2014: All of the Above, Plus....

OK, so 2013 was a washout, resolution-wise. But it's a new day, a new year. I'm carrying forward all of 2013's resolutions, and adding a few new ones. Heck, I'm even using the same napkin as last year.

#8 on this year's list is "paint house." I've lived in the Emory House for over ten years, and it was in need of a paint job before I bought it. So it's high time. In case I had been thinking of putting it off for another year, I got a call from my insurance agency. I had changed providers recently, and so the new company sent an appraiser out to look at what they were insuring. Everything got a gold star except for the exterior paint. I'm supposed to deal with that in the spring and send them photos. So suddenly it's a priority.

#9 is "hike in the Dolomites." Some of my disgustingly fit and healthy European friends hike together every year, and I get to look at the pictures. I'm jealous of the camaraderie, but not much else. I'm terrified of heights, hate the cold, have zero experience hiking, don't relish carrying a week's worth of gear on my back all day, and am unimpressed by vistas. However, I've been invited along on this year's trip to the Dolomites, and in the spirit of never saying no to anything I haven't done before, somehow want to go.

#10 is "helicopter." I've never been in a helicopter before, and maybe this is the year. Actually, there's a particular helicopter I have in mind. It takes off from the roof of MassMutual, carrying company executives to meetings in places like New York or Philadelphia. My cousin, who's a director, rides in it all the time. As a preferred vendor for the company, I do my work from home, rarely even having to meet face-to-face with people in the building, let alone elsewhere. But I can imagine some scenarios where I would have to be in Brooklyn for a few hours on company business. So I will continue visualizing, and maybe it will happen.

#11 is "speak French more." I'm fluent, but rusty, as I don't use French on a regular basis. This fact was brought home to me recently as I worked to translate a manual into French for a local company. Granted, the manual was very technical--I don't even know what most of it meant in English--and I did manage to complete the project and do a pretty good job of it, too, if I do say so. But working on it made me realize that I didn't want to lose this skill. I joined a French conversation meetup group, and found them vraiment sympatique. Best of all, I remembered that Americans who speak French tend to be very smart, serious, nerdy people. Not one but two of the women at the meetup were engineers, for example. Just the kind of people I like to be around.

#12 is "blog." I started writing this blog eight years ago, as an experiment, and it was a successful one. As I am always telling my students: writing is communication, and your most important audience is yourself. Writing forces you to transform those random neural firings in your head into actual thoughts. I credit blogging--and writing a newspaper column for over six years--with enabling me to tackle the more lucrative projects I now am being offered. For a time, I suspended all writing-for-pleasure in favor of writing for pay, but this year I'm optimistic. My goal is to do both, and still have time to play as hard as I choose. And all the while, of course, not neglect my afternoon spot of tea.

2013 Goes Out with a Whimper

Every year for the last dozen years or so, I have written down New Year's resolutions on a napkin, a napkin usually taken out from under my drink at whichever night club I happen to be visiting. Some of these resolutions are pretty ambitious: buy a house, go to Europe, get a hot job. Others can be knocked off rather easily, for little or no money: pierce ears, sing in public. I don't always manage to cross all of them off my list, but I have a pretty good track record. (I'm sitting in the house I actually bought as I type this, taking a break from the hot job I actually have, and I go to Europe just about every year at least once, usually on somebody else's dime.) This year, however, was a shutout. I only made seven resolutions, but I didn't carry out a single one of them.

#1 was "cape." Long, flowing, black, possibly velvet cape. I owned a black cape in college and I wish I still had it. I almost bought one this year on ebay, but decided that sight unseen was not the way to shop. And I haven't come across a really beautiful cape in any shop, auction or sale I've frequented in the past year.

#2 was "J.B.Martin boots." I lust after these every year when I walk through the shoe department of Inno in Brussels. Nobody else makes boots that look anything like these--sort of like pirate boots, with buckles. But again, I don't want to buy online, without trying on, and I didn't go to Brussels this year--or Paris, or London, or anywhere else they can be found.

