28 Dec 2020

366 DAYS

What a year! These 366 days. They came at us like roiling storm clouds. One freaking squall after another. At times I have felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, running for the backyard hole-in-the-ground before the tornado hits. My own storm shelter is made of blankets, which I pull over my head. I close my eyes, cover my ears and go “na-na-na-na-na.” Apparently kindergarten is still in session our house.

Obviously, in ways stark to slim, this year will not leave us where it found us. We are forever changed. At whiplash speed. Sure we’re all in this together, considering we live on the same planet, but it sure seems like we’re riding out the storm in different boats. The immensity of the issues that confront us, personally and as earth-dwellers, is overwhelming and I can go into a dark funk just thinking about it.

But through all the darkness of 2020 there have been flashes of sunshine. And stars and a rainbow or two. So when I’m not hiding under the covers, I change the conversation and direct the self-talk to what I’m called to do. Right now. Right here. This helps me be with today’s mess as if I’m peering through a wider lens. Like what do things look like from a hundred miles up? From two years from now? So I choose doing because ruminating is making me crazy.

This quote, “Grit, grace, gratitude,” is pressed under the plastic coverlet on my desk. I stuck it in a place where I would see it every day. Next to my computer. These are the words of Gwen Ifill, the late, dearly beloved journalist who passed away in 2016. When I first heard them, something inside went ding-ding-ding. They have served me well in the last 366 days.

And here we are—at the cusp of a new year. Does it feel like we are being drop-kicked into 2021?

But there is the sunshine part too: My zoom classes and gigs have been a miracle of technology and heart. We are helping each other endure, to make it through. And we’re doing it together, inviting total strangers over an invisible threshold into our own corner of the world–a living room, dining room, bedroom, office, cubby hole, garage, closet, kitchen, under a tree, in a car, into our life.

For me, this is grace made visible. And grit (are you woodshedding that Bb chord?) And gratitude (for waking up this morning). Singing and playing together, it changes the conversation. No matter our differences.

I’ve shared my ukulele fantasy with many of you: By executive order, every member of Congress is issued a ukulele. Nothing fancy or high end. They hire a patient and politically-neutered teacher to show each Democrat, Republican, Independent, how to strum three chords: C, F and G7. In tempo! They learn to play and sing one chorus and verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Each senator and representative must practice five minutes every day. Alone and with a colleague from across the aisle. When they all show up for an important vote… Well you can see where this is going. They have to do Woody Guthrie FIRST. Ya think more legislation would pass?

Yeah, I know… In my dreams. Well maybe Congress can’t change the conversation. But you and I can.

So here’s a toast to grit, grace and gratitude. To a change of heart, to enduring, to kindness and to the healing power of music! We will need them all in the new year.

Warmly,
Cali

If you would like more information about my three weekly Zoom ukulele classes, please log onto my website by CLICKING HERE.

11 Nov 2020

BRAND NEW DAY

“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (1899-1989)

I am not familiar with Emily nor her work, but I sure like this quote and maybe you noticed she lived a really long life. Heads up to my introvert, extrovert and whatever-vert friends. Even during these “don’t touch me, don’t breathe on me” times, our pals, our friends, our tribes, the online faces in little Zoom boxes, we are throwing lifelines to each other.

We are “walking each other home.” (Ram Dass)

I’m one lucky lady because I am living the creative life. Got the music thing happening and like my daddy, I love to write. It’s a party in my brain when the two go matchy-matchy.

Three years ago, I was working with a couple ukulele students on gospel tunes. I love songs with thumping rhythm that rolls in my belly. But I’m not a “religious” person so for my daily dose of inspiration, I look to you, the beloved community*. Numberless hands and hearts, known and unknown, help me through each day, like invisible rings of warm.

And it hit me. Why don’t I try to write one of those rollicking hand-clapping songs but what will I talk about? Well of course, the beloved community. Just like that, the melody and words poured out. This rarely happens in my songwriting life, where the creative process is more like pro-wrestling than “a spell.” But with Brand New Day, the beloved community waved its magic wand.

I started playing the song at my gigs. Folks clapped and sang along on the easy-peasy chorus: “Oh hallelujah! Oh hallelujah! Oh hallelujah! It’s a brand new day.”

Then I did a ukulele arrangement for The CC Strummers. They loved it too and we performed the song at Fiesta La Ballona, which is Culver City’s equivalent to a county fair. Some people in the audience gave us a standing ovation and yelled “more…more…more.” As a songwriter, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

Flash forward to here and now.

“May you live in interesting times.” Apparently this is an English expression that is based on an old Chinese curse. We are painfully aware of all the awful that is happening in the world. How easy it is to miss the little flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. Or through a seemingly impenetrable wall that separates us?

A friend once told me that life is a mystery to be lived, not solved. So I look to the beloved community to sustain me. We are going through this together, like sentries, quietly and not-so-quietly, witnessing our shared humanity. The joys, the sorrows. The whole mess of it.

My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, has morphed into a global ohana online. I am gobsmacked and filled with gratitude that we have the technology to support this kind of work and that we have each other. This is where I have landed—at the intersection of music, technology and all that “it takes a village” stuff.

The CC Strummers’ tech master, Michael Kohan, has taken on this project—to turn Brand New Day into a marvelous Zoom mosaic. A musical partnership. Several of our players made their own videos and sing along on that catchy chorus. I hope you will sing along too. Watch the bouncing ball!

CLICK HERE to watch Brand New Day!

Thank you Michael for your extraordinary work! And thank you to our ohana who appear and sing on this video: Ellen B, Carole E, Lyn G, Nancy H, Bobbie H, Marilyn H, Lorri K, Sherry K, Michael K (editor and bass), Ethan K, Tom K, Donna N, Joyce P, Nomi R, Robert R, Bob S, Bonnie S, Lin Van G and Mollie W.

If this song is new to you and you’d like to learn it and/or share it with your peeps, Brand New Day is available as sheet music.

I’m going to sound like one of those late night infomercials… “For $5, yes only $5, the sheet music is yours AND there’s more! I will throw in the ukulele arrangement too. Whoo-Hoo!” If you are interested please CLICK HERE for more information.

