visit, ensuring first the church was emptied. Like a child with a long-awaited birthday cake I pulled out the 16 foot tubas and the 32 foot rumblers and the horns and all the big stops. Yeeee ha!!! My ears were fat.

My first Sunday playing for them was just this past one.

The organ is a building within a building, the console this shed-like structure sitting by the alter. A building that could make a lot of noise. And I couldn't see, and barely hear the congregation, except if I slid to the very edge of the bench and peeked around like a vole.

But that instrument. A million dollar instrument. With pieces of it that are 32 feet long! Those 32-foot pipes give the most resultant and vibratious sounds and I love them. If I had a choice I'd rather play a 32-footer than eat a chocolate sunday.

Incidentally, and amazingly, and fascinatingly, this is the church I would trot along to with my grandparents as a child. I have only a few memories of being there. One was being too petrified to go up to the front for the children's sermon and instead sat solemnly in the pew. (thankfully I'm not too petrified to go up for the organ now) They provided Wiggle Bags, which my home church did not, full of crayons and coloring pages and I thought that was most novel indeed. I was probably nine or eleven years old.

I also remember feeling slight distress that dear sweet Grannie couldn't sit with us but was in the choir--though I was proud in my little self to see her up there.  But it meant that I had to sit alone with the venerable and formidable Grandaddy and I was timid then and didn't know how to deal with him. But Grannie developed how we could wave at each other--distant pew to distant choir--discreetly without flapping. It was scratching your right ear. And when I'd catch her eye and she'd lift her hand to her ear, that was the best part of the whole church service. Our little secret.

But this Sunday I was [hidden] at the organ bench behind the edifice, and my parents were there, but Granddaddy and Grannie were not.  I played foot-filled flat-full Presbyterian hymns as grandly as I could, include some 32-footers. It was a thrill, I tell you. Absolutely a thrill. For the occasion I wore my special Episcopal-gifted tall socks with the music notes on them.

After the service a sweet Chinese woman from the congregation gave me two colored hard boiled eggs; a young woman with shortish hair remarked "WHERE do you get your hair cut! It's the best!" (barber shop in T-burg for 15 bucks); someone told me I played beautifully; another asked if I worked in the windowless monolith at Cornell (she read my bio). And she worked there as well. Then Mrs Eggs came by again and insisted I have a chocolate. At one point I overhead a lady telling her husband (a couple my dad said he remembered from his childhood in that church), "She has music on her legs!"

So I did not feel ill-received there.

After the service the choir director gave an adult education class not on the book of Job or Ecclesiastes or something dryly theological but instead on the brain and music. Evolution, the role of music in culture, how music excites the pleasure sensors in our brains in the same way recreational drugs do, how violinists' brains have a larger lefthandsius medius or whatever. And the comments from the audience were as thoughtful as the presentation was engaging. With the two institutions of higher learning in this town, and the general enclave of cultivating expressive strangeness and the arts, this is a brainy and engaging place indeed. My parents and I sat in varying degrees of rapt attention and listened and ate egg salad sandwiches (imported to church basement from car). At one point there is a decided loud crinkling and I look over and my dad has his sandwich baggie inside out and is focusedly fetching out the stray bits of egg filling. "Mum!" I whispered,"Would you poke him!"

Brainy and strange is my Daddy, as well. A suited gentleman approached us after the service and announced he remembered the day my father was born. I liked closing the loop and returning to this church, as magnificent and intimidating as it had seemed at first.