Walk Journals ~ August 24 Ramblings

From the Franklin Road Bridge, looking east at the Franklin
Road Beach (baby beach) and the shore of Lenape Island.

The sub heading of my little space here in cyber world says I like to ramble.  If you've visited here before or if you're a friend of mine, you'll know I mean that figuratively and literally.  I tend to use a  lot of words when I write--ramblings.  And I walk--ramblings.  I walk a lot.

The walking, as some of you will recall, started with my endocrinologist explaining that one way to get diabetes under control is to exercise and she recommended walking.  The first mile I walked was a nerve-wracking tortuous slow hour of self-loathing.  But she had scared me sufficiently that I found 30 minutes or an hour every day.  In very little time I found myself looking forward to my outdoor excursions.  I began taking pictures of one spot every day--a location or scene that spoke to me for some reason each day.  The pictures began to find their way to facebook along with bits of song lyrics--whatever the music was that was moving me during that particular walk.  The River and Me is an outgrowth of those facebook postings.

A glorious sunrise.

The rambling part comes in, in part, with the stream of consciousness that goes on in my head while I'm walking.  Sometimes it's all about the music.  Sometimes it's all about the "to do" list for the day.  Sometimes I'm re-landscaping the yards of all the properties I pass (well, maybe not all of them, but I do love to help out the folks with crappy yards--if only they knew).  Early on, I needed to sit--often.  I'd bring prayer beads and take a break somewhere pretty and meditate or read the daily office off the prayer book app on my phone.

Crossing back from Lenape Island looking at the log
house and my little creamy storybook house.

View of the eastern shore of Indian Lake from the
Lenape Island bridge.

It seems I'm always walking near a body of water--either one of the lakes in town (having grown up near the Great Lakes, I use the term "lake" in New Jersey quite loosely--these are the smallest "lakes" on the planet), or one of the ponds nearby or my lovely river which I know on a pretty intimate basis having battled her inside and outside of my home on several occasions.  The walks began just after I'd finished rehabing my house following Hurricane Irene.  I love each of these little bits of water that are now thoroughly threaded through my life.  I need to visit one or several of them on a daily basis.  The water, the light on the water, the creatures that make their homes there ... it's all become like a familiar friend on whom I depend a great deal.  The walks are my equilibrium.

Today I'm walking around Indian Lake.  When I was newly married, I had a part-time job teaching aerobics at the local Y.  We had become friendly with the fitness director and her husband who lived in Denville and introduced us to this neighborhood.  This was how we came to buy our first house, a tiny, tiny cottage near the western shore of Indian Lake.  It was a short walk from the "baby beach," the shallow water beach where families with babies and toddlers like to congregate because it's so calm.  The "baby beach" is where I sat in my hideous maternity swimsuit, feeling rather like a beached whale and where I played in the sand a couple of years later with my own toddler.  It wasn't the house I wanted.  I wanted this creamy little house with the stone arch right on the water of the eastern shore.  However, by the time we were qualified for a mortgage, it was already sold.  Today it is for rent.  I still love this house. Our friends lived in the brown house next door, to the left--a little log cabin (before the current owners put on the clapboard second story).  I  loved our tiny yellow cottage too.  I'd thought there were a lot of good memories while we lived there.  Like mine, my friend's marriage also ended many years ago.


It's about three miles from my house in the center of town just behind the shopping district to the creamy little house on Indian Lake.  When I walk this way I usually walk through some of the parallel neighborhood before heading back into town.  Today I follow this route again, walking all the way past downtown, along the Rockaway River to the entrance to Lake Arrowhead before I turn for home.  In all, I do 5.5 miles on this walk.  It's not a great walk for a Saturday--I like to do 7 or 8 miles on a Saturday--but I needed to be home by 9:00.  It was a picture perfect morning ... and it was a good ramble.



Playlist for a Saturday:

Michael Franti and Spearhead, All People
Gavin DeGraw, Chariot

Concert Diaries Chapter Eleven ~ Love & Country

It's been a long time coming ... getting country music back in the New York area.  Our country radio station died about 17 years ago.  I was listening at the time it changed formats.  Thus began a 17-year drought.  I found some other things to listen to in the meantime and found books on tape, too.  Lately, of course, there's been my unabashed love affair with a singer in the pop music category.  But before that, it was contemporary Christian music, classical music and classic rock when my daughter was riding with me.  That was always fun.  Conversations sometimes went like this:

Listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sweet Home Alabama ... She: "Mom, you're so lucky you were around in the seventies ..."

Listening to Pink Floyd, Time ... Me: "You do understand that's our music ... right?"

Blair Garner of 94.7's morning show.

But this year, the country drought is over with the arrival of NASH FM, 94.7 (and, incidentally, sister station of my pop station, WPLJ).  I'd heard a rumor that country was coming back to our airwaves the day before they went live.  One of our bus drivers came into the school office on that day and said he was so happy to be listening to the new country station.  Suddenly I felt compelled to run an errand and hear it for myself.  There was car dancing all the way to the store and back.  There has been a lot of car dancing.

