Music and Cats

This poem comes by way of Philip, who left it as a comment for Jilbur. It was new to me, and I loved its evocation of the everyday, the small, even perhaps the annoying as being cause for thanksgiving. Thank you, Philip.

Poem in Thanks

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air
I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch
in the woods, the wood for fire,
the light-both lamp and the natural stuff
of leaf-back, fern, and wing.
For the piano, the shovel
for ashes, the moth-gnawed
blankets, the stone-cold water
stone-cold: thank you.
Thank you, Lord, coming for
to carry me here — where I’ll gnash
it out, Lord, where I’ll calm
and work, Lord, thank you
for the goddamn birds singing!

- Thomas Lux

When I was asked to design the second story addition for this old house, the builders told me that they didn’t want the remodeled house to look like a new house. There was no way to make it look like an original Craftsman house; the zoning and building codes wouldn’t allow for expansion in a way that would keep all of the proportions correct. However, their intent was to reuse as much of the existing period materials as possible, and use similar materials in the addition. The drawings that I did for the house (here and here) were a thoughtful attempt to blend the desired aesthetic with the city’s requirements and limitations.

When I wrote about the progress on the house last month, I was concerned about the proportions, but felt that the house would look better once the new windows were in, and the exterior siding materials on. I hadn’t been out to the site in six weeks, and a lot happened during that time. Sadly, many changes have been made from what I showed on the drawings, and to my mind - to my eye, to my aesthetic sense - they are not changes for the better. I’m quite surprised about some of them, as I respect the guys who are doing the construction, and think that their sensibilities about such things are generally quite good. Also, they both live in nice old houses, in neighborhoods full of beautiful Craftsman homes, and I’m surprised that they haven’t absorbed some parts of the aesthetic almost by osmosis.

The stairs up to the front porch were supposed to be centered on the porch. For a number of reasons, the front door is not in the center of the porch, but the stairs were supposed to be. The builder has shifted the opening where the stairs will be so that it aligns with the front door; it’s off-center with the porch. If the porch were wider, placing the stairs off-center might make room to one side of the porch for a seating area. This porch is smaller than a good usable front porch should be, and putting the stairs off-center just looks like a mistake.

The original plan was to keep all of the beautiful old windows, which had divided lights in the upper panes, and to order matching new windows for the addition. All of the old windows have now been removed, and replaced with new windows. None of the new windows have divided lights (mullions).

On the northeast face of the building (left photo above), the drawings showed a gable roof that extended from the edge of the porch roof all the way to across the recessed portion of the facade. I showed this piece of roof because the builder wanted it, but I felt that it did not help the look of the house. Instead of what was shown on the drawings, the builder has tacked on a small bit of gable roof that doesn’t connect to the porch roof at all. This is even worse. There is no reason for this bit of roof to be here. It is an example of the worst sort of thoughtless “detailing” found on many a suburban McMansion, whose designer claims that it is a certain style of architecture solely on the basis of random bits of poorly copied trim stuck onto an otherwise generic box of a house. In addition, during the course of replacing the windows, it appears that the builder moved the pair of windows under this little bit of roof, so that they are no longer centered in the wall on which they are located.

On the southeast facade (right photo above), something strange has been done with the roofline. Above the second story triple windows, from the corner of the house almost all the way to where the new chimney will be, there is an odd horizontal piece of roof sticking out from the wall. It is not supposed to be there; that roof should stop where the two gables come together. I’m not sure why this problem with the roof trusses happened, but it should’ve been caught and corrected.

The green color that the stucco base has been painted is too bright. I realize this is a picky point, but this is not a traditional color for a house of the period that this house was supposed to be emulating. It should be more muted. And, in terms of making the house seem less tall, the color on the lowest portion of the house should be darker. I don’t know what the plans are for the rest of the color scheme, but I’m worried.

I have more questions and quibbles regarding the construction, but they are pickier things that are even less amenable than the above to discussion without a slide projector (I’m showing my age) or Powerpoint show, a laser pointer, and several hours to talk about the fundamentals and fine points of Craftsman bungalow design. And that, my friends, will have to wait for another time.

