"Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir...?'

Kudos to Hendrik Hertzberg, whose piece on Jerome Corsi's THE OBAMA NATION leads off this week's New Yorker. Hertzberg presents a well-argued, sustained dismissal of Corsi's book, which he says, "is an example of what used to be known, in the glory days of ideologically driven totalitarianism, as the Big Lie." Hertzberg properly distributes blame among all those responsible for taking this dump and for spreading it around: editor Mary Matalin, mogul Sumner Redstone, radiocons Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage, and the author, who is "a crackpot, a boor, and a bigot." Q.E.D., I say.

Speaking of books, and on a lighter note, what I find strange is this: candidate Obama has this book AUDACITY OF HOPE, which I liked and which lays out his thinking on a range of topics, yet he never mentions it. (Am I wrong?) If I were running for office, and if I had a book, I would constantly be telling people, "Buy my book and read it.You'll learn who I am and what I am about." If reporters asked me a question I would respond, "As I write in my book..." or "See p. 58," or "That's covered on 122." If cornered, you say, "I'm gonna write about that in my next book." Someone told me that could be seen as elitist, and I guess reading books (esp. hardcovers?) and worse, writing them, is elitist. Maybe. Well anyway, that's why he's the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party and why he's having his best week ever.

Mr. Harvey's Reminiscence

Back in Nashville at the Natl Assn of Teachers of Singing conference, things were pretty slow a lot of the time in the exhibit hall, and so I had a chance to get to know some of the people in the neighboring booths.

We were selling through Classical Vocal Reprints, and I had spoken with its owner Glendower Jones on the phone any number of times when he called in a sales order, so it was nice to meet him. He was born in the South, lived for a while in New York, and about a year ago moved himself and his family back down South, to Fayetteville, Arkansas. His family includes his wife, who was cordial enough, and a whip-smart 6-year-old daughter, adopted from China. Mary Catherine (quite a mouthful of a name for a little girl, if you ask me) learned the Miss Mary Mack clapping game and song perfectly within an hour, and was able to write all the words (so she could remember it when she got home) with only the tiniest bit of help from me. However, I think the song quickly drove her parents crazy--I don't feel too bad, though, because I think they were already a bit insane to require an energetic young thing to be indoors in an exhibit hall for hours on end. But this post isn't about them.

It's also not about Tim, the California vegan exhibiting for Plural Publishing to the left of my booth. He was great fun, and nearly choked laughing when we were talking about how a blind conference attendee was having difficulty with her guide dog, and I suggested perhaps she would have been better paired with a guide monkey. (It turned out the doggie was in training--but he was clearly not enjoying it, and therefore not taking to it very well.)

Or about the lovely woman "of a certain age" directly across from me selling vocal studio supplies. She had the most amazing mini-bouffant, carefully styled each day, and was definitely a Steel Magnolia and the kind of woman I would have wanted as my mother.

No, this post is about the quiet salt-and-pepper haired lady across and to my right, Kathy Henkel. She was there to sell her compositions, but she spent much of her time there with Mary Catherine; I think they were both happy to have company, someone to pass the time with. But I also had a chance to speak with her, and she told me about one of her compositions, Mr Harvey's Reminiscence. I found it completely charming.

When she was younger, she married an Englishman, and had the opportunity to travel there with him. Unfortunately he was not a kind man, and she eventually decided to leave him. However, she had fallen in love with England, and travelled back there several times with her sister. On one visit they were in Cornwall, in a little town near Penzance called...Mousehole!

Can you imagine it? The very name of the place (though it is pronounced MOU-zel) conjured up images of the storybook version of Victorian England for me immediately. I was completely enchanted.

Anyway, quite by chance while there she struck up the acquaintance of an old man who had lived there all his life: Mr. Harvey. He kept a lovely garden with a rose bush, and they would sit in the evenings and he would tell her about the idyllic little fishing town it was when he was young. Sometimes his daughter would angrily call him in for dinner and break the spell, but probably it would be hard to say who enjoyed those visits more, the teller or the listener. His stories inspired Kathy to write a poem, which she later set to music; one line in particular she took directly from his words: "the fish looked like silver bowls in the moonlight." Some years later she visited the area again, but found that he had passed away.

On the last exhibit day I told her I really enjoyed the story, and wanted to buy the high voice version as a memento. She was really pleased, and said to me that of all the people she had ever told the story to, I was definitely the most attentive and seemed the most genuinely interested, and she was really happy that someone else would help remember Mr. Harvey. She was going to be in Cornwall again later in the summer, and said she would try to send me a postcard from Mousehole; so I gave her my home address and a hug.