#3 was "bar novel." I was all set to write a novel in a bar. The bar would depend on which city I happened to be in. In Brussels, it would be Magritte's hangout, La Fleur en Papier Doré. In Paris, it would be La Coupole. In Dublin, Toners Baggott Street, which was the only place W.B. Yeats would drink. But then, life got complicated. The time I thought I was going  to carve out for writing just wasn't there.

#4 was "paint ceilings." Not only did I not do this, I can't even figure out which ceilings I meant.

#5 was "radiant barrier. I was all hepped up about improving thermal efficiency in my house, and this was one of the items I was going to install. But then I decided it was a scam.

#6 was "absinthe." I was going to take advantage of trying genuine absinthe while in Europe. However, I didn't go to Europe in 2013. Worst of all, I learned right after I made the resolution that 1) the best absinthe bar in Europe is in that alley where the Jeanneke Pis is located, and which I pass every time I'm in Brussels, and 2) Brian knows all about, and frequents, that bar, and 3) Brian has a bottle of absinthe sitting right in his apartment. So why didn't I drink absinthe in 2012, or 2011, or 2010, or....? Three strikes and I'm out.

#7 was "electric car." I was going to trade in my vintage Mercedes for one of these. Unfortunately, I can't afford the Tesla I have my eye on (yet!), and it's a little premature to own an electric car in New England anyways. But maybe soon.

So--all of these are being passed forward to 2014.

On the upside, I made it through the year alive (no small feat), all fires have been put out, and I had some challenging (read: lucrative) writing projects. By all accounts, 2013 was a sucky year for just about everybody. I probably fared better than most. The house is warm and cozy, nobody is dunning me, and a couple of exciting developments are in the works for 2014. So it's all good. Now I'm going to pour myself a little glass of cognac, find a napkin, and pen some additional resolutions for 2014.

Lunch With Vernon Hill

For almost two and a half years now, I've been writing a weekly column in Springfield's The Republican newspaper. It's published in the Wednesday pull-out section, which has several other regular features besides. Mine's about the YMCA. I don't work for the newspaper; I'm 100% freelance.

The "Plus" section of the paper contains articles and columns which are local in nature. It varies somewhat in content from edition to edition. If I profile a person who lives in Chicopee, that column might appear on the front page of the Chicopee edition, but be buried in the middle of other editions. Or not even appear at all in, say, the Metro West edition.

I've got a new editor for this column, and I like him very much. Vernon Hill is experienced and he's professional, having worked in different areas at The Republican for years. Best of all, he has a willingness to communicate. That's the elusive quality I'm always looking for in an editor. You turn something in; he shoots back a "Thanks--looks good!" You ask a question; he immediately emails an answer. You query him with an idea; he promptly lets you know if he's interested or not.

My colleagues at the Y invited Vernon Hill to lunch today, and asked me to join them. The Republican's offices and the Y are only two blocks apart, but I don't think Vernon had ever been inside our facility. He got a tour, a nice lunch, and an opportunity to brainstorm a bit with us. We learned something about the issues and constraints he has to deal with in producing the weekly editions, and he heard our concerns as well.

I'm pretty happy these days because I have a picture, a byline, and photo credit. My articles are never cut, and the paper has stopped treating them like news items and editing them rigorously according to AP style. (My pet peeve was seeing all my verbs changed to past tense, when I had purposely used the present tense to lend immediacy to a conversation. Tom Shea gets away with it! Now I do, too. Thanks, Vernon!) I didn't bother to mention that they had massacred the title I was asked to design for the column. That was before Vernon's tenure, and I didn't want to appear greedy.

