Laurel Massé

Have a beer with St. Brigid and God!

 Brid agus Muire dhuit!

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare, to whom I have a special devotion. Patron saint of poets and brewers, of healers and midwives (and, along with Patrick and Columba, of Ireland itself), she was strong and gentle, prayerful and practical. St. Brigid worked miracles: my favorite is the healing of a blind Sister so that she could see the beauty of a sunset. To ease the thirst of lepers, she once turned a tub of bathwater into a tub of excellent beer. She was called Mary's Nurse, meaning that she helped Mary with the infant Jesus (a Time Lord!). Like so many of the great saints, she was as earthy and real as soil and water, and as wild as fire and air.

The following 10th century poem has been attributed to her:

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God.
I'd love the heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I'd love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I'd give them
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer
To every man.

I'd make Heaven a cheerful spot
Because the happy heart is true.
I'd make the men contented for their own sake.
I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around.
I'd give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women and God
There by the lake of beer.
We'd be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

 

In my mind's ear, I can hear this woman laughing, and singing, her voice husky, her eyes shining. How could I keep from loving her?

For my solo album, Feather and Bone, I adapted traditional prayers collected by Alexander Carmichael in Scotland in the 1800s and composed Radiant Flame of Gold, a prayer to Brigid. Here is the track, with the sorely-missed Layne Redmond, and Tommy B on frame drums. I pray it in my times of trouble, and for others in theirs: Download 09 Radiant Flame of Gold

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each day,

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each night.

I am under the keeping of the nurse of Mary

Each early and late, every dawn, every light.

 

To learn more about St. Brigid, start here. To purchase Feather and Bone, send me a Facebook message here.

 

Rainy day, dream away

Another grey day. What to do? Even I can drink only so much tea. Mrs. Peel strolled into her little carry crate hours ago, curled up in a ball, and went to sleep. The crate is in my office, with its door always open; she likes to nestle there when I am at the computer. And indeed, I have been at the computer, trying to create and maintain an illusion called Getting Things Done. Things are never completely Done, especially when I am distracted. I miss my friends in England. In fact, I miss England.

I might need a scone.

A scone is, to me, what a madeleine was to Proust, and what the Tardis is to Dr. Who. But, there is no scone in this apartment, and there is no scone in this neighborhood, either. Without one, how else do I visit England in dream-quick time? It's actually easy.

Poets speak of "the wings of song", and for good reason.

Off I go, with two of my favorite British singers:

June Tabor...

 

...and Maddy Prior.

 

I'm back. The NY skies may still be grey, there may still be no scone, but the scent of the rain is sweeter, and the inspiration, bright.

About that painting up top.... That will be me and Mrs. Peel, in another 50 years or so.

 

 

Deep in the heart of Texas

Do not pass "go". And do not wait. Just trot right over to my friend Paul Overton's blog at Every Day is Awesome. If you tend toward tears when in the presence of beauty and noble actions, have a hanky handy.

 

 

 

"There was a star danced, and under that was I born"

Today we honor what might or might not have been (where have I heard almost that exact phrase before?) the birthday of William Shakespeare, who showed us the whole world, and ourselves in it, in a wooden Globe. Even though the weather's reminiscent of the third act of King Lear, under my umbrella I am singing Happy Birthday to the Bard.

However, because the first Globe Theatre caught fire during a performance in 1613, I think it best to refrain from putting four hundred and forty-seven flaming candles atop the cake.

 

But mark you this! Hamlet brought a cake, too! And it's chocolate!

 

 

A second cup, my dears?

Reader Ernest has reminded me of something I left out of yesterday's post about the proppa cuppa tea, something that is is yet another link in the chain that leads to a truly discouraging brew in most restaurants here in this coffee-centric culture. Remember that the water used to make your tea often runs through the coffee machine to be heated. Remember that black tea needs boiling water poured on it. Remember also that coffee machines heat water to below the boiling point, so the hottest that water is ever going to be is not hot enough, and  - what I failed to include - the too-small mug it's poured into is usually a heavy ceramic thing, and has not been warmed. Say bye-bye to a few more degrees of heat. I would have included this, but I was already lying on the floor, whimpering.

However, now that I am writing this postscript, I really should also introduce the microwave issue. When microwave ovens first came into use, it was thought they might be a danger to pregnant women. That seems to have been addressed, and the things are everywhere. I have friends who almost never use their stoves anymore. And I have friends who, on offering me tea, fill a mug with water, plonk in a teabag, and thrust it into the microwave to boil (or not boil, depending on what the thing is set for).

