Dean at Home: The Pandemic Blog

A Love Bazaar Tonight's rippin' soundtrack: Prince, Montreux Jazz Fest, 2013  The last few days of heat has broken and a howling wind came in and twisted trees into violent contortions, the skies opened up. Earlier, when I walked Franklin at lunch, the grass on the lawn cracked and snapped under my feet. The rain is a welcome reprieve from my lawn and garden negligence. Franklin doesn't like the thunder and each rumble sets him off barking at the sky as if there is someone there to receive his complaints. I've been looking back at the photos from my father's archives, and interspersed with his photos from the late 1970s that I've imported into my digital album, are photos from the last few weeks. It is a startling contrast. My seven or eight year old self at the Epcot Center and then my 49 year old self wearing a mask looking out of an isolation cell window at Mass MoCA. What a strange photographic record will exist of this time. We have become so acclimated to ...

Apparitions and Meditations Tonight's soundtrack: Pino Palladino and Blake Mills, 2021  and then Prince Jazz Funk Sessions, 1977 (no video) This evening, after work, we went down to the river to cool off and there was a woman in a bikini sitting crosslegged and meditating on the far shore. It is a delicate thing to intrude on someone's meditation and we tried to be respectful as we approached the bend in the river where it is deep enough to dive in. At the same time, walking downstream in the river masks one's approach and I wanted to call out a warning, like when you pass a pedestrian on a bicycle, "Coming up on your left!" But, of course, I didn't. Instead, like an apparition, I imagine we just appeared when she opened her eyes.  We swam in relative silence, a little quiet reserved conversation about the shifting sand on one bank. And then, just as stealthily, after we cooled off, we made our way back up stream leaving the woman to her reverie. I imagine sh...

Brothers Today's soundtrack: Robert Glasper, North Sea Jazz Festival, 2019 It is funny the things that imprint in our brains, like the material used for a bedsheet, which I seem to know is hand sewn for some reason. Or the cutouts on a laundry basket in that enduring 1970's flower motif that was present in everything from non-slip bathtub treads to car decals. I have been thinking about brothers, and the responsibility brothers have for one another. I don't think I was always the best model for my brother. If anything, I modeled how to be unruly and rebellious. As a kid I basked in immediate gratification and struggled with waiting. My brother was always sweet and cherubic and paced his pleasures. That's what made me want to give him Charlie horses on the way to church in the back seat of the car, or once when my Aunt Mi-Suk took us for ice cream in her Camaro, I pushed his ice cream cone into his face because he was eating too slowly and I must have already finished m...

 Inhabit the Moment Tonight's soundtrack: Khatia Buniatishvili, Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 Op. 23 in B-flat Minor (OSR & C. Koncz) My brother was always a better musician than me. He learned to read music at an early enough age that in a short amount of time he surpassed my painfully slow progress as I attempted to translate penciled in fingerings into squeaky tones on the violin, or timid hammers on the piano. I was a bad student and relied too long on tape guidelines on the fingerboard or keyboard aids, the kind of thing a student should only use as a beginner. I stubbornly refused, or, as I believed, was unable to memorize how to read music. I managed to transfer my mediocrity from violin, to piano, to viola. I was equally miserable at each. My brother, who could read music and exhibited a kind of natural musicality, seemed to easily transfer that from violin, to piano, to trumpet (very loud), and then, much to my parent's chagrin, when he saw me pick up the guita...

The Things That Change Us Tonight's soundtrack: King Crimson, Japan, 1984 How Northampton looks after some really good sushi and a Froyo. I was thinking this morning that the world might just be saved by people like Korean grandmas. My mother is incredibly resourceful and will do things like repurpose a foil lined coffee bean bag as an ice pack, for no reason other than she can. She and my father have been researching edible backyard flora for several years now and their kitchen is stocked with all manner of dried roots and leaves. Through a combination of research and trial and error, they are expanding the knowledge base of what is good for indigestion, sleepless nights, achey joints, or whatever else might ail you. I'm afraid, like most inherited traits, my parent's resourcefulness seems to have been watered down a bit with my incarnation. While I tend to recycle most of my plastic containers, I do keep the more interesting jam jars, I've been collecting vegetable ru...

 Memory Like an Old Car Tonight's soundtrack: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, 1976 When I was growing up my father had a great big Ford Galaxie 500. It was a pale jade green with a black vinyl roof. It was a two door, but the doors were long and the front seats tilted forward so kids could climb in back where we had little triangles of window that rolled down for a small face to gasp for fresh air. The broad bench seats were covered in vinyl that got so hot in the summer that you could almost smell the flesh searing when you hopped in with your short shorts. I don't remember seatbelts, and on camping trips, or when we moved out to the Berkshires for the summer, the back seat was filled with suitcases, camping gear, and kitchenware until it was even with the rear window deck, and my brother and I would lie on top of that, comfy and nested among the bedding, the 1970s version of safety. At some point, while my father was away on tour, someone stole the car out of the Logan Ai...

 Progress Tonight's soundtrack: The Charles Mingus Sextet, Sweden, 1964 My daughter is coming home later this week. In preparation for her arrival I have been working on the big gaping hole over the bathtub where the upstairs toilet leaked through. Each day after work, I've done a little light sanding and spread another thin layer of plaster, and then I've walked around the house repairing the other various dents that have accumulated over the years. At this scale, working with plaster is pleasing. There is a gentle perfection one seeks while trying to smooth the surface and lay down an even smoothness. Of course, at a much larger scale, say a whole bedroom or house, it is a dusty and wearying task, but fixing a medium size hole, mending a dent here and there, that is a different more pleasurable thing. There is a nearly immediate reward where you can step back and see how much of a difference just a little bit of work can do. It would be nice to have more things in life as...

Archival Lessons Tonight's soundtrack: Joni Mitchell, London, 1983 My father has been digitizing an entire era of slide carousels from the late 1970s. It is marvelous to see these images again, like unearthing one's own archives. I am lucky that he has such determination and perseverance. I can only imagine how many boxes of slides he has stacked up in the back of a closet.  Family trip to Prince Edward Island, I think? Back then, whenever he returned from a symphony tour every guest to the household would get treated to a slide show in the darkened living room. I particularly remember the images from the trip to China. My father and his friends posing in Mao jackets and standing atop the Great Wall. I got to retrace some of those steps years later on a conference to help foster the development of community colleges in China.  I particularly remember a boat ride on the Li River where I spent time talking with one of the guides, whose name in Chinese was Cloudy. I played her th...