verbatim

Schoooool's ... out ... for ... the Summer!

Finally, finally, yesterday was the last day of school! (But not forever, Alice Cooper nothwithstanding.)

Julie "graduated" from elementary school amid the usual storm of silly string that marks the countdown of the last 10 seconds of fifth grade:

I was weeping like a baby, which is normal for me but even more intense than usual because this was also our last day ever at this beloved neighborhood school! For the past 11 years, I have walked back and forth to school two or sometimes three times a day, dropping off kids, picking up kids, having PTO meetings, volunteering in the library or the office or the classroom, going on field trips, and just generally being a part of the community. Next fall I'm going to have to invent a reason to get dressed every morning—otherwise I can imagine the kids coming home on the bus every afternoon to find Mom hard at work but still in her jammies!

Pete, meanwhile, had his own graduation: from middle school! They had an eighth grade "moving on" ceremony, but my photo of Pete receiving his certificate is too blurry to post here. (Yes, that does mean he'll be in high school next year—gulp!) Julie will be in middle school next year, so I don't have to say goodbye to the middle school yet. (Although even in three years that won't be a very emotional parting; as much as I love the school, I'm rarely there. The kids take the bus each way, and the only thing I do there is volunteer every other week in the library.)

Steph had the least momentous promotion, from tenth to eleventh grade, but she did manage an impressive achievement: She made the Honor Roll every term this year!

Steph lucked out that she had no finals the last three days of school, because she had to start her summer job on Monday! She's a junior counselor at a local day camp, and she's already loving it. Pete and Julie will go to a different day camp, but not until mid-July. As for the next few weeks, if the last 24 hours are any indication, Julie will be doing artsy-craftsy stuff every day and Pete will vanish. I've seen him for perhaps 15 minutes since he got out of school yesterday at 11:30—he's been off gallivanting with his friends, stopping home only for a sleeping bag last night at 7pm.

Still Here!

Hey, remember me, your blogger? I'm still here, and hoping you are too.

I've been crazy busy with work and end-of-school activities (no, we're still not done for three more days, if you can believe it!). Every day there seems to be some special event I need to attend or, at the very least, five or ten things that need my carpooling expertise. I'm very much looking forward to waking up on a day when there's absolutely nothing on the calendar. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I just finished up work on two vegan cookbooks (the irony is not lost on this omnivore) and am about to begin work on Michael Ruhlman's next cookbook, yay! In the meantime, I'm editing a non-cookbook for a change, and this project is a doozy. It's a twentieth-anniversary look at both Schindler's List and the Shoah Foundation, which Steven Spielberg founded in an effort to document the testimonials of as many Holocaust survivors as possible. Twenty years ago, when he was filming Schindler's List in Poland, Spielberg was approached numerous times by people who told him, "This is my story." He recognized the need to document these people's stories—and soon, as time was running out for many of them. As soon as he finished work on Schindler's List, he founded the Shoah Foundation, and within just a few years was able to videotape the testimonials of some 52,000 Holocaust survivors. So this book I'm editing consists of both a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film and the story of the Shoah Foundation, which was the legacy of the film. It's fascinating, and I have access to the coolest collection of photos, but it's also emotionally draining, and I find I can't work on it for too long before I need a break. Heavy stuff. It was a movie, yes, but it was based on the true story of the 1,100 people this one man saved (known as the Schindlerjuden). He was a complex, flawed man, but he did not question or run when he saw what had to be done. To quote the verse from the Talmud that the Schindlerjuden engraved on a ring when they had to bid farewell to Oskar Schindler, “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” There are now more than 7,000 children and grandchildren of the Schindlerjuden, all of whom can trace their very existence to the selfless acts of this one soul.

The One Where We Go Away Overnight

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell the ones that need to know
We are headed north....

I know you guys are sick and tired of hearing about all our exciting vacations and outings—I mean, after all, wasn't it just TWO YEARS AGO that we headed up to Portland, Maine, to see the Avett Brothers? Yes, it's true, just TWO YEARS LATER, we took another kid-free overnight, this time to see the Avetts in Gilford, New Hampshire (up near Lake Winnipesaukee). 

I had bought the concert tickets months ago, figuring we'd work out the details later. So then when it was time to find a place to stay overnight, I learned that every single place in the area (and there are a million and one little B&Bs and inns and actual hotels in the area) was booked. Huh? I kept widening the radius of my search, and finally ended up with a room in Portsmouth, which is about 50 miles away! But Portsmouth is lovely, so I grabbed it.

We later found out why everything was booked solid up there: In the nearby town of Laconia, it was Bike Week, the oldest motorcycle rally in the country. OH. MY. GOD. And that is all I'll say.

