Tales of the Blonde Shikseh

2011-09-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

You'll probably have to click on this to make it large enough to read.

Menelaos describes in the Odyssey how Helen walked around the wooden horse, patting it, and imitating the wives of the Achaians after she tells a story about how helpful she'd been to him when Odysseus slipped into Troy in disguise.

I was discussing how difficult making this cartoon was with my husband, because my parents' marriage wasn't like this and neither was his parents' marriage. Bob had to even give me pointers on nagging (when I asked him if he'd like to be "nagged" about something to remind him) - and I've already forgotten them. If it weren't for television sitcoms, we'd be totally lost.

The Better Life

2011-07-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

A recent e-mail from my (Republican, of course) U. S. Senator said something about the American Dream of one's children having a better life than the parents. On face value, this looks like something reasonable. Don't all parents (except the psychotic ones, and there are quite a few of those around) want Better for their children? What the e-mail was aiming at was another better and blisteringly hot and surging economy where each generation is able to earn mo' money, mo' money than the previous one.

I thought we learned this lesson in the 60s and 70s when the boomer children turned on, dropped out, and forsook the values of their parents - which drove their parents totally wild. [In the interest of discretion, I will admit to having been a Young Republican and missing out on all of that somehow. But I saw it happening, if only by being documented in the popular culture of the day - AKA sitcoms, etc.] Even today I see Boomer parents looking on in disbelief as their children avoid the Professions or any full-time work that involves Benefits. People who sweated through years of collecting bachelors and masters degrees see their kids, those that actually went to and finished college, waiting tables or travelling around the world camping out on strangers' sofas. Many of these parents don't understand why these kids are happy.

It strikes me that this particular American Dream was the one where the parents escaped a war-torn geography or totalitarianism and worked hard so that their kids could have the freedom to decide what they wanted to be. A few of those children may have decided to go on and be financial or industrial moguls, but you can only have so many of those, even in America. If the American Dream is for your children to be rich beyond your wildest dreams, then you have a sad, sad imagination.

I'm not an economist or know anything about math for that matter, but it's common sense to me that an economy cannot grow endlessly. I have finally accepted the fact that our economy is based on the endless manufacture and purchase of shit. If we stopped buying shit, our world would collapse. If we don't stop manufacturing shit, we're going to drown in it. I don't see a way out of this conundrum. If my dad taught me anything, it was the Law of Diminishing Returns. If being a woman has taught me anything, it's that things go in cycles. Yes, the economy has a downturn, but it comes back up again. Then it goes down again. We cannot keep making it go up. All we can do is protect ourselves for the times when it goes down. That may mean protecting people we think don't deserve a hand-out, but that's not our call because when it comes to Stuff, we can't be trusted. We turn into the formerly docile chimps suddenly fighting over bananas.

People are greedy. Don't argue with me. Some may be less greedy than others, but it's programmed into us for when we need it to survive. However, if we aren't starving, we should leave that tool in the box. If you have shelter and enough to eat, you are doing well. In a civilized society, you shouldn't have to worry about not having food or shelter. If you have more than one house (and I'm speaking as someone who does have more than one house, but would like to get rid of one of them - let me know if you need one), you have excess shelter. If you, like I, have trouble deciding whether to have Ginger Delight with Pork and Thai iced tea or Keema Mattar and Chai for dinner, then you have an excess of food. If you begrudge anyone else having any of your excess, you are greedy. If you have five houses and wonder which country to have dinner in and you still begrudge anyone having any of your excess, then you are a hopeless bastard.

Where did this dislike of paying taxes come from? In all my years with my parents, I never heard any bellyaching about paying taxes or where it was going. You think a Republican apple fell from a Democratic tree? Guess again. They would get all excited about Republican candidates [that is, until Reagan]. My parents were middle-class people with a single income and two kids. We were raised to value Fiscal Responsibility at home. You don't come much tighter with a penny than Depression Era parents. You bought a house you could pay for, not the biggest you could afford. [ In her later years my mother wondered if that were a mistake. I wish I could tell them now that it wasn't.] Taxes were not the issue. "Tax" was not a bad word.

The only problem I have with paying taxes is the forms. They're so needlessly complicated. I used to solve that problem by organizing all my 1099s and forms and pour myself a big glass of bourbon. I figure that if I don't have a problem paying taxes, then rich people shouldn't either.

I also don't believe that rich people create jobs. I think people with ideas create jobs. Rich people only create ideas to hold onto what they've got: tax loopholes, Political Action Committees, Credit Default Swaps, etc. Those things don't help anyone but rich people and then when some of their ideas go bad, everyone suffers.

So what is the American Dream?

I think the kids know: it's the freedom to find what you really want to be doing, what you really do well. It's being free to be yourself, to love and be loved by someone of your choosing. It's giving everyone else the same consideration. It's having enough money to pay your fair share of taxes to keep that Dream available to everyone, maybe.

Sunday Afternoon Humanist Meeting

2011-07-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

First of all, we meet on a Sunday, and I think that's just hilarious.

I had tried to nudge the online conversation toward "Lying" because we'd been talking about "Good" and "Bad" and when they finally bit, I was totally unprepared. So, here's the exchange between Husbob and me:

M: Quick! Who's the Apostolic Father who said lying was always wrong?!
H: Ummm, ummmm, ummmm - would you know it if I said it?
M: Yeah, yeah!
H: [Goes through a quick succession of names I don't recognize as being it.]
M: Maybe it wasn't an Apostolic Father.
H: Was it in Ehrman's book?
M: Yeah, yeah!
H: [Heads off for the bedroom.]
M: Oh, do you have it?
H: [From bedroom] I thought I did. I don't see it. Where is it?
M: [Helplessly watching the chat morph into something else as I start gesticulating in the direction the book should be.]
H: [Gazes dumbly at my wild gesticulations.]
M: AW, SHHHHUGAR! THE INTERNET'S GONE INTERMITTENT ON ME!!! Umm, thataway - Shelves. Counter. Stack of books.
H: [Returns with book.] Oh, this is helpful; you've marked it.
M: Have I?
H: Well, you've marked a lot of things in here. St. Augustine?
M: That's it! That's it! Starts with an "A"!!!
H: He says it's never, never, ever okay to lie.
M: [Starts typing even though that ship has sailed.]
H: That's not a direct quote ...
M: Close enough!!