For the past year I've been profiling people associated with the Y, which everybody seems to think is a good idea. People like to read about other people, even though it's the same message buried in there about the mission of the YMCA. Apparently, though, that tactic is somewhat limiting our coverage. So we've decided to focus in the future more on issues, like, say, prevention of gang violence, which may be seen by those in charge of laying out the editions as equally relevant to all neighborhoods.

A while back, one of my resolutions was to be syndicated. At that point, I didn't even have anything to syndicate! This column, while too locally focused to be a candidate for syndication, has been reprinted with fair frequency (mostly without permission). So it's a step in the right direction. It's been a small but steady source of income, good practice in meeting deadlines for a person whose middle name is "procrastination," and an excuse to ask shameless questions of loads of people I would not otherwise have license to badger. Of course, I can't shoot my mouth off exactly the way I'd sometimes like. But for that, there's always the blog.

La La Love

Since about the year 2000 I've been making New Year's resolutions, and I take them very seriously. Posting the list right on the refrigerator and looking at it daily helps me to accomplish them. Getting started right away on an easy one is another way to ensure success. This year #5--paint the bathroom--was the lucky choice for starters.

The back wing of my house has been remodeled from a warren of rooms into a huge skylit kitchen and lav with loft above (the original kitchen was in the cellar). A 15-foot-square stained glass window, dating from the same period as the house but probably originally from a church, has been set into the south-facing wall. All this was done in about 1986 and never changed since, and the colors scream "80s" to me.

The cabinetry is pickled oak, that light pinkish color I never liked even when it was in fashion. All the wood trim, including the frame of the big window, is painted the same pinky white. The walls are a chalky matte off-white and look like unpainted sheetrock. The floor and doors are stained a dark walnut. Too much contrast; not enough warmth or color for me. And the space is so cavernous--the ceiling soars to 20 feet in one part--and so light-filled that there's no need to use light colors to give the illusion of space.

I've decided that in redoing the kitchen, I'll use the colors in the window. Periwinkle blue, acid green, crimson, royal purple. Tangerine, turquoise, gold. Kindergarten colors? Maybe, but they're in that antique window, so they're authentic period colors. Anyway, I've got ten more rooms in the front of the house to decorate in subdued and elegant fashion.

I decided that the bathroom should match the rose pink of the uppermost panes. I snapped a picture of the stained glass window, then took the camera to the hardware store to match the paint. The color I ended up with is called "la la love."

Here's a picture of the room with the first coat of paint applied. I know, I know. It looks like some six-year-old girl's idea of a dream bedroom, lacking only the Barbie bedspread. But I'm thinking rather of those 50s bathrooms with the poodles on the wallpaper. My Aunt Jean had one of those. Does anybody besides me remember poodles on the wall?

What I Want To Do

New year, new napkin. This is what I want to do in 2008:

1) redo web page. It's been up for two years, and it's time to upgrade. Make it graphically more sophisticated, more content-rich, more interactive. Maybe hang my blog and email off of it. Use .pdfs instead of links for my clips. Sell something on it, or give something away. Draw more people to it. Lots of people read my blog; hardly anyone goes to my web site. I've learned a lot in the past two years; now I want to put some of that knowledge to use.

2) Venice. If I travel in 2008, I'd like to see la Serenissima before she is completely underwater. Also, I'd like to score an all-expenses-paid super-luxe press trip during Carnevale at some future point, but I don't want that to be my first visit. So this will be a preview.

3) Paris Green. Finish my screenplay. I had sort of painted myself into a corner, but my old friend Bob Chamberlain brainstormed me out of it in about 20 minutes the other day. Also advised me to write alternate endings--said mine was too downbeat, and people in troubled times like happily ever after. But if I get to the end of one ending, I'll consider my resolution accomplished.

4) screen door. I've been talking about getting screen/storm doors for about three years now. My front door has to be the biggest source of heat loss in my whole house, and these would help insulate. I'd like to have them made by the woodworking school in Easthampton. The owner is supposed to stop by one day soon to discuss the project.

