Slowly I turn . . . another year older

Obviously, there was a great gap (and, no doubt, gasp, as we all need to come up for air sometime) between my last post in September and my first post in October--the reason being that I turned another year older (rising to 46 on the Hot 100, still with a bullet, which is probably heading straight for my cranium) in the interim and decided to celebrate by making a marathon motor tour of Central New York and the Niagara region of Ontario.

I have a few stories to tell from the adventure and hopefully I'll get to those before I've forgotten all about them (age can do that to you) or have moved on to some other blogworthy (one can but dream) observations about life, love, and a certain senator's testicles.

But today I'm pressed for time at the mo', traveling a fair amount for work until mid-November. So instead I'll give you the short version (for me) and share a few photos from my travels.

I had a wonderful time visiting my friend, the Itinerant Professor of Chinese in New York State, and also enjoyed a splendid retreat on my own in Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

While in New York, I did some hiking with the Itinerant Professor, traveling to Chittenango Falls, Green Lakes State Park, and another nature preserve near Earlville and Hamilton, New York. I also dined out a lot, went to the movies, made some new acquaintances, and did the antiques roadshow circuit of Central New York.

In the Niagara region, I made myself quite at home at the Brock Plaza Hotel, the same hotel in which Marilyn Monroe stayed while filming the appropriately titled Niagara in the early 1950s. It was as camp a decision as I've ever made (other than my antiquing adventures mentioned above). I just had to do it--it seemed like a charming and slightly fabulous way to spend one's birthday. Heck, I even splurged and spent the extra $30 a night (woo hoo!) for the fallsview room, instead of the one with the vista of the late '70s modern parking deck. Despite my fear of heights, I even opened all the windows of my 11th floor room and let the roar of the American and Canadian falls lull me to sleep.

On my last day, before heading home, I spent the afternoon in the sublime Niagara-on-the-Lake, situated just so with a perfect view of Lake Ontario. I could have done more there--such as get my Anglophilia groove on while enjoying afternoon tea at the Prince of Wales Hotel--but it was hot and humid that day. Just call me Lily White of the Valley--I must be the only person who goes to Canada and gets a sunburn.

So I headed home to Pittsburgh, vowing to return another time for a longer visit. All in all, it was a splendid way to spend a birthday.

Perhaps it all sounds very lowkey and a "small" way to celebrate one of life's milestones. I mean, $30 extra for a fallsview room? Maybe I need to learn to expand my definition of splurging.

Nevertheless, it was exactly what I needed, precisely what I had been craving. Some time away, some time with friends, and some time alone, in a lovely and tranquil setting.

Oh, it's come to this, has it? First, gardening and origami, now beauty and peace over excitement and frenzied adventure?

Yes, thankfully so, it has.

Dancing barefoot

Lest ye think all I've done since I made it to Pittsburgh is eat, think about eating, or write about eating, I'll have you know I have also managed to consume a fair slab of 'Burgher kultur and société.

For example, just a couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend the Patti Smith concert at the Carnegie Library Music Hall in Homestead. Fantastic! One of the better concerts I've ever been to and amazing that a woman even older than me (imagine!) can still keep her art, life, and sensibilities fresh and fun.

Yes, Patti Smith and fun. Even harder to imagine than someone older than me with dewy-fresh sensibilities. When I used to read about Patti Smith in the pages of Creem and Rolling Stone way back in the '70s (that's 1970s, not 1870s, smart-alecks) or see her parodied by Gilda Radner in the golden age of Saturday Night Live (remember Candy Slice--that twisted Whitman's Sampler of Mick Jagger and Patti), I just found her scary. Drawn features, rake-thin body shrouded in mannish dress, and that hair, which had obviously never been introduced to Mr. Conditioner. A Breck Girl she wasn't.

This was the age of Charlie's Angels, after all. Having grown up on a steady diet of ABBA, '70s soul and disco (much to the utter shame of my more street-cred siblings), and Aaron Spelling TV, I wasn't quite ready for prime-time Patti. By the time college rolled around, however, punk was in full force as a social and musical statement/style concept and not simply as a pastime for junkies who needed something to do with their hands when they weren't shooting up. Punk's dark-hued and sin-tinged ethos of rebellion was a welcome challenge from what disco had evolved into, which as best as I can deduce was some sort of mutation into drug-addled celebrity pond scum and suburban spouse-swapping trilobites gone wild.

