When spring is slow to start, and the flowers are hesitant to open, I find my way to Faddegon’s to get a little floral fix before everything opens at once. (It usually happens when more than one day in a row deigns to be warm, and since that doesn’t look to happen with any consistency soon, here are a few floral blasts from the local greenhouse. They give a thrill because of their strong colors, and may be appreciated more than when the outside world will inevitably catch up to them.
Yesterday hit 82 degrees, instantly bringing out the first blooms of the season – and they happened to be blue. These little Scilla bulbs are usually the first into blossom after winter, and often they’re ragged and torn from wind and snow and ice. This year they’ve been largely unscathed, though I’m not holding out hope that such pristine delicacy will last (there were whispers of snow in the forecast sometime in the next few days). For now, they are a welcome beacon of spring – and the one spot of color in a brown and barren yard. Even the Lenten rose has delayed its arrival, still huddled close to the ground and slumbering beneath a layer of oak leaves.
The photos give a greatly exaggerated idea of their size and stature, but in my mind this is how big and impressive they feel, especially when nothing else is brave enough to be in bloom at this stage. The largest bloom in actual size is about the size of a dime. That such a tiny thing can have such an impact will always impress my mind and thrill my heart.
In the magical way with which she does just about everything, Tess Collins provided the perfect segue into this Dazzler of the Day with one of the photos from her feature. Most people in Albany need no introduction to the magnificent Matt Baumgartner and his storied career (from starting the Bombers enterprise with a single casino win to his current raging success at June Farms). For all his business successes and acumen, he has an equally-powerful philanthropic side that more than justifies his ability to dazzle (many of us still recall the billboard he erected in support of marriage equality, back when New York teetered on the edge of not passing it into law). For a beautiful glimpse of the spell Baumgartner has cast on upstate New York, check out the idyllic majesty of June Farms this spring and summer, and visit their website for all they have to offer.
Despite what some consider a somewhat ferocious appearance, the opossum is an animal that greatly aids our backyard ecosystem. As seen in the helpful reminder below, this creature gets rid of hundreds of pesky problems, while offering no threat or harm to us. Earlier this year, I witnessed two of them lumbering through our yard early in the morning, a reminder of this visitor from two years ago. It was good to see them making their patrol, and I’m glad they are working their neighborhood magic.
These are trying times. New York State especially has been rocked with horrific news this week, and I had to get away from the media just to ease the awfulness of everything that is happening. Work is getting more and more stressful as far as workload and volume goes, and as I started to feel the weight of it all bear down and slow my ability to simply get usual tasks done. Add in our yard’s daunting spring clean up (which consists of single-handedly cleaning and pruning the gardens, and then filling about 50 lawn bags) and lending whatever support I can to my parents has my plate full – and I only ever want a full plate on Thanksgiving or Christmas. I realized I’m at a breaking point, due in part to the dismal fact that I haven’t had a proper vacation in several years. It wasn’t just COVID – we hadn’t gone on a vacation in the few years before that – and I understood that such a lack of relaxation is finally having an effect on me.
As much as meditation and therapy has helped, there’s just so much anyone can do without periods of recharging and restoration, and the increasingly sporadic and spread-out weekends in Boston only charge bits of my battery. It’s probably time for a new battery entirely.
In the past I might have barreled through such a lull in inspiration, forcing myself to just keep going. I know myself better now, and it’s ok to need a break, and to insist upon one. The world wears all of us down. Now and then we deserve a break.
For the past 75 days, I’ve been reading and doing my best to try one meditation practice per day, from Matthew Sockolov’s ‘Practicing Mindfulness’, and while I admit that I didn’t fully execute each and every one, I did the majority, and added them to my daily meditation. Unlike some things in life, where excess may lead to harm, the more one meditates, the better one gets.
Sockolov offers practical and easy meditation practices, and this book is good for anyone new to meditation. While most are designed for ten to fifteen minutes of focused practice, I found that a big-ask for the beginner. When I started out, I was at two minutes a day – for over four decades I’d been trained to occupy every single minute of the day with action or thought. That doesn’t go away the instant you decide to start meditating. I took it a couple of minutes at a time for a couple of weeks before I gradually increased – maybe an extra minute after a few days, then two extra minutes – until I began to be comfortable with the stillness and the silence.
Many of the meditations that Sockolov describes can be whittled down to a few minutes for those still not quite comfortable with a longer practice. I found these a decent supplement to my daily 20 minutes, and they offer a helpful entry point for anyone looking to start simply, and for those looking to bring the practice into everyday life.
