The May -ing List

22 Tuesday May 2012

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After a month’s break in the -ing list, here’s what’s got my attention this May.

Eating: Goat cheese. I hate cheese unless it’s on something like pizza or melted on a cheeseburger. Cold or room temperature cheese and I just aren’t friends.  I suppose it’s a texture thing.  However, when my sister was visiting me she got me turned on to goat cheese.  I put it in scrambled eggs and put it on as a garnish on crostinis and it’s love with every bite.

Drinking: Weissbier.  Now that warm weather has arrived I am indulging in my summertime favorite, Weissbier.  And not to brag, but I can perfectly pour a Weissbier with a gorgeous, frothy head on it.

Anticipating: This weekend’s Stadtfest.  Each year during Pfingsten (Pentecost) weekend, Magdeburg holds a four-day city festival.  A large swath of the main street in the center of the city is closed and then filled with sales booth, food stands, stages for bands, carnival rides and beer tents.  And it’s all just up the block from my flat so I can dash out, walk around, indulge and get back home to the cleanliness of my own bathroom before going out into it again.  I’m just hoping for good weather so Burkhard can come out with me.

Mourning: Robin Gibb.  I’m not a Saturday Night Fever era fan of the BeeGees but am a big and unashamed fan of their earlier and later music.  Some of my earliest memories of childhood was listening to their tight harmonies on the car radio.  I Started a Joke and I‘ve Gotta Get a Message to You can still break my heart.

Watching: Mad Men.  This latest season is now taking place during a time where I have personal memories so while I can’t say I relate to this season more, I do have memories of people wearing clothes and driving cars and living in homes that look like what I’m seeing this season.  And the episode where Sally scares the shit out of herself by reading articles about the Richard Speck murders in Chicago?  I did the exact same thing except my mass murder fright was caused by Charles Manson.

Anticipating II: The Eurovision Song Contest.  Three or so hours of Eurotrash pop music at its best.  Or worst, as the case may be.  I hate it but I’m lured into its trashy, tacky web and I end up watching it every year, if only to hone my sarcastic commentary skills.  This will make the fifteenth Eurovision I’ve watched.  I’m sure that sounds as pathetic to you as it does to me. Here’s my favorite performance from 2007:

Tell me that’s not tacky and yet completely fabulous!

Reading: Late yesterday evening I finished A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell.  The end just broke my heart and books seldom ever leave me in tears.

Listening: Blunderbuss by Jack White.  With every listening I hear echos of great music from the early 70s.  It’s love.

Knitting:  Aaaaahahahahahahaha!  No kidding, I can’t find my current works in progress.  I stashed them somewhere when I was spring cleaning and I can’t remember in which of my seventy-jillion cabinets I stuck it all.  I think that means I should just start on a pair of socks.  I haven’t knit any socks in about a year.

Anything special have your eye these days?

When I Don’t Write, I Read

18 Friday May 2012

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I realize I’ve been a dreadful slacker with this blog lately but I’d like to think I’ve still been using my time wisely.  First I was rather engaged with getting things ready for my sister’s visit earlier this month.  There’s nothing like an impending visit from family to make me get the spring cleaning finished.  My sister’s visit was for a week and during that time I barely had time to sleep, let alone write.

Still that doesn’t account for all my free time that I could have spent writing or at least doing something worth writing about.  What I found myself doing at every available moment was reading.  I was in a full-blown, out-of-control reading jag.  The last time I was on such a reading jag was hospitalized and I found myself reading seven books in ten days.  This time around I wasn’t even necessarily reading really fantastic books but evenings seemed to find me wanting to curl up on the sofa and read until I could no longer hold open my eyes.

When 2012 started I made my annual Goodreads.com reading challenge said I would read forty books.  So far I’m doing quite well with the challenge and with a good nine or ten weeks before the half year is over, I’ve read twenty-two books.  Goodreads tells me that’s 17% ahead of schedule, which is nice since there’s at least one book I’d like to re-read before the year is over and I don’t count books I’ve previously read in my challenge numbers. I’ve also been keeping a list on this blog of the books I’ve read along with a short blurb (or in some cases a full review) about how I liked the book.  However, with all the reading I was doing I not only fell behind in keeping up this blog but that list as well.

