And Goodnight, Mrs. Pruden, Wherever You Are

Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden & Jacob Riis - Prophetic Witnesses to the Social Gospel

A few years ago, I saw one of those cartoony Facebook postcard thingies that said something to the effect of, "Love is wonderful; you should tell someone that you love them every day. But love is also terrifying and confusing, so when you tell them, scream it in German!"
 

Wilma-Jean Bland Pruden

When I heard that anecdote, I relished sharing it with my friend Wilma Pruden, because -- among her many talents -- she prided herself on being fluent in that intimidating language.  However, she did not need to resort to Teutonic rants to command respect, either from those who knew her well or -- as it sometimes happened -- perfect strangers. 

My favorite Wilma story took place in a setting that was far from our normal stomping grounds: in a "healthy food, fast" franchise that was catering, at least at that moment, primarily to the gym-obsessed male denizens of Chelsea.  For the uninitiated, visitors to the Muscle Maker Grill make their selections at the counter, but the food is then brought to your table.  The young man working the register, after taking Wilma's order, politely asked, "May I have your first name?"

Wilma, just as politely, replied, "No, you may not."  

 

Our server looked stunned.  Clearly this had not been included in the training; perhaps women of bearing did not typically frequent this stretch of Eighth Avenue.

 

Sensing his confusion, she went on to explain, "Only people I know call me by my first name. You and I have not even been introduced. You may call me Mrs. Pruden."

The employee, bless his heart, dutifully keyed "MS. PRUDEN" into the register.  After two-and-a-half minutes, he knew better than to argue.  And, if Wilma was tempted to school him in the correct uses of Mrs., Miss, and Ms., she chose instead to let it go.

I don't tell that story to make Wilma sound haughty or uptight; her tone throughout this whole exchange was completely cordial.  It is simply an example of a woman who knew there was a right way to do things and treat people, and she was not afraid to point them out.  She was no less exacting in her standards for her own conduct than her expectations from everyone else, and while we kidded around about her legendary ire, she also had a rich sense of humor and loved to laugh, especially at herself.  

 

For several years, Wilma and The Archwarden shared responsibility for managing our now-former parish in the absence of a full-time rector, and I looked forward to ribald stories about what Wilma did or said during their epic meetings.  And during our years of "leading" our church youth group and making basement-music with the Archwarden's late father Henry, I could also count on her husband, (whom we all know simply as "Doc") to share similar tales with his trademark smile.  He is as easygoing as Wilma intense; a balanced partnership that helped them get through medical school, four children, and now a new generation to love and spoil.

We lost Wilma today.  I'm still trying to get my head around that. My heart aches for Doc and their kids, and all the lives that will have to adjust to the hole left by her formidable presence.

Find the Cost of Freedom

ASH WEDNESDAY

“Hey, are you Polish?”

The question, though incongruous from a stranger as my two friends descended a busy staircase into the West 4th Street subway station, seemed innocent enough, and -- in fact -- one of them is.

The next question was even more out of place, although the intent was not immediately clear: “Are you faggots?”

My friends report that at first they thought the stranger was kidding around; an inside joke on the gayest corner of the gayest city east of Mrs. Madrigal. There has been much debate in the “community” over whether we should neutralize the venom of that word by playfully throwing it around, much as another two-syllable word has been co-opted by some of those against whom it was used. We know people who do that, with that word. The stranger had an accent, and sometimes people from other places use words differently than we do, and they were a little buzzed (they were, after all, celebrating their tenth anniversary). In a city they know well, and -- a mere block from Stonewall on a Saturday night -- they had no reason to be particularly wary.

So they said yes.

What followed happened so quickly that they struggled to recall it in detail… to the doctors, to the cops, and then to me. In a nutshell, the stranger did not like that answer, and he made that brutally and physically clear, while a station platform full of people fixed their eyes back on their phones and did nothing, said nothing. The birds are angry. Can you blame them?