5) paint bathroom. I've got some insulating paint additive I'm dying to try out. Any one of the bathrooms is an easy project because they're all sheetrocked, with lower ceilings than the rest of the rooms.

6) rejoin Y. For obvious reasons. I'm going to be doing some grantwriting for them, in addition to the newspaper column I write. Maybe they'd roll in a membership with my contract?

7) roadtrip. This is a creative project I've been contemplating. Too complicated to go into here.

8) Rigoletto. I've had "La donna è mobile" running through my head for weeks now. Maybe seeing the opera performed will exorcise it. Prague has a good production of it this spring! Or maybe just watch Ponnelle's version with Pavarotti as the Duke.

9) opera. Jazz is out; opera is in.

How I Did

Tonight I ushered out the old year in the company of friends. Sitting by the fire in the lovely McKnight district, sipping a glass of fizzy cava, beating the pants off of the unbeatable Dan at Scrabble, I reflected that it had been a good year. Sometime around October, I mislaid the napkin on which I had written my resolutions, but pas de problème, as I had digitally captured it for posterity back in January.

Here's how I did:

1) get in the movies. Well, I guess I did that! I had purposely left it open, but ended up doing one of just about everything I had imagined, and more. By March, I had been an extra in a movie starring Kevin Spacey. I followed that up with several more movies, TV shows, and an ebay commercial. I got my car in a movie. I joined a screenwriting group and started writing a screenplay. I went to screenings and industry workshops and film festivals. I met lots of movie types, from actors to directors to casting assistants to writers to Cameron Diaz's espresso guy. I had a blast and I learned a LOT.

2) publish wine article. Did that one, too. In fact, I published two. And got paid to do it. I toasted the old year and the new tonight with the Segura Viudas Brut Reserva cava I've been recommending in print, buying for myself, and talking everyone I know into trying.

3) jazz. I listened to jazz, read up on jazz, acquired a bit of jazz for my cd library, and attended a jazz festival. So, yes, I did that.

4) finish novel. OK, here it gets rocky. I did plenty of writing, but not the novel. So that's ongoing.

5) publish book. That one's stalled, too. The book is written, but I've got another project ongoing with the publisher, and he won't talk to me about the book until I finish the *** (I don't even want to write the word). Can you say "procrastinate"?

6) Lew Hunter workshop. That's a screenwriting workshop, which would have been fantastic to attend, but it's pricey and I couldn't justify the expense. I joined the Northampton Screenwriters Workshop instead, which is much less intensive, but still extremely helpful. I'm not giving up on Lew Hunter, though.

7) Europe. Did that. Le Mont St-Michel, super-hip Antwerp, ever-lovely Brussels. I wish I could've gone to Europe with my mother--she would have loved it, too, I'm sure--but her spirit lives on for me in Belgium. And I've been dreaming about that big rock in the Atlantic Ocean since high school. I still can't believe I finally climbed it.

Cicily Goes Hollywood

Last night and this morning was the shoot for the "Untitled Blackjack Picture." My old friend Alma had landed a part in it as well, so we drove into Boston together on Thursday afternoon. Parked in the Boston Common Parking Garage, as instructed, and looked for the bus which would take us to the set. Here it is, with some engaging muppets who happened to be strolling by. After this shot, I put away my camera for the evening. Try to take a picure on the set and you're thrown out--into a box, with rats, as they warn you.

Throughout the night (we were there for eleven hours) a total of maybe two minutes of the film was shot. If they even use the scenes. In the first scene, Kevin Spacey and Jim Sturgess walk down the street, heads bent, deep in conversation. Later, Sturgess comes back along the same street, glancing from a scrap of paper up to the buildings as if searching for an address. Still later, he comes out of an alley. And that's it.

