Melsville

Science Fiction and Me; do I care?

Space science fiction and I have a long-standing, questionable relationship.  Outer space never has interested me,  so the idea of hurtling through it in an enclosed craft with the same people day after day holds no appeal.  It sounds too much like floating around in a dormitory that you could never leave.   There also seem to be too many academies, fleets, etc. sending people out on missions and giving them ranks and titles.  Send chatters on a mission, and mission threatens to overshadow the characters, and if I can’t care  about the people, the story has lost me.

Some of Buddy Holly is Alive on Ganymede  took place in outer space, but I couldn’t resist that title.   Buddy Holly never sold out or lost his pop-perfect edge.  He didn’t live long enough to disappoint.  I loved the idea of Buddy Holly, always twenty-two,  always the epitome of nerdly-cute, out there playing like nobody else ever could.   When I read the book,  I knew that it was about the narrator, his mother, and music.   If space travel and aliens could let that happen, I allowed it.  I’m told that this book is called “Speculative Fiction”, and that’s okay with me.  

For someone who does not like most time-and-space  science fiction,  I’ve got a better vocabulary than I want to have.    Like many people I know, I remember happily sitting on the floor and watching Star Trek;  I know most of the crew by name, shirt-color and  endearing little quirk.   I know what Babylon Five was,  and even looked forward to weekly episodes before its purpose made itself clear.  Once it went from being character-driven stories that happened to have aliens in them to a full on war with The Shadows, I left it like a burning building.   Don’t even talk to me about Battlestar Gallactica, I flatly refuse to even look at it.    I’m not even comfortable with knowing what a Cylon is.   It may be a good program; but it smacks of a military space-opera, and there is nothing I like about that.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I did like the new Star Trek movie.  I still hate Jim Kirk, still love Scotty, and I will always suspect Spock has the best sense of humor.  The director didn’t rebuild the characters, but understood that he had to give the audience people they could care about because they already did.  The characters have to make sense.  Humor is important in this movie, and what the audience knows already makes it funny,   When Spock started talking about red matter, I didn’t mind not understanding a word he said.  At this movie, I enjoyed owning my inner geek.

I thought the characters were younger than they actually are.  I think I’m so used to the actors trying to play younger characters that I’d actually started believing them.  It could also be that twenty-five is younger than it used to be.

Billy and Jeff

You don’t need a dictionary; Billy Bragg can show you the meaning of “unrequited”.  If you want to hear about how an all-consuming love can less than a casual thing the other person, he’ll tell you about that too.   If you need to ask that is, which I didn’t When I first heard Billy Bragg in 1990, I knew all about unrequited love.  I knew how twisted-up and raw it had made me feel, and I’ve been relieved to hear somebody else sing about it at least ten times since then.  Nobody’s like Billy for the rightous outrage, and I go to hear that too, but it’s the love-songs that creep into my head, humming gently to themselves.

These days, the song that won’t let me go is barely a song; it’s Billy telling a story over another person’s heartbreaking tune.  Just as the listener begins to recognize “Walk Away Renee,”  Billy starts talking about a declaration of love being “a figment (of speech) because she could never imagine it happening”.  The song and the story walk along together, keep each other company.   They commiserate.  Finally, the  tune winds away, and Billy says, “And then, it happened.  She cut her hair, and I stopped loving her.”  Although, when Billy performs it live, he has been known to say, “she voted Tory, and I stopped loving her”,  I prefer the haircut ending. It’s abrupt, complete and shuts the story off like a light.  Feelings are like that, sometimes they come from out of nowhere and change everything.

Funny, but those songs of Billy’s as well have come from Jeff Murdock , a character from a show that makes Jamie laugh so hard that he just might hurt himself.  Americans  try and sum up the British television show Coupling  by saying that it,”just like Friends , only dirtier“  because it follows six buddies (three men, three women) though their thirties.  After ten years, Friends  wrapped it up, had people fall in love and give birth , and offered its audience six happy endings.  Coupling didn’t work that way, because things didn’t always work.    Things got messy, and stayed that way.   Sex came in at least 31 flavors, and everybody had a few favorites and talked about them.

Jeff talked about everything.  That’s what he did, talked about everything  even things his friends wouldn’t admit they understood.  Jeff spent more time inside his own head. Jeff pulled an experience  out, named it and nailed it, wriggling to the wall.  To him, the undeniable need to laugh at a funeral was part of the, “giggle-loop.”  When his lathorio chum Patrick tells him he’d been unable to work up an erection when he really wanted one, Jeff told him that the had been visited by the dreadful, “Melty Man”.  What he says makes sense, but the others don’t want to put it into words.