Eighteen hours later, my friends finally made it home, having been up almost all night retracing their steps, paging through mugshots. One of them required stitches near his eye and may need surgery for facial fractures. They are both stunned, angry and sad. The city whose welcome we have come to take for granted now feels like a house that had been robbed.

Protest in Greenwich Village after Mark Carson's murder

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Fleshman
Used under Creative Commons License

Even as crime drops precipitously in the city and marriage equality comes to a new state seemingly every other week, two groups of people have increasingly found themselves the targets of violence and rage: gay men and transgender women. We are not just being called names or getting black eyes. In May of last year, a young man named Mark Carson was shot dead just blocks from where my friends were attacked. In August, an aspiring fashion designer named Islan Nettles was beaten on a Harlem street, right across from a police station, later dying from her injuries. Although multiple people identified her attacker, the charges were later dropped. Another man was attacked in an East Village subway station just three weeks ago. In all these cases, the perpetrator hurled homophobic and transphobic remarks at his victim.

My friends know they are lucky that what happened to them wasn’t worse. They are home eating soft foods because it hurts to chew, but they are alive. The police and doctors took their report seriously and told them they had done nothing wrong. We can be grateful: this would not have been the case thirty years ago.

As I write this, an invitation to a male couple’s wedding, which will be valid in the eyes of the church and the state, sits on top of today’s mail. My straight friends treat my partner and me like members of their families, and their kids say “uncle and uncle” without even puzzling at that idea. I think they would find a rotary phone more confusing.

It is clear, however, that some around us remain so threatened by the evolution of our rights and the normalizing of our place in the culture that the only way they can reassure themselves of their power is by lashing out: with words, with fists, with bullets. The rash of Jim Crow-evoking legislation that popped up around the country in recent weeks, was -- while failing to become law -- still successful at reinforcing the us-and-them mentality that drives such paranoia in some quarters. We can celebrate how far we’ve come, but if we let ourselves believe for a minute that the struggle is over, it is at our peril.

“It's unfair to be called a faggot your entire life; however, the slur becomes most dangerous when you let it no longer faze you.”

- PAUL FLORES

Walking on Water

So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

MATT. 14:29-33

We spend most of our Florida vacation within site of the Gulf of Mexico, but -- with the exception of our eight-year-old traveling companion -- most us us limit our actual immersion to splashing around right in the fairly miniscule waves.  

Last winter, the proprietors of a surf shop a few blocks from our rented house caught my attention with a strange contraption that looked like a cross between a surfboard and a kayak.  You stand on it like a surfboard, but -- rather than skimming on the crest of a wave, you paddle it like a boat.  Though I am about as graceful as a drunken giraffe during an earthquake, it looked like fun, and I wanted to try it. By the time I got the nerve to talk to them about it towards the end of our stay, the wind and currents had picked up and made conditions unsafe for a beginner.

That's me!

Since then, I found out this "has been a thing" since 2005 when it came over from Hawaii, but really took off in the past year or so.  Several friends have used them on northern New Jersey's lakes. People's little kids were doing it. A senior citizen with an enviable torso glided past us on one right near the water's edge during one of our daily walks. I was not going to miss the opportunity again this year!

So midway through our trip, I marched myself over to the languid youth guarding the pile of  equipment on the beach.  He has a cake job at this time of year, before the snowbirds and college kids arrive, we shared the beach with only a few other people so he mostly has to sit there and hope someone wants to rent something.

There were no lessons... after about a five-minute description of what to do, he dragged one of the boards into the water and guided it past the breaking waves.  I flopped onto it, managing not to go off the other side, and followed his advice to start out kneeling until I got more confident with my balance.  After five or ten minutes, I tentatively got to my feet and lasted a few minutes before flying off into the drink.