Mental Health Day

2011-04-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

I was put in mind of something this morning that I thought I could blog about. It was going to be a really insightful and well-written piece (unlike the posts below, no doubt) and then I got in the car and it all drained out. "There are," as Phyllis Diller said, "no excuses but there are plenty of reasons." Apparently, the ~~rickets~~ ~~hives~~ ~~rieslings~~ ~~hanggliders~~ [damn!] shingles have odd effects on the brain. These effects are supposed to disappear along with the rash and I was reassured that it was not dementia.

I don't recall mentioning dementia to the doctor. Now I wonder what I sounded like to him. I have had trouble remembering vocabulary for quite a while. I always have to ask my husband for a word that I'm stuck on. I started blaming menopause for that after the "I've taken too many foreign languages" excuse wore out. Could have used this shingles excuse all the past year.

I'm having trouble writing and I've lost interest in reading. I've been having my husband read to me from some book he's reading, which probably annoys him by slowing him down. Cats are banned from the bedroom for now. All of this because I have ... shingles.

I blame my co-worker, Shannon. We had a lovely day together at the YMCA being ignored by hundreds of children (even the fire truck was being ignored) and chatted about stuff. Shannon has been struggling with kidney stones. By Sunday afternoon, I was having back pains. Husbob and I were on our way to Greenville for dinner and I started to squirm in the seat. Well, that's typical. I am never comfortable in that car. Why I think I can ride in it to Arizona and back is anybody's guess. I still hurt on Monday, so I went to the chiropractor and got a crunching. That night it became apparent that the pain was not the usual back pain that you can find a comfortable position to relieve, if temporarily. It was squeezing and squeezing. I started counting seconds between squeezes. It never got higher than 14.

So, Tuesday I went to the doctor and tests determined that I had a kidney infection. I was given a prescription but blubbed when they tried to give me a shot. Oh no. Stab me all over for blood as much as you want, but I had enough of the morphine shots when I had my accident. Nasty they are, painful. I was numb in my "hips" for two years after that and still cower at the dentist office. At least I have stopped crying at the dentist's. And I turned down the offer of some prescription pain meds because the last ones made me itch all over. [I called in to say I thought I was having an allergic reaction to the pain meds and they unhelpfully told me to "take some Benadryl." I slept for a week.]

Wednesday, there were some red bumps on my abdomen. Husbob thought I was having another allergic reaction. I thought it might be poison ivy, which takes a few days to crop up and I might have touched something in our yard (Poison Ivy Central), although I had no memory of doing any yard work that weekend. By Saturday, it had spread seriously and I called the pharmacist to see what she said about it and she thought the likelihood was good that it was a reaction. So I have to get the doctor-on-call and he phones in a new antibiotic prescription that I picked up 10 minutes before they closed for the weekend.

That was just as well. The first antibiotic was a nightmare of "don't take at the same time as calcium" and Husbob had to remind me when I could take what. I'm on extra calcium after losing half my para-thyroids. Two hours before or six hours after. This is like math, man. As the days wore on, and pain seemed to be all over that area and not just the squeezing kind, a new word popped into my head: ~~hinges~~ shingles. Damn! So I looked that up online. Monday morning I called the doctor and went in again. And that's what they were: shingles. So, this is a case of the shingles. Well, well. Lalalalalalalalaaa.

There is no way we can drive out west if I can't get in a swimming pool (I'm told the chlorine would be very painful) and the heat (I remember 115 degrees in Phoenix, AZ in May) would make this unbearable. Also, the antibiotic makes one sun-sensitive. No point in going 3,000 miles just to sit in a dark motel room. So, now our vacation has been put off about a week. [This is just as well. We're such slack planners.]

I'm existing on acetaminophen, hydrocortizone, antivirals and I'm doing okay. There is still discomfort, but this isn't anything like the kidney business, which must have gotten better already. I have a Get Out of Wateraerobics Free card I've deployed, but I'll have to return to the fitness center with one that says I can go back.

Noted since: Although I thought I was feeling pretty well yesterday, today I am in a lot of pain. Now I need to develop some sort of vest to wear with those frozen gel inserts because it is helping a bit to have a sack of chilly water wrapped in a tea towel on the affected area. Thanks to everyone for their sympathy!

The Making of an Atheist

2011-04-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

The hype over the penultimate Harry Potter movie made me think of the star’s professed atheism and then I imagined asking him what makes him think that at his young age (and this was a while ago, so he was a teen) he could call himself an atheist. I tried rewording it to sound more polite, “How would you respond to those who might task you if you’re a bit young to profess to atheism.” It didn’t sound much better, but then it set me thinking about how young I was when I started getting the message.

We were a church-going family. We said “Grace” at mealtime. Although my father was a Methodist, my mother was a Stealth Atheist. That is, she never mentioned it while we were growing up. She warbled the hymns each Sunday (while my dad boomed a bass line he probably thought was “manly”), prompted me to sing those horrible little tunes they taught us as Sunday school (“Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” is a particularly execrable one), sang little religious ditties to me to comfort me (“Down in the Dumps I’ll Never Go” was amusing), told me when I was hesitant to do the Right Thing (especially things I didn’t want to do) that it would earn me Stars In My Crown (that is, in Heaven). I was never threatened with Hell. Who would do such a thing to a small child? God was a big, friendly daddy in the clouds who watched over me and kept me safe. I said prayers each night before bed, nervous about that “if I should die before I wake” business which I quickly replaced with the Lord’s Prayer as soon as I learned it. To please my dad, I even tried to learn it in German. He was also big on memorizing psalms – and if the boys in his Sunday school class learned the prescribed ones they were allowed to feel his cauliflower ears he earned while wrestling before headgear was required.

Our family’s religious habits were eclectic. As I mentioned, my dad was Methodist, so I was baptized Lutheran and confirmed Presbyterian. Each time we moved, different churches were auditioned and my sister and I had to keep scarves on hand in case we attended a service that called for women’s heads to be covered. There may even have been times when we went to a service on a day other than a Sunday. On the last move, my mother fell in love with the Unitarian service but my dad vetoed it – both for the same reason: the absence of the name of God, but that discussion was not for our ears. In the end, we went Presbyterian because that particular church had a very lovely interior. Mom scoffed at the tenet of Predestination. “They don’t mention that because it embarrasses them now,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about. Her sister was unhappy with the service when she attended and when Mom pointed out the lovely and expensive stained glass windows (Mom was an artist), her sister sighed and said that she was missing the Whole Point.