It was Easter week 1993, and somehow Suzie and I found ourselves on a train from New York to Florida for a questionable visit to Disneyworld. That two teenagers at the height of their cynicism and moodiness should be taking an overnight train ride to Florida, and the purported happiest place on earth, is the height of improbability, if not downright foolishness, but there we were.
Suzie is the ideal traveling companion for me, as she and I know each other very well. Most importantly, we know when to leave the other alone, which is really the key to any successful relationship or friendship. Thankfully there would be just one or two moments when we needed that alone time – the rest of the time we were helping each other though such a trip at that particular point in our teenage lives. Nowhere was that more evident than on the long-ass train ride, which forms the memory of this post. The aural backdrop playing on my headphones was Annie Lennox’s brilliant ‘Diva’ album (which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, so that’s how far back we are going here). The track ‘Primitive’ soothed the gentle rumble of the train as the middle of the night arrived and our car flickered with only an occasional night-light. Outside, the amber lights of the tracks whizzed by overhead. It was a moment in time stilled by this song.
The fabulous Mother Hen of all Albany misfits, celebrities, restaurant workers and just about everyone who has played a part in this fair city over the past couple of decades, Tess Collins is long overdue for this Dazzler of the Day crowning. No matter how many setbacks or knockdowns that are thrown her way, she gamely deflects and defies, rallying over all adversity in the take-charge manner for which she is rightfully adored and admired. Generous of spirit and industry, she has crafted a one-woman enterprise that is a foundation of all that is good in this city, and remains a font of wisdom for anyone seeking guidance or some tough love. She is one of my favorite people in Albany, so be sure to say hello the next time you catch her working her magic at McGeary’s.
When crafting mocktails, it’s important to use the freshest ingredients to off-set the lack of that liquor bite, and that is especially true for any citrus-based concoction. Forget the processed juices housed in plastic or cartons – even the ‘freshly-squeezed’ ones – and buy a few limes and lemons and oranges and do it right. In the case of this Calamansi Cooler, and in the absence of calamansi juice, a suitable substitute is the juice of an orange, a lemon, and a lime. Strain and pour over ice, then add a simple syrup – either plain or augmented by some Kaffir lime leaves during the boiling process.
The secret ingredient is orange blossom water – just a few scant drops as it’s powerful stuff – and then top with some calamansi seltzer. Garnish with whatever citrus twist you’d like. This is going to be the mainstay for our spring and summer days, and it feels good to have it in the line-up. A season is only as good as its signature drink.
Why Tuesday should feel so much worse than Monday is one of life’s more bothersome mysteries. The Tuesday Blues are a real thing, and sometimes the only thing to combat their shadow is something like these gorgeously-shaded grape hyacinths. The colors of these are more delicate and nuanced than the ones that are more commonly found in the spring garden, and in the greenhouse where I found this grouping, they are far less tattered than those thrown about by spring winds and storms.
The term ‘hot-house flower’ is usually used in disparaging fashion, describing some overly-delicate person considered too sensitive or sheltered for their own good. Personally, I’ve always thought of a hot-house flower as something rare and exotic, something to be exalted and honored, and if that means being a little more careful and considerate of them, all the better.
So here’s to the hot-house flowers, like this variety of grape hyacinth, lucky and fortunate to be raised outside of the winter wilderness. We should not begrudge it such a pampered life.
Recently confirmed as the newest Supreme Court Justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will hopefully bring some sense to the very-questionable highest court of the land. (Though given its right-leaning majority, we may not be so lucky). At any rate, Jackson is one of the most qualified justices we’ve seen in recent years, and is the first black female the court has ever seen appointed. It’s woefully past time for that, and her dignity in the face of ridiculous questioning by the GOP makes her more than worthy of this Dazzler of the Day.
And so another Holy Week begins, signaling spring and all its themes of resurrection. We’ll start the week in quiet but sweet fashion, with this cinnamon roll I made using the base of a lemon cardamom sweet roll recipe and switching out the lemon and cardamom with cinnamon and brown sugar. Going back to basics in a delicious turnaround, and starting off Monday with cozy comfort. On with the recap…
A momentary meditation beside a stream.
The consequences of cancel culture.
A Fairy Godfather emerges from the shadows. (Spoiler alert: it’s me.)
Dazzlers of the Day included Alice Wu, Ramin Karimloo, Viola Davis, and Bo Burnham.