Unperturbed and glad I had not yet made it to where my friend Linda was waiting with a camera, I scrabbled back onto the board and tried again.  Before long, I was standing more than kneeling, and getting used to the sensation of trying to balance on top of a giant pan of Jell-O.  I am proud to say I didn't fall again, and made my way slowly up and down the beach, hoping the wake from a passing speedboat wouldn't send me flying right when I was in range of my intrepid news photographer.

By the time my rental hour was over, my quads were like rubber bands, but I was hooked.  I can understand how this is the Outdoor Industry Association's reported #1 new sports activity for 2013.  I also think it will help me in the gym, since it requires constant engagement of your core muscles and awareness of how you are distributing your weight.

Speaking of weight, I cringed when I saw the photos. I hate pictures of myself to begin with, let alone shirtless ones, and studying for the Project Management Professional exam plus some medical issues meant it was not a very outdoorsy summer for me! Hopefully I can find more chances to "SUP" next summer which will help counteract too much computer time.

"I feel pretty, o so pretty"

At the end of our week on the beach, we headed to Busch Gardens in Tampa for a day before flying home.  I was kind of amazed how in-your-face Christian the Christmas (clearly not Happy Holidays here!) decorations and music were.  But my point (yes, there was one!) of mentioning our visit there was that we saw a hippopotamus swimming underwater.  This huge animal, which lumbered slowly around its enclosure on land, was positively as graceful as a dancer as it moved through the tiny fish and plants that surrounded it.  Similarly, as uncomfortable as I was with the sight of my pale, flabby self, there was none of that while I was actually cruising, albeit slowly, on top of the waves.

Are the Lifeboats Seated According to Class?

Saturday in Easter Week

By now you are probably sick unto death of references to the R.M.S. Titanic as we approach the centennial of her sinking.  Actress Kate Winslet reportedly cringes when she hears "My Heart Must Go On" and every time a cruise ship encounters any kind of mishap, breathless passengers insist "it was just like the Titanic!"  Of course it was... except that it was 2,800 miles away, 90 years later, within sight of land and your inconvenience was limited to warm beer for an afternoon in the Anchors Aweigh Lounge til the lights came back on.

 

Simulated Size Comparison:
Titanic vs. Oasis of the Seas(Caution: Contains Music)

For those with no other references, the Titanic remains the "go-to" vessel, to which every new passenger ship is compared.  However, for ship geeks like me, the most interesting thing about her is that she almost immediately failed at her job: that is, to get her human cargo safely from one side of the Atlantic to the other.  Her speed and size statistics were almost immediately eclipsed by other vessels, and few can name her two sisters, both of which also met with disaster in varying degrees.  Since then, hundreds of liners -- ever larger, ever faster -- came and went, most of them long forgotten except by a nostalgic handful.  Today's plodding cruise behemoths bear little resemblance to the ships of that time, yet passengers who -- when asked what ship they spent their vacation -- answer, "Um, Carnival?" know Titanic.  People who have never seen the ocean know her name and remember her story.

To me the human dynamic of what happened that night, and what it says about the time in which it occurred, is far more interesting than the ship itself, or even the human errors and vices that made it happen.  We recently started watching the British "costume drama" Downton Abbey, which is set in England in the same time period, and seeing the characters interact with those in their own and in different social strata is helping to understand a little more about the way events unfolded. Just as scullery maid Daisy knows that she is never to set foot in the family dining room, some in third class seemed to accept as normal that their station in life meant that it was more important that a wealthier person should live while they would die.  Just as the Dowager Countess has no problem with the idea that the townspeople let her win the village rose competition every year regardless of merit, the mother of Winslet's fictitious character Rose is more concerned that nobody of lesser pedigree be seated next to her in the lifeboat than the fact that -- for the vast majority of souls on board -- there will be no seat at all.  While that remark was fictitious, it was probably not especially unlikely.