My first inklings of suspicion came from my earliest recollection of a Lutheran Sunday school where even the tiniest of us had a sort of mini-service that included an offering. I am only slightly mortified to recall that I did not like handing over my few pennies, even though they had just been given me that morning. I am, after all, my mother’s daughter, and I cling to my cash, even at age five. Money was the taboo subject in our house, instead of sex. I wasn’t allowed to know how much my dad earned, even when time came to fill out college scholarship forms. I filled in everything else and then my mom completed the financial bit, put it in a sealed envelope, and gave it back to me for delivery. This must have been a Depression Survivor thing. Anyway, it is my recollection that they passed the plate and then put it on our miniature altar. After the offering came some prayer and we were all to bow our heads. At the end of the prayer, the plate was gone. Now, I can’t say definitely that I was ever expressly told that God reached down and took that plate, but that was the impression I got … until the day I peeped. I was scandalized to see one of the teachers remove the plate and silently take it away. What? My nickel was not going directly to God?

This, however, did not kill my belief in God or Jesus (although for some reason the latter was keen on us little ones “suffering”). I still believed in this enough to worry about those angels who were supposed to be watching over me (and this was about age eight or nine), which I thought was incredibly creepy and insisted on extra blankets. If they could see through the roof into my room, they could probably see through a layer or two of bedclothes and I wasn’t having any of that!

Moving and changing churches involved, sometimes, changes I had trouble with. I had finally committed the Lord’s Prayer to memory by age eight and now I had to learn a slightly different version. This was the change from forgiving trespasses to forgiving debts. Oh, dear! My mom tried to explain that it was a tiny difference but I knew that “debt” was a bad, bad word in our house. Later I learned that some churches used the word “sins” – which sounded absolutely horrible. It’s one thing to walk across a neighbor’s yard without asking (what I thought of as “trespassing”) and another to forgive “debtors” – although this was easier to say than “those who have trespassed against us.” I was interested in words and it seemed odd that there would be such a difference in terminology as well as euphony (and as difficult as learning to say “those who have trespassed against us” was, I enjoyed the meter and poetry of it).

Then there was the German version. Schuld means all sorts of things. There was a bit of German spoken in the home, as well as sung, and I knew that there were some words that just couldn’t be translated from one language to another. It hadn’t fully hit me that these words I chanted (or, later, read in the Bible) were not originally written in English.

I joined the children’s choir at the church in Cincinnati and enjoyed singing to no end. I still wrestled with the training-tithes, this time in the form of a cute cardboard church you were to fill with pennies and return by a certain date. I was the sort who filled piggybanks until they literally burst, but that was because I was saving up for something I wanted desperately (which probably had to be a new piggybank after the previous one cracked). In those days, pennies could actually buy something. If you had a dollar – omigosh! I resented having to use my own money (now) to give to what was plainly mission work, but was described as the deserving poor in underdeveloped nations – as if there weren’t poor enough people across town.

We moved again and found another new church, the one with the famous stained glass windows and the downplayed Predestination. This was in the 1960s and the theme was reaching out to other religions and popular culture. We visited a synagogue, we studied other religions and tried to find similarities – it was hippie ecumenicalism and Let’s All Feel Good down the line. Well, except perhaps in the minister’s forgettable sermons. Mom pointed out that when he really got going, his nose started to run and I paid attention more to how often his big, white hanky came out than what he was orating – and he was Orating. He was a Doctor of Divinity! As a daughter of the middle-management middle-class, I was heartily impressed with anything that smacked of the professional class. This man was smart. My dad may have gone to college, but this man had a doctorate. I was easily impressed.

The assistant minister was lumbered with the onus of what is now called youth ministry, and he was easy to ignore, but when the head stepped into our classes with what seemed like his tall, imposing physique (I am remembering from a time when I was shorter, of course) and his grand demeanor, we all straightened up. One time he decided to quiz us on our Christmas story knowledge, asking some difficult questions about the three wise men – such as what they did afterwards. Okay, that seemed more difficult at the time because I have now read the entire New Testament but at the time we only read pieces in some garbled christospeak. So, probably wishing to appear knowledgeable about something, I asked about the fourth wise man. The Great Man smiled condescendingly at me and said that that was a mere fairy story. Well, I loved fairytales and read them over and over and I thought I knew one when I saw it, and the three wise men was one if ever there was. But, I had not made that connection until he sneered at the idea of a fourth.

In later, more sophisticated years, I took it upon myself to read some of the Old Testament and was appalled by what I read – mostly in Deuteronomy and Numbers. Feminism had reached me and it had been hammered into me that rape was not a woman’s fault. A woman walking around in a short skirt does not give her rapist the “out” of “She was just asking for it!” – but it said in the Old Testament that if it occurred inside the walls of the city where she could have been heard to cry out, she gets a stoning on top of it. Outside the walls, well, maybe no one could have heard her there. It hit me that it would be easy for an adulteress-wannabe to meet her lover outside the walls to hedge her bets. Basically, I could have been Bill Clinton if I’d worked at it.

None of this took away belief in God or in the goodness of Jesus (although that three-gods-in-one mess confused me – fortunately, the Apostle’s Creed that I had to memorize says Jesus sits on the right hand of God, which keeps him nicely separate) and we were still going to church regularly until that one fateful Sunday. I had been out late (probably not drinking, but just hanging out with my friends) on Saturday and when my mother came in to ask me if I wanted to go to church, I truthfully said “No.” I had meant, “No, I’d rather not, but I’ll go if you ask me to.” Mom took this as her out. “Good,” she said, “I’m sick of this.” She told Dad we weren’t going anymore. Dad might have gone on his own for a little while after that, but he stopped as well.

My dad was from that intensely personal Christian background that needed his own faith only and not the reinforcement of organized religion. He never lost that faith – despite all the arguments with my mother in future years about the reality of God. He wondered why she felt she had to argue with him about it. “It’s Faith,” he would say, “you can’t prove or disprove logically.” “Yes, well, if I’m going to Hell,” Mom would counter, “I want you with me.” I suppose that is some sort of deep devotion - or else she was just making a joke.

Religion fell away from me then by degrees. I found myself being annoyed by other Christians. There was an annoying habit one had of agreeing by saying, “This is true.” If you say that once, it rings. If you keep saying it over and over instead of “Oh, yes!” or a number of other more neutral expressions, it loses all impact and instead becomes a gnat buzzing around your ears. I winced every time she used it.