Thank you for showing up, for yourself and others. Thank you for fighting the good fight, whatever that is, and for helping to make this brand new day a place we all want to share.

_______

If you would like to Zoom with The CC Strummers on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings please CLICK HERE to check out my Zoom classes. Thank you!

*The Beloved Community is a term that was first coined in the early 20th Century by the philosopher Josiah Royce and later popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

CLICK HERE to watch The CC Strummers perform Brand New Day at Fiesta La Ballona.

20 Aug 2020

GOODBYE PRIVACY

I’m squirming slightly in the wobbly patient chair as my doctor peruses my electronic chart on her computer. There’s a lot to scroll through and, of all things, she lands on this: “You are due for your tetanus shot. It’s been ten years.” My doctor is brilliant, beautiful and I know immediately when she is approaching my room because of the familiar clickity-clickity of her high heels. She is also Russian and maybe it’s just me, but when she delivers a pronouncement of any kind in that take-no-prisoners accent, I sit up straight and usually say “okay.”

Well the good news is that I can finally play with the rusty nails I keep in a Ziplock under the planting soil on our balcony. Kidding of course, but when I was a kid, I had an outsized fear of getting “lockjaw,” as we called it in our family. I also loved to talk. And talk and talk. My parents may have hoped for a jaw-freeze now and then, just for a little peace and quiet. But one time I remember touching a rusty something and for days afterwards furiously checking the mirror for signs of trouble. I worked my jaw up and down, back and forth like a puppeteer pulling the strings on her marionette.

My doctor tells me I need to go to my local pharmacy for the shot.

Huh? “Why can’t I get it here?”

“Because your insurance won’t pay for it. But the shot is free If you go to your pharmacy.”

First of all, I’m trying to picture how they give shots at my mini-size Save-On, er, CVS, during a pandemic. And who THEY are. And where do they do it? Is there a secret treatment cubicle in the back, next to the break room? A hastily erected tent in the alley behind the store? It’s interesting how our expectations eventually go poof when they smash into reality.

I call CVS on the phone, connect with a living, breathing pharmacist and ask him if I need to make an appointment and what are the nurse’s hours? Apparently I have blinked and missed the big changes in the medical dispensing business these days and my query gives him a good yuk-yuk. He tells me to come in anytime and the pharmacist, him, will administer the shot. Well okay then. I guess he took the “injection workshop,” practiced on oranges, himself and his fellow non-nurses, in order to get the official certificate that says: “I Can Do This.”

So a few days ago I appear at CVS, just as the pharmacy is opening. I know this pharmacist. He is a sweet guy and I watch him from afar as he prepares the paperwork and snatches the vial of vaccine from a nearby fridge. I’m also looking around for where this thing is going to happen. And I’ve got nothin’… Is he going to walk me down a people-free aisle and do it? There’s no one in feminine hygiene right now. I don’t see anyone loitering by the crutches and canes.

Then, with one hand, the pharmacist pushes open the swinging gate that separates us from his den of drugs. In his other hand he’s toting a plastic basket. I see a roll of paper towels, Lysol, gloves, lots of paperwork, a vial and the syringe. Where is he going? That’s when I notice, right in front of me, a tall four panel screen that is folded into a neat square box. So THIS is what privacy looks like at CVS. He opens one panel to reveal a lone chair in the middle and instructs me to SIT. The puzzle pieces are coming together, I realize this is the same prime real estate where they had the do-it-yourself blood pressure machine in those halcyon days before the pandemic.

I’m wondering now how Mr. Pharmacist is going to cram himself into the teeny box too. Well he’s not. He can’t. Now he’s kneeling on the floor next to my right foot, gathering up the crudités for the vaccine banquet. He tells me this shot will protect me from tetanus AND diphtheria AND pertussis. That’s a lot of cluck for the insurance company’s buck. He seems genuinely delighted about this as he prepares the shot.

Now mind you, any notions of privacy I once cherished have been relegated to a dusty heap behind Fantasyland. A woman stops dead in her tracks, social distancing be damned, and asks if this is a Covid test. The next shopper has questions too, as well as a third. Others are glancing over their shoulders as they pass by. And he hasn’t even given me the injection yet. For someone who is accustomed to this shot business happening behind closed doors or, at the very least, behind sliding curtains, it’s kind of a shock…

And a wake-up call that things are changing, that bodies are bodies, that I don’t want to pay for this shot so I go to CVS. That we are all doing the best we can as the challenges pile on and it’s a good idea to go with the flow. Sure there’s a time to “push back.” There’s a time to “keep your powder dry.” And there’s a time to “back off.” Here’s what I do? I plop myself in front of the computer and write something funny in a blog. Then I have a cookie.

Finally, it’s shot time. When I really want to know about medication side effects and nefarious drug interactions, I ask a pharmacist. This guy answers all my pesky questions as he competently administers the vaccine. It hurts, but just a little. He applies a Band-Aid; massages the injection site and releases me back into the wild.

It’s been a couple days and I feel fine and at least for the next ten years I won’t have any lock-jaw flashbacks when I touch a rusty nail. No dithering about diphtheria. No wah-wahing over whooping cough.

Perspective is everything. People are muddling through, suffering, afraid, depressed, dying from Covid. Getting a shot at CVS in full view of morning shoppers? What a puny problem to have. It doesn’t even register a mini-quake on the Richter scale. At the same time, I’m dreading what’s going to happen next. In my world, in OUR world. But in spite of all that, each moment of each day is rich with possibility and fresh opportunity to embrace the messy business of being human. Pulling back the curtains, even a little, is probably a good thing for all of us.

16 Apr 2020

GALLOWS HUMOR

Have you seen the toilet paper jokes on Facebook? How about the ones with hoarders and emotional support dogs?

What feels like a hundred lifetimes ago I worked the 11pm to 7am graveyard shift at a local emergency room as the “admitting clerk.” Like it or not, I was a triage person, generally the first to access the “red flag” level of the sick or injured as they trundled into the waiting room. Considering my only qualification for this job was a hot-off-the-press B.A. in Psychology and a pushy nurse mother who got me the job at her hospital…well this whole thing was a frightening prospect. For everyone concerned.

