Fit for a Clunker

Back in June, when the Cash for Clunkers program was first announced and then signed into law, Joy and I talked it over and decided to participate. We had been saving towards a new car to replace the truck so we'd have two safe cars for the boys to ride in and felt $4500 from the government was too good a deal to pass up. Since we were gone most of July, we planned on going as soon as we returned home.

During that time, we followed the news about the program with interest, watching the lines of people collect at dealerships to cash in on their old cars. We fretted that we might not be able to participate, but when the extra $2 billion was signed a week ago, we made plans to go test drive and buy.

We looked at several different cars, but ultimately settled on the Honda Fit for its size and gas mileage. This car will basically be my commuter car and needs to be able to haul the boys and their ever-expanding gear a few days a week as well. If you haven't been in a Fit before, it has almost as much room as our CRV, is amazingly fun to drive, and gets in the mid-30s for gas mileage (though friends and my brother who have one all report regularly getting in the upper 30s). So last Thursday we loaded up the boys and headed to the dealership.

Now, up until now my truck has not really been a clunker. Sure, it gets around 12-13 miles to the gallon and has almost 200,000 miles on it, but it still runs great. At least it did until we we to replace it. The truck must have known it was being thrown over for a shiny little upstart, and so on our way back from the dealership, decided to overheat. On the interstate. In 90+ degree weather. Turns out that not only does the car leak oil (a problem I had known about but didn't monitor since we were gone a month), it also was basically out of coolant. I limped it to an exit and finally got it a nice drink of coolant and drove it on home Thursday night. Now it is getting evil glances from the family and is a bit of an outcast until our deal is cleared by the government, at which point we'll go swap it in for the new car.

Of course, with the way the program is going right now, it may be out of money by the time our request is processed. If that happens, I'm afraid we're in for a bit of the Exorcist in our household. Stay tuned.

I'm Ready for My Closeup

I think someone will be competing against Sam for the "Ham of our Family" award.

Signing up a Storm

Over the past month Noah has become a signing machine. He's reached that point I remember with Sam where new signs come quickly and easily. Unfortunately, he's also at that point where his coordination is not the best, so many signs look the same. That means that when he walks up to me when I'm in the kitchen cooking and frantically waves his left arm, I assume he wants to go outside and politely tell him it is too hot right now. Only after he dissolves into tears do I realize that he means water, and so his thirst is finally quenched.

What has most surprised me about Noah's signing is that he's grouping multiple things under one sign. Sam pretty much signed for what we told him a sign stood for. Sure we used the sign for car for bus and tractor too, but Sam never initiated that kind of grouping.

Noah has.

And he does it most with animals.

Sam was always a vehicle boy. When he was 9 months old, we drove to Champaign to see friends and Sam wouldn't go to sleep if a semi happened to pass his window. That was a fun trip. Noah, on the other hand, is an animal boy. Sure cars and trucks (especially garbage trucks) are fun, but nothing is better than a duck. And since we haven't given him many animal signs (mainly because we didn't have to learn many with Sam), he's started combining animals. All birds get the duck sign, most four-legged animals get the dog sign, etc.

The funniest is when he actually sees a duck or a dog because then he starts saying "da! da!! da!!!" with the vowel going up higher each time. The other night we were watching Bolt and Noah woke up. Joy went to get him and brought him down to see if he'd sleep in her arms so we could finish the movie (Noah gets away with more than Sam ever did). Of course, Noah saw a dog on the screen and sleeping was a lost cause. He frantically signed dog and shouted "da!! da!!!" and refused to look anywhere but the TV. So much for sleep that night.

Oh My, How They've Grown

We spent last weekend celebrating my mother's birthday with the whole family under one roof for three days. With four children napping at different times, having different eating habits, and needing various levels of parental involvement, we had our hands full. But the days were just packed and slipped away from us much too fast.

Most remarkably was to realize that this time last year, my brother brought his family to meet Noah and at that time, the kids looked like this:
Now? One year and many miles later, they look like this:Yes, there are brown leather couches wherever we go, but more importantly, Eli has become a young child, ready for kindergarten; Liza has grown lots of hair and even more personality; Noah can now hold his own and has more curls than you can shake a stick at; and Sam is somehow still Sam, only with less tantruming.

Merce Cunningham (1919-2009)

Two weeks ago, Merce Cunningham died in his sleep at the ripe old age of 90. I'm late to the blogging party in eulogizing Cunningham, one of the best of mid-century modern dancers, but I wanted to share my memories of him.

I first discovered Cunningham the same way many musicians do - through John Cage. Cage's music is almost indescribable apart from modern dance as many of his best works were written for dancers (the prepared piano was even invented for dance concerts). And perhaps no dancer had more impact on Cage's development than Cunningham. Their collaborations are legendary as they would decide on the general timing of the production and then each would work alone. The music and dance would be put together as a final product with hardly any change right before the concert.

Learning of their working methods may make you question my statement that Cunningham had an enormous impact on Cage's music, but their aesthetic moved ever closer and closer together the more they collaborated. Together they opened dance and music to ideas often thought of as against all the arts forms stood for.

As a result, when I met Cunningham in 2002. Joy and I both were in the US premiere of Mikel Rouse's realization of Cage's James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet
where I played Robert Rauschenberg, Joy played one of Brigham Young's wives, and Cunningham played Erik Satie (Rouse was James Joyce for the production). Although Cunningham had to be carried on stage because his legs would not hold him up, he delivered his lines with relish and had the best humor through the long nights of practice of anyone there. Backstage, he regaled us with stories of his time with Cage and treated us all as equals, providing kind attention even to a young musicologist.

Cunningham was truly a link with the past, with a pivotal part of American musical and artistic history. As I teach my post-1945 class I'm continually saddened to watch so many great musicians slowly disappear, roughly one a year. But I'm also gratified to see their legacy live on in younger musicians who take their ideas and twist them to their own purposes just as once Cage and Cunningham did the same. Life is short but art is long indeed.

Writing Update

The month 'o writing is over and as of right now, everything is done in the rough draft for the book but two or three pages of the prologue that I play to finish this next week. So the month is going to be one of those long months that stretches into the next as I also finish revisions on two articles. Still, after ignoring the book for a year, it is nice to have the rough draft done and revisions underway. For you, that also means I'll be back to regular blogging now, and I've plenty of stories from the past month and our travels this month to share.

Dogs and Boats, What More Could you Want?

So, who do you think is having more fun in this picture?