The Late Great Planet Earth was a popular book when I was in college and several of my friends would regale me with the startling coincidences that reveal that the End Times were nigh. Well, Chariots of the Gods? was also out at that time and I was more inclined to read that one, if not believe it. At least it had some nice pictures in it of archaeological interest, and I was very interested in archaeology.

As an adult, I watched the tragedy of a minister’s family breaking up over his adultery. He lost his vocation and his family in one moment. I thought it was sad because he was so personable. His wife, whom I worked with, was so nice also. In retrospect, I think they should have worked something out. At the time it just showed me how human ministers were – a real change from that Great Orator with the Evangelical Rhinitis*. And I think you understand human failings better if you experience them yourself. I believe he went on to be a counselor/therapist. I bet he was a good one.

I love to read, so I went through quite a few books on religious topics. It was only too plain to me, after years of studying Spanish, German, French, and Latin that it was hard to translate things exactly, and if there are many Bible translations and they are different - well … I later started to study Koine Greek on my own** and one of the exercises was translating the Ten Commandments. I slaved through that, amazed by what I was making of it and thrilled by the plasticity of words. Then I turned to the back to see the correct literal translation … and it was just the same as in the Bible. Nothing at all like what I’d created, unlike the other exercises I was able to translate properly. Hmmmm, I thought. I subscribed to Biblical Archaeology Review for a while – but eventually I gave up when the letters section was reduced to religious in-fighting. The problems with the book on Koine Greek reminded me of the infighting that led to Constantine causing the sects to sit down with each other and hammer out a unified belief. We’re still fighting over what Jesus meant – and I include atheists because we seem to be as vocal about that as anyone else.

I read The Bible as History as well as The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion. I still have the former, as well as a number of historical books on Christianity. Everyone comes to different conclusions. I was willing to accept anyone’s beliefs, bow my head out of respect when they prayed, go to their places of worship until I moved back to the south. I have a German last name, and I’m often asked if I am Jewish. This gives me a little thrill as I see an opportunity to “punk” them. But I don’t. My background is of a people notable for their oppression of Jews and so I take the high road and ask, “Is it important?” If they say no, then I say I don’t need to tell them. If they counter with, “Well, yes …” then I refuse to tell them on the grounds that it would change our relationship. It doesn’t always work, but I usually try it on (I also like Jonathan Miller’s response that he is only Jewish around anti-semites). There are accusations of Jewish lineage on both sides of my family tree but I can’t document it. It’s a shame, really, because small towns like where I live now really need more variety in them so they stop taking things for granted. What things? Well, things like praying as a group in a work situation.

I’ve wrestled with my newfound antipathy towards Christianity (and other religions and some atheists, but I see mostly Christian bullying in my day-to-day existence) for twenty years now. On the one hand, I would like to be able to opt out of praying without causing a fuss (thinks back to an office Christmas party) and on the other hand I know that my reaction to the heavy-handed religiosity only makes them react more heavily. It’s a conundrum. Here’s only a sample of what happens:

A patron came in one day and I was helpful. Before she left, she felt obliged to ask me if I were a Christian (without any subjunctive or indefinite verbiage). I am not forbidden to respond to such questions and either way I answered would cause a problem. If I said I was, then I would give her the false impression that there were more like-minded people out there and she probably had some follow-up question to trick me into admitting I was the wrong kind. I knew it would be equal trouble, but I said I wasn’t and this led to a Conversation. I said, upon being asked why, that I had read and seen too much to believe. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I’ve seen many people confused by …” and she went on.

Yes, many of us are confused by historical and scientific facts, but that does not necessarily cause us to stop believing. We are not confused by our studies because generally we only see the parts we agree with anyway. We more often are struck by our lack of belief and then go searching for material that bolsters this. I have tried to look at both sides at first. I had read Mere Christianity and was with Lewis right up to one little point where I realized his logic fell apart. After that, it was all over. The fat lady sang. This was not an ancient document that was a copy of a long line of copies. It was not something that an editor interpolated something he thought he heard someone say that he heard someone say that Lewis said once. It was in Lewis’s attempt to clinch his argument – and not at the very end, but hidden in the last few irrefutable statements where it might go unnoticed. But I saw it and he failed. He tried to do the impossible, and I applaud his attempt, but it didn’t work. In the end, it was Christians who made me an atheist and everyone since that has fired their best shot at me, ordinary or wielding their credentials like clubs, has also failed. Therefore, I suspect that foisting my beliefs on them would work equally poorly.

The more embellishment you lard on, the less likely I am to accept it as truth. I know stories and I love them. Passion stories and the Christmas story can bring me to tears even in their most banal renditions, but not because I see Truth – I just see a wonderfully told tale. I am willing to leave the question open on whether or not Jesus existed as a man. It seems likely, but for me there is no God for him to be Son Of. I have to, as The Life of Pi suggested, go with the Better Story. I don’t buy the tiger one and I’m sure Martel could have made the other story just as interesting if he’d bothered instead of reducing it to a few dry sentences. As it was, I was reconstructing it in my mind the same way scholars try to eke out the verifiable in the Bible.

Everyone else is free to find their Better Story, but, as they say, it’s in the way you tell ‘em. And, even better, is the one you discover for yourself.

*Bob and I discussed the pseudo-scientific naming of this “ailment” (I suffer from Gustatory Rhinitis – or perhaps other people suffer having to watch me dab at my nose at the table) and he came up with all sorts of adjectives, notably: Rhetorical Rhinitis (which, though the alliteration is to die for, makes it sound more theoretical), Proselytizing Rhinitis (which I rejected because that would be orating on street corners), Pulpitary Rhinitis (you can’t keep a good man down when he’s on a roll), Homilary Rhinitis (okay, that one was all mine, but Bob had to think of the word Homily for me), Sermonizing Rhinitis (which didn’t sound “science-y” enough although I tried Sermonial for a while), Eschatological Rhinitis (which sounds so – so final) and Hortatory Rhinitis – but we just descended into silliness.

**I did not begin my study of Greek purposefully to unravel the Bible myself. It began with reading Aristophanes’ “The Frogs” and laughing so hard that Diet Pepsi came out my nose (and very nearly the bean burrito as well). I started to wonder if it was as funny in the original Ancient Greek as the translation was. It is. Well, that part was anyway.