This weekend NASH FM sponsored a concert at Six Flags Great Adventure.  One of the opening acts was a new singer I've been listening to, Jaida Dreyer, and the headline group was Love and Theft.  I'd wanted to take the whole day off and hang out in the park before the concert but there is far too much to do at this time of year so I drove down after work in typical Friday Jersey traffic and arrived in just enough time for bad park food and a spot close to the front of the line.

Apparently, the collective memory of New Jerseyans has not remembered country music yet--or hadn't recovered from last weekend's Kenny Chesney extravaganza at the Meadowlands.  The crowd was sparse for the space and I felt so bad for all four acts and the radio station (it was fun to see Blair Garner from the station's morning show in person).  I was sort of in the front row and was shocked the couple of times I turned around and saw no where near the number of people I thought would come out.

Jaida Dreyer was wonderful.  She's a really good songwriter and has a lovely voice.  She reminds me of young Loretta Lynn crossed with Reba.  Pure country updated.  Did I mention she was born in Canada? That, of course, always gets my attention.  The band that supported her as well as the other two opening acts was tremendously talented.  There was serious playing and really good backup vocals happening up on stage.  I wished that she had played longer and that she had played my favorite song off her current EP, Half Broke Horses.

I'd never heard of the other two opening acts and was so pleasantly surprised by both of them.  Austin Webb was very good, entertaining although somewhat in need of variety in his moving around on stage (he paced).  Dakota Bradley, at age 18, is very talented and probably will be around for a while, having captured the attention of Tim McGraw who's produced his album.

Love and Theft, the enormously talented pair of artists comprised of Stephen Barker Liles and Eric Gunderson, both of whom play guitar and share the vocals, is one of my very favorite duos ever.  They performed a lot of their hits like Angel Eyes and If You Ever Get Lonely and even covered some Johnny Cash.  Country heaven for this one who's missed it for such a long time.  Their voices blend perfectly and their band is amazingly talented.  The bass player is from New Jersey. Their energy was totally infectious and the audience was treated to a wonderful show. Their interactions with the crowd and bits of stories that Stephen wove between the songs were wonderful.  I love knowing the stories behind the songs and how the artists feel about them.  It brings me that much closer to the music.  (I know another musician who's also very good at that ...)

It was a beautiful summer night, worth the drive from North Jersey.  I'm looking forward more live music sponsored by NASH FM.  I hope they know how happy thousands of us are that they are here in the Tri-State making up for lost time and giving us back our real, emotional, boot-stomping, loving-through good-times-and-bad-times music.  And they have to promise to stick around for a long time!

~~

Enjoy some Jaida Dreyer courtesy of @HomeSweetCountry here.  (And to the voice in the background that asked:  Jaida.  Dreyer.  Don't forget.)

Angel Eyes, Love and Theft

Concert Diaries Chapter Ten: An Evening with Ernie Halter

I know it doesn't look like much but
I've seen some good bands there.

I spent a nice evening with Ernie Halter at the Rockwood Music Hall last week.  The Rockwood is a music venue just off Houston Street in Lower Manhattan. Not that I was with Ernie Halter ... but he's very personable and it sort of felt that way.  (I attended this show with a friend but I don't expect my friends to become characters in my blogging hobby so I usually disguise them with pronouns or initials for names.)

Ernie is one of a handful of musicians currently hanging out in Nashville that I follow on Twitter (@erniehalter).  I don't know what it is about Nashville--I've never been there--but I feel drawn to the place and am just waiting for the perfect moment to visit for the first of what I'm sure will be many times.  (And in fact, if I don't get there before May next year, I'm assured of a visit around Memorial Day for the wedding of a friend.)

I think it's fairly safe to say that I favor the singer/songwriter type of musician above all others.  They sing their own thoughts and ideas and emotions; it seems so honest to me.  Even when the song isn't about their own experience but someone else's, I find they are sincere in what they are trying to communicate.  I admire the risks they take, putting their own feelings out there for all to see ... or hear.

Ernie sang and played piano and guitar and chatted with the crowd about his music, visiting New York and his twin daughters for about an hour.  His music runs in the "pop" vein I suppose, or "adult contemporary" as many say today since the pop category is so very broad now.  He told the audience last Tuesday that he likes writing "baby-making music" the most.  And much of what he played was pretty romantic.

The Rockwood is really small and intimate (and very red) so no matter where you are in the room, it's a safe bet that you're going to feel like you're in the front row.  It must be either very comfortable for the performers there because it probably feels like playing in someone's two-story loft living room or maybe nerve wracking for the same reason--so close and nowhere to hide.

I most enjoyed Pretty Girl and Lighthouse, but really I found all his songs spoke to me in some way.  He desperately wanted to play some of his newly written music and managed to get a few songs in (some of which so new he struggled a wee bit with the lyrics) but his fans kept requesting their favorites and he definitely seemed in the mood to give his audience what they wanted.  He mashed some of his popular songs together in order to make the most of his hour at the Rockwood.  He was deft at improvising them together and amusing the audience with silly verses in between songs.  I got the impression that that's the way he rolls as an artist: genuinely wanting his fans to have a great time and charming his way into the hearts of new audience members, like me, too.