My training was sparse and soon I was let loose at my post. It was a sad gray cubicle where I perched in front of an IBM Selectric typewriter and asked the sick person or anxious family for a mother’s maiden name, social security number and…wait for it…wait for it…medical insurance.

Back then, when the dinosaurs were roaming the streets of Los Angeles, this was a busy hospital ER, but not at night. I arrived at 10:30pm, parked my bicycle in a closet and greeted our skeleton crew: One doc (from a rotating band of crazies), a couple nurses (work hard/play hard types), one orderly who had served in Vietnam as a corpsman and could read an EKG better than the visiting cardiologists, an able and entertaining X-Ray technician. And me.

“What a motley crew” you might say. And you’d be right. But when the ambulances screeched into the driveway with heart attacks, gunshot wounds, car accidents, these blessed professionals jumped into action and turned into heroes. They saved lives, they comforted the loved ones. They took me in at a time when I was lost and floundering.

I joke that I learned more about psychology in my first week working in the ER than I did in four years of college. But this is no joke. For one who is drawn towards self-reflection, this kind of environment is a gift that keeps on giving. And not always in a sugar-coated way.

Because there were so few staff members at night, when the you-know-what hit the fan and we got nailed with a code blue AND other critical patients all at once, the nurses snatched me from my cubicle, pushed me into the treatment room and jammed a clipboard in my hand as they barked out such things as IV line started, patient intubated, this medication, that medication administered. Yes I was the one scribbling down the nursing notes. Me. The future professional musician. At these times our ER turned into an urban Mash Unit and it was all hands-on deck. The pressure to do the work right, even my humble, lowest-on-the-totem-pole job, felt like I was laying my body under a bank vault. And I confess that I loved it.

I saw patients rally, get sent home, to the ICU. Or the morgue. My next job after the ER was performing in a piano bar in an “iffy” neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles. I frequently told my audiences, who consisted of alcoholics and working ladies, that “very little shocks me.”

For example…

I remember watching one of my fellow admitting clerks—a take-no-prisoners kind of gal with a sense of humor as sharp as barbed wire—roll us over with one well-turned phrase. The cops had just brought a belligerent bad guy into the treatment room. He was handcuffed to the gurney and thrashing back and forth. My amazon-tall colleague arrived at his side with her ER forms and asked matter-of-factly “what is your name, sir?”

MOTHER^^^KER !!!

Obviously this was a juicy, bombastic expression of how he was feeling at the moment…and delivered with enough decibels for everyone to hear, even in the waiting room. My friend didn’t flinch, she didn’t look away.

“Sir, is that your FIRST name or your LAST name?”

We could hardly contain ourselves. Or walk back the laughter. Even the bad guy took a breath and shut up. What can you say when you have been disarmed with humor.

In the ER we called this gallows humor. Merriam-Webster defines it as humor that makes fun of a life-threatening, disastrous, or terrifying situation. I want you to know that this is how we survived some of those long nights. It’s an imperfect coping device. But it mostly works. For awhile.

We would gather in the break room and share the most obnoxious jokes and exquisitely embellished stories. The grosser the better. The work that is done in this pressure cooker can get so intense that, like the pendulum that swings at the Griffith Park Observatory, we have to go to the opposite extreme to “right” ourselves again.

Too bad the break room wasn’t sound proof because our display of frivolity might have seemed crass. In bad taste. At the very least, inappropriate. I remember one quiet night I was keeping watch over the waiting room as some of the staff was guffawing about something. They were very loud. I knew my colleagues were blowing off steam but an angry husband, whose wife was being cared for in the back, rose from his seat in the waiting room, stomped up to me and asked “how can you people laugh like that when patients are sick and dying.” I don’t remember what I said to him. But I do remember feeling awful. Just awful. He was right, of course, and I felt terrible for him. But I also knew that my colleagues were preserving their sanity. The work depended on it.

This is real world Psychology 101: Learning how to make a space in my heart for emotions that pull me in opposite directions. Can I give myself permission to feel it all?

We are in a pandemic right now. I watch the scenes from the emergency rooms flicker across the television and my dusty memories come flooding back. In full technicolor. But this virus is an equal-opportunity fright machine. We are all in this together, living the emergency room life, to one degree or another. Most of us will survive. Others will not.

Having lived that life for real so many years ago, I want to put my money on humor. It got me through then and gets me through now. Sooner or later, we have to laugh a little even as the tears flow.

______________________

Take really good care of yourself and your dear ones!

12 Mar 2020

A DRINK OF WATER

The World Health Organization has just declared that we are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. That’s way too big a concept for me to wrap my brain around and I can feel the tentacles of denial slip-sliding across the wavy stuff in my mind.

Then today, it got real.

My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, is one of many classes offered by The Culver City Senior Center. This morning word came down from on high that this bustling nexus of activity will close indefinitely and all the classes are cancelled.

Just when The CC Strummers need our weekly dose of “music therapy” more than ever, poof, it’s gone. Of course, they—the city officials and fire department—are acting out of an abundance of caution. The folks who hang at the Senior Center are…well…seniors. And if we believe the news about the Coronavirus, older folks are especially vulnerable. Above all we want to keep our rental-bodies healthy.

But what about our hearts? What about the “intangibles” that bring and bind us together in community? That give us comfort and a sense of belonging, especially during this time of stunning uncertainty. How do you “cancel” that?

So on this day, as the stock market continues its dramatic descent and the talking heads predict that the worst is yet to come, a team of CC Strummers and I carpool to UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital to sing for the kids and give ukuleles away.

In my experience, music therapy is a mutual blessing, for the giver and receiver. We sing for kids and families and teach some parents how to strum Row Row Row Your Boat. But today, what strikes me the most is how desperately we need to feel okay right now, reassured that goodness exists and that it flows abundantly from a heart that is cracked open, even just a little. A heart that is open to ALL the weather patterns in life.