A Brief History of My Reading

2010-10-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

Today I tried to come up with an author's name and it just didn't rise to the surface. That isn't too surprising, not at my age. I look at my co-workers, people I work with every day, and can't come up with their names although they are wearing name tags. But I did sort of remember one of the author's books, which I confused with his name (because they are both singular - you know, like "Cher") and because there is the interweb-thingie I can key what I know in and come up with the bit I don't know. Love the interwebs.

It is frustrating though, for someone who can't remember the names of the pseudepigraphic Pauline letters from one moment to the next (let's see, there's the pestorals and the ones that start with T ... but what about Effusions, Collations, and Fellations?) despite having heard/read about them time after time, to suddenly remember a book from 1979 and some of its content despite not having read it. And suddenly I remember that I was on page 263/4 of Nabokov's Ada before I gave up (planning to resume later because I kept track of the page ... which is often how I keep track of where I stopped reading when a bookmark isn't handy: I just remember look at the page number and remember it) at about that same time. Mind you, I don't remember what I've read. In order to cope with the book discussion group I lead I have to make a note of each character in the book because I just can't remember names (see above co-workers).

This has put me in mind of what I have read over the years. I go through fads, but cheezy mysteries and non-fiction tend to resurface.

Grade school: the Alfred Hitchcock collections, Nancy Drew, and Roald Dahl. I was once handed some realistic fiction by a school librarian when I looked hesitant and regarded her with suspicion ever after. Why would she think I would enjoy a book about a girl whose father was a janitor and who was feeling ostracized by her peers? Later one handed me James and the Giant Peach and all was well again - but I have been careful since becoming a children's librarian about what I recommend to kids and how I express it. "Well, I liked it," I might say or "I hear it's popular." I will never suggest that they would like a book.

Grade school and what was then called Junior High: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a gift from my sister who knew a little martyr when she saw one. My sister was the The Secret Garden type: pushy and devious ... but in a good way. I read this book about once a month and cried and cried and spilled Chicken with Stars soup on it. It's engraved on my heart. Wish I could remember that little girl's name though. Nowadays I read some of the stuff written for "teens" and I just can't take the pain and the angst. I guess we like it at that age.

High school: Mysteries. I started with Agatha Christie and never stopped. Preferred the British and the more gentle, but occasionally branched out into the more gruesome. And fell in love with P. G. Wodehouse and his unique turn of phrase. Also, I spent high school summers immersing myself in themes such as Epic Poetry and Greek Drama. This affectation continued in college. It's an affectation because I didn't take any courses in them, just read them to be able to say I had and shut down conversations with "Well, you know what Aeschylus says ..." Oh, and I also read a lot of John Barth and Anthony Burgess.

College: More cheezy mysteries to offset the reading I had to do ... in three different languages. Oh, yeah - I forgot English. Four different languages.

Grad school: I don't recall reading anything for pleasure during that time. I was too busy drinking. Oh, wait - I seem to remember reading popular books about physics - that must have been during the summers. And I got back into the medieval and ancient.

The South Carolina Years: I worked at a public library and had all the material there to read: More mysteries (especially the Brother Cadfael ones by Ellis Peters), more Wodehouse, lots of non-fiction. These were also the Shogun years. It took me six days to read it and I've picked up used copies of it ever since to give away. Also read an account of the historic Anjin-san Clavell based the book on. Amazing.

The New York Years: Mysteries ... and portable Greek philosophers, branching into ancient history.

The Boston years: Mysteries and I discovered that Charles Dickens was actually a fabulous writer if you weren't being forced to read him for school. I was tricked into this by seeing that he'd written a book with "mystery" right in the title! Before long, I was staying up until 4 am to finish Bleak House. This caused me to read Jane Austen as well. Well, dang! And Harvard Square has the best bookshops. I finally got the David Steinberg joke about the Ludwig Wittgenstein book with the red cover because I was back in the philosophy section again ... revisiting my idea about yet another play about the Athenian legal system. And I became obsessed with The Iliad. It made me mad, but I loved it. And I was reading some Aristophanes one day at lunch downtown when it made Diet Pepsi* come out my nose and I wondered if it could possibly be that funny in Greek. And that's when I started signing up for the Ancient Greek course in adult education - again and again until it got enough suckers to make it worth a teacher's while.

The Back to SC Years: I moved back here with a Ryder truck full of books in ... several languages (none of which I had learned properly) and immediately got a library card and started reading mysteries again. Although in a book group, I find it really hard to read serious or realistic fiction. I love satire (Christopher Buckley does a great job coming up with ideas for books, but I don't think he knows how to end them properly) and historical mysteries - but I love popular non-fiction. I just love learning, even if I don't remember things properly. But I am assembling a world view from what I have read.

My reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1711341
My books: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marfita/yourlibrary

*I come from a Coca-Cola family, but if I was forced to drink a diet beverage (and I never do anymore), I preferred Diet Pepsi. Actually, I had a Pepsi Light (now apparently called Pepsi Twist) once and became instantly addicted. I went out the same day and bought a six-pack, drank it, and suddenly realized I could Never Have It Again.

Advice for the Sleepless

2010-10-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

Sleeping on concrete during dance rehearsals seems to have done me no harm.

I was one of those people who could sleep anywhere, anywhere, except her own bed at night. I've slept on a pile of coats on a concrete floor with a musical rehearsal going on around me. But just put me in a nice, comfy bed in the dark at night and suddenly my head keeps me awake. All the bad things that happened, that I did, that I didn't prevent, that might happen, all run through my pointy little head and I can be up for hours. I can't take a nap during the day for fear it would keep me up for hours at bedtime.

Middle age has done nothing to soften this effect. I have more responsibilities, more bad things that did, might, will happen (two elderly parents with dementia was not mitigated by their passing - now I have to worry about my brain). I feel guilty about everything, which I can forget about during the day when I'm busy or desperately searching for distraction on the internet - and that's what that is, isn't it? Searching for a distraction from the Guilt Furies in one's head. [Okay, maybe that's just me.]

Now I have to tell you how much my husband loves me. Sitting on a dresser in our bedroom is the device that has saved me. We had already discovered that a car plus an audiobook is like unto a visit from your friendly neighborhood anesthetist for me. Good thing my husband is driving. When my husband is away, I would pull the little boombox out of the kitchen and load it up with Bart Ehrman or, if I needed cheering, Terry Pratchett to keep me company at bedtime. When it suddenly stopped, I would grope for the next cd in the lecture or the audiobook and insert it (this is where my husband, if he reads this, discovers where the scratches on his Ehrman lectures came from) in the dark, then go back to sleep.

