Dreaming of magnolias

Pittsburgh's magnolias are nowhere near close to bloom... but I am already starting to fantasize... maybe three weeks from now? Here is one magnolia whose buds I captured for posterity a year ago... it's on the way to work... I nearly drove off the road when I saw it. Please ignore the yewball right beside it. I would like to hurl a Molotov cocktail at these horrible foundation plantings... they're magnets for bugs and mice and peeing dogs... and ugly to boot. But oh, those magnolias!!!!

dreams of summer gardens

I have finally finished Shirley Hazzard's "Graham on Capri" and by the end, of course. was completely beguiled ... less by Graham Greene (what a grouch) than by Capri and Hazzard herself... she writes very sweetly about Harold Acton which makes me remember when my friend Wistar and I, eager teenagers, incongrously served the great Florentine aesthete spinach hors d'oeuvres on the back deck of her parent's house in Princeton. (Here father, Alan Williams, was Acton's editor for his book "Memoirs of an Aesthete" which, sadly seems out of print but you can buy it here for about a gajillion dollars.)

Here is a gorgeous passage about the garden of an abandoned cliffside villa on Capri Hazzard and her husband used to wander through which made me want to go there immediately... I did visit the island in September of 1975 during my senior year in college and I've never forgotten its extravagant beauty. I must go back before I die...

For the moment, though, this passage makes me long for green shade and warmth and damp earth smells...

"Inexpressibly romantic in its solitude and decline, it was cared for by a custodial Caprese family who for years intrepidly occupied the kitchen quarters at the landward rear of the building, while the haunted drawing rooms, shedding stucco and gold leaf, teetered ever closer to the limestone brink. The damp garden, tended by the housekeeper, was ravishing: suitably overgrown, encroached on by a cloud of ferns, creepers, acanthus, agapanthus, amaryllis; shadowed by umbrella pine, and by cypress and ilex; lit from within by massed colors of fuschia, hortensia, azalea and all manner of trailing mauves, blues, purples -- wisteria and iris in spring, solanum and "stella Italia" in high summer; in autumn, plumbago and belladonna lilies. Geraniums were the size of shrubs, and of every red and coral gradation. The different jasmines flowered there, on walls and trellises, in relays throughout the year.

"In September and October, great crowds of wild cyclamen, small fragrant flower of the Italian woods, sprang from crevices... a garden of mossy textures and dark dense greens, with impasto of luminous flowers: a place of birdsong and long silence; of green lizards and shadowy cats, and decadent Swinburnean beauty."

aaauurrghhhh!!!!
--

TODAY AT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

It's just occurred to me that I've been at three "centers of the universe" in the past three to four months. I.e., in the middle of huge crowds who were ecstatic about something.

First, it was Grant Park in Chicago on Election Night.








Then, it was the National Mall during President Obama's Inaugural.









And then it was today, sitting at my desk, while outside an estimated 400,000 people gathered to celebrate the Steelers' victory. I took this photo with my BlackBerry from my window. It's not great, but you get the idea:

Actually, we were kind of stuck in the office for the most of the day. It was like being lodged deep in the internal gears of some huge vast machine that was grinding away... and you could HEAR the grinding... BOM BOM boom BOM BOM boom WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU...

Et cetera

My favorite scene, which we have on our web site: Troy Polomalu doing the Mosh Pit thing:




You can see the video of Troy at our Post-Gazette web site here.

How I found out we'd won the Super Bowl

I think this is a picture of Bruce Springsteen from the Super Bowl. That massive, leonine head...

Someone should sculpt him.

I should note that I once slept on a sidewalk ALL NIGHT LONG so I could get tickets to one of his concerts. Needless to say, on this particular night, I found him wonderful and riveting in a sad way. It was as though a long lost boyfriend had emerged from the past and was as virile and gorgeous as ever while I was old... so OLD...

Okay, Mackenzie, you're 54. Get over yourself.

The New York Times and other critics didn't agree that Bruce was so transcendent. You can read about that here.

Anyway, towards the end of the second half, when Kurt Warner caught that touchdown I thought, well, this can't be good. Sure, they have two minutes left, but what are the chances...?

This kind of football is actually almost painful to sit through. Especially when your newspaper, the place where you work...the place you plan to cling to until they pry it loose from your cold, dead hands... is probably going to reap all kinds of extra ad revenue if the Steelers WIN. So, if they LOSE, it's not just bad for Steelers Nation, it's bad for the Pittsburgh-Post-Gazette (One of America's Great Newspapers).