Today I took the opportunity to get caught up with the list and as of the moment it’s current with all the books I’ve finished so far this year.  You’ll find the link to click at the top left of this page under 2012 Reading Challenge.  Go ahead and give it a look.  Maybe you’ll find something there that will spark your own reading jag.

Have you read anything this year that you really loved?  I’m always interested in knowing what others are reading and what they liked so if you’ve got a recommendation for me, leave a comment.  And if you’re a member of Goodreads.com and want to add me as a friend, you can find me here.

Book Review – The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England

16 Wednesday May 2012

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I believe what caught my eye first when I saw this book are the words “a Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century”.  I think anyone who really loves history often daydreams about going back in time and observing the past firsthand.  But who among us would really be prepared to make such a trip?  When we arrive at our destination in the past, just how well would we do in fitting in, finding food, lodging, or money?  How would we figure out how to get from one place to the other? If we really could make a trip back to another era, having a book like this to rely on would be exactly what we’d need.

The Time Traveller’s Guide’s purpose is not just to teach us about the past but to enable us to see the past through the eyes of those who lived there.  There are plenty of history books in the world that can tell us about life in another time but the Time Traveller’s Guide gives us the information from another perspective.  It’s what makes the book so enjoyable to read for those who enjoy history and those who have more of a passing interest.  The author, Ian Mortimer, puts us in the shoes of a traveler to the 14th century.  As we, the traveler, approach the city we’re not just told what we’d see but also what we’d hear and, rather vividly at times, what we’d smell.

Virtually every aspect of 14th century life in England is covered.  Clothes, from the fashions of royalty and aristocracy to what’s worn by common villagers are described in detail.  Each class of people eat foods that are different from each other and are really quite different than what we consume today.  What’s considered humorous to those of that century would be considered not terribly funny and even cruel by today’s standards.  The law and court system doesn’t much resemble our modern day ideas of justice.  Travel during those times is difficult and dangerous.  Lodgings come in a rather wide variety.  Music is prevalent in 14th century life and is enjoyed by all classes.  Heaven help you should you become injured or ill during your trip to medieval England because chances are a doctor won’t be able to do much that won’t make you worse off.  And through it all the Roman Catholic church is engrained in England during the 14th century and its rules and laws control most aspects of life.

As we read Mortimer’s guide to life in medieval England we’re tempted to believe life in the 14th century is crude, cruel, violent, filthy, uncomfortable, and people, especially the lower classes, are unhappy, ignorant, untraveled and miserable.  Mortimer dispels some myths about life during this era and we find out that people did travel more than we may imagine, and they had more access and interest in literature and music than we may think.

The strong suit of the Time Traveller’s Guide is how Mortimer allows us to examine life in medieval England from a different perspective.  By making this a guide to living during that era, we’re invited to view things, not from the perspective of a person in the 21st century but to only see things as they were in the 14th century.  Viewed from a current day perspective we tend to only see what is negative about life during that era.  Homes are considered uncomfortable and dirty, food is unappetizing and people are thought of as ignorant when we compare them to what we know from the current day.  When viewed from the perspective of the 14th century – when we see people living with what they had and with what they understood of their world, we find that they’re not so very different from us.  They still had aspirations and goals, even if they different greatly from ours.  They still tried to live as comfortably as they were able to manage even if what was available to them was of a lower standard than what we have today.  They still enjoyed jokes and music and stories like we do today, even if our tastes in such things differ.  Fathers still tried to provide for their families even if it meant difficult work that was mostly for the benefit for their landlords. Mothers still tried to keep a tidy home even if they didn’t have the benefit of cleansers and disinfectants.

Reading The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England will help you appreciate our modern world, full of technology and advanced medicine and wholesome food and comfortable homes but more importantly it will help you understand that through the centuries, the basic values of family and community remain.

Sweet Anticipation

07 Monday May 2012

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She dreams of sitting outside a restaurant and having a Weissbier.

Anticipation.  It can be unnerving at times and even downright frustrating but there are times when it’s simply wonderful.  That’s how it felt last week as I sat in the Hannover airport and waited for my sister’s plane to land.  To heighten the experience the plane was about 25 minutes late arriving.  I didn’t mind the wait though.  I’d already waited nearly five years since the last time I had seen her so a half hour, more or less, wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

Every since January when my sister told me she was coming for a visit at the suggestion of my brother-in-law who took pity on us for having been apart so long, I’ve been anticipating her arrival.  Burkhard and I had talked about it on a near daily basis.  My sister and I had sent each other little messages about it (“Only eight weeks until I see you!”).  I’d spent hours and hours getting my flat whipped into shape for her visit.  I’d even gotten my sixteen year-old car checked over to be doubly sure that it would make the trip Hannover since normally my car only makes its usual weekly trip to the grocery store.