No more! This new device is a Bose clock radio/cd player. We can awaken to radio or the cd. We can also listen to the cd for an hour and it slowly. Fades. Away. When I say "listen for an hour" - I exaggerate. I can manage one or two ten minute segments before I start purring. Who can think unhappy thoughts when Granny Weatherwax is excoriating some miscreant? [And, by the way, how come she's Granny Weatherwax if she's had no children? Is this some honorific upon achieving grey hair?] I have to advance the story one increment each night because I barely hear ten minutes before falling into blissful sleep.

You might think that this was hardly so wonderful for my husband to buy me a clock radio/cd player. He enjoys the benefits of it as well, although hardly anything keeps him awake. [Men are so lucky. How do they fall asleep like that?] He even told me that my reading at night didn't keep him awake. What makes him so wonderful is the fact that he hates Bose. My husband is an audiophile for whom sound means everything. If a brand needs to be advertised, it can't be any good. His audio equipment is labeled with obscure branding ... or none at all. The fact that he went to a Bose store and bought a Bose product for my birthday speaks volumes about how much he loves me. "Don't even ask how much it cost," he said, implying that it was more than the thing was worth.

I am entirely satisfied with this product. First of all, it has a remote. I'm so lazy that I want everything to be operated by remote: the lava lamp (it's plugged into a clicker), the fan (it came with one - I was delirious with delight) - very important to women of a Certain Age who get hot suddenly at night, and now the clock radio/cd player. In fact, it can't be operated at all without the remote. There are no buttons on this machine. If I lose the remote, I'm dead. I've had to memorize the button positions to operate it in the dark. Two down, one over from the right to start the cd. On the left, four down to turn down the volume. One more to the right to up the volume in case someone starts purring or the a/c came on.

This works for me. If you lie awake nights with those nagging thoughts, you might try this. If your spousal unit doesn't want to listen, get a library audiobook on your mp3. I always sleep on my right side, so I've just put both buds into my left ear before. I worry that this has become an addiction, but I'm getting so much more sleep! Now if I can just pull myself away from the internet long enough to lie down.

Cross Posting

2010-09-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

Grizzy has issued a statement on how she plans to commemorate 9/11 this year in SL, and I thought I would go along with it - I have put this picture and the following statement on my profile:

"To show solidarity with my Islamic brothers and sisters who have had their faith vilified as a result of the actions of extremists, I will be dressing my avatar in the traditional Islamic hijab for Tues - Sat this week."

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor ...

2010-05-28T13:14:00.000-07:00

Having just finished reading a blogpost from a competitor, I am reminded of my own dating mishaps. First of all, I didn't date anyone. I was too homely/annoying/smart [pick one ... or two - what the heck, pick your nose!] to get my own dates, but instead ended up date-sitting instead. What is "date-sitting" you ask? It's the act of occupying the time of someone a friend of yours is trying to pry themselves away from. I was telling my husband an old war story recently about the second time I had done this when it occurred to me ... that I had done it more than once. Hence, the "second time." And there was more after that.

This is like that "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride" thingummy. Three and a half decades later and this guy is still hankering after the one that got away instead of the one that had to listen to him sigh on the phone for hours at a time. Another one, in describing his nightmare blind date, deftly describes the woman he spent months with and that I date-sat him for, which only shows what an impression she made on him that he can't let go. He still asks me about her when I see him. I suppose he doesn't have words to describe me because after he got drunk and passed out, I decided it was safe to go home. For all I know, he just thinks I was a pink elephant with a slightly smaller nose.

Like the male equivalent, Mr. Right Now, I was Miss Right Now. No one bothered to ask me if I really wanted to go out with these guys. Well, except the first one. While I was in high school a friend of mine in college tried to palm her boyfriend off on me and ask if I would mind. He was just too needy. "He needs a hamster, or something," she wrote me, "to lavish his affection on." I had little or no dating experience so I agreed to go out with him. We had one date. He was affectionate. It was good experience for me, sort of training wheels for dating, and he probably went back to pestering her. I don't blame him, I loved her too. She wrote the best letters.

Yes, I love my girlfriends and I will do anything for them ... except ... except ...

No more date-sitting (I have my own permanent date now - whee!) and please, please, please stop calling me when you're drunk. And, I just haven't got the nerve to say this to your face - you need to stop drinking, or at least stop drinking so much ... or so often ... and stop going out with or shacking up with unsuitable guys that are so hard to get rid of just because you think you need to have somebody. I have my own problems now - I can't solve yours.

One Morning In the Month of May ...

2010-05-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

Me and Poetry.

We're starting a new work learning experience that is already starting to torture me: Poetry. If you know me, you know I like poetry. I did a poetry workshop with children.* Anyway, we had our first meeting at lunchtime yesterday and we were asked what our first experience with Poetry was - and for me it was my dad's recitations at the dinner table. "Gunga Din" was probably interesting the first 2,000 times, but it's a long poem and I wanted to go out an play after dinner. Seeing it done by Mr. Magoo made me understand it better, but it was torture after a while. When my dad was elderly, I could recite "The Incident of the French Camp" with him and help him when he faltered. "You know we French stormed Ratisbone ..." - love that poem because of the punchline, "And smiling the boy fell dead." Despite this, I like poetry that tells a story and some rhyme and the tumty-tumty-tum.

But I also like contemporary Word. As you can tell from the March 19 post, my husband and I - a couple of round, very very white, very very middle-class caricatures - attend poetry nights, making the denizens nervous by our pasty-white presence. In all honesty, we can take the strong language, the political and racial backlash, but the religious stuff makes us wince. We have heard poetry so emotionally evocative, so hair-raising, wry, ironic, sad and funny that we exit stunned and amazed by the power and the talent of local people. How dearly I would love to host a salon of these people each week! How rewarding it would be to provide them a safe and stable place to speak their hearts. Even the religious ones.

Anyway, thinking back to early poetry in my life, I recalled having a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses ... and being unable to relate to it. Here I am, subjected to versification at length ("A bunch of the boys were whooping it up at the Malamute Saloon ..."!) on a regular basis and these gentle poems turn out to be totally unmemorable, except the one about the wooden spoon or shovel and digging in the sand and the sea filling it in - something I could relate to having tried to dig in the sand and having the ocean fill it up and destroy my handiwork.