So, I bid youngest daughter Annie-belle farewell and wandered into my room to lie down in darkness. I lay there, thinking, it's okay, Mackenzie, be still your beating heart, it's only A FOOTBALL GAME.

Then, from the house across the street on our small city block, I heard a strange sound. It was Kent Tarpley, a RABID Steelers fan. He sits in his front living room during games watching it on his big screen TV. Basically, you can follow the play-by-play from his howling, his hollering and his "yowzas."
(He's also the guy who saved our house from burning down a few years ago. You can read about that here.)

Out of this silent night, I suddenly heard this kind of "HMHhPHFFFF!!!! harfmfff!!! YEOWWWWWff!!!

And I thought, hmmm, something must have happened? I got up and wandered out into the family room. "What happened?" I asked Annie-belle.

"Oh," she said in her tiny little 14-year-old voice. "The Steelers got a touchdown, they're winning and there are 23 seconds left."

HMHhPHFFFF!!!!

harfmfff!!!

YEOWWWWWff!!!

Suddenly I heard the sound of firecrackers going off out on the street below.








I opened our window. Neighbors were coming out onto their porches, yelling for joy.

"Mom, don't do it. Don't be embarrassing!" Annie implored, as I leaned out and screamed in a strangled voice, "GO STEELERS!!!"

Inaugural... Super Bowl... Inaugural... Super Bowl...

IN PITTSBURGH WATCHING THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS IN THE SUPER BOWL
I'm trying to finish my posts about the Inaugural, but the Super Bowl is on, and our Steelers are in it. Hard to concentrate. Somehow, the Inaugural is receding into the mists of time... already it seems so five minutes ago... Groundhog day is upon us... then Valentine's Day... then St. Patrick's...
Oh, never mind.

My daughters are sacked out on the sofa in our second floor family room, stubbornly refusing to explain to me what is going on. It's 10-7, but, I wonder aloud, vaguely, is the momentum with the Cardinals? ... How would I know?
Leslie and Annie will also not cooperate with my attempts at picture taking.









The Cardinals just received a 5 yard penalty but I'm still not sure what it all means. My husband is at the Post-Gazette, having volunteered to work that evening... do you think it was to get away from my questions? I'm not sure why. Indeed, there is so very, very much I am not sure of in this world... But one thing I DO know is that Maira Kalman's piece in the NY Times about the Inaugural was far more artistic than anything I would ever post. You can look at it here.
Anyway, let's make a long story short: On Monday, Jan. 19th, I went down to 14th and U to meet Bob Witeck, a K Street lobbyist for GLBT causes... he's extremely nice and very plugged in. He told me he was going to the Huffington Post Ball that night. We had lunch at a Thai restaurant, then walked down the street to Ben's Chili Bowl, which Obama had visited a few days earlier. Here's a picture of him emerging from the eatery, having just ordered and consumed a chili "half-smoke."
By the time Bob and I got there, it was bedlam. Long lines of people outside, snaking back into the alley, patiently waiting for a chance to visit what had become something of a shrine. Here are not-great photo from my BlackBerry of the lines heading back into the alley behind Ben's Chili Bowl:








And here are some folks in the street in front of Ben's. The police had parked in front and were politely asking people to get on the sidewalk.









Oh. Back to the Super Bowl. James Harrison just ran down the field and nearly broke his neck making a touchdown for the Steelers. The longest play in Super Bowl history. At least I think he made a touchdown. They're reviewing it.









John Madden just said James Harrison ran like James Brown. Bob Costas says it's one of the biggest turnarounds in Super Bowl history. They're already calling it the Immaculate Interception.







Okay. Back to the Inaugural. It's a good thing that I was down at 14th and U that day... I hadn't planned on doing much reporting, trying to save my energies for the next day down on the National Mall. But at 5 pm, while I was preparing to move from my dad's apartment to Georgetown to camp out overnight at a Washington Post editor's apartment -- within walking distance of the Mall -- I got a call from the PG: Seems that the editor had decided we needed an Inaugural "set up" piece for the next day's paper.

He decided that at 5 pm, and they needed me to write it.

I was furious. Ready to quit. They'd had ALL DAY to figure this out.

