Ellen Schmidt—muse to the musical in you

As if raising seven kids were not enough, Ellen Schmidt helps local musicians grow while she keeps her own songwriting alive and well. Frequent host of multiple open mikes around Boston and Metro West, Ellen has a way of welcoming you into her world, first by the songs she writes that draw you in with a complex web of emotions and then with her invitation to share the stages she frequents in Natick, Boston, Framingham. She appeared (above) last night at the Emerson Umbrella in Concord, Mass., an art center that nurtures artists of every persuasion.

Jack McCarthy , formerly from Massachusetts, but now from Washington State, was in town as the featured poet last night at the Emerson Umbrella. He began performing his poetry at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge in 1993. Ever since then he's increased his output from a couple of poems a year to a poem a week. The man's prolific! And a compelling performer who draws you in with subtle rhymes and even more subtle truths about life, love, and broken down cars and broken down lives that get a chance for a glimmer of glory—not the fame and fortune kind, but the miracles of daily life filled with appreciation for the wheel that keeps turning.

Adult kids play Halloween games around the back bay . . .

Boylston Street near the Berklee College of Music isn't your usual trick or treat location and the only costumes I saw last night on my walk around town were the ones that college kids who don't want to give up this fun holiday wear.


I'm not very savvy about children's TV programming put I have heard of Teletubbies and the ones I heard about don't drink beer, but these ones do. The ladies above were French speaking and are most likely having fun with their first American Halloween parties. The moon looked full last night as it flitted in and out of the clouds.

The air was humid and balmy and it inspired me to head up to the top of the Prudential Tower—once again playing tourist in my own home town. You've got to pay $10 (Sr.) to walk around the Skywalk Observatory but the views were worth it. I think the foliage peaked this weekend. You can see little dabs of it on this photo I took from the 50th floor.

Levitation or yoga demonstration?

Guillermo Barrantes from Bikram Yoga Quincy was one of many participants who displayed their focus, concentration and stamina at the New England Regional Yoga Asana Championship 2009, on Saturday, October 24 at SpringStep in Medford, Mass. Although the event is called a "yoga competition," which in itself sounds like an oxymoron, it is more an event of yoga enthusiasts competing together to celebrate the ultimate lengths each yogi has been able to take his/her yoga practice. Underneath the founding of this "competition" is the hope that yoga will become a bonafide sport worthy of inclusion at the International Olympics. Once this distinction is achieved, yoga will easily become part of any public school curriculum, enabling its young practitioners to learn how to de-stress, promote health and fitness, as they learn a powerful tool for living a balanced life. Unlike other sports that often deplete, this discipline energizes the body and mind creating a sense of balance and calm that a lifetime yoga practice can instill.

Founder of the United States Yoga Federation, Rajashree Choudhury (above) of Yoga College of India, was on hand to lend her enthusiasm and support to all the participants. The final competition takes place in Los Angeles each February.

I took several hundred pictures at the event. Once I sort through them all, I'll post an album online so everyone can see what happened. Come back to this posting in a couple of days to link to that album. The link I just added tonight 11/1/09 will bring you to one of six albums from the event that are posted on my mobilme account. Once you've got entrance to that album you should be able to click on the other five if you want to see more. Above is Allie Foy from Bikram Yoga Concord, Concord NH.

Car free in Boston and environs . . . almost

Last Friday night my Nissan Sentra 2000 began to gasp and shake. The engine light flickered on and off and within a few minutes a burning smell wafted up to my nostrils. I parked the car to abandon it for the weekend until I could get it towed yesterday morning. Shades of past auto-neglect returned— that cracked block on the Dodge Dart because of no oil, and again on Blue Heinrich, my used Mercedes Benz deisel, that conferred vehicular status for a short period of my life until, that, too, died from lack of oil. I was already assuming that I would join the ranks of those car free in Boston citizens and returned, at least for the weekend and into Monday, to the public transportation system.

Yesterday I made my way on the Rockport commuter line to visit a friend. The round trip train ticket (Sr. price) was $7.35 and to my great surprise the ride included free WiFi.....OMG, how cool is that! The picture above is one of many I took through the window with my digital camera and transferred them immediately to my computer and was able to send some of the images to friends, all the while, never having to look at the speedometer to make sure I wasn't violating something or putting my life at risk.