I waited patiently in a seat outside the arrivals gate and when I saw my sister come through the sliding glass doors I was on my feet and rushing to greet her.  As ever I was struck by how she never seems to look older to me, no matter how many birthdays we have.  It was just so good to see her and worth every minute of preparation and the two hour drive to the airport.  She would only be here for less than a week but I didn’t care.  Any time together was golden to me.

Each day we’d do whatever captured our interest.  We shopped some.  Went out to dinner.  Visited with friends.  Cooked lovely meals together.  One day we went to Berlin, visited the old art gallery, shopped on the Ku’damm, ate in a Greek restaurant, and got soaking wet walking home in the rain from the train station.  We played games, watched TV, drank wine and beer, and talked.  And talked.  And talked.  And laughed.  We laughed a ridiculous amount.  We laughed about stuff that happened when we were kids and and laughed about stuff we’d done since we’d last seen each other and sometimes we’d laugh so hard I had to run in desperation to the bathroom before I had an accident.

It always seems that the sweeter the anticipation before and event, the faster the event goes by and it was no different with my sister’s visit.  All too soon it was over and very early this morning we wrangled her bags into my little car and made the long drive back to the airport in Hannover.  Whenever we have to say goodbye it’s always sad and I always cry even though I try very hard not to and today was no different.  As much as I hate to do it I have to force myself not to look back at her as I leave.  I simply have to go home feeling a little emptier but also armed with the new memories we made during her visit.

She ought to be landing in Memphis in about an hour from now.  I know she’ll be exhausted after what must seem like an endless day and after her own long drive home from the airport I know she’ll be very happy to see her own family again.  We’ll go back to missing each other terribly and relying on phone calls to make the time apart easier.  And I hope it won’t be years and years before we see each other again.

 

No, I Really Do Care

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

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I follow writer Sherman Alexie on Twitter.  Now let me first state that I like Sherman Alexie very well.  I like his books.  I’ve bought his books.  I would recommend that you read his books.  That said, I read a tweet of his this afternoon that sort of stuck in my craw.

Sad to realize that a vast majority of folks, even readers, don’t give a shit about the fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores.

I read that and my first thought was “Well aren’t you in tune with a vast majority of folks to know a little factoid like that!”.  How does he know what a vast majority of folks give a shit about and exactly how is he defining giving a shit?

My second thought was a little more snarky.  I considered replying to him “Well I’d be more broken up about the fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores but I’m busy losing sleep over the fate of farriers,” but no one likes a smart-ass.  Still, am I to fret over the fate of every business that gets swallowed up because their business model becomes outdated?

In reality I do give a shit about the fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores, whether they’re part of a big chain or a small, privately owned store.  But does that mean I need to be made to feel guilty for shopping for my books online, especially by an author who sells his books online?  Does that mean I should pay more for less service because I’m concerned about their ability to keep their business afloat?

I buy a great deal of books annually and the vast majority of them are bought online.  I buy them from online booksellers, not because I don’t give a shit about the fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores but because to me, buying books is like buying anything else.  There are certain things I look for when I’m purchasing any item.

1.  Price.  I consider price first when buying pretty much anything.  I’m not talking about going out of my way to save a few cents but when it comes to saving a few euros, I’m going to take my business to the place that enables me to get more for my money.

2.  Convenience.  I have a quadriplegic husband at home and I am his sole caregiver.  I don’t have the luxury of being able to go shopping whenever I want.  If it’s a choice between shopping for a book in a physical shop or ordering it online and having it delivered to my door and not having to leave my husband, I’m going to choose the latter.  I also now have an e-reader and now I prefer to use it to read novels.  Being able to get a new book the moment I want it, whether it be after store hours, a holiday, inclement weather outside or simply before I forget the title of the book, means a lot to me.