As is their wont, the cats spent a good part of Thanksgiving day napping. Sadly, when Paul and I might have wanted to retire to our bed for a bit of a post-dinner nap, this was the sight that greeted us. Sasha and Sergei were on Paul’s side of the bed, entwined in a typical cat brothers napping pose. Lyra had her own space, up against my pillow, and was more deeply asleep than I usually see her.

We find it amusing, and heartwarming, that the cats’ favorite places on the bed are right up against our pillows. If they selected these spots only when we had recently vacated them, I would chalk it up to their being prewarmed. However, these are the places that they often select whether or not we have recently occupied them. I assume that our pillows smell like us, and are therefore comforting.

While the past year has been perhaps the most difficult of my life, I have much for which to be thankful. Most importantly, my husband Paul is here with me. At the beginning of this year, we weren’t sure that he would live to see another Thanksgiving (which is, for many reasons, his favorite holiday). My parents and Paul’s father are here with us today, and I’m so grateful that we’re able to be together.

I first read the following poems while I was in college. They are two that come most often to mind when I feel an upswelling of gratitude for all the ways in which I have been and continue to be blessed.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

-e. e. cummings

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

One of the songs that my mother sang to me and Melanie when we were children began with these lines: Asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower/ Dandelion greens and escarole/ Fennel and grapes and honeydew melon/ And iceberg lettuce for the salad bowl. As you will have surmised, the song went on to name a vegetable, fruit or herb for each letter of the alphabet, with a few stretches, such as Un-ions, sweet like strawberries. I don’t remember the crops for V and X, but I think they were similarly contrived. I haven’t been able to find the lyrics for the song anywhere, and have no memory of hearing anyone other than my mother sing it. When I asked her about it, she said that she had learned the song for a high school production of Plain and Fancy, a musical set in a fictional Amish community in Pennysylvania. In fact, the last line of the song is In Pennsylvania, anything grows.

The Pacific Northwest has one of those climates - or more accurately, cluster of climates - in which it seems that almost anything grows. Fruits and berries that I used to think of as exotic delicacies grow in my neighbors’ yards. For four years now, Paul and I have gotten most of our winter produce from Whistling Train Farm, a small family-owned farm in the Green River Valley southeast of Seattle. They have a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program in which we buy a “share” for the season; each week November through January we get a box full of beautiful, seasonal, Certified Naturally Grown vegetables and herbs. Since we have been getting this produce, I have eaten vegetables that I had never seen before (such as kohlrabi and rutabaga), and learned that I now relish some vegetables that, as a child, I detested.

(The winter vegetable that has reached most-favored status in our house is brussels sprouts. Yes, brussels sprouts. The first cold snaps or light frosts make them, and all of the greens, much sweeter than they are in the summer. If boiled until limp, as I remember them from my childhood, they would still be rendered inedible. But there’s another way. Take a bunch of frost-sweeted brussels sprouts, slice them lengthwise into 1/4″ slices. Saute them gently in a mixture of butter and olive oil until slightly browned on the edges. Add enough chicken or vegetable broth to barely cover, a grind or two of pepper, and some thyme. Turn the heat up fairly high, and cook until the broth is reduced almost to the consistency of a glaze. Squeeze on lemon juice to taste, and cook for another minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Paul and I have been known to have a dinner of just these brussels sprouts over brown rice. If the last time you ate brussels sprouts was when your mother could still punish you for not doing so, consider giving them another chance.)

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we receive a “double” box, equal to two weeks’ produce. This provides lots of food for holiday cooking and, more importantly, gives the farmers a vacation. On Sunday, we went to pick up our produce from the farm’s stall at the Ballard Farmers’ Market. When I saw the bounty for the week, I thought of the song my mother used to sing. While it doesn’t fit neatly into an alphabet song, here’s what we brought home: cabbage (Napa), carrots, celery, garlic, kale, onions (cipollini), parsley (Italian), potatoes, pumpkin, radicchio, sage, spinach, sweet potatoes, turnips with greens, winter squash (festival, which is sweeter and smoother than acorn). Most of these vegetables have roles in a fairly traditional Thanksgiving dinner. I’ll either make a place for the others, or save them for next week, when I won’t want to see sweet potatoes or smell sage for a little while.