Any romantic history Jeff may have had started out sketchy at best.   He  implies there has been some, but offers few details.  One story he does tell is a story where nothing actually happens  He talk about falling for “the school bike” (slut?), but wanting to treat her differently.  He tells the guys that he did  ask her for her phone number and carried it, in his pants-pocket, increasing creased, blurred and besmirched , before he finally does call.  When he does call, his conversation with the girl ends abruptly when her boyfriend arrives and they, rather graphically  make up.  Not only does he have to listen to it, he believes that the phone-receiver was used as some sort of sexual device.   

Billy Bragg never talks about sex devices, but you get the idea.    Can you see what I mean?

When Coupling  ended, two character had had having a baby, two were going to marry, and one had met somebody very nice.  And Jeff had been removed.  He appeared in dreams and made phone-calls, but he had been removed, sent on a long holiday to Lesbos .  It made as much sense as anything else.  He never got the neat, cheery ending he might have deserved.  Uncomfortably honest, he remained always barely on the outside.  Can you tell he was always my favorite?

City Spring

Springtime has unsettled o’er New England.  Some days are hot, some are cold, and you don’t know what you’ll get.  Unpack your tee-shirts,  but keep a wooly  sweater in the drawer, you live in the land of layers.  If the day spends a few hours warming up, and the night slowly slides toward cool, then you’ve had a perfect day.

I was raised in a small town and hoofed it straight to the city after college.  This small city works for me because I don’t drive, but I need freedom to travel about and get things done.  I can reach the subway in ten minutes, and we own a house with a yard. West Somerville is urban enough. 

Another small-town transplant and I agreed once that visiting our parents was almost to the country  and that we needed some country every now and then.

This Spring, I’m growing strawberries and tomatoes (the way we always did at home) and herbs.  It’s the kind of garden a small town girl living in the city can have.   Country -dwelling Facebook buds of mine update their status  by talking about they crops they have planted just the way they told everyone about boiling sap for maple syrup and curing meats.  I love hearing about these things, and maybe my garden will be bigger and more varied next year.  This year, I’ll be happy with strawberries that weren’t shipped half-green  and fresh tomatoes and herbs that know of neither freezing  nor drying. 

Songs Kids Want to Sing

Before I get started, I want people to know that today is the 72nd anniversary of my father, Corbett Campbell’s  birth.  When he died ten years ago, I realized how much I’d always admired him; Atticus Finch, up close, and deeply flawed.

Daddy, I miss you every day.

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I wanted to say something else too.  My son came home from school the other day singing, “This Land Is Your Land”.  He sang while he set the table, while he wandered around the house.   I had been waiting for the day he learned this song, but I’ve been doubting it would ever happen. 

When I was in  Music class in Grade-School, , we sang.  The Music teacher, Mrs. Carr handed out the books, took request, and we sang.  The Headmistress s was heavy-handed about religion, and she filled the school songbook with hymns, but some of these were not often requested.   Some the hymns were fun to sing, so we requested them.  Because we got to sing it good and loud and stomp our feet in time, “March of the Men of Harlech”  was popular.   The arrangements of some perfectly good songs got too fussy ,  but we didn’t know it.  We just sang.

I know that Pete Seeger taught Americans a lot about American music.  He made it his mission to travel all over the country collecting the  old folk songs and songs that started the Blues.  He found music, brought it onto the concert stage and taught it from that bully pulpit.  His voice is huge, and it’s monumental with a concert hall singing after it.  Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land”,  and Seeger helped him bring it to people.  Many

Ms. Lu, Liam’s Music teacher is despised by most kids, and some parents  too.   The kids start working on their song for the holiday concert in the first class, and they sing little else.  If one kid isn’t singing it just so, that kid gets singled out and told off,  and any kid fooling just a bit got to stay inside for lunchtime recess.  She yells, and tells kids they aren’t good singers.   If all Music or Art teachers were like her, nobody would be fighting for Arts education in schools.  Ms. Lu isn’t doing music only harm.

When Ms. Lu isn’t around (which seems to be often), the kids watch movies; mostly Disney movies with music, and they don’t get to see the whole thing.   This week, things were a little different.  Liam learned that little bit of “This Land is Your Land”  from a movie about “The Star-Spangled Banner” and  “This Land is Your Land”.   Well, it did work.

My son’s teacher, Ms. Clapham, has taught the kids a few folk songs which the kids seem to enjoy.    This Winter, the kids learned about tall tales, and Ms. Clapham brought in her guitar and taught them a song about Paul Bunion (one I had learned as a kid too).  The kids were thrilled, and walked into Music class singing it until Ms. Lu shouted them down.