Four languages later, I find I have accumulated some foreign favorites that I can still recite. My mother's cousin used "Du bist wie eine Blume" as a curse: "Ohhhh, dubistwieineblume!" so that resonated with me. I cultivate white roses with José Martí. I used "Venez a ma jubilé" for the invitation to my 50th birthday party. I have The Oxford Book of French Verse all post-it noted and went back this weekend looking for something appropriate for the "Poetry and Pints" meeting in Second Life and amazed myself that I understood any of the poems (much of it 700 year old French) enough to mark them as a favorite.

The first leg of our adventures in "Poultry" (as I relentlessly like to call it, the same way my sister always talked about "Taco Hell" instead of Taco Bell) will be through the Leaves of Grass section called "Song of Myself." I should withhold my applause until the end, I guess, and post it at the appropriate place (the Staffdevelopomendo blog). This particular work of Whitman was probably thrusting, avant-garde stuff when it was first written, both titillating and evocative, but it's an uphill slog for me now. I can mark bits of it I find pithy or expressive, but the totality of it is wearing me down. I hate being oppressed by something I really love. Bring back the stories and the tumty-tumpty-tum!

*Despite the age limitation I put on the sign-up sheet, my workshop contained children who could not read, much less write poetry, because their doting, idiotic, hare-brained parents [puts hand over heart and tries to calm down] insisted that Their Child was Advanced. I have gotten a call about signing up for workshops for this summer already (in April at the time) from a mom who insisted that her five year old was good with scissors and it would be totally appropriate to leave her in a room filled with older children more capable than the child working on some as yet undescribed project of unknown age-appropriateness. I had one of those kids in a program this winter who ended up sobbing her little heart out. Not in my workshop, lady! I want six year olds minimum! These programs are for school-age kids, not for your "Advanced" pre-schooler/toddler. [Looks under desk for bottle of bourbon - none there. Despair!]

By the Footprints In the Jell-O!

2010-04-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

Derby Day upcoming, "I am always remember the day I first meet" the parents of a very good friend of mine. He had won me in my first annual "Win A Marf Contest" by submitting many pages of what he would do with me when I got there, letters of recommendation, and an 8" x 10" glossy. My fingers are drumming the keyboard now as I try to remember why my then boyfriend had not won. I think I recall a letter saying, "If you want to come visit, why don't you just say so?" That was not what I was looking for, but says a lot about that relationship.

My friend had me for a week of my vacation from the library. As a house-warming gift, I brought him a glass mug on which I had had etched "I've Been Sacked By" and the name of his employer. To be fair, he'd argued his way back into the job ... for the satisfaction of quitting. The sentiment, though, was appreciated. This was the first time I spent any extended time with this, one of my best friends. It was definitely the first time I stayed over. I hadn't thought much about that, what it entailed. He was renting a part of a house that had two bedrooms (one occupied by a roommate who was even more slovenly), a bath with a tub, and a kitchen. The kitchen was fairly roomy and had a table with chairs, so it was the social point of the ménage.

His bedroom consisted of a mattress on the floor, and a floor covered in loose change. Apparently, when he undressed at night, the change fell out of his pockets and he never bothered to pick it up. I spent each morning lying next to his slippers and desultorily picking up the coins and putting them in the slippers.

I thought it odd that such a young man would have bedroom slippers until I made note of the state of the floors in the place. Each morning he would rise, attempt to put on coin-laden slippers, swear, pour them out, and go on as if nothing unusual had happened. I asked him about it later and he had apparently not been awake enough to register the addition of the coins.

Slippers were a wise choice. Neither of these guys was big on cleaning and the bathroom had dust woofies in it that were about 3 or 4 feet long. Every zephyr that ran through the house and under the door caused these ephemeral caterpillars to ripple. I had this terror of being in the tub and someone opening a door to the outside, causing a woofie to raise its head over the edge of the tub and attach itself to my wet body. Bleagh bleagh bleagh!!!!

I would stay in bed until I ran out of small change to put in the slippers and then get up and cast about for something to do. The kitchen was a disaster. My friend had tried to make rice the week before and lost tract of time. The rice had burned to the bottom of the pan, and about an inch and a half up. He'd scraped out most of it, but just filled it with water and left it in the sink. That pan was the worst of it. I cleaned all the other dishes and worked assiduously on the rice pan.

I was up early one morning, probably a Sunday, when there was a knock at the door. I opened it and saw this very surprised looking middle-aged couple standing outside. They were his parents. They asked to see him. He was still in bed, so I had to let them in and go get him. This was the awkward part for me. I was going to have to wake him up, which was not an easy task. It was embarrassing for me that he was still slug-abed and his parents had come. I didn't realize until a little bit later that they didn't know I was visiting.

Hearing that his parents were there helped to wake him a bit, but not totally. He had to get up, dump the coins out of his slippers, swear, and get dressed. Eventually, we all sat down at the kitchen table for what I expected to be the typical semi-awkward cross-generational conversation.

My insouscience probably made me come across as a shameless Jezebel. This is nice, I thought, I get to meet his parents, who were a bit younger than mine, but I had always gotten on well with older people. I really had totally the wrong attitude and I'm sure they left thinking the worst of me, little realizing the relative innocence of our relationship. If anything embarrassed me, it was my friend using a credit card to wine and dine me ... which his parents apparently paid for him.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time other than the parental visit. I laughed myself sick quite a few times while he told elephant jokes, which he normally would not consider to be funny. It got to the point where he could just say, "Shoehorn!" to set me off again. We would sit at the kitchen table and talk and just enjoy each other.

He was making brownies one night, and almost proudly showing his self-sufficiency in opening the box and handling the whole deal himself. In an unusual fit of tidiness, he not only threw the box away, but decided the trash can was full, closed up the bag, and took it out to the bin. He was quite carefree in the process, and I started wondering if he had made note of the time or how long the box said they needed to cook. No matter, I was a brownie expert.

His roommate came into the kitchen, having smelled the brownies.
"Wow, brownies! When will they be done?"
"I don't know," my friend said.
"How long are they supposed to cook?"
"Dunno."
"When'd you put 'em in?"
"Don't remember."
"Where's the box?"
"Threw it away."
"Oh." Pause.
"I took it out to the bin."
"Ah."