I have noticed that tea thus prepared does not taste the same as it does when steeped in water boiled in a stovetop or electric kettle. It's not quite the same color, either; the rich brown I expect becomes a little greyish. I thought for a while this was because microwaving does something to the tea. So I did an experiment, using several different microwaves (thank you to my tolerant and amused friends!). I heated the water only. Just the water in a clean cup. Here's what happens: put in a teabag, and get greyish-brown tea that does not taste the same, even when I use my beloved Yorkshire Gold as a control.

It is true that putting the tea on top of the water isn't really the done thing. Pouring the water onto the tea is what I do at home, so I have done that, too, with microwaved boiling H²O. It still brews up grey. It still tastes... funny. I am convinced that microwaving changes the water itself.

Do we find this acceptable? Ermmm, not really, no. We do not.

Of course, if Parliament had not enacted the Tea Act in 1773, things might be different here. One might be able to get good tea in an American restaurant. Instead, it's coffee everywhere. Coffee made its way to Europe and thence to the American colonies from the African and the Middle Eastern countries of Ethiopia, Egypt and Yemen, and is also a very admirable beverage. It had a big popularity surge during the American Revolution because of that Tea Act, and we've been hooked on it ever since... far longer than we've been mainlining oil from roughly the same part of the world.

 

A proppa cuppa - one woman's opinion

When I run for president - in my next life, of course - I will have a very short agenda. If you are serving black tea, use boiling water when you make it. Simple, yes?

Apparently not. Unless I go to a dedicated tea room, like the slice of sassy British heaven that is Tea and Sympathy here in Manhattan, the aromatic, magical potion that results from pouring boiling water into Yorkshire Gold and letting it steep for the proper amount of time is not what I am going to see coming toward me when I order tea at a restaurant.

I have been a drinker of the sacred beverage since I was ten, and I cut my tea-teeth in Solihull, England, at the daily afternoon break at St. Martin's School for Girls. It was a strong black brew, whitened with whole milk, and sweetened, if you liked it that way. "If you are cold, tea will warm you," said William Gladstone. "If you are too heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are exhausted, it will calm you."  Tea at St. Martin's did all that, and set the imprint for what I expect from a cuppa: flavour, heat, energy, and something a little more intangible: gentling.

Let me make it clear that I am talking about tea made from the tea plant, camelia sinensis. Herb tea is made with herbs other than real tea. Confused? Not surprising. It's a simple failure of language. In French - and perhaps in other languages, but French is the one I know - thé is made with real tea, and herb teas (infusions made with herbs, not tea) are called tisanes. It makes sense to have two different words, because most of the time the two are not prepared in quite the same way.

Flavour starts with providing a good black tea to begin with. This tea will not say Lipton on the box. Nor will it say Bigelow, Stash, or the name of an American chain supermarket (I am talking about you, Key Foods!). I'm personally not all that fond of Twinings (as sold in the States) either, because it always seems so, oh, trying hard but too weak in the end to get the job done. My current favourite is Yorkshire Gold, a rich, malty blend that helps me sit a little straighter and think a little faster, and restores my optimism. If there is a good tea and coffee purveyor in your town, you'll be able to get beyond brand names into loose teas from all over the world, and will end up knowing more than I do about the stuff.

Now, dry tea tastes like sticks and leaves (a dry tea bag tastes like sticks, leaves, and paper). You need water, boiling water, to unlock the flavours of black tea. What this means, to the weary traveler, is that one can almost never get a good cup of tea in a restaurant south of the Canadian border, because most of the time the water used has been heated by running it through the coffee maker. Coffee makers are set to heat water to just below the boiling point, because coffee is appalled by boiling water. So it's never going to be hot enough. Then the water, hot-ish and smelling faintly of coffee filters, is poured into a too-small mug, and the mug, with a tea bag (Lipton, most likely) next to it, is brought to the table. Let me recap: it wasn't hot enough to begin with, it's less hot now, and the consummation devoutly to be wished, water and tea together in cup, still hasn't happened. 

One drops the tea bag into the cup and waits; the cold, weak brew that results is just plain discouraging. One may drink it, but why? In fact, why bother with anything? It's all so hopeless, really. Nothing matters.

One is hard-pressed to Get Up And Get On With It.

Furthermore, if it is a gentling of the buffeting winds of life that one was hoping for, and that same sense of being cherished that had extended from teacher Miss Waugh as she poured tea for this little newcomer to a school, a community, and a country... well, it just can't happen. None of the necessary ingredients are present: not the good tea, not the boiling water, not the trusting nature of childhood, and not Miss Waugh.

Therefore, I've resolved that henceforth I shall travel with a little electric kettle and a stash of good tea so that, when it's All Too Much, I can fill that kettle, boil the water, and, conjuring a sweet and personal past, brew some smashing tea, knowing that I wlll, no matter where I am, find therein the strength to Carry On.