3.  Service.  I cannot tell you the last time I was in a bookstore and got any sort of meaningful help or advice or recommendations.  I believe the last time it happened Ronald Reagan was president.  It’s been my experience that bookstores are not staffed by people who read a great deal of books or have any knowledge about the variety of books they sell.  About half the books I read are not on bestseller lists and it’s my experience that if I need advice about a book that’s not on the New York Times bestseller list, the personnel in a bookstore are not going to be able to help me.  Even if it is on the NYT bestseller list the most they’ll probably be able to tell me is on which aisle those books are stocked.  Online book retailers, on the other hand, have customer recommendations that I can read.  I can get reviews from people who have read the book, regardless of how obscure the book may be, and I can better judge whether it’s a book I’ll enjoy or even if it’s about the topic I believe it to be.

Maybe the problem isn’t just our black consumer hearts and not caring for the people who own and staff brick-and-mortar bookstores.  Maybe the problem is that brick-and-mortar bookstores aren’t giving the book-reading consumer what he or she needs.  I like to spend my money where I feel I am getting the most for what I spend, in goods and in service.  As long as bookstores are stocked with mediocre selections, staffed by personnel that have no idea about what they’re selling and charge me more for that privilege, then I am not going to prefer to shop at them.  To gain my business, brick-and-mortar bookstores are going to have to start giving me what I can’t get through the online book purchasing experience.

When I moved to Germany 14 1/2 years ago it was very difficult for me to buy books in English, which are the only books I read at the time.  I only bought books in English when I was in an international airport, in an English speaking European country or when I returned to the US for a visit.  When I was back home I would spend at least one whole afternoon selecting and buying as many books as I thought I could cram into my suitcase and looked forward to the experience.  Once books in English became available to me online, I no longer had to spend hours in a bookstore back home in order to stock up on reading material.  And while I’ve always enjoyed browsing in bookstores, I have to say that the last time I was home, I skipped my ritual of buying books and I didn’t miss it.  What was most important to me was having the books, not the shopping trip.  Because that’s the bottom line for me – having the books.  I want to have as many books as I can get for my money and if that means I will end up purchasing from online booksellers, then I will.

I do give a shit about the fate of brick-and-mortar booksellers because I care about their employees and I care about those who prefer to shop there.  But it’s a two-way street and I believe brick-and-mortar bookstores stopped giving a shit about me a long time ago.

It’s Got a Good Beat

19 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Modern Culture, Music

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One way of knowing that you’re well into middle age is that the pop icons you grew up with – musicians, actors, TV hosts, and such – begin passing away.

A few months ago Don Cornelius, host of Soul Train, died.  Yesterday the news was announced that Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand, had passed from a heart attack.  Within the space of less than three months two icons of my youth are gone. I won’t say it makes me feel old but it does remind me that none of us are immortal and mortality gets a bit closer each day.  The passing of these men also reminds me of how important they were in shaping my knowledge of music and of simply being a young person in the US over thirty years ago.

American Bandstand was the first music TV show I can remember.  I remember seeing pop and rock bands and singers on variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Hollywood Palace but American Bandstand was a show that came on weekly and it’s where I learned what many of my favorite performers looked like.  It’s also the show I watched to learn how to dance, which may explain why when I dance it seems as if I’m stuck in 1968.  I learned about teenage fashion.  Mini skirts, maxi dresses, Nehru collars, double zip jeans, goucho pants, Qiana blouses, cowl neck sweaters, wedgie shoes – I watched teenage fashion evolve even before I was a teenager. And watching its commercials is where I learned what shampoo to use.  What toothpaste would whiten my teeth and freshen my breath.  I learned that Noxema was what a teenage girl should wash her face with.  Clearasil and Stridex would fix your acne problem.  And one should always have Dentyne and Certs on one’s person just in case that all important teenage kiss was coming up.  American Bandstand is where I first saw African-American singers perform and black kids danced alongside white kids.  12:30pm generally found me in front of the TV ready to absorb it all and hosting it all in a way that seemed approachable without seeming condescending was Dick Clark.  He was an adult that seemed to make teenagers feel as though their viewpoint mattered.

Soul Train started in my late childhood years.  Don Cornelius, with his’ low, soulful voice, wasn’t anything like the white hosts I saw on TV.  The musical acts were mostly African-American and so were the dancers and they brought a whole different vibe to the teenage music dance show.  I was able to see musical acts – soul singers, funk bands, R & B groups – that weren’t necessarily seen on mainstream TV shows.  I even loved that the show’s sponsors were companies whose products were aimed at the African-American community.  When I was a kid it never occurred to me that African-American people would have need of products that white folks wouldn’t.  I’d heard singers like The Supremes, The Temptations and Stevie Wonder when I was young, but there were a lot of other groups I may never have heard had I not first seen them on Soul Train.  I got a much fuller idea of what popular music could be from Soul Train.