Fast-forward a century, the lines of class -- while not erased -- are certainly blurrier than they once were.  While it is taking an embarrassingly long time to get past the concept of race or ethnicity as a marker of your human worth, at least we've evolved to the point where making such crass remarks is considered bad manners in most circles.  And if someone on the Costa Concordia tried to assert that a balcony suite meant he was entitled to evacuate the tilting cruise ship first, he would have likely been thrown overboard.

The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain
Washington DC

My friend Julio mentioned in his new pop culture blog recently that a novelist used simple statistics and known cultural facts to surmise that "the love that dare not speak its name" was most certainly in bloom aboard the ill-fated ship, and that -- unlike the preposterous inter-class romance in The Movie -- males from from various passage grades and even the crew were free to roam past barriers and interact.  While his assertions are mostly speculation, I learned recently that at least one pair of men on board were widely assumed to be a couple.  Major Archibald Butt, who served as chief military aide and close friend to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, shared a home in Washington DC with a painter named Francis Davis Millet, and the two were traveling together aboard Titanic after Millet got Taft to convince Butt he needed a recuperative vacation.  Both died, and the fact that a fountain bearing both their names was constructed the following year near the White House signals that their relationship was both recognized and respected by the President is telling considering that -- 100 years later -- the Current Occupant is "still evolving" on the issue.

The Old Country, Part One: La Marche

THIRTY years ago, my family and I flew a TWA 747 from JFK to Rome.  It was -- as far as I know -- my first time on a plane, and this was when flying, especially internationally, was still kind of an event.  I do not remember as much about that trip as I would like to, but I do remember a few things very distinctly: tangling with a German woman in St. Peter's Square, drinking hot chocolate made the right way by the Graymore Sisters whose convent was our temporary home, and my cousins trying to see just how much I could eat before I would explode.

So, it was time to go back, and my dad had been offered the use of a house in La Marche, and of course we would need to go see the family.  This time around we flew Swiss, and I learned that the Zurich airport is, in fact, not made entirely made out of Lego.  So much for that fantasy.

Il Ducato

There were five of us in the party, and my dad -- wanting to ensure there was room for us all -- went big with the rental vehicle, a Fiat Ducato.  Ducato is apparently Italian for "too big."  It was big by European standards... it was big by AMERICAN standards, and that's saying something considering we have the Hummer.  The closest thing I've seen on these shores is a Sprinter delivery van.  Dad, who drove a delivery truck for his family's grocery store, was undaunted by its size or the flaky gearshift, once we figured out how to get it into reverse!  I snagged shotgun and operated multiple maps and GPS devices, and still managed to get us terribly lost several times.
 
After one night in Rome, we headed for the hills.  La Marche, located on the Adriatic coast north and east of Rome, but not quite as far as Venice, is a lumpy blanket of hills and valleys, dotted with sunflower fields, olive groves and pristine lakes fed by mountain springs as they tumble down to the sea.  Amandola, the town closest to our temporary home, is perched on a hilltop, with the old city at the very peak.  Of course, due to my stellar navigation skills, we managed to steer the Ducato into a one-way street which got narrower and narrower like a scene from a Lewis Carroll story .  At one point we had to stop and wait for some locals to come out of their houses and move their cars so we could squeeze through.

One of our number had booked her own accommodations in a beautiful bed-and-breakfast whose only downside is its location at the end of a long, remote track made of snow-white gravel.  When we arrived at the address on the main road, a man came out to see what his dog was barking about, and -- after learning what we were looking for -- got in his car and beckoned us to follow him to the place rather than try to explain it.  This became a recurring theme, and we were grateful that the local populace was so patient with befuddled tourists.

La Mela Rosa

Once we found La Mela Rosa, our friend's B&B, we were told by the Australian proprietress that she'd made arrangements for all of us, including a British couple also staying with her, to have dinner on a working farm some distance away.  We had been driving for hours and were tired and hungry, but we were also kind of at her mercy as we stood little chance of finding our own house in the dark, and she was willing to guide us there if we'd participate in this complicated arrangement of people and vehicles to get everybody to and from the restaurant.  The Briton had -- after barely getting his little rental car up the steep hill to the B&B -- thrown his keys on the table and relied on his hostess to navigate the local roads.