After our rounds we grab the next elevator…going down. Like the Titanic. Here we are… A busy student, distracted visitor, weary staff, and now, us—six senior citizens—who suddenly and inexplicably break into song. In the time it takes to go from the 5th floor to the lobby we sing a quicky version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Our fellow elevator mates stare wide-eyed at first, then begin to smile. I can feel how music kind of changes the subject. It pulls us out of our heads and into the here and now. People wake up. For a moment… One young woman exclaims “you have made my day.” The whole elevator ride is something of a miracle, if you ask me.

Back in the 1990’s, country singer Kathy Mattea recorded a song called Standing Knee Deep in a River and Dying of Thirst. Here are some of the lyrics:

So the sidewalk is crowded, the city goes by.
And I rush through another day.
And a world full of strangers turn their eyes to me.
But I just look the other way.

They roll by just like water.
And I guess we never learn.
Go through life parched and empty.
Standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.

Seven people holding ukuleles at a hospital building — Left to right: Bill, Linda, Keith, Michael, Barbara, Jenna B. (the music therapist) and Cali.

Today at Mattel, we don’t look the other way. We do what we do. We witness the power of music to quench the thirst of those around us. To sate our own. I guess what I am saying is that there are a thousand little moments in the day when we can choose to smile at a stranger, hold the door open for a harried mother, we can pull our ukulele out of its case and play. And sing.

The scary virus is too big for me to comprehend, the chaos in the world is overwhelming. The level of deception and lies and nasty trolling boggles my mind. But there is something I can do, in the trenches of my everyday life. Be kind and offer someone a drink of water. Enough for two.

During our drive to UCLA, we commiserate about the run on toilet paper at the local Costco. I mean, what else is there to talk about? Bill, who grew up in rural Northern California, describes his formative years when the family shared the outhouse in the backyard. Toilet paper? That’s for babies. They kept an old Sears Catalogue at the ready and tore off a sheet. As needed.

Please CLICK HERE to visit The CC Strummers Facebook Page and view our Carpool Ukulele and videos of this visit.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The CC Strummers just had our last class. For a while… We ended with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Featuring ukuleles and kazoos. CLICK HERE to watch.

And dear ones, take care of yourselves…

4 Mar 2020

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OSCAR

I arrive at my gigs with a list of this month’s famous birthday people and events. I will wrap each one around a song. It’s March and one of the notables is Oscar Ferdinand Mayer. He was born March 29, 1859. The guy liked meat. I bet he ate a lot of it. And he lived to be 95 years old. Hooray for hot dogs!

We are sitting in a circle at my music therapy session, the memory care folks and me. I mention the name “Oscar Mayer” and watch their eyes glint in happy recognition. My eyes are glinting too. I tell them about the lunches my mother made for me when I was a kid. She poured slices of bologna and Velveeta cheese onto a pane of aluminum foil, rolled it like a mini-duffle bag and sent me off to school. No avocado toast, no carrots or celery. Not an apple or orange slice in sight.

I’m lucky I’m still alive.

That said, when I’m feeling all gunky about the state of the world, do you think I reach for tofu? Or lettuce? Or even chocolate? Are you kidding? I run to Sprouts, stand in the meat deli line and ask for half a pound of bologna. And then this happens: The deli lady appears with lovely folded slices on a pane of plastic, lays the whole thing on the scale and usually the weight is a little over. “Oh that’s okay!” I chirp. Food therapy is close at hand.

So the memory care folks and I launch into the iconic Oscar Mayer jingle.

Oh I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener. That is what I’d truly like to be…

I’m here to tell you that a well-written commercial jingle is like Velcro in our brains. The gusto-factor has kicked in and everyone is singing and swaying along after the first line.

We continue…

Cause if I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener…

She is sitting next me. I’ll call her “Sparky.” She is a human spark plug, a walking-talking firecracker. But she couples her joie de vivre with a rare and indefatigable equanimity, even in the face of the challenges that are a constant her life. The woman is laser-sharp, feisty and ever protective of those around her. Including me. “Cali, did you sign your invoice. We want you to come back.”

In a voice that slices through the ragtag chorus in the room, she sings the final line of the jingle.

“Everyone would take a bite of me.”

Let me introduce you to “Big Bad Bob…”

“That’s so F–ked Up,” he bellows. Some of the ladies in the room roll their eyes. They are familiar with his colorful language. I silently admire his verb substitutions. But Sparky is undeterred and sings her line again.

“Everyone would take a bite of me.”

I love it when stuff like this happens… A sudden burst of spontaneity and irreverence. Maybe this is what I love most about my work–when I am willing to let go of my own agenda, just a little, and trust this moment to lead us somewhere unexpected. And let me tell you, the rewards are bountiful. Surprising. Joyful. Scary. Deeply moving. Letting go can crack open our hearts.

The actual last line of the Oscar Mayer jingle is everyone would be in love with me. I sing it to Sparky and this is how I read the expression on her sweet face.

“Come on Cali, that sucks.”

“Sparky,” I exclaim, “I like your version better and it makes a whole lot more sense.” So we sing it again. Even Big Bad Bob joins in.

Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener. That is what I’d truly like to be.
Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener. Everyone would take a bite of me.

Yes we may love bologna or cucumber and watercress sandwiches. But when we take a bite, well that’s a whole different picnic.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

CLICK HERE to read about songwriter Richard Trentlage and the story behind his famous Oscar Mayer jingle. Guess what, he played a banjo-ukulele!

4 Feb 2020

ALEXA!

Last December a dear friend gifted me with a life changing present, although I couldn’t have known how life changing at the time. I tore open the bag with glee, careful not to spill onto my plate of spicy noodles at a Thai joint in Hollywood. “Oh my God! It’s Alexa.”

Yes, THAT Alexa. The lady voice that answers all your questions (well not quite) and plays all the music you love (yeah…right). Up to now I have resisted bringing a third member into our family of two. Especially a disembodied being you plug into the internet 24/7 and that some believe can, and does, eavesdrop on you. The whole idea of “privacy” is getting more “fluidy” these days. So I wasn’t interested in letting “Big Sister” move in. But jeesy peesy, she arrived. As a gift.