Afterwards, he hung out in the bar, signing CD's and taking pictures, chatting with folks.  He was gracious and funny, very generous with his time.  If Ernie Halter is playing in Nashville when I get there, I will be stopping by to hear him again for sure.

~

Lighthouse - The person who filmed this must have been sitting right in front of me.

Let me be your lighthouse
Let me guide your hand
Let me be your shelter
For you, for you I stand

When you feel the dark inside you
And the wind and waves
Keep pushing you down
Feel the whole world pulling you around

Let me be your lighthouse
Let me guide your hand
Let me be your shelter
For you, for you I stand

When you feel the dark inside you
And the moon and stars
Don't lead you nowhere
Feels like no one is watching up there

Let me be your lighthouse
Let me guide your hand
Let me be your shelter
For you, for you I stand

Let me be the one
Standing when you come
Lay your anchor down
And let me wrap my arms around you

Let me be your lighthouse
Let me guide your hand
Let me be your shelter
For you, for you I stand
For you I stand, for you I stand

Baggage

This blog started out as a journal about my dual journey to reconcile with the river after Hurricane Irene and my path back to health and my own life.  And that's not really a dual journey, I suppose, because I think the hurricane (downgraded to a tropical storm, most of us still call it "the hurricane"), although real and traumatic, was just the catalyst for a bunch of succeeding thoughts and circumstances that led me to finally take control of my health and, consequently, my life.  I suppose the hurricane represents the least amount of control.  It took weeks to get the disastrous mess left by Irene under control and months of renovation to get the house back under control.  I started getting my life back a few months after the paint dried and the furniture came in.  And I never looked back.

Until recently.

Since I've been back from Boston, I've been out-of-control eating, barely exercising and haven't been journaling food since before the trip.  It's all a vicious circle too.  Eating too much makes you feel lazy and leads to lack of exercise and journaling.  Lack of exercise affects your mood and sleep patterns.  Feeling weak and tired does not equip you for good choices.  So if eating is your Achilles' heal, you'll probably eat without preparation, intention and reason.  Although the trip was beautiful and I had so much fun, my wonderful mood was completely stripped upon my return to the office.  A dramatic mess awaited there that shook me up and turned my world upside down.  Even though the situation is more or less resolved, I've not been sleeping, eating too much and wasting time in the same sort of lethargy of the spirit that marked my years before April 2012.  I've been blaming my feelings on work, however, knowing deep down that there must be more to it because work doesn't own me any more.  What is holding me down for real?

I've been well aware of all the poor choices I'm making.  I can hear myself making excuses and being my own chief enabler.  I eat and tell myself I don't care.  

Yesterday I was reminded that it was my brother and sister-in-law's anniversary.  That's when it hit me:  Tuesday I would have been married 29 years.  Last year I was so buoyed by my weight-loss success and the concert travel that I barely noticed the date.  I don't remember anything about August 2011 before the storm hit but I think I didn't pay much attention that year.  Most years, I'm okay.  But some years are paralyzing.  And the really weird thing is, until something triggers an association with the date, I'm at a loss to explain the overwhelming pervasive sadness that invades my body.  It's not like divorced people have their wedding anniversaries on the calendar, after all. I remember one year a few years after I'd started at the school, I couldn't move.  I couldn't get out of bed.  I called out sick and again the next day.  The second day I called the only administrator who was working that week.  I remember it was the BA and she mentioned the date:  August 6.  I remember saying, Is today August 6?  Energy and relief came flooding into my body and I could function again.  I recognized the source of the paralysis and I could move on immediately.   The trigger this year was the mention of someone else's anniversary.  I became flooded with relief again at having figured it out again and realizing that it's only temporary; that I'm not going to undo all the good I've done myself.  

I just have to get past Tuesday. 

Baggage.  I obviously still have baggage.  Just when I thought I'd put it down forever, it's clear I still have some--at least a carry-on. 

~

Music is a big part of the cure these days.  This weekend, here's what's helping a lot:

Michael Franti & Spearhead, I'm Alive (Life Sounds Life) 

~

This appeared in my Twitter feed about 15 minutes after publishing this post.  Thanks @Lindsay_Gal for sharing it. Guess I'll be listening to some Matt Cusson soon...

Maternal Health

Some good links from Global Citizen on the subject of maternal health:


http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=ba74186b-1776-4708-86c2-e6ae9c95fc6d&rby=00f9a9e1-51eb-471b-8511-95e666ea71a6


http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=e46f6566-64bd-4557-a18a-d8cb47f6a33e&rby=00f9a9e1-51eb-471b-8511-95e666ea71a6

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=eb1eb8de-72e9-4430-a56b-c4ace2b2f59f&rby=00f9a9e1-51eb-471b-8511-95e666ea71a6

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=0a4da982-3275-4f9f-896b-1f70bc403350&rby=00f9a9e1-51eb-471b-8511-95e666ea71a6


Learn about why family planning, access to contraception and women's reproductive health are universal issues deserving of our attention.