During my high school years, on the radio you could hear Patti Smith's "Because the Night," a song she cowrote with then still dark and brooding Bruce Springsteen. This song was probably mainstream America's first bitter taste of punk and the rawest, darkest, most powerful pop song that Kasey Casem ever had to present on the Top 40. Later in college there were trance-inducing tunes like "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot," the latter being one of my all-time favorites, even if I can never quite get the lyrics right.

An adult Patti resurfaced in the late '80s and thanks to my friend the Upstate New Yorker, I've kept up with her career ever since. I don't know that I'm her number one fan like my friend is, but as sort of a tribute to him and because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, my fellow nouveau Pittsburgher Fouchat and I made it a date to go see her in concert.

I couldn't let the event go by without a little silliness. Knowing that Patti is revered by a certain element, that her rather dense (and, to me, somewhat precious) poetry causes some to writhe in a Teresa of Avila-esque ecstasy, I kept telling my friends that I sure hoped she'd start off with "The Warrior." Or maybe she'd invite Don Henley on stage for an encore, and they could duet on their hit "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough." Or perhaps during a lull in the set, I'd flick a Bic and screech out, "Sing 'Goodbye to You'!" (For the record, those are songs by Patty Smyth and Scandal, not Patti Smith, about as far from punk as Britney Spears is from Mother Teresa. Now it's no fun if I have to explain these things . . . .)

Nevertheless, once the concert began, I was all attentivenss and good behavior.

And, wow, what a concert it was. The setting--a restored concert hall from the late 1800s--the music, the band, the crowd, and the Patti herself, all made for a perfect and marvelous moment.

Yes, I did say even the crowd. Have I mentioned that I don't particularly like crowds? Honestly, I don't particularly like a good portion of humanity, for that matter. (Just call me by my maiden name, Miss Anne Thrope.) Generally, in public spaces, especially in ones where people tend to forget that they came to see a performer rather than be a performer, I expect the worst, that the crowd will be filled with persons in the known universe least capable of conducting themselves in a sane, sensible, and sagacious manner.

After all, I did once view an entire Gypsy Kings concert through the bellydancing gyrations of an over-peroxided trophy wife and her lumbering, wasting-away-in-Margaritaville husband, whose dance-style indicated that perhaps he was suffering from the DTs, thought there were rats scampering around his feet, and had decided it best to stomp them to death, not necessarily in any time to any music, real or perceived. This suburban Sid and Nancy managed, on a completely empty row, to position themselves right in front of me and my friends and proceeded to do their own take on the Moroccan mashed potato through most of the concert.

Admit it--you, too, would be contemplating the benefits of a taser-dispenser in the restroom, now wouldn't you?

In Patti's case, I figured the audience would be filled with aging rockers who got lost on the way to the Aerosmith concert. Or, worse, guys and gals who, like, work at the counter at Starbucks/Whole Foods/FedEx Kinko's (or in a mailroom anywhere on Pitt's campus, for that matter) but who are really in, like, a band, ya know.

Surprisingly, though, about 98 percent of the crowd was great--a real mix of ages, ethnicities, genders, and lifestyles. Other than the leftover Grateful Dead campfollowers who arrived during the middle of the fourth (!) song, the only blips on the screen were this aging queen (perma-tan, muscle shirt sans muscles, and too much time spent looking at the crowd looking at him and not the stage) and his hag (frosted [!?!?!] hair in a style reminiscent of the season on Dallas when SueEllen once again got off the bottle and into trouble with that 12-year-old (looking) kid from The Blue Lagoon, also cursed with the same is-everyone-looking-at-me-yet?-'cause-I-am-so-cool/hot! affliction), who crowded the stage at the very start of the concert and no matter what Patti sang, kept up this bizarre, jazzy, finger-clickin' badass-ness during her performance.

Maybe they were thinking they were at an Ella Fitzgerald tribute concert and somehow all those finger pops would bring Ella back to us. I just don't know.

But once the cop gently encouraged them to return to their seats (without a billy club, darn it all) and Patti calmed the audience ("Now I know some of you want to sit, and some of you want to stand, but I'm pretty sure before the evening is over, everyone will have their moment . . . hey, my next career should be in crowd control!"), it was a pitch-perfect evening.

Patti went through some of her better known tracks ("Because the Night," which had me rockin' in the aisles, "Summer Cannibals," and "Gloria," but sadly no "Dancing Barefoot" or "People Have the Power"), as well as a number of songs of her new album. That album, Twelve, features covers of some of her favorite songs. There's quite a range of predilections on display, from Jimi Hendrix to, goodness me, Tears for Fears.

As Ms. Smith predicted, everyone had a chance to do his/her/its own thang--sit, stand, dance, or, like me, all three.

See, we really all can get along. Bliss.