So my husband sets her up in the living room on a small table surrounded by a cluster of watchful ukuleles. We plug her in and ask her a question. “SIRI, what’s the weather today?” Nothing. “SIRI what’s the weather today?”

“What’s wrong with this effing thing?” I say to whomever is listening. Can you tell we are Apple People? It was hard enough to get the “Siri” thing down. And now…

“A-LEX-A!” Our voices are rising to middle school gym teacher level. “What is the weather today?” With her soothing, everything-is-okay-even-though-the-world-is-burning voice, she gives us the highs, the lows, the wet, the dry. All the information we need to get us out the front door in appropriate attire.

“Thank you Alexa.” And she replies. Oh yes she does. “You’re welcome.”

Then my husband exclaims, “Alexa, have a nice day,” Can you believe? We are imploring a plastic gizmo with innards that include a mini-tweeter, woofer, cables, system board, bluetooth chip and God-knows-what-else, to have a nice day. “You too,” she chirps. Alexa is very polite.

My husband decides quickly he needs more decibels and orders a speaker boom box with its own R2-D2-like nesting pod for Alexa. It also has a big green light that looks like a giant eyeball that follows us around the room. If the guardian ukuleles could talk they might be saying “WTF.”

“Alexa. FART!” With the bigger speaker we can really hear THAT. We ask her to do it again and dissolve into gales of laughter. We ask her to sing a song. Right now she’s singing about what makes her happy and is accompanied by a ukulele. I think it’s called “I’d Like to Say Thank You” and has a kind of “Baby Shark” feel. When I ask her to sing another she does a rap song about Jackie Robinson.

“Alexa, tell me a joke.”
“What’s the lemon’s favorite dance?” The Twist.”

“Alexa, tell me another joke.”
“Did you hear about the new squirrel diet? It’s just nuts.”

“Alexa, tell me another joke.”
“What do you call a dragon with heartburn? Bad news for the next village.”

(Like I have time to have a conversation with a robot).

“Alexa, tell me another joke.”
“It’s tough to write a joke. The other day I told a joke about a toilet, but it tanked.”

I’ll be looking elsewhere for my comedy material.

I have several albums that are streamed on Amazon, Spotify and all those online services, so of course I lean into her swirling light and say “Alexa, play songs by Cali Rose.” She launches into some raucous garage band something-or-another. “A-LEX-A, play songs by (now I’m spelling my name really slowly) C…A…L…I…R…O…S…E.” She takes a long a pregnant pause.

I’m using the word “pregnant” for a reason because recently my husband asked Alexa “what is your gender?” She replied, “I’m female, in character.” Well…okay.

But I digress. After Alexa’s pregnant pause I am suddenly hearing my own voice singing my own song coming out of the magic disc. I cannot lie. This is very exciting.

But here’s a little something to keep in mind: Alexa messes with relationships…

When I’m in the bedroom and I hear my husband talking in the living room, I think he’s talking to me. After all I’m the only other person living here.

“What’d you say, honey?” I yell down the hall.

“I’m talking to Alexa…”

Our lives are forever changed. And “have a nice day.”

29 Sep 2019

PSYCHOANALYTIC FAMILY THERAPY

It’s Sunday afternoon. Open House day in Culver City, California. Normally I drive right past those For Sale signs sprouting on street corners. I’m too busy coming or going or thinking about food or traffic or listening to the latest podcast of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. But not today…

Many of my long time blog friends endured the “big house sale” back in 2016. It happened about this time—just as summer slides into fall. My mother passed away on Independence Day (there is plenty of irony there folks) and I needed to clean out forty years of stuff from my parent’s townhouse. Before the 2016 election because God knows what was going to happen with that.

My husband and dear friends helped when they could but the load fell on me, sorting through dense, dark memories that lay like dust on the books and clothes and lamps and desks. In boxes and file cabinets and closets. Several 1-800 Got Junk trucks came and went, as did the paint guys and floor guys and a cleaning crew.

The mother daughter real estate team held my hand, made the calls, went above and beyond the job description of “let’s jettison, let’s clean, let’s stage, here’s the paperwork and congratulations, escrow closed.”

“Please no assholes,” I begged them in the whiny, tired voice of a person slightly beaten down. I want good people in this house.

We got very good people.

And three years later, this same mother and daughter are selling my parent’s place again. Starting today.

I haven’t been back to the old homestead since the election but I know I have to do this. “Be a big girl, Cali,” I tell myself. “Take a deep breath, fluff up the hair and say hello to your favorite realtors.”

And now I’m standing at my parent’s front door as I slip the complimentary white paper booties over my shoes and enter this hallowed ground. Well hallowed for me. I am the only one carrying a lifetime of memories about THIS house. The only one who remembers my mother’s stark-raving mad tantrums, all those Chinese Food take-out binges between fights, the omnipresent drone of my mom’s television upstairs, the hushed tones of Beethoven wafting from my dad’s eight-track in his den downstairs. The stony silences when no one was talking to nobody and my father’s ultimate descent into end-game emphysema. Until he just couldn’t breathe anymore.

My mother. She could butter you up with compliments and cheesecake one moment… And mean it. Then wish you dead the next. And mean that too… She was certifiable. They call it Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She thrived in a whorl of frenzy and if things mellowed out, she’d conjure up something big and theatrical to fill the void. The more eyeballs on her, the better. And you couldn’t look away because she was so entertaining and funny and bawdy but God help you if you stood between her and the spotlight.

And true to narcissistic form, she was incapable of self-reflection. Whatever nasty rockslide lay at the end of the tunnel, it was NOT her fault.

If you have been around people like this then you know how exhausting they are. Yet they still find willing victims to “carry their water.” This is such a tragedy because it is untreated mental illness that is the thief here, stealing my mother from her higher angels. Stealing my mother from me.

Some of these old feelings wash over me again as I tiptoe across the threshold in my disposable booties. The home is staged and looking effervescent. Millennial couples and curious neighbors fan out across the square footage. I search for a place where I can be by myself, alone in this house, alone with my memories. Instinctively I follow the steps down to my father’s den. Once-upon-a-time this was my refuge of sanity, even with its lopsided stacks of books and boxes and disparate piles of paper strewn across his desk. A desk that was the size of a door. Because it WAS a door. The man was a brilliant writer and enthusiastic aeronautics engineer. He needed a lot of elevated flat space to spread out.