After having a few nervous breakdowns, and cussing in front of my father, who was driving me to Georgetown ("I don't mind, I understand," he said. What a great guy.) I let myself in to my friend's apartment, hooked up my laptop and started writing. I had only a few hours to do it, and had to interrupt my work with a trip back to my father's apartment to pick up a credential I'd left behind. My sister Camilla came to pick me up. There she is, on the left, in this photo taken about ten years ago, since I don't have anything more recent... our stepsister Carolyn is on the right.









Camilla was a calming influence... Broadway show tunes were blaring on her XM satellite car radio, and when Edie Adams came on, as Eileen, to sing "I'm a Little Bit in Love," from the musical "Wonderful Town" -- the VERY SONG I HAD SUNG when I played Eileen in the Princeton Day School musical -- I knew it was a good omen. Especially with my sister Camilla (THE musical comedy queen in Princeton's Triangle Club, ca. 1977-78) right there!







Anyway, I wrote the Inaugural setup story. It's perfectly fine, but it could have been better. I died a thousand deaths while writing it, though. You can read it here.

TUESDAY, Jan. 20.
I got up early and headed towards DuPont Circle, my old stomping grounds. I used to live on O Street, between 21st and 22nd. Memories came at me from every corner... the Rathskeller... Second Story Books... the CVS (in my day known as People's Drug Store).
I got on the DuPont Circle Metro. The trains were crowded but not unmanageable. When I emerged from Metro Center onto the streets of downtown Washington (near 11th and G?) I was greeted with an extraordinary sight: wide boulevards thronged with people, not cars, moving inexorably towards the mall, only to be rerouted around whole city blocks, past vendors hawking organic food and cappucino... a carnival atmosphere... two million people, most of whom seemed to be in some kind of state of euphoria. At some point, when I can figure it out, I will post videos that I shot with the Flip camera the newspaper gave me that document that extraordinary scene. But I haven't figured quite how to do that yet.
I think it's time to stop now and watch the end of the Super Bowl. To be continued...

Obama's Inaugural

I didn't take this picture from my cell phone. Allison Price, former Western Pa press spokeswoman for Barack Obama's campaign, did. Allison, who I am still in touch with, posted this photo on her facebook page and I pilfered it. Thanks, Allison!

I was too busy back at the Lincoln Memorial shooting video... which I never was able to send due to technical difficulties... to take still pictures of what was going on around me. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I went down to Washington on Friday, Jan. 16, after finishing two preview stories and flying out the door into single digit temperatures... It was COLD..... the snow blowing across the fields as I drove into the Laurel Highlands. But I had Gabriel Faure's Requiem playing on my Mp3... and when I heard the exquisite, ethereal final movement -- "In Paradisum" -- all my anxieties about the challenges of the upcoming week melted away. I think music has that affect on me... whenever I get nervous about an assignment, I just put on some Ravel or Chopin and I'm fine.

You can listen to Kings College Choir of Cambridge's version of "In Paradisum" here.

D.C., thankfully, was warmer than Pittsburgh... I arrived at Rebecca Trafton Frischkorn's fabulous Washington apartment that evening, and after some social time with the dear girl and her great and good friend Dodge and a few others, collapsed into bed.

Here's a photograph from my BlackBerry of lovely Becky/Rebecca the next morning, sipping cappucino made FROM HER OWN MACHINE:














And here's a photograph(below) of what she USED to look like, back in Wyonegonic days. She's the little girl on the far left, deeply immersed in sewing something on her teddy bear -- or at least PRETENDING to, for the photographer.... I actually remember when they made us pose for those pictures. I think I'm at the table but obscured by the girl in the white headband (sigh).















Oh, wait... I was supposed to be writing about the 2008 presidential Inaugural, not Wyonegonic camp, circa 1963. But it's late and I will write more about my incredible adventures tomorrow....

SUNDAY JAN. 25th...

Okay, where was I? Oh, yes. Here's a picture of your correspondent, blogging and bleary eyed, the next morning (Saturday, Jan. 17) in Rebecca's apartment (actually POSTING TO THE BLOG is a more correct way to put it, I've been told... in this case to the "Early Returns" blog). You can read some of the blog postings here and here and here and here and here and here and here
and here.

That Saturday was spent gallivanting around visiting old friends while posting to "Early Returns" which is mostly a product of my colleague Tim McNulty (who also writes great pieces like this on about Steelers Nation ) but since it was the weekend, I was on duty. Maybe it was crazy, or rude, or both, but I was tethered to my laptop, posting things that I found on the Internet that I thought might be relevant to our readers. We don't always do original reporting on blogs; we serve as aggregators -- hunting down interesting fragments of information and color that might otherwise get lost in the blogosphere...