My brother and his fiancée recently announced that they are having a baby boy this summer, and the only thing happier than hearing that news was being asked to be the godfather. After serving as Uncle to Noah and Emi for the past twelve years, it feels like I finally passed an audition process for what could very well be the role of a lifetime. Landrie and Paul have been very generous in bestowing such a charge upon me, and I intend to make the most of it.
And so we have this tease of an introduction to the forthcoming Ilagan boy – and my very first godchild – with photos from the gender-reveal we had several weeks ago. It came with all the joy and excitement that any impending birth holds, and we need all the joy we can find these days.
As Mario Puzo wrote in ‘The Godfather’, “Great men are not born great, they grow great…”
While it will be years to see who this baby grows up to become, they are already entering a world of love and protection, at least if I have anything to say about it. Fiercely loyal and unconditional of adoration, I’m going to show this baby the best and most beautiful aspects of life, even as the world grows ever darker around us. If you can give a child that kind of light and love from the start, and keep it going for a few years, they have a decent chance of becoming a good person. With a little bit of luck – the kind of luck that has charmed my brother’s journey over the years – the kid has a chance to become great.
To that end, I’ve got the top hat, the cloak, and all the fairy dust to properly embody a fairy godfather, and I’m going to strive to be the best one this world has ever known. We all know I can do it.
Congratulations Paul and Landrie!!
“There’s no such thing as “cancel culture”. It’s “consequence culture” and demands more than an apology for transgressions of harm. “Consequence culture” aims to deplatform a person’s social capital until they make meaningful change.” – Annastacia Dickerson
That is quite the provocative quote, one with which I generally agree. While I’m not usually a big fan of cancel culture, I do believe in consequence culture – and sometimes the consequence of repeated offenses is cancellation. My own take on it is that I fully believe in personal cancellation, rather than a blanketed and enforced cancellation that becomes a public witch-hunt. It happened recently with someone who used to consider me a friend. This person has always been somewhat problematic with what she posts and how she posts things, positing controversial topics as click-bait, then waiting for the ensuing fights and arguments and wondering why such a flare-up resulted from her deliberate gaslighting.
While I’ve known her for years, it finally became too annoying (her gross and public mischaracterization of what happened between us was the final straw), so I blocked her on all social media. She was bringing nothing of value to my online life, her writing has never been anything that particularly impressed me, and the people she was amplifying in her social media posts were often ghastly. Ridding my own timelines of such ghastliness was a personal choice, and my own little cancellation of her was a decision she likely hasn’t even noticed.
That said, I never told anyone else not to follow her. I never asked anyone to stop feeding into what I considered pointless gaslighting. I never even suggested that anyone take a stance on the division between us. Because that aspect of cancel culture – when you try to enforce your own stance upon others – is not my style.
My personal cancellation of this person didn’t involve harming her in any way, or cajoling others into jumping on the bandwagon of attacking her (though several people did reach out and share similar stories of their own), it was a simple and effective way of removing what had become a negative and toxic voice from my own social media feeds. Everyone else is still free to enjoy what she does and how she does it, I just don’t want to see it on my timelines anymore.
It’s part of an ongoing effort to turn my social media time and engagement into a space reserved for things and people I find beautiful, talented, genuine and inspiring. If that means canceling someone who no longer embodies any of those things (personal opinion only, of course, as personal opinion is a beautiful thing) then the consequence of cancellation in this case is one that I absolutely support.
{PS – I’ll probably be cancelled next week.}
“I’m no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.” ~
O great sea, how you call to me, with your beauty and danger and mystery. That a landlocked boy should feel such an affinity for a place and space that would always be out of his grasp is one of life’s conundrums, unsettled and unbalanced but no less beloved because of that. The call of the sea is a song I’ve had in my head since I first glimpsed its seaweed-strewn splendor as a child, and as the years go by I feel its pull evermore.
“There comes a time in a man’s life when he hears the call of the sea. “Hey, YOU!” are the sea’s exact words. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.” ~
I’m not taking life advice from Dave Barry, so this spring and summer’s theme for our trips to Boston will be the sea – in particular the Seaport – which has grown in leaps and bounds like the arms of a starfish. Where one has gone missing, another sprouts up again. It was the backdrop for the Spring Stroll I took with Kira recently, and will form part of an upcoming anniversary visit to Boston, and later our annual BroSox Adventure. Life events have been founded upon flimsier ideas – and the sea is anything but flimsy. It will more likely be a matter of trying to tame the power and might of an idea that has the immensity of its reality surging behind it – a reality that has never been defeated. Our shores and beaches are but barely holding their own, and that delicate line between land and water is tenuously held. Let that be our only drama, and let us enjoy it.
“There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