The den today is clean and Zen spare. I notice the picture of a VW Bug on the far wall. My father would have chosen a framed likeness of a Saturn Rocket. Then I see an open book resting in a petite workspace to the right. What is THAT book? It draws me closer, closer, like a tractor beam from the Death Star. I lean in to read the title: Psychoanalytic Family Therapy.

I have to tell you, home stagers have a subversive sense of humor. Or they are freaking psychic. Or this a very entertaining coincidence.

Or…

Let’s face it, most of us have “someone kinda like my mother” in our families — either hiding out or in plain view.

One of the realtor assistants is standing at the front door greeting potential buyers as they remove their shoes or “booty up.” I’m in the mood for sharing, especially after the “book encounter” downstairs and I tell him this was my parent’s place and yada-yada yada. This lovely man takes a deep breath, actually more like a heave ho, and describes his family home. The one that sold two years ago. The new owners demolished the house and built one of those boxy monoliths. Long on architectural flourishes and short on…well…trees. Two years later, he still can’t drive down that street and look at that house.

He says to me “well I guess I gotta let it go.”

Circa 2016. Cleaning out my parent’s house, one big trunk at a time. This one is full of pictures and greeting cards, my mom and dad’s love letters… Theirs was not a happy Hallmark Card ending.

“We honor our parents by carrying their best forward and laying the rest down. By fighting and taming the demons that laid them low and now reside in us.”

Bruce Springsteen, rock n’ roll philosopher king

When I get back home I don’t pull the covers over my head. THAT is a big victory. The memories are softening a little and losing their sizzle, their power to pull me back in time and grind a few gears.

What I do instead is sit at the computer and write this blog. It’s my way of “laying the rest down.” It’s my way of looking in the mirror at my own stuff, of teasing out what was my parent’s burden and what is mine. It’s enough to carry our own water, don’t you think?

4 Aug 2019

GRATEFUL

I land on the steps of The Superior Court Building one June morning in buoyant, conflicted downtown Los Angeles and queue up with the rest of the prospective jurors to squeeze through security and “go right” into the big gray-feeling jury pool room. Can you tell I’m jittery? Actually I am freaking out. Like I’m the one on trial.

I’ve been fretting about this one day for months. Months! Will they know–these judges and lawyers and official-looking people in uniforms–that I stole an eraser in 4th grade? Will they know that the last courtroom drama I watched from beginning to end was “The Verdict” with Paul Newman? Why? Because I’m not wired for this kind of stuff. I’d rather eat cardboard than be here.

So back to the jury pool room… As if there is swimming or billiards? Just before noon a disembodied voice from on high calls my name, along with 37 others, to report to “Courtroom OMG” for a criminal trial at 1:30pm. We obediently reply by saying “here.” When someone doesn’t say “here” loud enough, a chorus of others in the room calls out “here-here-here” for the low-energy person in question. It’s a lovely moment of community service.

After lunch we gather in the hallway outside the courtroom until the Superior Court Wrangler Guy herds us into three lines and hands each of us a little piece of paper with a handwritten number on the front. We are told to slip it into our juror badge. I am standing at the head of one line and just like that my new official name is Juror 18. All this is virgin territory for me and I haven’t given one thought to math. As in—divide 36 by 2 and you get 18.

But all this becomes evident as we are escorted into the big courtroom and the first 18 of us head to the jury box. Mind you I can’t feel my legs now and the inside of my lips are sticking to my teeth. Thank you for asking. The remaining 18 get comfy in the gallery. And it’s going to be a long haul, for all of us, because the judge and the lawyers ply us with questions for almost two and a half hours. Until the end of the day.

I must say that everyone is very kind except for the lady bailiff who gets a little testy with a guy in the back of the courtroom for, gasp, looking at his cell phone. She’s wearing a gun. He puts his phone away.

I will also spare you most of the details—like how I tell the judge I believe only 50 percent of what I hear because people spin the truth and forget stuff, or worse, omit important information. He looks at me incredulously and asks “50 percent, really?” To this I reply, “okay, 51.” Obviously all I need to do is look in the mirror to prove my point.

Now I’m watching the prosecuting attorney build a flow chart with a pad of Post-It Notes, colored pens and highlighters. Each juror has his or her own Post-It with lots of little scribbles on it. I glance at the defense attorney two long desks over and he’s doing the same thing.

When I was in college I took a class in experimental psychology. We were issued our own lab rat to run through the mazes. I called my little guy Sam. Sam was an asshole. Once he tried to bite off the tip of my finger and I was so mad I threw him across the room. No worries. Sam, all bravado and puffery, survived his flight and taunted me for the rest of the quarter. Along with my fellow students…who called me out to the professor. I’m not proud of my behavior and still feel prickles of guilt. But I’m telling you Sam’s story because, in this courtroom today, I feel like a lab rat.

The judge concludes his very civil inquisition in grand style, asking each of us this: “How would you describe yourself, using ONE word?”

Yes! One Word.

Take a moment… What word would you choose that completely captures the essence of YOU? Okay, times up…

One person says happy, another boring (that gets a ripple of ha-ha’s in the room). As I recounted this story to my Saturday ukulele class, one guy said his word would be “incontinent.” I have a few seconds to think about my word because remember I am number 18 but when it’s my turn here is what pops out of my sticky lips:

GRATEFUL

And you know what, it’s true. As bad as things can get, I’m still breathing and personally think it’s a miracle that any of us are here. That’s because I’m kind of a pessimist too. I just expect things to go south. And when they don’t (and they usually don’t) I’m SO happy. Actually I’d say I’m a “grateful pessimist” but that’s TWO words and I don’t want to piss off the judge.

At this point the prosecuting attorney rises to his feet, stares ME down and says “If you don’t mind me asking, Juror 18, what are YOU grateful for?”

And this is what I say:

“I’m grateful because this morning I woke up. And I’m grateful you woke up too.”

