Flash mob caroling

                                                            Pat, Rose, and Mary Jean

     I was driving home from a toy store in Lake Oswego when I noticed police and fire vehicles hurrying down Rte 43.  You don't' often see that on this side of the river, I thought.  Life in the wealthy suburbs is more sedate.   I fiddled with the radio scan button.  My favorite progressive talk radio station, KPOJ, had changed abruptly to a 24-hour sports yammer, so I don't really have a home on the  dial anymore. ( Of course, it's no longer a dial, and I don't have a word for how you work a radio anymore, either.)  
     I switched from classical music to Oregon Public Radio, and heard tense voices. "Clackamas County Sheriff reports that units are arriving from Gladstone, Milwaukie, West Linn and Lake Oswego."  A little later, "Unconfirmed reports of two dead.  One taken by Life Flight helicopter to OSHU."  There was a gunman killing people in our local shopping mall, Clackamas Town Center.  About twenty minutes later, "The shooter has been neutralized.  That's all the sheriff will say.  We don't yet  know if there are any other gunmen in the mall."  Deputies were scouring the mall, looking for other shooters and evacuating shoppers and clerks who had been hiding in storerooms and bathrooms and under clothes racks.  Eventually, the sheriff reported that the lone gunman had killed himself, and that everybody was being  evacuated from the mall.  Later estimates said that 10,000 people were in the mall when the killer was shooting.

Flash mob, Judy at left

      A week ago, Lisa Nowak had the idea that we should  sing Christmas carols in the food court of Clackamas Town Center, right where the gunman had opened fire.  She checked it out with mall management and mall security, who were enthusiastic.   She started planning on Saturday, inviting  all of us at Tamara's tea.    She e-mailed the women from Chrysalis,  our writers' group.  The leader of Chrysalis, Pat, is also the office administrator for my church.  Pat put the event on the church listserv and on Facebook. We  invited our friends and neighbors. I invited  my former Flash Choir.  One of the fine bass voices in  the Flash Choir is our local TV weatherman, Mat Zaffino.  Zaffino e-mailed Lisa to ask if she would mind if he sent TV  news cameras.
      By Wednesday night a flash mob of singers strolled around the food court, gathering weary shoppers to sing with them.   Lisa planned on singing the first verse only of 6 familiar  carols:
O Come All Ye Faithful
Joy to The World
Hark, The Herald Angels Sing
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
What Child is This
Silent Night
     Lisa, in her Santa hat, passed out sheets of paper with the lyrics on them. Chrysalis turned out in force.   Paula led the singing with her guitar, and a flute player set the key.  Mary Jean gestured to the crowd to join in. Church members with their children on their shoulders walked around singing. Judy was there in her red Christmas sweatshirt, along with our neighbor Janet.  After about 5 minutes, when the carols Lisa had planned had been sung, the crowd  formed a circle around the guitar and flute, and some lead singers (including a chihuahua) emerged.  The group   continued with We Wish You a Merry Christmas.  By the time they got to Go, Tell it on the Mountain they were singing third and fourth verses.  When they sang O, Holy Night  they were making 4-part harmony. The brief, spontaneous flash of carol singing that Lisa had anticipated turned into a twenty minute celebration, with about 150 people participating.

To see the  local news coverage of the event:www.kgw.com/.../Flash-mob-carols-at-Clackamas-Town-Center-184277741. html -

Lisa writing

      I was not able to go sing carols  at the mall because of a silly meeting.  Later that night I eagerly watched all 20 minutes of the video,  pointing out friends and probably making Judy bored with my running commentary.   "Lisa's new book Dead Heat  has just been published.  Paula also plays the  dulcimer.  Rose's husband just died.  She is a fine poet.  Mary is making her second movie.   Pat's book Kidnapping the Lorax was in Amazon's top ten environmental books last year.  Mary Jean is on the ski patrol on Mt Hood."
To see a more complete video via KPDX:

    http://politicollision.com/story.php?title=clackamas-town-center-flash-mob-christmas-caroling-days-after-shooting-showing-support-#26747

     Lisa made a bold move, and good people gathered around to do a modern version of singing away the dark.  As Lisa told KGW news, "We can't let the darkness inside of a few disturbed individuals extinguish the light in all of us."

Singing, dancing, cooking from cans

    

2012 Christmas Revels

    The  Christmas Revels show this year  was the best I have seen.  The Revels are variety shows that celebrate the winter solstice with music, dance, children's games, and mummers' plays.  They are presented by local musicians, singers, dancers, actors, mimes, and children's choruses, along with one or two professional performers.  Each  show is formed loosely around a time and place.  This year, the Portland Revels was set in a small, snowed- in Appalachian mountain church around 1850.  The performance was almost all singing, with some clogging, square dancing, and one mummer's play.   As always, I wished fervently that the grandchildren could be with me to see it.