These scenes were shot in Chinatown. Gund Kwok (which means "heroine" in Chinese), the only Asian Women Lion & Dragon Dance Troupe in the United States, provided local color. One of the women told me during a break that Thursday is their night to practice anyway. A pyrotechnics squad provided extremely noisy firecrackers. Some of us, myself included, scored sparklers, which we were supposed to light for each take. Sparklers are illegal in Massachusetts, but the head of the squad told Alma and me that we were operating under his license.

Between scenes, we could sit inside. The third floor of a restaurant was reserved for us. Catered food was brought in for two meals and snacks. Union actors are fed first, because if they go more than a certain length of time without food, they get a hefty bonus (something like $300 apiece). But there was plenty left over for the rest of the talent (as I now prefer to designated).

Traffic was light going to Boston and returning, since we were going in the opposite direction from most everyone else. The night was extremely mild. We accumulated around 12 hours, which means we'll get some overtime pay. The casting company validated our parking. Alma and I got to chat about some projects we've got lined up for spring and summer. I got home and crossed my number one resolution ("be in a movie") off of the napkin on my refrigerator. I got to work with one of my favorite actors. All in all, a great night.

New Napkin

Last day of the year, so time to make new resolutions. I'm not even going to write down the ongoing ones from years past--that'll have to be understood. My refrigerator is wallpapered with lists written on napkins. I still want to get to the Blue Lagoon, learn Italian, reupholster the Mercedes, and so on and on. The following are my brand-new goals:

1) Get in the movies. Providence, Rhode Island is becoming the new Hollywood. I know people who have had bit parts in movies and know the drill. I think it would be fun, not only to be in a movie, but to have the experience of being on a set. I don't want to try to develop skill as an actor, just be an extra in a crowd scene. Or have my house used as a movie set. Or have my dog or car filmed. Or write a screenplay.

2) Publish a wine article. I've decided on the subject and the outlet; now I just have to do it.

3) Jazz--listen to more of it; collect some of it. I like jazz, but I like so many other kinds of music, too. This is going to be the year of jazz.

4) Finish novel. I started it in Iowa; Gordon Mennenga (ghostwriter for Garrison Keillor) and Phil Hey (fiction editor of the Briar Cliff Review) thought it had legs. What is my problem?

5) Publish book. Book is already written. Just needs to be shopped.

6) Lew Hunter workshop. Lew Hunter taught screenwriting at UCLA for decades; he's also taught at the Sorbonne and pretty much all over the world. He runs the kind of workshops that people like Steven Spielberg drop in on. His Nebraska workshop should be like the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, only for movies. The Big League, in other words. All I need is $2500 and part of a script.

7) Europe. Poland, anyone? Or the Couleur Café festival "dedicated to all currents of urban music across the world" in Thurn & Taxis? The Ice Hotel in Lapland next fall? Another press trip to whereever? I'm leaving it open.

Old Napkin

It's almost the end of the year, so time to look at last year's resolutions. Results were mixed.

I didn't get syndicated--but I did make some progress toward syndication. I've got a regular weekly column now, which appears in one newspaper. I couldn't say that this time last year.

I didn't publish anything travel-related. I did, however, publish more articles on other subjects that I expected to, which is one of the reasons I didn't focus on travel articles. Corporate copywriting pays astoundingly well; travel writing doesn't. I do intend to follow through with the wine material I've accumulated, though. That's travel-related.

I did make the portière. And I hung one side of it. If I can find the missing piece of hardware for the other door, I can hang up the rest of it.

I didn't learn any Italian. I did find an Italian course I could afford and get to, but it had already started up. Maybe in the spring I'll take the next round.

I did hang the heaviest pictures and mirrors. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

I did have my ears pierced. I'd had the studs in for over two months when I got to Mumbai. I pulled them out to put in my beautiful fancy earrings to go with the shalwar kameez I'd had tailored there, but I couldn't get the earrings in. I didn't want to risk an exotic infection by struggling with them too much. By the time I got back to the U.S., the holes had completely closed up. Too late I learned I should've had it done with a needle and not a gun. So I'm back to square one. But I did get them pierced, I guess.