The good/bad news from my loyal mechanic is that the car had some kind of ignition problem. There was plenty of oil and for now, I won't be car free in Boston, though I plan to use it less and less and may just make my weekly pilgrimage to Gloucester a mini vacation from the auto highway and ride instead an electronic one.

Not-so-daily blog . . .

I've changed my signature that appears on the bottom of all my emails. Part of the signature used to have this blog address, implying that it's a daily blog, but time and truth have surfaced. Now the blog address is prefaced by the words: not-so-daily. Some days I may even post twice, but then a week or 10 days might go by with nothing new. The busier I'm getting in this fall season, I'm finding that my walks are getting shorter and the zip that went into thinking of my blog first as my entry point into the day's creative action is changing. My latest foray into the land of inventing something out of nothing is songwriting. Now I've been listening to music and especially lyrics for years, but once I finished my behemoth novel FLORIANA a few months ago, I'm gravitating to shorter pieces of writing. Through a set of serendipidous connections, I've been immersed in songwriting for the first time and sometime in the not-too-distant future may actually make my way onto a stage to bark at the audience in whatever voice comes out. But let me tell you, short doesn't mean easy. The form of songwriting is full of craft traps that force you to express complex thoughts in simple language with the fewest amount of words. Call me a Jill of all trades, but I do love/hate being a beginner. Every time I learn something new I am a beginner and in this genre I'm at the lowest rung, but there's a kind of joy and ease in that. No expectations. I'm just doing it for the pure joy of it. Which brings me to a quote I've wanted to share with you for weeks now. It was on someone's office bulletin board and I copied it down so that I would never forget it. And today's the day I want to share it with you. It's by G. K. Chesterton. Not sure who he was, but he said,
A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.

Classic Rock at the Lowell Auditorium . . .

I want to know what love is, I want you to show me . . . Hot blooded! . . . Cold as Ice . . . Urgent . . . I've been waiting for a girl like you to come into my life . . . It wasn't until my son Michael (pictured above on the keyboard from last night's concert in the Lowell Auditorium) began to tour with the band FOREIGNER, that I realized those classic rock lyrics from my past, had been created this 80s band, the only original member of which is Mick Jones (the original "foreigner" of the group). Most of their classic rock tunes appeal to all of our sturm and drang relationship woes and ecstasies, so when we hear them years later, they still pull at our fantasies and heartbreak, two aspects of the human condition that never change.


Wikepedia says Sturm und Drang (the conventional translation is "Storm and Stress"; a more literal translation, however, might be storm and urge, storm and longing, storm and drive or storm and impulse) is the name of a movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in response to the confines of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements."

The concert at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium evoked all of those emotions. The crowd stood all evening swaying and singing along, each of us with our own personal history, reliving the music and all the sturm and drang attached to it— past and present.

If you'd like to see more pictures from the concert, click here and it will connect you to an album I've placed on mobile me.

Who needs Maine when you can ride the Blue Line train?

Looking at this tranquil bay you would never expect that it is just a few minutes' walk from the Orient Heights stop on the Blue Line. Secrets abound in East Boston, Winthrop, and the cozy little quiet neighborhoods with triple decker houses whose porches spill out onto scenes like this. Although I saw several planes take off and land across the bay at Logan Airport, I heard no disturbing sounds. Not only the home of Boston's best pizza joint— Santarpio's, East Boston has one of the most exquisite views of the Boston skyline from Piers Park which you can easily reach from the Maverick Blue Line stop.

Instead of heading back to Boston the way we came, my friend and I did something very spontaneous when we got back to the Orient Heights T stop after our walk. In the spirit of exploring unknown places as I often have when traveling in Europe, I convinced my companion to jump on a Revere Bus Line bus that was waiting at the Orient Heights T stop just to see where it might take us rather than getting back on the Blue Line. Our bus driver, Riccardo, lives in Winthrop so he served as a guide answering all our questions as the bus went to its final destination: the entrance to a five mile trail that encircles the tip of Winthrop known as Deer Island— absolutely a trip I want to take in the future. I'll pack a lunch, put on my walking shoes and explore. By the time we found that spot, it was getting cold and windy, the light was fading so we stayed on the bus as it brought us back to Orient Heights. Deer Island would be a bookmark for the future, and hopefully, the near future—before the first snow.