The Vintage Reader

Here are some things I don't miss about my job in educational technology: the education, and the technology. Particularly the latter. However, I have to say that technology at the office was NEVER as difficult as it is at home. For example, here at home my power pack has quit working, so I'm working off the battery on my laptop, and I have no idea how long this will last before I have to do something about it. Like order a new power pack... or a new laptop. I should have another couple of hours, anyway.

But it wouldn't matter, because even when I had power, I couldn't get any music to play--something about the way I've got Firefox and Windows Media Player and Live365 configured completely prevents me from playing Live365 on this laptop unless I download and install iTunes, which I haven't already done because I don't really have the memory for more than one media player on this machine. I finally gave up and went down to rescue my Admiral AM radio from the dining room, where it's been gathering dust, and brought it up and plugged it in--and found that it has a persistent hum that actually--get this--made the baby grab both his ears and squawk. So--no music, no laptop. Arggh.

Last week we took a rather impromptu trip to New York. Mr. VR was speaking at THREE, count 'em, THREE, events for librarians, and staying with his aunt and uncle, and we decided, sort of on the spur of the moment, that it would be fun for all three of us to go. We all drove down together on Thursday, then Vintage Baby and I drove back on Sunday, leaving Mr. VR there to fly back later.

We didn't get to see much of New York, but VB and I went on a whirlwind tour of the Met with my aunt-in-law. Seriously, we were there for an hour and a half--just long enough to see the Impressionists and some of the artists of the Hudson River school, which I've wanted to see for a long time. I do love those gorgeous lush landscapes. And I just never get over how completely cool it is to see a portrait of someone like George Washington or Queen Victoria painted from life. Wow.

We spent Saturday at the Bronx Zoo, and we had a great day for it. If we had had a little more time I would have liked to go to the Botanical Garden as well (along with about a million other things); I think we're going to have to start a tradition of an annual pilgrimage and somehow, over the next 30 years or so, maybe we'll do everything I'd like to do in New York.

Of course, anyone who reads a lot has a certain mental image of New York. Mine is largely from a different time. At the Met, I thought of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a children's classic that I have somehow never read. When we turned onto Central Park West I looked up at the apartment windows and knew that it was 1935, and Marjorie Morningstar (née Morgenstern) was looking out one of them. Going to the zoo, I tried to remember whether it was the zoo in a YA book called It's Just You and Me, Cat (I think; I can't find it in Google and I'm too lazy to log in and check WorldCat) [EDIT: Actually, the book is Newbery winner It's Like This, Cat] that I read in 6th grade.

In my mind, New York is made up of bits and pieces of Anita Loos, Patrick Dennis, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, E. B. White, Jacqueline Susann, Faith Baldwin, Paul Zindel, Philip Roth, Sophie's Choice, the photonovel of Saturday Night Fever (yes, I did have the photonovel of Saturday Night Fever!) and Harriet the Spy, all with a soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel. Somebody--either Jaime Weinman or The Retropolitan--wrote once, maybe a year ago, about a certain time in the 70s and 80s when New York, in the movies and on TV, looked like the most wonderful, beautiful, incredible, place in the world. That's the New York I think of when I think of New York: the New York of Arthur Bark, not the New York of Lennie Briscoe (although certainly the New York of Jerry Orbach). I think I've been afraid to go, all these years, for fear that it wouldn't live up to my mental image, but I was in Manhattan itself for less time than it takes to watch Sophie's Choice, so it never really had a chance to go one way or the other, and my mental collage remains intact.

And then I was back on the road, and that was very nice too. There are worse ways to spend a rainy Sunday than driving on a good road through lush downstate greenery, with a sleeping baby in the back seat, listening to Sam Phillips and the soundtrack from Next Stop, Wonderland and John Mayer (I'd link, but his web site is REALLY annoying).

What's that? John Mayer? Oh, did you think The Vintage Reader doesn't listen to anything produced more recently than 20 years ago? Well, see, that's the other thing I like about Internet radio. I can hear the new music that doesn't get played on regular (read: Clear Channel) radio, and go out and buy more of the stuff I like. And there's something about "Room for Squares" that I just really like. Even though the songs remind me of a time I didn't particularly enjoy--my early 20s--they kind of remind me of the good part of that time, too. Looking back, it seems like a lot more fun than I remember thinking it was at the time. And just about the time I've lulled myself into believing that it was kind of fun after all, the CD changes over to The Indescribable Wow and I remember what it was really like.

