Opera on Tap

On a recent Wednesday night, while the rest of the family was upstairs reading bedtime stories, I snuck out of the house and met my friend who was waiting in her parked car on the corner. We drove to Ballard, where a meet-up of over a hundred motorcycle riders restored some of the neighborhood’s old, salty character. Drifting uncertainly through a sea of leather-clad riders and parked bikes, we found the warehouse with the letter H painted on the side.

“I think that’s it. Doesn’t the name of the bar start with H?”

“Yes, this is it. See, there’s a sign.”

Next to the door of the warehouse was a white homemade sandwich board. Stenciled in black block letters was the word, “Opera.”

Late Bloomers

I was a precocious, Type-A, perfectionist, high-achiever child with the GPA and SAT scores to prove it. Measuring achievement in real life has proven more challenging. Figuring out what I want to achieve had me stymied for decades. And that is why I always appreciate late-bloomer pep talks like this one.

Finding the PATH

I drove to the dog park every day when my border collie was young, passing by a nondescript building with this logo on it. Like Charlie Bucket in Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book, I wondered what went on inside the mysterious industrial building near my house. Finally I got the brilliant idea of googling it, and discovered that the building housed something more wonderful than Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Book Report: The Perfect Landscape

 

After several perplexing Icelandic novels in a row, it was a breath of fresh air to read a straightforward, plot-driven narrative. Whew! Icelanders still tell stories after all. Fun stories about creativity and mystery; intrigue in the fine art world.

What the Steadfast Reader Said About Clean Reading

Last month I tried “reblogging” for the first time. Although the whole point of having a blog is to share your own thoughts, sometimes you run across something that you just want to share. Mostly, I use Twitter for that, but lately I’ve seen a few blog posts that really seemed to fit my blog more than my Twitter, and that didn’t really need much commentary from me.

This blogger isn’t on WordPress, so I’m just going to insert a link below. It’s the first I’ve heard of “clean reading” and I think she does a pretty good job of explaining and debunking the practice. I especially appreciate this statement

I do think that every now and then we should make an effort step outside our own echo chambers and explore things that make us a little uncomfortable or that we find a little bit ugly. Those are the places where we will learn the most, where we will grow the most. 

Please take a moment to read the Steadfast Reader’s post on The Problem with Clean Reading, and maybe come back by and let me know what you think. I’m a big fan of the blog No Clean Singing. After this, I’m tempted to rename my blog No Clean Reading. Would you read it?

The Children’s Book Coincidence

It’s a beautiful world.

Whether one believes coincidences are actually meaningful messages from a higher power, or are merely coinciding incidents, it’s hard to deny the impact they can have. In my life, impactful coincidences tend to happen at the library.

Book Report: The Pets

Now that I have read something by each of the Iceland Writers Retreat featured authors, I am moving on to the Icelandic authors who are involved in the event. Not all of them are available at my library, but of the ones that are, the first to arrive at my local branch after I placed a slew of holds was The Pets by Bragi Ólafsson, translated by Janice Balfour and published in English by the literary translation press Open Letter.

I have to say, I’m not sure what to make of it.

April by the Numbers

In the past few months, I’ve been paying attention to blog statistics. Sometimes I learn something useful. I’m not sure what you get from these posts, but my statistics say a lot of you read them, so I’ll keep it up.
Sometimes people click on links from other pages that take them to this blog. The three most common referring sites are:
Flippism is the Key
Facebook
Twitter
This is the first time that my own social network has driven more traffic to the site than the two more established blogs that link here.
Top Posts:
An Imposture of Writers
Stalking Asgeir Trausti
Decibel Magazine Tour at Showbox
About
Finally, something outperformed the Asgeir Trausti post – and with three times as many views! I was also pleased to see that a lot of people looked at the About page. I only look at About pages when I’m intrigued by whatever I landed on first. So I take it as a compliment.
Usually the most interesting thing on my stats page is the list of search terms that people used to get here.

Most common Search Terms:

• Gemma alexander blog – This is the first time that people looking for my blog have outnumbered accidental hits. It’s a proud moment for me. Even more exciting is that something finally topped
• asgeir trausti girlfriend
• showbox market smell – This cracked me up. Of course they got this site because I talked about the smell of hamburgers frying on the grill right before Carcass took the stage, but I doubt anyone was searching for that reason. Especially since the Showbox is not a smelly venue (cough El Corazon cough), I’m guessing it had to do with something my husband told me, “The men’s room smells like fruit cocktail from all the guys smoking scented vaps back there.”

A search term like that also makes a nice segue to Most Interesting Searches:

• ten little tadpoles lyrics [maybe because I used this image]
• after romeo kills tybalt and flees to friar laurence, why does he sob and threaten to harm himself? [it’s always good to know exactly what you want. I guess you ended up here because I watched Romeo and Juliet at the ballet.]
• How to make rag dolls at home [probably because of this post]

In April, I reblogged two posts from other writers, and both had views comparable to other posts. I don’t know if that’s because you all agreed with me that they were as interesting as anything I might write, or if you didn’t know they were reblogs since I’ve never done them before – what do you think about reblogging? Should I do more of it?

Tales of Hoffmann at Seattle Opera

A while back I wrote a post about the erroneous perception that heavy metal has to be grim and angry and depressing. Even a lot of heavy metal fans fall into this way of thinking despite the fact that they have a lot of fun listening to heavy metal. Last weekend, Tales of Hoffmann at Seattle Opera reminded me that opera shares a similar image problem. Heavy metal and opera are both technically challenging styles of music that can seem inaccessible to the uninitiated, but both are actually be a lot of fun. In fact, they can both be quite silly.

Case in point –

Curiouser and Curiouser

I was stopped at a red light while driving my daughter to preschool. Next to me was one of those public wastelands, a strip of land between roads that served no purpose but to host weeds and give a municipal gardener one more thing to mow twice a year. It was covered in bright green spring grass. Too coarse to be a proper lawn grass, it still seemed too lush to be a native meadow grass. I wondered, ‘Is there such a thing as a weed lawn grass?’ and then wondered that I wondered. Two weeks ago, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the grass. I would have been too absorbed in the inner monologue dictating my schedule for the day, and how the red light might affect it. But after Iceland Writers Retreat, the grass not only caught my attention, it piqued my curiosity. I blame Susan Orlean.