A taste of honey

There is a grocery store near my apartment, part of a chain of average quality. It's where I go when I am tired, or time is pressing me hard, or the weather is bad. But today, because the sun was shining so as to make glad the heart, I took a longer excursion, and walked down the big hill to a place called Garden Gourmet.  The staff is friendly, the produce is quite fine, there is a pleasing selection of cheeses, and and I am often surprised by finding something for which I didn't know I was searching.

Today I came around a corner, and found myself standing in front of a shelf of Greek imported foods.

There were tall bottles of green olive oil, bags of dried fava beans, jars of dark-gold honey, cans labeled with pictures of the Acropolis and Greek lettering in blue that for all I know said "Temple-in-a Tin". On a whim, I put a jar of the honey in my basket.

 When I'd hiked back up the hill to my apartment, I brewed a pot of tea, and while letting it steep, put the groceries away. Then I opened the honey and dipped a silver spoon into the liquid amber. It tasted sweet on my tongue. All of a sudden (as Mark says so often in his gospel), I was in a small hotel dining room in Athens. I had risen at dawn, and slipped downstairs alone to breakfast. Coffee, pungent and grainy, was served in a small cup. In a white bowl before me was unsweetened yogurt, thick from having been strained, and creamy with all the butterfat of the good milk it was made from, and a fresh fig, halved. A little pot of honey was set before me; I drizzled a spoonful atop the yogurt, and took a bite.  Now, I'd tasted exquisite yogurts in my life, and lovely honeys, but nothing quite like this. I could smell flowers, and thyme, and pine trees. I could almost hear the bees. I finished my meal in a trance of sensual pleasure and contentment, in a dream of a summer day, in the making of a memory so potent that thirty years later, in the snow-covered Bronx, it could take me back to that morning in one sweet taste.

That was just my breakfast in Greece. I haven't even begun to talk about...

     



... the light!

Monday morning musing

Yesterday it rained. Today it will rain. It has been raining for two weeks, and that's a lot of grey sky, and a lot of weather to be under. My cat Bobby is doing the sensible thing: sleeping until the sun comes out. I am having a cup of tea, and letting my mind roam in a sort of "puzzley puzzley wonder why" (a John Lennon coinage, as I recall) about a lot of things, in no particular order.

Will the New York Times ever review me?

What would be the state of the world if those of us who claim to be following Christ actually did?

When you fall through a crack, do you land on something, or do you fall forever?

Manhattan is not a very big island - why can't it be car-free?

What exactly is the problem with universal health care?

Was Little Feat really a better band when Lowell was alive? Or did it just have Lowell?

Why are the arts so poorly-supported in this country? Is this somehow related to the health care question? I mean, is there someone actually deciding who and what deserves life and who and what does not? Based on what criteria?

Why are people who are incapable of returning phone calls hired to book venues?

What would happen if I went down into the subway and just started singing what is in my heart?

What would happen if I did the same at a cathedral?

How much longer will the watermelon be sweet this season?

How does one truly surrender?

Will I ever get a handwritten letter again?

Will the New York Times review the JaLaLa cd?

How do we really feel about Facebook? Isn't it a little "let us be your entire universe" creepy?

What's in the refrigerator for dinner?

Untroubled by these and many other questions, Bobby's still sleeping. All his needs are attended to (in aforementioned refrigerator there is lots of cat food, and he has trained me to execute a complicated behavior chain - go to fridge, open same, remove jar of food, close fridge, remove lid from jar, get spoon, put food on spoon, convey food to dish, place dish on floor, put lid back on jar, place jar in fridge, close fridge) and in return he has only to keep breathing, and be himself. He doesn't even have to heel.

Verily, I tell you, it's the cat's meow.

 

Good to the last drop

Special thanks to my friend C.J., who recently sent me a care package from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I now have Community Coffee New Orleans blend (dark roast coffee mixed with chicory) in the house, and, more importantly, in the cup. This is the best way I know to start the day. Brew this, add hot milk, and darlin', it's a good morning even if a cold rain is falling and the rent is due. Merci, cher!

I start every day with coffee and a prayer and music. I used to take my dog Shadow out for a walk every morning, and before him, Shekinah, and before her, Sonya. I got Sonya in 1978, and she died in 1990. A year later, Kinah came charging into my life, and then Shadow asked to be mine, too. So I have lived with dogs almost continuously since 1978. Twenty-eight years. And now, not. It's a big change. I am having to create far more of a new life than I had imagined. New rituals. I could use some suggestions. What works for you?