The Midnight Special, shown on late Friday nights, was what you watched to see performances by musicians that you wouldn’t necessarily see on dance based shows like AB or Soul Train.  No Rate-a-Record or Soul Train Gang here – this was the show where bands performed live before a concert audience.  Performers like King Crimson, Steely Dan, Peter Frampton, T Rex, Heart, New York Dolls, Janis Ian, Electric Light Orchestra, Aerosmith, Van Morrison – seeing them perform live was so eye opening. To see music performed live in a concert type setting was so different than seeing it lip synced on other shows. I can’t imagine how great it must have been for people who couldn’t go see music performed live.

And if those three weekly music shows didn’t fill me up with enough music, there was American Top 40 on the radio on Sundays.  Casey Kasem’s familiar voice counting down the hits of the week and my friends and I would predict which hit would hold the top spot.  We’d argue over which songs were worthy and which weren’t and after a while we’d wonder when You Light Up My Life would ever get knocked off of the number one position.  The answer?  Not for ten endless weeks.

During my youth, music seemed to be harder to access.  It’s so much easier now.  You can sit at your computer and download all you can bear.  You can flip over to YouTube and watch video after video of your favorite bands.  There’s no waiting for your favorite song to come on the radio.  There’s no having to go to a record store to pick up that song on a 45.  There’s no waiting for the weekend to maybe catch a four minute segment of a band you love on American Bandstand.  I admit that I love hearing a new song and being able to add it to my collection in a matter of seconds without having to stir my ass from the sofa but there’s something to be said about that anticipation of waiting for the music I loved that somehow made me appreciate it a little more back then.

 

Cringe

08 Sunday Apr 2012

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It’s always good to read, right?  I mean we’re taught from an early age that reading can only make us better people.  That we learn and become better informed from reading.  That we’re entertained by reading.  That we’re transported by reading into worlds we may never knew existed.  We’re even sometimes transformed into different and perhaps even better versions of ourselves by reading.  So what could be so bad about it?

Reading in itself isn’t what’s bad. It’s the stuff we choose to read and how we sometimes take it more seriously than it deserves.  And as this article finds, our choices in books from our youth can be rather embarrassing to consider when we look back on them.

I like to play along like the next girl so here’s my confession:

1.  Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask by David R. Reuben, MD.  As a young teenager this was a book I’d read on the sly, afraid I’d be caught by my mother and she’d take it as a sign that I’d want to talk about sex.  I’m not sure where the good doctor gained his knowledge of sex but thankfully someone set me straight on the idea he proposes that a 6 1/2 ounce bottle of Coke can be used as a post-coitus douche to prevent pregnancy before I ever had the need to try it.  I will, however, give the book credit for cluing me in as to what a circle jerk is, for as much as I’ve needed to have that information.

2.  The Happy Hooker and Call Me Madam by Xaviera Hollander.  I’ll give these two books credit for making me more comfortable with the topic of human sexuality and its variety, but I can’t think about the German Shepherd scene without wanting to scratch out my mind’s eye.

3.  Go Ask Alice by Anonymous.  Seventh grade found me and my friends becoming obsessed with this book.  Passed around a dog-eared copy and swore we’d NEVER so much as be in the same room with pot, let alone any other sort of drugs.  Ask me how that turned out.

4.  The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.  Another dog-eared, pass around book that was a must-read of my friends.  BECAUSE IT’S ALL TRUE!!

5.  Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice.  This was a favorite book of a good friend in high school and she recommended it to me.  I had it with me during my year at Extremely Uptight Christian University in Possum Ass, Arkansas and my extremely uptight Christian roommate was horrified, told me that it was evil, and that reading it was putting my soul in jeopardy.  Naturally that made me want to read it all the more.  So I did.  Constantly.  To near obsession.  I read it again many years later and hated it.  I can’t decide whether that’s because I read it too often or if it’s because it’s actual shit.

So what’s on your list of cringe worthy reading?

 

The March -ing List

26 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Books, Daily, Music

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Well if I ain’t been here, what have I been up to this month?