We bumped and jostled our way along behind her to La Conca, the agriturista where we'd be dining.  What we didn't know was this was a once-a-year event, and the place was swarming with people, but a table was waiting for us.

In case we had forgotten, we quickly learned that there is no such thing as a quick meal in Italy.  Each dish was presented in succession, with plenty of time to enjoy it before the next one followed.  After almost two hours we begged for mercy and our guide returned to shepherd us along the dark country roads to the house where we'd be staying.

The view from our house

The house is modern by rural European standards, made of stone with casement windows within and louvered shutters without, although the latter were made of sturdy plastic instead of wood.  It is surrounded by  farmland, and the dirt road twists through the fields and hills far beyond where Dad and I grew tired of walking and  headed back.  We never walked the way we drove in, as the neighbors have a pretty aggressive German Shepherd who chased the Ducato every day as we approached (but never as we left, oddly.  What was he trying to say?).

We spent our days there exploring the villages and lakes around Amandola.  We had some amazing fresh mozzarella in Sarnano, bought some local bread, cheese and fruit for a picnic on the shores of the Lago di Fiastra and sampled the signature dish of Ascoli Piceno: Olive all'ascolana - fried olives stuffed with pork or beef, tomato paste, and Parmesan cheese.

Driving in Italy is fun!

Ascoli Piceno is the largest city in the region, and an incident involving the Ducato is worth mentioning.  Since it does not fit into a normal parking space, we asked a policeman for help and -- after trying to think how to explain to us where we could park -- he thought better of it, borrowed a scooter and gestured for us to follow him (sensing a theme yet?).  We dutifully entered the parking garage he showed us, only to discover that there were sprinkler heads protruding from the ceiling which were lower than the peak of our little bus's rounded roof.  With two of us directing from outside, dad maneuvered a complicated geometric dance to get into a space. After our tour, he performed an even more elaborate one (backwards) to get out again.without scraping the roof, let alone triggering some kind of aquatic calamity in the unstaffed garage.

One whole day was spent driving to San Marino, a tiny country-within-a-country that occupies the top of a mesa surrounded by flat plains.   A steep, winding road leads you up into the fortified complex which is chock full of churches, museum, and (surprise) gift shops.  In the spirit of the occasion I forked over 5 Euro to have my passport stamped, just to say I was there.  On the way home, I managed to get us REALLY lost, and a local guy who we flagged down in a parking lot tried to explain how to get where we needed to go, sighed and then asked if it would be okay for him to buy his beer before leading us back to the highway.  Sometimes pity is useful!

City Visit

Martin Luther - Educator and Translator (1546)

Singer, by shiftynj
(C) All rights reserved

I spent a warm Friday afternoon in the city with friends , celebrating my 20th anniversary with my employer. We had lunch at Salam in Chelsea, then walked through the Meat-Packing District (Gaansevort) and on the High Line, an elevated railroad trestle, long unused, which has been re-crafted into a wonderful park. 

One of the distractions in the park is a changing collection of art. The acoustics where it passes through a building are utilized to enhance a project called "A Bell for Every Minute" where -- once a minute -- a simulation of a bell somewhere in the city can be heard.

On the way home, we encountered another friend who is a student at General Theological Seminary, and he gave us a quick tour of the campus chapel. Then we saw Ethan Hawke on the street with his family.  Unfortunately by that time my camera had died. I hope to get back there soon and join them for Evening Prayer.

We were grateful for the unusually warm day.  More pictures in the gallery 20th Anniversary Lunch on Flickr.