See, even though Sam Phillips is still releasing albums every few years, I have been listening to her for nearly 20 years now. And although the Next Stop, Wonderland soundtrack is less than 10 years old, the music on it is all 60s Brazilian classics: Jobim, various Gilbertos, your standard Girl from Ipanema/Desafinado/Mas que Nada mix, albeit a particularly smooth mix. But still, I do have some new music in the CD changer from time to time.

So altogether, not a bad trip, but I'm glad I'm home now instead of driving on the Thruway. I like to drive, but I'd rather be home reading. And on that note, I think I'll go back to the Barbara Michaels book from the 70s that's been on my TBR list for a while. Ah, summer. Time to sit in the recliner and read throwaway thrillers and eat Eskimo Pies. Too bad I don't have any Eskimo Pies. Or a recliner.

Well, you know what Meat Loaf said:

I was a varsity tackle, and a hell of a block, and when I played my guitar, I made the canyons rock...

oh, wait.

Two out of three ain't bad. Yeah, that's it.

All kinds of good things have been coming in the mail recently. First, through PaperBackSwap.com, I've recently received Slaughterhouse-Five, which, believe it or not, I've never read. I've also received a couple of middle-grade children's books that look promising, including From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I have always--and I do mean always--wanted to read, from the time I was actually in the target age group for it. It was on the reading list for the class called "Kiddie Lit" when I was in library school, but somehow I never took that class. My recent visit to the Met (more on that later) revived my interest, so I ordered it.

I got a nice friendly email from an eBay seller today. Here's what it said:

"If you would like to exchange postive feedback, please enter yours and then I will do the same."

Um, no. That's not the way feedback works. Here's how feedback works: I'm the buyer. My ENTIRE responsibility in this transaction is to pay for the item. In this case, I did so via PayPal within a few hours. If I have fulfilled this responsibility, then the seller should give me positive feedback.

You are the seller. Your responsibility is to package the item in a way that ensures its undamaged delivery to my address and send it out in a timely fashion. If you do that, I will give you positive feedback.

Feedback is an indication of how well each participant in a transaction fulfilled those responsibilities, not a carrot for the seller to dangle in front of a buyer's nose.

This isn't the first email I've gotten from a seller who offers positive feedback on the condition that I leave positive feedback first. I'm sure it won't be the last. But as it has been before, this WILL be the last time I purchase anything from this particular seller.

So this morning, while finishing up Vintage Baby's retro romper, I decided to actually try local radio again, because the Saitek was downstairs and I didn't feel like setting it up. The local radio scenario probably isn't really any worse than it is anyplace else; on FM we've got a great classic rock station, NPR, one of the "Jack FM" affiliates that plays the music of my misspent youth, and several of those awful "family-safe" stations. I started out on one of those because there was a song I liked playing (but now I don't remember what it was). But then it went on to the personal testimonials, by on-air personalities (I can't say use that phrase without thinking of Michael Ian Black in The State, many years ago, saying "...and all those spooky diseases! Ouch!"), about how wrinkle cream--no kidding, wrinkle cream--changed their lives, and how you can get a valuable coupon for it by stopping by their live remote, and I ventured on down the dial. Unfortunately, the clock radio in the sewing room didn't seem to be getting any FM stations except that one today, so I switched to AM instead.

Now, I already know there's one tried-and-true AM station that I really like, Solid Gold Soul. That's what my GE is tuned to now that WKBW has switched to a talk format, so I get to listen to the big bass (yes! The GE has a bass mode! And a speech mode!) echoing in the basement. And that is truly wonderful. But this morning I couldn't seem to find it in the sewing room. Instead, I found what I've been wishing for: a classic country station! Old country music, all week long, and then on Sundays, they play a show called POLKAMOTION! How can I possibly go wrong with a station like that?

This morning it was a syndicated show called Country Oldies, and the theme was "answer songs." They played one called "Queen of the House" that was a response to "King of the Road" (Roger Miller wrote them both) and "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" (a response to Hank Thompson's "Wild Side of Life"). After that I skipped out for a little while to take pictures of the finished retro romper, and got back just in time to hear "Family Tradition," which is odd because yesterday I got it in my head and couldn't get rid of it after watching the episode of The Waltons where the house burns down and John Boy thinks it's his fault because he had been smoking a pipe in his room while working on his novel, and I flashed on that TV biopic of Hank Williams Jr., starring Richard Thomas, and thought, Hank, why do you drink, and why do you roll smoke?

But the main thing is that I finished the romper. Unfortunately, while the craftsmanship is admirable, Vintage Baby looks like a total dork in it, and if I ever let him out of the house wearing a pastel green romper with little bears cavorting about in pink and orange boxer briefs on it--not to mention the yellow Peter Pan collar--I'm sure I'd be looking at paying for years and years of costly child psychiatry.