Neglecting: Blogging.  But don’t worry – it’s a phase.

Procrastinating: My sister will arrive for a visit in about five weeks and I have yet to feel the panic necessary to get me to do my spring housecleaning before she shows up.  Things are generally clean anyway but I wanted to do the disgusting stuff like taking a toothbrush to the bathtub grout and finding and cleaning all those little hidden places where grease collects in the kitchen before she arrives.  If I know me I’ll be spurred into action about 60 hours before I need to leave to pick her up at the airport.

Watching: The Walking Dead.  I’m rather surprised that I’m a fan of a show about survivors of a zombie invasion but I am.  I often watch each episode with the thought that I wouldn’t make it to the opening credits before becoming lunch.

Reading: At Home by Bill Bryson.  I’ve previously read four or five of his books and I like the way he can blend humor in with information.  This particular book is about the history of the home – rooms in a home, things commonly found in most homes, and so on.  After reading a Bill Bryson book you’ll find yourself feeling as though you’re better prepared for a night of bar trivia.

Eating: Not as much as I used to.  I’m on a new medication for my diabetes and it has changed my appetite.  If I eat too much or when I’m not truly hungry, I feel rather bloated and nauseated and it can last for hours and hours.  I have to become better at reading the signs of when to eat and how much.

Listening: Andrew Bird’s new album, Break It Yourself.  I love his voice.  Go buy it or download it or find some other way of listening to it.  Now. Oh wait.  Finish reading this blog entry and then go listen to it.  I mean it.  Don’t argue.  Do it.

Playing: Chess and Monopoly and backgammon and Yahtzee.  I got a new iPad last week and one of the reasons I wanted one was to be able to play games with Burkhard.  We’re about even as far as backgammon and Yahtzee skills go but Burkhard soon learned that when it comes to Monopoly, I’m ruthless.  However don’t waste your time pitying Burkhard for my making him go bankrupt in record time.  When we play chess he grinds me into a fine powder.

Wearing: My beloved denim jacket.  We’re at one of the two brief periods of time during the year when it’s the just right temperature for me to wear it without either sweating or freezing.  It’s not the most flattering thing I could wear and I can’t wear it with jeans without making the double denim fashion faux pas, but it’s comfortable and I love it.

Searching: For a new wristwatch for my MIL that has a stretchy band.  It’s what she wants for her birthday.  Why sure, Mutti!  I’ll just jump into my time machine, go back to 1967 and snap one up.  While I’m there perhaps I can pick up for you that little chain you clip on to the collar of your cardigan so you can wear it over your shoulders without it slipping off.  I have yet to locate a stretchy band watch but so far I’ve only made the most cursory of searches.  Maybe if nothing else I can buy a watch with a leather band and find a stretchy band with which to replace it.

Knitting: Do you really have to ask?

Anything special you’re digging on these days?

 

Tangled

19 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Daily, Ukulele

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I taught myself how to knit.  I can do various cast-ons.  I can knit cables.  I can knit lace.  I can knit in the round.  I’ve knit socks and scarves and blankets and shawls.  Made tassles.  Made pom-poms.  I can wind yarn from a unwieldy hank to a smoothly formed yarn cake.  You’d think that with that sort of knowledge I should be able to do things with strings without it turning into a problem.

And then I decided to restring Lira the Ukulele by myself.

I went into this thinking I was prepared.  I read in my beloved copy of Ukulele for Dummies the section on how to restring a ukulele.  And then I read it again.  And again.  And again.  Then I looked up videos on YouTube on how to do it.  Watched various ones.  Repeatedly.  Frankly, after all that preparation I began to feel pretty confident about the process.  It just didn’t seem all that difficult.

I have a set of very good quality strings that I bought a few weeks ago but I was reluctant to use them for fear of mucking them up since this was going to be my first time at tackling this job.  I decided instead to use the spare set of strings that came with Lira because should I foul things up and end up having to cut something loose I wouldn’t be out anything.

Getting the strings off was easy enough.  I simply slipped the ends loose from the tuners and then pushed the knot at the bridge loose and voila! they were off.  The next step, however, reminded me of the very worst part of knitting with cheap circular knitting needles.