An Embarassment of Riches

Philander Chase - Bishop (1852)

Our house is a mess. I don't mean it's dirty; people who know us don't have to wonder who is Oscar and who is Felix, but neither of us has the time or patience to go around doing the white glove test. We manage to keep it sanitary and -- especially after an alarming episode of Hoarders -- we guiltily nudge ourselves into action to disperse recyclables, junk mail and obsolescent electronics to prevent it from devolving into a complete Collyer Brothers situation.

I'm referring more to all the little things about it that I want to fix. The kitchen floor is worn to the point where it never looks clean, the dining room did not come out the color I wanted and the curtains remain on a Certain Party's ironing pile despite a number of hints, subtle and otherwise. The shutters out front were not the right wood for outside and are now coming apart at the seams, literally. Nobody's sure exactly how it is that the furnace continues to function when I think it enjoyed a former life as a boiler on the Mauretania before coming into our employ.

Everywhere I look, I see mismatched, unraveling or scuffed beyond repair. There's never enough time, and there's never enough money, to make it look the way it does in my head. I looked back at old blog posts to see when we got the giant captain's bed (I immediately nicknamed it "the tree fort") thinking we'd get the mattress to fit it the next month. It was Lent, and we're still on the old, too-small mattress.

As I am sure is the case with just about anybody, no matter how much money comes in, there always seems to be someone, or something, that is clamoring for a piece of the pie. We are both lucky to have full-time jobs, me for long enough to have some of the benefits that new entrants to the job market may never see. But that does not make me any less worried about there being enough to get by on during those golden years, which suddenly don't seem so far away.

But by nature of the fact that I'm sitting in a room that doesn't leak, using a computer, had a healthy dinner, and don't have to share either of those items with anybody, I've already got more than 99% of the world's population beat. And if you're reading this, in all likelihood, so do you.

In the midst of my frustration that my little patch of the American dream is not blooming as rapidly as I might like, I was humbled by a beautifully written reminder by my friend, the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, that my priorities are just a shade off when I fuss about such things. Not that I should need to be told: the headlines and statistics are a daily grim reminder of the suffering that people endure every day. What touched me was the way she articulated her appreciation for something as simple as twilight, which is free for the taking, but yet goes unnoticed by me and every fool who is too busy finding fault with our charmed lives to appreciate all the gifts that surround us.

Telling Secrets: The Universe of the Anawim

No vampires here!

 Special request: If you're reading this in some format (syndicated) other than the actual

blog page (vergeofjordan.blogspot.com) and would like to comment, I ask

if you could take a second to click into the blog itself to do so, simply so that

any conversation that  unfolds from the posting can happen in one place.  

Thank you!

Clare of Assisi - Nun (1253)

Last night I met some friends at The Garlic Rose, a restaurant in Madison, N.J. whose nickname is "The Rose City".  As the name suggests, the lowly bulb figures rather heavily in the menu.  While this seemed somewhat off-putting at first to those of us who did not grow up believing everybody's kitchen smelled like that, I'm here to tell you that there's nothing to be afraid of.  When cooked whole, garlic cloves do not overpower whatever they are in, and in fact can be eaten as-is or spread on bread, as the hosts are glad to demonstrate to the squeamish by providing a few roasted bulbs for free when you first sit down.  

Our entrees ranged from three-cheese ravioli to roasted chicken.  Nothing you'd call "diet food" but everything was wonderful.  I was glad to have friends who are as adventurous about food as I am.  

Then we got to dessert.  Among the more routine offerings, they naturally (?) have... garlic ice cream.  This isn't my first encounter with strange flavors of that all-American confection: for years, Gerenser's in downtown New Hope, PA, had hundreds of flavors including African Violet. I never was brave enough to try that one, and I have heard they don't offer nearly as many choices as they used to.

This night, too, was not to become an expansion of my confectionery repertoire.   We voted to head to Cafe Beethoven in nearby Chatham, N.J. only to discover that they stopped serving at 9 p.m., and thus ended up at the (sorry, guys) vastly disappointing local Carvel.  I mean, it's still ice cream; even if it's not great, it's still pretty good.