Then it was on to Dad-and-Ele's apartment, just a a short ride away. D&E were a Godsend on this trip... they not only gave me a free place to sleep, and free food, but free parking in their apartment building with AN AUTOMATIC GARAGE DOOR OPENER!!!!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank D&E -- there they are in a photo from Thanksgiving a few years ago, with my husband, Gary Rotstein. And props to you too, Gary, for holding down the fort while I was gone.

At any rate, after depositing bags in D&E's apartment, it was time to head to the Walter Washington Convention Center to pick up media credentials: a mission undertaken with some dread, given the talk of traffic gridlock.

It was not to be: there was a parking spot right in front of the Convention Center, and after being ushered through four security checkpoints, I found myself in media credential land. As there were NO OTHER REPORTERS there... the Inaugural volunteers actually seemed glad to see me. They gave me a packet of credentials, some hand-warmers, which would prove INVALUABLE, and I was outta there.

Then it was time to visit Jayne Clark, the lovely, effervescent, tart-tongued travel writer for USAToday:








She was battling a cold but received me graciously in her charming little Georgetown house and allowed me to post to my blog in her living room while she tended to some family business. Then we headed over to her colleague, USAToday columnist Craig Wilson's equally charming Georgetown house. Here's a picture of Craig from USAToday:





There, we had drinks with him, his supernice partner Jack (who works in health care statistics and probably contributes far more to society than I ever will) and Olivia Barker, another extremely nice USAToday reporter. Is all this friendliness a USAToday thing? Sure, we talked about how the troubled newspaper industry, but generally, the mood was cheery and even a bit riotous... as it will be when reporters get together to gossip.

The next day, Sunday, it was up bright and early to meet PG columnist Tony Norman in front of the Georgetown Starbucks to head over to Capitol Hill to pick up yet more media credentials. Tony has been to DC before but I drove him around a bunch of neighborhoods he'd never seen, to help him get the lay of the land. Again, despite all the dire predictions, Capitol Hill on Sunday morning was empty too. I ventured into the Russell Senate Office Building, where I'd spent so much time as a young aspiring field producer for public television, and again, I was the only print reporter in line for credentials.

















Of course, all of this quiescence wouldn't last... I gather it was bedlam up there on Tuesday... but I wasn't to see it, since I was down at the other end of the National Mall, thank goodness. More on that later.

After dropping Tony off near DuPont Circle, I headed over to the Washington Hilton to cover the wild n' crazy Emily's List lunch for Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, et al.



There, I ran into my old colleague, former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette summer intern Indira Lakshmanan, now, after a distinguished career as a foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe, the diplomatic correspondent for Bloomberg. I've run into her a few times on the campaign trail... she is delightful. We sat in the back of the room and laughed hysterically when U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore banged her high heeled shoe on the podium to emphasize a point.

I filed a breaking news story about the lunch for the Web, and, later, a more polished print version. But, I have to confess, a far better piece on this event was penned by Salon's Rebecca Traister. She said everything I wish I could have said -- but I had only 12 inches allotted to my story, after all...

Sigh.

That evening it was out to dinner with D&E and Aunt Anne, at DeCarlo's, a terrific restaurant in Spring Valley. We had a great time. I felt so blessed to be spending time with them, especially since all three are the liveliest, most acerbic, most fun dinner partners you could ask for -- and they don't mind if you steal bites of their dessert!!!!

More later.

Going to the Inaugural

I am headed to Washington, D.C. this afternoon for five days... to cover Barack Obama's Inaugural. Let's hope I don't encounter this scene along the way. But I probably will, so I might as well just relax and enjoy the experience. This whole year has been so extraordinary.

Tonight, I will be staying with my dear childhood friend Rebecca Frischkorn. We've known each other since we were nine years old, at Wyonegonic Camp in Maine, when she was Becky Trafton (tall, strong, a true leader) and I was Kenzie Carpenter (short, pesky, and a chatterbox).

We will probably spend the evening singing camp songs together from memory. I will post a photo of us from those days when I get a chance.

Today, Rebecca is an accomplished garden designer, writer and lecturer and host of the acclaimed PBS series, GardenStory.

Isn't she beautiful in this picture?