Revels players

       I usually cringe at the sound of shape-note singing, an 18th-century style where the four parts sit facing each other in a square and sing very loudly into each other's faces.   But the Revels singers performed shape-note songs straight out of the Sacred Harp hymnal, and it was some of the sweetest singing I have ever heard.  Then the leading lady, Suzannah Park,  gave us an a cappella rendition of Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.   She used a  highly ornamented style of mountain singing, all twists and rises that don't quite become yodels.
     Our friend Kit, who  lived for years in a Virginia mountain town,  told us something interesting about traditional dancing in  Appalachia.  At a dance, there is always somebody watching to make sure that the steppers do not fall into the synchronization that happens naturally as the music goes on and on and on.  If there is too much sympathetic synchronization, the physics of it can cause the barn floor or threshing floor to shimmy and then collapse.  Kit once  danced "flat-footing" (what we call step dancing or clogging) so far into the night that she wore the skin off the bottoms of her feet.

Suzannah Park, mountain singer

     Kit and Donna came back to our house after the Revels for a quick supper of beef stew, corn pudding, and Waldorf salad.    Donna asked if I had made the corn pudding.  "Well, I assembled it," I replied.  "Butter, eggs, sour cream, a can of corn, a can of creamed corn, and a box of Jif cornbread mix."  Donna allowed that, even though she doesn't cook, she could probably handle that recipe.
     This time of year, it seems that we revert  back to our mothers' and grandmothers' holiday favorites. The recipes come from an era of American cooking before the yuppie food revolution, when canned and packaged goods  were considered safer and better than food made from scratch. The gingerbread  I "bake" and doctor up from a mix is always a hit.  Tonight I will put together a favorite of my Aunt Faye's:  curried fruit , a combination of canned peaches, pears, apricots, pineapple, butter, brown sugar, and curry powder. (Aunt Faye had a reputation as a good cook and a great hostess.)  And who can deny that pumpkin pie from Libby's canned pumpkin is much better than pumpkin pie made from scratch?

Tina

      Even my daughter-in-law Tina, one of the most adventuresome cooks I know, included City Chicken in her Thanksgiving menu this year.  Tina set out to replicate her Ukrainian grandmother's Thanksgiving meal, with special cabbage and sausage dishes and a chocolate torte made of nut flour, as well as the usual turkey and trimmings.  Her grandmother also made city chicken, a U.S. Midwest favorite from the 1940s, when chicken was an expensive meat.  Chunks of veal and pork are placed on  skewers to look like drumsticks and cooked in a white gravy.  The last time I cooked city chicken, the recipe called for Campbell's cream of  mushroom Soup.  I draw the line at canned cream of mushroom soup, even at this time of year.  Tina probably did too.

Celebrating Old Women

Granddaughter Kelli

Louise 90

    Louise celebrated her ninetieth birthday at a party next door.  She wanted to make sure that Judy and I were there.  "The neighbors are coming, aren't they?"she  asked her granddaughter, Kelli, many times before the big day.  We were honored to sing "Happy Birthday" along with her family and friends, ranging in age from ninety to eight  months.  Arnold watched from the back yard.
     My Aunt Sister turned 90 in May.  There was a big party for her in New Jersey.  My sisters came from Maryland and Washington State, and my brother from Texas.   Her nephews and cousins and longtime friends were there, too.  (I was unable to go, because I was waiting for the birth of Simone.)  Everyone wanted to cheer for this dear woman.

Arnold

     Aunt Sister has lived alone since  her sister and lifelong housemate, my  Aunt Helen, died in 1994. Aunt Sister’s circle of connection is wide and deep and always personal.  Her strong sense of relatedness must help to form the positive and hopeful way that she interprets life.  When your mind is full of people whose family and pets and history and hopes you know well, when you remember them in your prayers everyday, where is the room for cynicism or discouragement? Somebody in your world might have cancer and need hope, somebody might be starting a new job, somebody might be pregnant.

Aunt Sister with cousin and nieces

      I have had that constant consciousness of interconnection at crucial times in my life:  when my babies were born, when I moved across country, at a niece’s wedding, at my mother’s death, and then at my father’s.  Aunt Sister seems to live in it all day, every day, even in her old age.  She lives in relatedness, with a positive sense of progress for the whole group, the whole world.  As children, we learned the phrase, “communion of saints” to rattle off in catechism class and in church.  Now, knowing Aunt Sister in her old age, I begin to understand it.
     My friend Kris's mother Win also turned 90 this year.  Her party in Sequim included relatives who came from her native Australia, as well as nine of her elderly friends.  What a rare and lucky thing it must be to  have that many healthy, active friends at age ninety!

Win (pink dress) and friends

Finally allowed to marry, at ages 85 and 77

     Beginning on December 6, same-sex couples  are  allowed to apply for marriage licenses in Washington State.  The first couple to receive a license in Seattle were two women, June Lighty and Pete-e Petersen, who have been together for 35 years.

Hooray for old women.