If you’ve ever knit with cheap circular needles you’ll be able to picture perfectly what I’m about to write.  You know how the cable will be kinked into a coil and you can’t get that coil to relax no matter what you do.  It’s one of the reasons knitters normally break down and buy expensive circular needles that have smoother, more pliable cables because else it’s like trying to knit with a bed spring.

As it turns out, ukulele strings (at least these cheap ones) come out of the package in pretty much the same condition.  However, unlike cheap circular needles, you can’t dip ukulele strings into boiling water in hopes that’ll make ‘em relax.  You just have to plow through and hope that you don’t take out an eye when the string inevitably springs wildly out of your hand.

I got the first string tied onto the bridge without too much trouble.  I watched that particular part of the instruction on the most detailed video I’d seen and while the words made sense, it was pretty difficult to see the instructors big fingers tie off that thin string, especially since the strings he was using were transparent.  I kept on and the string seemed to be tied on snugly enough.

Now it was time to wind the string around the tuner.  That became a bigger problem because, again, the transparent string in the video made it difficult to see the direction in which he was initially winding the string around the peg.  I tried as best I could to copy his movements but I found it to be a lot harder than he seemed to find it.  Still, the string seemed to be on and at that point that was the most I could hope for.

Strings two, three, and four went about the same.  Actually strings two and three were the worst because they’re the thicker strings and harder to tie into knots.  Still, I didn’t give up and even though it pretty much looked like a monkey had performed the job, Lira the Ukulele was restrung.  Now it was time to tune her.

It’s at this point where I should probably come up with a joke about catgut strings and that ukulele sounded like a cat that wanted its guts back but the strings are nylon and I think a gutted cat would have sounded more pleasing to the ear.  I would no more get the A string in tune than I would have to go back and start with the g string and tune them all again.  Lira would literally not stay in tune for more than five minutes.  The C string twanged so badly that I ended up having to take it back off the tuner and rewind it.  Things got slightly better but still it came out of tune so quickly that I simply zipped Lira back up in her gig bag and put her away.  I was so frustrated that I was afraid I would turn her into kindling with only the merest provocation.

I didn’t know what to do.  There were some distinct possibilities as to why my ukulele sounded so terrible.

1.  I can’t restring a ukulele for shit.

2.  The strings are too cheap to possibly sound good.

3.  My ukulele is a piece of crap.

Well, my ukulele is a piece of crap but not a totally useless piece of crap.  As a beginner’s ukulele it’s fairly good.  It gets rated as an acceptable beginner’s ukulele.  I could get a better one but I’m not going to do that until I get better at playing and become more dedicated to playing the ukulele.  And the strings probably were cheap but I don’t know that they were so cheap that the old strings would sound better.  I also freely admit that I probably can’t string a ukulele for shit but I don’t believe my stringing job was so bad that it made my playing sound like animal torture.

My verdict?  All three were the culprits.  The question then is, what do I do about that?

Buying a good quality ukulele right now is out of the question.  I need to get out of the beginning beginner’s phase before that happens.  I do have high quality strings that I could put on that would likely make Lira the Ukulele sound better.  Now how do I get those strings on her?

I could do the restringing myself.  If I’m going to be a ukulele player then I need to learn to restring.  What may be a better idea though is to walk down a couple blocks to the local music shop and ask them to put the strings on Lira.  I am going to assume that if people already sell things like guitars then they can put on a set of ukulele strings.  I’ll gladly pay for the service and for the lesson to be able to perform the task myself in the proper manner.  I hesitate though because of my cheap ukulele.  I have a fear of going into a music shop and explaining my plight to them only to have them say “Well no wonder your ukulele sounds like nails on a chalkboard – it’s a piece of crap!  Wouldn’t you rather just make kindling with it?”

Over most of the weekend I let Lira alone.  I was so disappointed with how the whole experience turned out that I couldn’t bring myself to play her.  Then late Sunday afternoon I picked her up and began to tune her.  And this time she stayed in tune long enough for me to play her a little bit.  Today she was wildly out of tune again but at least now you can hear that the strings sound better than the old ones I had removed.

I had read that strings take a while to settle in and maybe that’s what the biggest problem is right now.  I’ll keep playing Lira and keep watching those how-to videos on YouTube and then maybe I’ll give restringing her another try, this time using the good strings.  And if that fails, I’ll swallow my pride, stroll down the block to the music store and face their snickers when I present Lira for a professional restringing.

Maybe I’ll be lucky and they won’t consider it as putting perfume on a pig.