I had forgotten about it completely until we came home from Kansas City, and in the mail were two postcards: the first from St. Mawes, with a message saying she hadn't found a Mousehole postcard yet, but hoped to before she returned to Los Angeles. The second was a picture postcard of Mousehole itself, with this message: "Hi again - The weather was so bad in Touro today that my sister and I took the train to St. Ives for a day-trip -- where the weather was glorious! While there, I found this postcard of Mousehole in one of the little shops. Mr. Harvey's house is off the postcard on the left. it is on the edge of town and overlooks the sea -- actually backs up to the sea. Take care. Hope the remainder of your year will be happy and successful. Best wishes -- Kathy Henkel"

Maybe some day I'll be able to get there myself. And if so, I hope it is the same sleepy little fisherman's town that Mr. Harvey lived his life in.

I just flew in from KC and boy, are my arms tired...

No, seriously, we're both tired. T. I. R. E. D.

We had decided to fly by Midwest Airlines for two reasons: they have nice wide seats (though it looks like their new planes will not be this way, bummer for Kevin...to be honest, I feel like Alice in Wonderland in them) and they fly directly from NY to KC. Unfortunately, even though we bought our tickets about 5-6 weeks in advance, the choice of flight times (the days were fixed based on the Natl Flute Assn convention schedule) was greatly limited, and we ended up with a 7am Monday morning flight.

So miraculously I got up at 4am without being a complete bitch (I am NOT a morning person; if you have any doubts, ask Kev for a few prime stories) and we got out to the airport and except for the fact that they offer basically no food (!) at MCI airport things were going just fine. Even that was not a big deal, because another good thing about Midwest is that they offer actual meals for sale, not just crappy snack items. So we had a decent breakfast on board, and were well on our way to seeing the kitties by noon.

Well, the weather can be a real fucker-upper. About 1.5 hours into our 2.5 hour flight, the captain gets on the intercom and tells us that we're being put in a holding pattern because of some bad weather at LaGuardia, but not to worry, he took about an hours worth of extra gas and even with a delay we should get there with no problem.

30 minutes later, he has to go back on his story because apparently the freakish weather has caused serious delays, and we've got to get refueled before it's likely we can approach the NYC area. So off to Pittsburgh we go. Which is sorta funny because the only other time we've been to Pittsburgh was exactly 2 years ago with the first NFA convention I exhibited at. Anyway, we're told we'll be disembarking because the pilot is not convinced that it will be just a refueling, that though it could be just a short overly we'd be better off in the airport than stuck on the plane while we likely wait out the weather.

We were told not to wander too far, but we did manage to buy some lunch at least. And I took a moment to call KAKe to get a first hand NYC weather report--besides being completely surprised to hear from me, she told me that yeah, the weather was severe just a little while ago, but the sun has come out. "Yay," I think, "we'll be home by 3pm the latest." Why I was so optimistic, I can't say exactly, but overly optimistic I most certainly was.

Shortly after calling KAKe, they had us reboard. Yay!
Shortly after reboarding, they parked our plane off to the side of the runway. Boo!
About 20 minutes later, the captain says we're taking off. Yay!
About 20 minutes after taking off, the captain reports we're back in a holding pattern. Boo!
We look out the window and Kevin notices that our circling pattern has us going right over a pair of nuclear reactors. Eeep!
Nuclear reactors?? We're not even out of western Pennsylvania! Boo!

About 20 minutes into that circling holding pattern, I started to feel motion sickness...headache, queasiness, like that. Boo! So I did my best to get some sleep and not toss up my lunch.

The plane eventually landed at about 3:15 NY time. Just so you have a reference, it was originally scheduled to land at 10:30am NY time. And as luck would have it, the Grand Central was completely backed up, and we didn't get home until about 4:30. It took a few hours to get rid of the motion sickness completely, and even though we took a nap at around 6pm, we're both tired. Kev was asleep before I started posting this. And now to bed, too. More on KC in the next few days.

Kansas City, MO

We arrived in Kansas City late Tuesday afternoon after an uneventful flight except for one guy across the aisle who had his shoes and socks off and his leg up on his knee, showing us his ugly toes; and an annoying man who did not turn off his cellphonetexter as per orders before takeoff, and who later asked for a third cookie (they generously give two freebies) just to annoy us. File him under "schnorrer," a Yiddish term that means what it sounds like.

Our hotel is in a different part of town from where we stayed two years ago, and that really changes your orientation and perspective on things. We discovered a great new district just over the railroad tracks by Union Station. What was formerly a freight loading district now has condos, lofys, galleries, and restaurants--We ate at Lidia's, you know the famous chef....and the food was terrific. And last night we had BBQ. Also very good. But we need greens!

More to follow...I hope.