Jande Tomelilla

It's funny, on a day like this—a day during which I made a delicious haddock chowder, and took two gorgeous walks in my favorite places, sat and watched the tide pull and push some seaweed in and out and back and forth, ate a lobster sandwich, de-greased kitchen screens (which was actually fun), and read One Morning in Maine aloud to Josh and James *while* I ate chowder—to declare that my moment of pure and selfish joy was making my NPR name. But it was. Serena posted it her Facebook, and I immediately got why this was a thing. Carl Cassel. Korva Coleman. Mandalit Del Barco.

Here's how you do it. Take the first initial of your middle name. Stick it somewhere into your first name. Then your last name is the smallest town you've ever been to. Turns out that's not so easy to remember, but I did remember that I was in the smallest film museum in the world, and it was in Sweden. So I looked up the town the museum is in, and suddenly I had a future with NPR. So. My real first name is Jane. My middle name is Deborah. So my first NPR name is Jande. (That's pronounced yon-deh.) The name of the town in Sweden is Tomelilla. This is Jande Tomelilla, reporting from the world's smallest film museum.

Maine!

We left at 9 AM. We arrived in Brunswick by 3, so I could have a meeting with a filmmaker who might hire me for some work on his almost-finished film. We drove past Red's 15 minutes too late to get a grilled haddock sandwich. But when we pulled into Boothbay, Bet was there, and she still had fish, and we went for it. James' first trip to Maine! Josh's first of the season! Our first trip together as a family! Josh's and my 10th anniversary! Haddock! Whoopie pies!

(I swear to god, and Josh and James can attest to this, that I wore an actual dress with an actual matching sweater all day long, and I did not look like a mis-shapen hippie with jeans under and a sweater over my dress. I sweah da gawd. But then it was getting chilly and I was getting cold, and so OF COURSE by the time we took our second family photo, there I am again. But I was warm and happy!!!) (Also, I am going to figure out how to fix this photo upload problem I am having.)

Pickled Ramps

And then—somehow squeezed into a day full of copy editing, job applying, packing for a long weekend in Maine—I made pickled ramps!

(Which for some reason I cannot get to display right side up without becoming strangely foreshortened.)  (You get the picture.) (So to speak.)

The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, but the pain of love lasts a whole life long.

As sung by Taylor Mac in his concert of popular music from the 1780s, (with the original French sung by Nina Mankin.) There's pretty much no way to convey the context of this song, or the direction that Taylor took it, without writing for about an hour now, so let me say, without worrying if I might confuse you, because Taylor pointed out that worrying is boring and undramatic—in fact, by definition repetitive—let me say that it's the 1780s, and the country has just come through the Revolutionary War, and we are figuring out who we are in peacetime, but we're too hepped up from war to know what to do with peace, and so we create drama where there is none, because we think we need to replicate a certain level of drama, and then some people do some things and then some other people do some other things, and all this is, of course, illustrated in spectacular song, and then a woman has a secret, and it's too vulnerable to share, but then she feels like maybe it's OK to share it in French, and she does:

Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment;
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.

And then Taylor says, "OK, you said it in French. Now let's say it in English." And so they sing it in English, 

The pleasure of love lasts only a moment;
The pain of love lasts a whole life long. 

and then Taylor thinks, "That's not much of a secret. There has to be something else." And then he decides (or maybe he realizes) that the real secret is that she likes it. She likes the pain. She likes the life-long pain of love. And I wonder how many other people in the audience thought to themselves, "Yes, girl. That's right." 

But oh, that moment of pleasure. Made even sweeter because I was there with my son, his first time seeing Taylor, in all his brilliance, complexity, humor, and voice.

One mussel

I thought it was going to be my joyful thing to go to the Madison Square Park food fair, but when I got there it turned out to be hot, crowded, expensive, and annoying. Still, points to me for trying, since I was in Flatiron in between a doctor's appointment and a production meeting, and needed to eat something. Later, I found out that Abigail had been there at the same time, which would have of course transformed the whole experience into one that was hot, crowded, expensive, and annoying to TWO of us. Even later, like much later, like at 8:30 PM, once I came home, and once Josh had made dinner, and once nobody was home to eat it, and I convinced Josh to go out for a run with me, I was able to meet up with Abigail (and Heath for a minute)—at a cute little cafe on Courtelyou Road. And that's when the joy came. A beautiful night, good friends, one mussel as an appetizer, and then home for Josh's dinner on the front steps. The unexpected trumps the plan.

Bad Lip Reading

So I was at the office all day long finishing up my work of two years, feeling sort of sad that it was so unceremonial while simultaneously feeling productive and grateful that I was there alone on the weekend and not in the midst of all the weekday chatter, and at some point I just needed some outside perspective that the world is bigger than making sure my paper files are in order to pass along to someone else, so I put the call out over Facebook, and asked for people to send me whimsy and humor. My people came through! Here's the first thing that arrived. Bad Lip Reading of the NFL. Hilarious. Delightful. Whimsical. Someone spends their time doing this so that other people can giggle. After I watched the NFL one, I watched this Bad Lip Reading of the Independent Spirit Awards. (I would WAY rather watch this version of Silver Linings Playbook.) Thank you friends, for coming through for me. Thank you Karen, for this orange peanut. I accept you.

Is your state bird a stupid bird?

OMG, I love this. I killed 30 minutes reading it and googling photos of the stupid state birds so I could compare them with the birds the author thinks would be not stupid state birds.

Here's an excerpt, but I think you should open up the link and read the whole delightfully opinionated piece for yourself.

3. Arizona. Official state bird: cactus wren

Cactus Wren is like the only boring bird in the entire state. I can’t believe it.

What it should be: red-faced warbler