False Friends

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in Expat Life, Family, Living in Germany

≈ 5 Comments

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When we’re trying to learn a new language it’s very disappointing to have false  friends let us down.  False friends are those language quirks that you think will help you understand things better but they only get you into trouble.

There’s a couple things to remember when learning how to speak another language.  First, one-to-one word substitution doesn’t generally work.  It’s very tempting to, for example, think of a sentence in English and merely plug German words in the same places.  But considering that when it comes to grammar all things are not equal, doing that will do two things for you: you’ll sound like Yoda when you talk and likely the meaning of what you’re trying to say won’t be quite the same.  I will admit that after nearly fifteen years of speaking German, I still make this mistake, especially when it’s a more complex sentence.  I get confused and instead of taking the time to perhaps figure out the right way, I take the wimpy way out and plug German words into an English sentence and hope for the best.  It’s why after so many years I sometimes sound like I just got off the plane for the first time.

The other mistake that’s easy to make is to assume that all words that are said and/or spelled the same way in two different languages have the same meaning in both.  Let’s first consider the German word bitte.  Bitte means “please”.  Easy enough, right?  But it also means “you’re welcome”.  Bitte is such an all-around handy word that when coupled with the word schön it can even mean “Here you go!” as well as “you’re most welcome”.  Now if you ever have the chance to run across German speakers who speak little or no English and they want to try out a little English on you, see if they don’t say the word “please” when they should use the words “you’re welcome”.  I’ve encountered that fairly often in Germany.  My first experience with it came with my MIL.  She knows a tiny bit of English and she made the assumption that the English word “please” is multi-purpose like bitte is.  To her thinking, if bitte means “please” and “you’re welcome” and even “here you go!” in German it must be the same in English.  She would bring me, say, a glass of water and say “please” when giving it to me.  It took me a good week to figure out why she would say “please” at what seemed like the oddest times.

When my sister and her family came to visit the first time they were finally able to meet friends that I’d been talking about for years.  They especially took to our friends, Christa and Rainer.  Even though they couldn’t speak to each other without having either me or Burkhard to translate, they still got along like a house a-fire.  Presents from my sister’s family to Christa and Rainer and vice versa have been exchanged through us over the years and one year I took back to Germany after a visit back home a jar of hot pepper jelly for Rainer.  When I gave him the jelly I told him what it was and that it would probably be quite spicy.  Rainer was somewhat surprised at just how spicy hot pepper jelly can be.  He took a good look at the jar and noticed that written on the jar lid the words “A gift from Florida”.  Well that seemed simple enough for him to translate since the words are very close or exactly the same words in German.  And certainly calling it a gift from Florida was a witty way of describing just how spicy hot that jelly really was.  This is what Rainer told me the next time I saw him and at first I thought I was the one who was translating things incorrectly.  How would a present from Florida warn one that the jelly would be spicy?  And then it hit me.  Gift in English is another word for present.  Gift in German means poison.  Rainer figured that it being “A gift from Florida” was a clever play on words warning that the jelly was hot.  I laughed for a good five minutes before I could explain what gift means in English.

When my sister and her family came to visit me they brought with them my sister’s  step-daughter, Misty.  When I was told that Misty would be coming I made sure to tell Burkhard that we must always call my sister by her real name, Karen, when others were around.  Karen’s family nickname is Missy and Burkhard and I both nearly always call her Missy.  But to untrained German ears “Missy” would perhaps sound too much like “Misty” and would be too confusing in a situation when we’re already dealing with strange accents and people who don’t speak the same language.  It’s taken me years since that visit to come to this conclusion but the Misty/Missy thing is probably not what would first stick out in a German’s mind as being something to adapt to.  It’s the name Misty itself.  Mist in German means manure.  Mist is also used as a mild swear word, much in the way that we say “crap” in English.  I now wonder if my friends and relatives in Germany thought “Oh that poor lady!” when I would say to them “And this is my niece, Misty!”.  I have a feeling that at least one must have internally giggled at the idea of my niece being named “Crappy”.

Sometimes even when something has a perfectly good name in English that’s not so great in German, the English is still used.  “After” is such an ordinary word in English but in German After means “anus”.  Still bottle after bottle in drug store aisles in Germany have the words “after shave” on the label.  Gives a rather painful sounding twist in meaning, doesn’t it?

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