So, Saturday we drove up to Portsmouth, stopping off in Kittery, Maine, for some lobster rolls and a (very) little bit of outlet shopping (got some cute lowball glasses at the Crate & Barrel outlet). Then we checked in, and soon enough, headed back out. I had Googled to find a place for dinner in Laconia (yes, before we knew about Bike Week), outside of Gilford. Once we drove past all the bikers, we came to Tavern 27, which is a sweet little tapas place in the middle of nowhere. We sat at the hammered-copper bar and shared some lovely dishes and a yummy Malbec. We split a Caesar Salad (with quite a kick of something hot in the dressing!), some positively amazing Duck Confit Rolls (two steamed and two fried, with both sweet chili and ginger sauces), and then a really delicious Chicken BLT Bocadillo (open-face sandwich). Two other couples at at the bar were going to the concert too!

The Bank of New Hampshire Pavillion, known simply as Meadowbrook, is a huge concert venue. They seat 8000 and have several bars and restaurants on the premises. We had great seats!

The opening act was Old Crow Medicine Show. I love them and have all of their CDs, but I'd never seen them live. Wow. I know that if you ask Andy, he will say that he enjoyed them even more than the Avetts, and I'd be hard-pressed to pick myself. I don't know how to describe OCMS if you don't know them—they play old-timey music (complete with fiddles, banjos, etc., just like the Avetts), but it's not old-fashioned music. What a show they put on! Their amazing frontman/ songwriter is Ketch Secor, who is also incredibly handsome and charismatic, has a great singing voice, and plays the fiddle like nobody's business, as well as the banjo and guitar, and is maybe the best harmonica player I've ever seen live. The other Old Crows, Critter Fuqua and Chance McKoy and the rest, are all impeccable musicians. They did all of my favorites, including "Take 'em Away," "Cocaine Habit," and "Caroline," and of course "Wagon Wheel" (which you may remember me waxing rhapsodic about a while back). In fact, here's someone's homemade video taken during that song at last night's show! If you don't know OCMS, that is a good place to get started. Oh, and they also did a swell bluegrassified cover of  "American Girl."

So then my boys came out, and they did not disappoint. However, I will say that a bunch of the songs they chose for their set list were not my favorites. But ... that balances out because the #1 song I most wanted to hear was "Laundry Room" (perhaps the most romantic song ever about teen love) and they did that, and I never would've dared dream that they'd also do "November Blue," but they did. Awesome. 

But then ... THEN! For the encore, OCMS came back out to do two songs with Scotty and Sethy (and Bobby C. on the fiddle and of course Joe Kwon on the cello)! They did a cover of "Wild Horses" and then "The Girl I Left Behind," which I didn't recognize but sounds like a traditional hootenanny-type song. Watch this one, really. I was already standing and dancing and jumping and clapping, so there was little else to do but fly through the air.

The only thing I want to add here is that there were A LOT OF REALLY DRUNK PEOPLE at this concert, and that made me feel kind of bad. 

We then drove all the way back to Portsmouth and fell asleep, then woke up and got yummy muffins at Ceres Bakery—and they had PG Tips, which made me happy beyond belief, because I always travel with my tea but had forgotten it this time, and it was the first time I've ever seen PG Tips in America outside of my or my in-laws' home. We enjoyed our breakfast in a little park down by the water (did I mention that the weather just happened to be about as good as it gets around here?) and then walked around for a while, poking into all of the cute shops. We decided to have lunch at Surf, which has a little balcony right on the water. I really enjoyed my fish tacos.

And then back home we went to greet our children, who had been having their own fun with Andy's parents. The girls went to the Red Sox game Saturday afternoon; Pete, meanwhile, had a soccer game. (Of course the one game all season that we missed, he bent a corner kick right into the goal, just like Beckham. Ah well.) Then they all went out to dinner in the North End (Boston's "Little Italy"), where they ate all the pasta, then followed that up by eating all the gelato and all the cannolis, so don't bother going there until stocks are replenished. Then the next morning they went out for brunch and ate even more.

And now we are all back home and not so ready to start a normal week tomorrow morning....

Take Five

I'm swamped with work—some cool stuff I'll tell you about soon enough—and busy with all the kids' end-of-year stuff, but here are a few choice tidbits to tide you over until I have time to compose a proper post:

1. Remember a while back when I was mulling over the various Fenway Park vendors, and which would be the best gig? Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks about such things.

2. Today the USPS issued these sublime Johnny Cash stamps—I plan to snag some for myself tomorrow.

3. If you are a fan of crosswords puzzles or magic or, like me, both, you are in for a treat when you watch David Kwong's amazing feat.

4. This is so many shades of awesome: OK Go performed the same song hundreds of times (223 takes!) while NPR Music's Tiny Desk department moved from their old headquarters to the new facility. Carl Kasell's cameo was the best part.

5. I scored 3780 on the Merriam-Webster "Name That Thing" Quiz on my first try but haven't tried again. How'd you do?