Tattoo. Still not sure about that one.

I cleaned up a lot of loose ends. And created at least as many new ones. But I can't seem to say no to anything. I like having my life very full, even if it means lots of loose ends.

I did start a blog. And write to it pretty much daily.

I did get a bartending job. Not a full-time, permanent one, though. So I'm back to square one on that one, too.

Progress

Making good progress on the resolutions so far this year. Ears are pierced, for one thing. That was not terribly difficult--$12.98 at the mall for studs with free piercing included--so why not get it out of the way?

Other resolutions are more expensive and problematic. "Fixing the hallway/stairwell" is a carryover from last year, something I don't know how to do, and was having difficulty finding someone competent to do for me. My beautiful floating staircase had been damaged when the kids helping me move had gotten the king-size mattress wedged partway up. A crack had turned into a hole, ominously close to the plaster ceiling medallion. For the last eighteen months, I have been using the back staircase almost exclusively, afraid to place any undue stress on the area, and wincing every time my sons and their friends thundered up and down.

Wednesday morning, I was woken up by a call from my neighbor Ken. Could he come over and bring buckets, compound, ladder, and so on for fixing the stairwell? I prayed I wasn't dreaming. This project had been in the talking stage for a year and a half. Not only had he volunteered to do it, but he seemed to know what it entailed, and wouldn't hear of payment. My kind of offer, broke as I am! On the down side, he kept putting it off. The hours he spent in my kitchen over coffee, talking about his many projects--making a movie, starting a non-profit, running for office--were enough to rebuild the entire house. So I didn't dare hope it was finally getting underway.

But sure enough, a few minutes later he was at the door with a shitload of stuff. And that night he was back at 9:30 to start. He worked till 4 a.m., with only a fifteen-minute break for coffee, prepping the area, cleaning it out, wetting it down, and keying in Portland cement mixed with some secret ingredient. He also fixed an ugly crack that had been there when I moved in, and two holes left from an incident involving kicking a space heater downstairs (culprit to be left unnamed). The next night he was back for another four hours of extremely careful labor, and on Friday night he put a skim coat of plaster over the cement. So maybe one more visit to do the final final coat, and it'll be my turn.

I want to sand the floors (Ken says I should strip the stairs, not sand them. He thinks they're pecan). Then strip all the mucky paint off the plaster ceiling medallion. And maybe the woodwork, too? Then paint the walls--I'm thinking amethyst, with some gold stencilling. And make a portiere for the double doors, to keep out drafts. The portiere rod is on its way from the U.K. as I type this. There's a demi-lune window over the front doors, and a matching filled-in one over the French door opposite. Ken thinks a little mural painted in there would be nice--a pastoral New England scene. I wonder what the front hall looked like when Pascal Emory first built it? I should do a little genealogy research and figure out if he has any heirs around today, maybe still in the area? I wonder if there are any old pictures....

That could be a resolution for next year.

Happy birthday to me

Today is my birthday. Also the day on which I sometimes make my resolutions, if I don't make them on New Year's Eve. Here are my resolutions for 2006:

1) Get syndicated
2) Publish travel piece
3) Make portiere
4) Learn Italian
5) Hang pictures
6) Pierce ears
7) Get tattoo
8) Shape up
9) Slim down
10) Start blog
11) Train dog
12) Catalog!
13) Finish knitting projects
14) Finish origami crane project
15) Sew duvet
16) Do Pilates
17) Clean cellar
18) Fix hall
19) Build display case
20) Get bartending job

Some of these are carryovers. Some don't seem like much unless you put them in context. ("Hang pictures" is a daunting project when you live in a Victorian with untrustworthy plaster.) Some are pretty much ongoing, like "shape up." Writing things down, does, however, make one attend to them.

Well, by creating this blog I have already accomplished one thing on my list. One down, nineteen to go!