The bad and good

Must write a little before I settle in to work, which has become psychologically more difficult recently. It is crunch time; there's been team talk. There's been talk of nights and weekends. The supervisor breezed in from Texas last Friday, two days late because she had a stomach flu, and we got plastic rulers decorated with peppers and the Alamo. She told stories that were supposed to be humorous and human, but I wasn't buying it.

Some of my coworkers -- bless them -- smiled and nodded. Bless them. Maybe they believe. Maybe they have unflinching warmth and humanity. Maybe they were born to test.

What do we do? Let me say it. We make tests for children we don't know in states we don't live in. We make them based on some claim to industry knowledge -- the assessment industry is still rather small (and lucrative) -- and based on documents created by boards of education that specify (usually clumsily) what should be known. A whole floor here is based on tests; a whole floor here is profiting from No Child Left Behind. And we are a nonprofit. An educational nonprofit. Seriously -- how much does it cost to fly her here and put her in the Marriot for two weeks?

Basta. I'm not supposed to think these things, and certainly not allowed to say them. (And yet, and yet -- vocational suicide . . . How often I've been tempted, throughout my life. As an accompanist, I longed for carpal tunnel. As a video store manager, I longed for that old wiring to spark a fire.)

I had forgotten already, but last Wednesday I heard Maddaline sing again. Not my favorite, as I whispered to B., but still, still. Two different songs. She means a lot to me, like David Letterman. I could watch him every night, or I can be happy just knowing he's there. I could see Maddaline every Monday and Wednesday night . . . But I like to go as life allows, and I like to sit and wait, never knowing when there will be a break from the open mic and she will perform by herself, or if I've just missed her songs.

Maybe that's their secret. They are the extraordinary in the every day. Dave appears every damn night; it's just a late night talk show, decades old. But he brings to that old-fashioned and mainstream institution such a peculiar comic genius. Maddaline performs in random bars stretching from San Francisco to Carmel, and she spends most of her time playing for people who become giddy singers for just a couple songs a week. And then, in a loud crowded bar . . . people are talking and drinking . . . a passionate genius appears for a few short minutes, then disappears again behind the piano and someone else's voice.