I’m referencing my own song of course, “This Morning Something Wonderful Happened to Me (I Woke Up). Can you believe it? The words just bounce out of my mouth like ping pong balls. Boing, boing, boing. After that the prosecuting attorney leaves me alone. So does the defense attorney. And in the end I am excused from the jury. I assume the remaining 18 in the gallery have to return the next day.

Believe it or not, this is ONE day I wouldn’t give back for all the swimming pools in Los Angeles. It blasts me out of my comfort zone. (You think my lawyer-ly friends are rolling their eyes about now?) And I take full responsibility for my self-inflicted fretting–even though it feels like all that worry shaved a few months off my life.

I also reflect with gratitude…yes, gratitude…that my degree in psychology led me on a most circuitous route…to piano bars. I’m grateful I get to play music today. I’m grateful that lawyers, judges, jurors make the best of it within an imperfect system.

That goes for all of us.

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You gotta love synchronicity… Speaking of This Morning Something Wonderful Happened to Me ( I Woke Up), here is a video I made shortly before my adventure in Jury-Land.

I am sitting on the sofa in the living room, just the uke and me. I clamp my iPhone to a music stand and strain my brain to look at the camera lens instead of my own face on the phone. With a Sharpie I draw an arrow on a baby Post-It and point it at the lens. Cali…CALI…Look Here!

And there’s more! Over the years I’ve come up with strums and tricks to play fast on the ukulele and I show them to you in the accompanying video tutorial. CLICK HERE to watch both on my website and download the ukulele arrangement of my song.

And remember that this morning something wonderful happened… YOU woke up.

20 Mar 2019

NEVER TOO OLD

I’m at Trader Joe’s doing my “food gathering” thing and rolling the cart past the display of ready-made yummies because…well…I am good at reheating and turning on the microwave.

Another shopper, a Gen Xer kind of gal, is leaning into the stacks of meatloaf and chicken wraps when her cell phone goes off. Let’s put it this way, the volume is at eleven, and it’s playing The Age of Aquarius. Suddenly this particular quadrant of TJ’s is awash in the cast of Hair singing “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Age of Aquarius…”

She wrestles the cell phone from her purse and answers, “Hi Mom!”

MOM? That’s mom’s ringtone? Really? I saw Hair in 1968 at the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood. If I had had a kid (instead of house plants) that kid could have been this lady.

I wanted to laugh out loud. But I didn’t. This is the same Trader Joe’s where my mother had a public melt-down. Where they almost had to call the guys in white suits to haul her off. (Click Click if you want to read THAT blog). It happened a handful of years ago but it kind of feels like yesterday. So I quietly remind myself that I’m still alive. I’m still making music AND—here’s the big news—I’m appearing (along with a whole bunch of other musicians) in a brand new documentary called Never Too Old.

One of my longtime friends got me into the party last June when we filmed at the Long Beach Senior Center. This documentary was produced by The Recording Industry’s Music Performance Trust Fund which is part of The American Federation of Musicians. They send musicians to underserved communities around the country to share music and a whole lot of happy. The documentary gig is right up my alley. This is what I do when I’m not teaching—I sing and play ukulele for senior citizens and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

Before my performance, the crew puts me in a big high-back wicker chair that I swear feels like a throne. It goes crunch when I move so I try not to move. It’s decorated with a fat garland of plastic roses. There’s a lot of pink happening here.

We are on a second floor walkway outside the senior center and the director asks me lots of questions about performing and music and then we have to wait a few seconds as a helicopter whizzes go by…and a nearby siren stops wailing…and the car horns stop honking. You know…urban life. (Special shout out to the film editor.)

The video crew filmed in New York City, New Orleans, Long Beach and the documentary features very talented and dedicated musicians. Life-long musicians, doing such important work, changing lives, all the while hovering under the media radar. And here we are bringing the generous heart of music to communities where music really heals, really comforts and really brings us together. At least for an hour.

CLICK HERE to watch the documentary.

It runs twenty-seven minutes and I hope you will watch the whole thing because you will be inspired! I appear around minute nineteen. They have included snippets from several songs I play including two of my own tunes: Pony Ride (which is a ukulele instrumental) and This Morning Something Wonderful Happened To Me (I Woke Up).* You have to know that I am THRILLED about that. As a songwriter I’m not sure there is anything better than hearing people sing your song back to you.

I am so proud to be part of this documentary. Big record companies actually help support these Trust Fund projects. Jeez isn’t it nice to know that it isn’t always about making $$$ and getting a zillion downloads on Spotify. Music is also about serving the heart and soul of a community with something that reminds us all of our shared humanity. That we are in this together.

Maybe this really IS the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

*This Morning Something Wonderful Happened to Me is from my CD “Smile, Smile, Smile.” Available on Amazon, iTunes and CD Baby. And yes, Spotify.

13 Feb 2019

SHOWING UP

We are having a date! Husband and I are zigzagging through rain-splashy traffic for an afternoon matinee of Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood Village. It’s dog-eat-dog as he squeezes our little Honda Fit into the long line of cars entering the $4 validated parking lot next to Trader Joe’s. It may be “mellow Sunday” but it’s still a zoo out there and we will do just about anything for cheap parking in Los Angeles.

You may remember Julia Sweeney as “Pat,” the gender-bending character on Saturday Night Live, way way back in the day. Was she a boy? Was she a girl? After that stint in the limelight she wrote shows and took them on the road. They were about her life—losing her religion, losing her brother, almost losing her own life, adopting a little girl from China, marrying a scientist, settling into middle-class housewife-dom in the Midwest and today, at the age of fifty-nine, bringing her new show to Los Angeles. She calls it “Older and Wider.”

We afternoon revelers take our seats, forming an intimate semi-circle around an empty floor in the middle of the Geffen’s mini-theater room. Well it’s not quite empty. An usher brings a bottle of water and a big cup of something, places them on the stool and arranges the microphone and stand real close to the beverage supply. With no fanfare whatsoever Julia is introduced and bounces into the spotlight wearing a black jogger suit as if she too just dashed over from Trader Joe’s.