Ms. Clapham has taught long enough to watch education change.   She seems to still heartily enjoy teaching and children.  Because four of  her students were on our soccer team, she attended our last game, and watched the boys hold our opponents scoreless up until the last five minutes, and that’s not the only reason I I know how much she cares about the kids. I like the books she gives the kids to read  for book-group. I’m glad she’s there in her L.L. Bean duds to bring in her guitar and teach them a song they wanted to keep singing. 

 I can imagine Ms. Clapham attending a Pete Seeger show and singing along as loudly as anyone else

Homework Rant

Before a child enters the Fourth Grade, giving that child homework doesn’t do the child or his parents any good.  It is a crime against families, and kids and parents know it.   When a nine year old boy with a folder full of worksheets comes home, he knows that the school-day isn’t over.  He knows that he’ll get a break before he has to hunker down and work.  This is not a happy kid.

Young kids with backpacks full of work learn to be surly.  They may start  to work independently and to employ what they have learned in school.  They may take pride in what they accomplish .  All this may be true, but something that is  true is that homework can bring on surliness .  When he walks through the door, an eight year old kid with homework already has something he wants to avoid. 

Making sure he does it becomes the parents’ chore.  Parents are the ones making kids sit down at the kitchen table and work.  The parents are the ones who get to say fun things like, “get your butt in that chair  and settle down!” , or, “It doesn’t matter that your best bud wants you to meet his new kitten,  you’ve got a report due Wednesday!”  If parents say it too much, the kids may think they like yelling.  Who wants to eat dinner with someone who yells and doesn’t care about kittens?  Why should a kid believe that his mother wants to hear about wall-ball if all she wants to talk about his Amelia Earheart diorama?

When I was eight, my parents and I played charades and sardines in the evening; not every night, but enough times that I remember playing.  I played with my brother.  We were all watched television; our favorite show was M*A*S*H*My parents read to me.  I read books, but I read them when I wanted to read.  School-nights were never riotous parties, but they times when we had fun.

Schoolwork started coming home when I changed schools and entered the Fourth Grade.  It was part of moving to a new school with older girls.  I’d outgrown the Brooks School which I’ had attended (and loved) since I had been three: time to move into a bigger world.  Homework was part  of the change, but I never liked it.
During the Spring before I graduated from The Brooks School, , my new school sent me a list of books from which I could choose my Summer reading.  I loved Summer reading, and didn’t think of it as work.  Expecting children to read during the Summer isn’t homework, it’s a fun challenge.  I’m all for Summer reading.

As a parent, I do not approve of giving nightly homework to kids in the Third Grade. That said, if my son has to do homework, he has to do it well Goddamnit!  It is my responsibility to sit by him and help him with his work.  I proofread and correct.  It’s my job.  If children have to do homework, the parents have to help them.  At the end of a long day, it is tough on everyone.  Parents and kids all need the rest.  Nights would be more fun, and we deserve fun.

Cough it Up Loud and Strong

This morning, I chugged home from leaving Emma at Pre-School with the old Clash song "Straight to Hell" staccotto-rattling though my head insistently though my head. I needed that song more than I needed breakfast. When I got home, I headed straight for the stereo,  couldn't get it on fast enough.  When the music finally started. I filled up the whole living room, dancing all by myself. 

Playing loud, rough music is one thing I do alone. I don't have to share it.  It means the house is empty.

Maybe I'm chickening-out,  but I'm not ready to do a walk-through of "Combat Rock" with a nine-year-old boy; even Liam.  Ameuroasian war-babies, knowing your three rights, the subjects bring on the anger and meant-to-shock language.   I think that he should understand these songs, but at the end of a school-day, I doubt I can work up the engery to play them.

The Pougues also swear when they are mad, or happy, or sad, or just plan stupid-drunk.   They are emotional, they get sloppy, but they really are so sweet.  You'd need to keep an eye in the Pougues when you took them anywhere.   Telling my son that they swear for effect is easy, it's the feeling they want to give, it's the way some people talk, but I don't want to hear him talking that way.

A boy in Liam's class has the foulest mouth in the history of the 3rd grade.  The other boys keep a tally of how many times he says "The F. Word" in a single day.  He swears at the other kids, he swears at his teacher, he just swears. The other boys are not impressed;  they laugh it it. 

I really resent this child's bad habit.  Jamie, my mother-in-law, and I don't swear in front of the children.  When Liam was two years old, I dropped a frying-pan on my foot.  "Oh fuck!," it made such natural sense. The words were ready to leap out of my mouth,  but they  hit the back of my gritted teeth, and I didn't say anything.  If I don't swear in front of my children, why should this little twerp?  The boy's mother is the image of polite and upright, I wonder if anyone has mentioned it to her.

My son hear senseless swearing every day, and I wonder when he's old enough to hear great, important music. Maybe I should be greatful; I can keep it to myself