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Okay, I’m a middle-aged white woman. I look like somebody’s mother because I AM somebody’s mother. I don’t look the least bit mean or intimidating. Friends and even complete strangers (delivery customers) worry about my safety. Justifiably so, it seems. When we were trained, the manager assured us casually we’d be robbed sooner or later.

Some nights do have spooky moments. My phone loses reception in all the worst places. One street started off okay, nice little ranch-style houses, a streetlight or two. But before the numbers counted down to my appointed destination, the road petered out into gravel. The last streetlight was busted. My headlights illuminated further down the road, where the gravel ended and the rutted red clay track led uphill and out of sight. Read more...

Cascades of purple flowers perfumed the air every time I got out of my car. It smelled like jasmine, delicious, mysterious. It took me a couple days to find it.  The pizza store is swimming in a sea of asphalt, with a six-lane interstate behind it. But the wisteria grabbed onto a little patch of dirt and climbed daringly on the understructure of the highway, vines and blossoms drooping down, making a magical bower just to the right of the rusty trash dumpster.

Magic happens everywhere. At the stop light on the corner, a girl and her guy were in an older car, the kind with a bench seat in the front. As the light turned green, she leaned over to kiss him and he leaned forward too, trying to turn the car and kiss at the same time.  They were both laughing. Call me sappy if you like. Spring is beautiful.
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Three days after I started delivering pizzas it was Super Bowl Sunday. Boy, did I have the jitters. I just knew it would be a crazy night; I envisioned coming home with piles of cash. About seven drivers were lined up to work, and we were all poised for action hours before kick-off.

As it turned out, most folks in our delivery area decided to pick up their pies. From the comments I heard, customers didn't have a lot of confidence in our ability to get pizzas delivered. Our store had had pretty steady driver turnover. Nobody told me exactly why, but it probably had something to do with low tips and/or driver dangers. So I only delivered to five or six people on Super Bowl Sunday 2010.

It made me start thinking about who eats what. Sometimes you can guess at what type of community it is by looking at the food for sale. Like, a college area might favor restaurant/bar combos, or a swanky suburb might sport sushi and high-end chain restaurants. Since our delivery area cuts through six or seven different neighborhoods, I get to gather little clues about everybody’s eating habits. Read more...

I don’t care if you think I’m nuts, I think pizzas could change the world.

I tell people I’ve got the greatest job in the world, because everybody’s always happy to see me. Even the dogs. I’ve delivered pies to ritzy houses in secluded neighborhoods, cottages tucked away in the woods, homes with the ceiling falling in. They’re all glad I’m there, bearing pizza and wings. They’re hungry. Arguments stop, telephone calls end, people gather, if only for a brief moment, around the pizza box. They might even exchange a smile or send a blessing up to heaven and around the room.

It’s great fun to imagine stories behind every door. Sometimes they’re obvious. A beautiful woman with a week-old baby and two girls under ten. Of course cooking dinner was out of the question. There was the late night pizza delivered to a darkened house, a hushed living room, a single lamp pooling light over an adding machine and a pile of receipts. Tax time. The lady in her bathrobe was clearly exhausted; she deserved a snack. Read more...

On my way into the Wright Center Friday night, I bumped into my violist friend, Sharon.  "That's right," she said.  "You LOVE Mozart."  You may or may not remember from previous articles and blog entries, but yes, Sharon, I sure do.

I left my friend on the steps to wait for her husband and entered the Wright Center with mine for the first time since I've moved to Birmingham.  I have been to operas here before, a few years ago, but only at the Alabama Theatre.  Settling into the more austere space of the Wright Center challenged the aesthetics of all my prior opera experiences and for the first few moments, I was completely distracted. 

But then the music began. Read more...

Some pieces are a delight to hear in a live setting, helping the listener to develop a deeper connection with the music being played and a better understanding of the composer, the time it was composed.  Last night's performace of Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin by the ASO was precisely this kind of experience.  This is piece I've heard a hundred times over, and though I love some of Ravel's other works, Le Tombeau never quite captured my imagination.  Perhaps it was the mastery of Thomas Wilkins, whose lithe conducting style wove him seamlessly in and out of the music coming from the musicians in front of him.  Wilkins body is one with his conductor's wand, his kind face expressive and measured as he conducts.  His leadership is altogether holistic.  Read more...

I took part in Media of Birmingham's panel disussion about Birmingham media's future in the digital era. The panelists were myself, Joe O'Donnell of b-metro and Ty West of Birmingham Business Journal.  The panel was moderated by Birmingham View's Vickii Howell.  Read more...

The hour-long drama that romanced the world five seasons ago, has beaten me down, lifted me up, tricked me and confused me so many times that I have now entered into a complete and pitiful numbness.

Because of my background in marketing and writing, I watch television with a keen awareness of story lines, plot twists, suspense builders and commercial placement. (Yeah I know it's totally lame, but I can't help it, okay!)  Watching Lost is like watching all of those story elements strung out on heroine.  The exploitation and manipulation of emotions that ABC puts into this show is the most obvious display of cheap that I have ever witnessed.  The reason this show has such amazing ratings is because the writers and producers have learned how to manipulate and exploit the human psyche.  The system worked successfully for a while, but eventually weakened when the writers started running out of ideas. Read more...

In addition to being a writer and editor, I am a songwriter.  I have two bands that are currently active:  Teen Getaway and Delicate Cutters.  I have been writing songs since I was about ten.  I had my first garage band when I was fourteen, my first band that actually played shows and recorded albums at fifteen.  I have found that wherever I am in life, music has been what keeps me sane. 

I guess, in keeping with the theme of this issue, that I could sort of describe music as my sanctuary, huh?  I mean, I never feel more MYSELF than when I am playing a show.  That is a very deep and abstract self.  I am connected to myself through writing, learning, walking, baking, and being with my loved ones, but that ineffible, abstract self that is constant and singular is performer Janet.  Read more...

My favorite yogic breathing exercise is breathing in for 1-2-3-4, holding it in for 1-2-3-4 and breathing out for 1-2-3-4.  It forces you to pay attention.  It keeps you accountable for every second of breath and it helps achieve what is so difficult to achieve in meditation, stillness.

I first attempted meditation in high school.  I'd read some book that offered a beginners meditation practice in which the meditator focuses on the flame of a candle in a dark room.  So I lit a candle, turned the lights off and I sat down in a half lotus position determined to master this meditation thing.

I did not master that meditation thing. Read more...