But next time I'm holding out for the garlic. 

God's Been Good to Me

Mary, Martha & Lazarus of Bethany

I begin writing here from a very "good place". Anyone who knows me well is aware that last summer was, for lack of a better expression, a shit show, bookended by the diagnosis and subsequent death of my friend and bandmate Henry from Leukemia, and punctuated in the middle by eye surgery which left me unable to drive, lift weights or read for the better part of a month. Thanks to the generosity of some close friends I was able to get out here and there but for the most part it was an isolating, unhappy time.

Thus there was nowhere to go but up, and -- being a summer person by nature -- I vowed that this year I would make up for it. Unlike George Costanza, I have thus far not been disappointed. In fact, looking back at what's happened so far, I feel as if someone up there has been stacking my deck in my favor.

Case in point, I found out a few months ago that a band I have loved for years, Chamberlain, had signed on to tour with The Gaslight Anthem this summer. Since they live in Indiana, aren't on a major label and broke up in 1998, I had pretty much assumed I would never see them live. Yesterday, I did, and it couldn't have been better. We got great seats, the weather cooperated, and they started out with one of my two favorite songs of theirs, "Try for Thunder" that had helped keep my spirits up when all the aforementioned stuff was going down last year. Also, I found out while writing this that they released a single "Raise it High" which hopefully means they're planning on doing more work together.

None of this should eclipse the fact that they were opening for Gaslight, the main reason most of the audience was there. I have to say that the audience, which was pretty young, was extremely receptive to both Chamberlain and the opening-opener, Tim Barry. Hailing from Richmond, VA and also the once-and-future(?) frontman of a punk band Avail, Barry is unapologetically rough-hewn and commented that he rarely performs anywhere "as nice as this". At one point he got off the stage with his acoustic and climbed partway up the amphitheater where he performed a song unamplified. Just about everybody quieted down so he could be heard, interrupting him only by clapping along at the chorus. He sheepishly thanked everyone for indulging him, calling his stunt "selfish" when in fact the audience seemed to love it.

I won't go on about Gaslight Anthem, both because I'm sure there will be tons of reviews of their show and I don't know their music that well, but they were pretty energetic and connected well with the crowd, who knew every word of every song. If only their teachers could get them to study so hard! Now I want to go see them again at the Stone Pony next week, especially since (Gaslight lead singer) Brian Fallon is a huge Springsteen fan. The Boss appeared at the Pony last Friday night to play a few songs with buddy Alejandro Escovedo, on whose album he appears, so you never know.

Anyway, I'm going to bed feeling very blessed.

"Try for Thunder"
By Chamberlain (written by David Moore & Alex Rubenstein) from the CDs The Moon, My Saddle and Five Year Diary

I haven't smiled in a long time but I've learned how to look impressed,
learned to lose the dreams I had when I was at my best.
When I was a boy on the back lawn, faith, like a gun,
I'd find and be it loaded or not I'd keep it at my side.

This voice inside keeps saying: "congratulations on what you've done,
on all you are and all that you won't become."
But even when it's hard I guess I'm never where I don't belong
and I'll get there by knowning I'd get there all along.

This life to me it's like a try for thunder.
This sky that I'm under it's the best sky for me.

I've learned less from daylight than from night threatening to leave.
All along my voice goes after what my hands cannot reach.
I ran through the fog without you, through the low hard language of rain,
afraid that if I caught what I came for I'd never want it again.

This life to me it's like a try for thunder.
This sky that I'm under it says God's been good to me.

One night in the rain you set me straight.
You said I have everything I need, and for every slow day in the sun there's two storms in between.
Where I am is where you'll find me at the edge of many things,
hands outstretched, doing circles in the rain, grinning like a thief.

This life to me it's like a try for thunder
this sky that I'm under it says God's been good to me.