And immediately she apologizes. For her voice. She’s getting over a cold and is still hoarse and crackly and improvises on the spot about her emergency room visit. Then the microphone goes dead. Then the lighting goes funky. And this is NOT part of the show. But as the jean-clad techie rushes on stage and replaces the mic and the sound lady, whose disembodied voice is floating above, proclaims that the lighting IS the way it’s supposed to be, Julia Sweeney soldiers on. With grace and humor. She answers audience questions until the new microphone arrives. She sweetly tells the light lady “NO we need the lights turned down” and we applaud happily when that finally happens. All these distractions…and this woman “stays in the moment.”

Julia Sweeney greets the audience after her show

That is why, when Julia Sweeney makes an audience-schmooze appearance after the show, I tell her “you are such a pro.” Because it takes a pro to navigate the vagaries of doing a show, the vagaries of being in show business, the vagaries of just living your life and still grabbing onto an anchor—to something—that keeps you, well, upright. And maybe even smiling. Because you are still breathing, after all.

She weaves story after story through her ninety-minute monologue, embellishing each one with lots of ha-ha moments. But like any good storyteller, Julia Sweeney is holding up a mirror for us, so we can catch a glimpse of ourselves. When her daughter confesses that her boyfriend is “annoying,” mom declares, “everybody is annoying. E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y…” The audience is roaring, of course, because…well…DUH…

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Once upon a time The Geffen was The Westwood Playhouse, standing pretty in the shadow of UCLA, which is right across the street. I flash back to the summer of 1984 where I am the first person in line with my $25 sit-anywhere-you-can-grab-a-seat ticket to see Miss Peggy Lee. I want to be in the front row, center, close enough to see the veins in her eyeballs. She is my favorite singer.

Her combo launches into THE signature song as she s-l-o-w-l-y approaches the microphone. It’s delicious torture how she takes her time. She extends her arm towards the audience, starts snapping her fingers and sings, “Never know how much I love you…” Oh wow! This is what COOL looks like. Her platinum hair—a wig probably—is dolloped just so in a perfect pageboy—and she sings that song—Fever— like she’s singing it for the first time. What a pro!

Talk about the vagaries of life—she has traveled THAT road. Peggy Lee had a hardscrabble childhood, born in the “jazz capital” of the world—Jamestown, North Dakota. But she found a way to do what she loved—to sing and write great songs and be a star. I do think she was a “diva.” She also liked to sue people who pissed her off. Like the Muppet folks when they added a new character to their brood: A blond—it’s all about me—bombshell. With an attitude. They gave this pink fluff a familiar Midwest hardscrabble back-story and named her “Miss Piggy Lee.”

Well Peggy Lee got wind of this and called her lawyers. That is why today Kermit the Frog’s on-again, off-again paramour is known simply as Miss Piggy.*

Apparently Peggy Lee had a pre-show ritual which included knocking back a shot of cognac and letting lose with a guttural whoop before going on stage. I can only imagine she was doing that before the show I saw in 1984. Then she comes on stage and sings like there is no tomorrow.

I remember hearing someone say that the sum of his whole life has brought him to THIS moment and then THIS moment. In other words, THIS is it. Peggy Lee brought each filament of her life to THIS moment. I could hear it in her songs, see it in her face. Just as Julia Sweeney does in her show. That’s what singers and actors and comics and writers and artists DO. They hold up a mirror so WE can see ourselves…doing the same thing. SHOWING UP and landing here. Baggage included.

*Sourced from the book, Is That All There Is? The Strange Life of Peggy Lee

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SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

I’m doing my thing in my little corner of the world—teaching, doing gigs, writing songs. If you are a Southern California person and interested in my ukulele classes here’s an update:

I am starting a brand new class: Ukulele For Beginners PLUS. We need a transitional workshop for folks who already play a little but want to feel more confident and learn more goodies on the ukulele. This four-week workshop begins Saturday, March 2, 2019 at Boulevard Music in Culver City.

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My Four-Week OnGoing Ukulele Workshop & Jam is beginning a new session on Saturday, February 16, 2019 at Boulevard Music. This has morphed into an intermediate level class where we co-create song arrangements and add lots of flash and fun.

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My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, meets twice a week, Monday afternoon and Thursday morning in Culver City. Please CLICK HERE for the details.

And thank you all for being there, staying connected and coming along for the ride.

Warmly,
Cali

21 Nov 2018

QUOTABLE QUOTES

So I’m trying to clean my desk today… Those of you who have actually seen my desk and the piles of paper growing to the left, to the right, on the floor, know this endeavor is more like dream-on sucker. But I seriously want to make space, make calm. Okay, I want to know where stuff is.

There are people in this world who can grab and jettison without pause or reflection. I am not one of those people. I have to look at every little scrap before I decide on its final resting place. I had barely begun my excavation when I found a couple pages of pithy quotes–nuggets of wisdom I had gathered over the years that I’ve supposedly used in my shows.

Well… Truth be told, this is the most quotable quote I use in my shows now: “Is it hot in here or is it me?”

Not exactly Thoreau… Or Yoda.

But I want to share these quotations with you because they are like little arrows pointing at a radiant moon. Don’t get stuck on the arrows. Look at the freaking moon.

Many moons ago I dragged my sorry butt to meditation retreats. You are supposed to do some serious “letting go” at these things. Not me. I collected experiences and quotes and wrote long discourses in my spiral notebook about what I was feeling and the ah-ha moments that would change my life. I wrote fast and frantic. God knows I didn’t want to lose THAT thought. I hauled my treasures home like I’d hit the jackpot on Black Friday.

Except it doesn’t work that way. Between the time I scribbled them down at the retreat and the evening I re-read them after dinner and Wheel of Fortune they had lost their sizzle, their pizazz, their power to move me.

And that sucks.

But it’s not all bad news. Something does change, change in my wiring. Something shifts. Little bitty cracks appear that let in some light.

THAT’S the treasure.

Not the words, not the stuff. It’s the sweet, potent residue they leave behind in our hearts. Something to remember as I fill up the Hefty Bags today.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Author Archives: Cali Rose

Happy Thanksgiving!