Soon they were both gathered around the oven door, peering inside.
"How do you know when they're done?"
"I think you put a knife in and see if it comes out clean."

His roommate lost interest and wandered off again. My friend returned to the kitchen table where I was biting my lip and my shoulders shaking.

"Wha-at?" he said.
"You know how you can tell if the brownies are done?" I asked.

He paused and considered it. "By the footprints in the Jell-O?" And I lost it. I was laughing so hard and he kept asking, "No, really - how do you tell?" And somehow, "When they pull away from the sides" sounded even funnier. Okay, you had to have been there.

"No, really. Tell me! How can you tell when the brownies are done?"

Ummm ...

2010-03-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

Must be some other "marfita" - what do you think? Got this from my Lijit.com stats. If you aren't "lijit" you might want to consider it. It tracks who (only as in-depth at the above example, so don't think I have your name or IP address or nuffink) visits my various websites, how they got there (hmmm ...), and what they search for further after they cam-, ummm, after they ente-, ummm ...
Anyway, if you're interested, subscribe to my blogs for Omssake! Put it on your blogroll. I don't blog so often that I'm a nuisance. Yompin' Yiminy!

Crazy White Girl

2010-03-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

Crazy White Boy and I did it again last night: we infiltrated a black poetry stronghold. We've done this before, of course. The first time I was really nervous. I had heard there was a regular poetry night going on (my old one had faded away) at the Coffee and Dessert place in the desanctified church and we waltzed in on what I feared was a black sorority meeting. They were, however, very welcoming to us and in time they encouraged CWB to go back to playing guitar.

The group eventually broke up and we missed meeting with them each week. We missed being their pet white folk.

So when one of our old poetry friends told me that there was another poetry group starting up, we dusted off our poetry ears, turned off our computers, and sallied forth. It didn't have the swank of a coffee shop, being in a barber college, and there wasn't anyone we knew. I had been falling asleep right after dinner and we were planning a discreet retreat early (our source said it ran from 7 to many 9 or 10 pm) so I could be put to bed at a decent hour for a change.

Again, they were welcoming although they didn't know who we were. There was a $5 cover charge each and they tried many times to get us to taste the refreshments, but we'd just eaten a huge meal and were full to bursting.

The emcee seemed a bit nervous about us - warning us about the rap style of someone coming up, but I must admit that we do look like a couple of pasty-white, middle-class nerds. I didn't want to protest, "Oh, no! Go ahead and do your worst. We can take it." We're subversive in our own quiet way.

There was a low turn-out, but one of them was an old friend whose handle is "Spoken." There were about 5 reader/speakers and a couple of singers. One brought a keyboard. The next gathering is March 31st. Again, the quality of their creations can be stunning. I was brought to the edge of tears twice. Okay, maybe I was just a bit tired, but the writing is compact and moving.

They were again very nice when we left, shaking our hands and expressing the hope that we would return. I wondered if they packed up, hugged us and each other, waited until we were out of the parking lot, sighed, and turned the lights back on. CWB didn't think so.

Here We Go Again

2009-11-11T08:29:00.001-08:00

I thought we were past this, but it's raised it's giant head of stupidity again. I was asked "Why do all the new buildings look like mosques?"
Well, there is actually a good answer to that, and it's "Because y'all have mosques on the brain!" You go for decades without seeing a mosque, suddenly parts of the world where these buildings are prevalent are relentlessly in the news, and when you drive down the street, you see something new that doesn't look like a box with a storefront so you immediately connect it with these other "foreign" objects.
Here's a quiz for y'all. Mosque or Not-Mosque?

1.
2.

3.4.

5.

Answers are below. How'd you do?

Gobsmacked

2009-10-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

The group was gobsmacked. They had been working on the project for two weeks and it was almost finished. And Farhad had asked to be moved to another group.
"Why?" asked Bev, because she was always the one who had no governor on her mouth and said the first thing that came into her head - the things that other people wanted to say but couldn't.
Farhad raised his head but did not look any of them in the eye. He looked to his side, as if someone was there to give him support. "My father says I cannot be in this group."
Eve became very still. Her eyes searched Farhad, but he wasn't looking at her either.
"But why, why does he say that?" Bev slogged on, crashing all social barriers as she went.
Farhad looked pained. He looked as if he were barely keeping his face from crumbling. His wide brown eyes became even wider and his forehead seemed to be performing some minimalist gymnastics feat.
"Why this group but not another?" Bev continued, and Tony shook his head at her. She glared back at him. "I want to know. I bet everyone wants to know." She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest. "But I'm the only one with the nerve to ask. Why, Farhad?" And she was about to go on when Eve made a hesitant noise that was more a gasp than a throat-clearing.
"It's me, Bev."
All eyes immediately went to her. Eve's arms hung like wooden forks. She didn't dare move for fear she would start shaking. With everyone's eyes elsewhere, Farhad relaxed too soon. The group's eyes shot straight back to him like spectators in a tennis match. Now he looked hunted.
"You ... you mean you two - " Tony began.
"No!" Farhad said, too emphatically. He grimaced and tried his adult voice again. "No, no, it's not like that - "
"We're not - " Eve interrupted.
Net ball.
The group began to breathe. Then Caleb stuttered, "Because she's J-jewish?"
Farhad could not answer him.
"That's just - that's ... silly," said Tiff.
"You don't understand," Farhad began, wanting to defend his father even though he was angry with him. "He is my father. I respect his decisions even if - "
"They're stupid?" Bev added, again with no governor on her mouth.
"No, even if I do not agree. It is called respect."
Tiff shook her head, "Farhad, that's medieval!"
"No, it's not," said Caleb. Then he blushed when they all looked at him. "There's lots I'd like to do but my parents won't let me. They do it for my own good," he added, echoing something he had heard many times.
"Like what?" Bev's inquiring mind never stopped.
"This isn't what group projects are about," groused Tiff. "We're supposed to learn to work together. If it's not sex," and here Farhad looked shellshocked, "I don't see the problem."
Another polite, if strangled cough, came from Eve. "I do." She flapped her wooden arms aimlessly. "My parents ... my parents told me to find another group, too." Farhad's head jerked up.
"What did you tell them?" Tony blurted out.
Eve wriggled a bit under the stares. "I lied." Plucking up some courage she continued. "I told them I was in Anna's group now."
"Great," said Bev, grasping the positive, "problem solved. Farhad, just tell your dad you switched groups and stick with us."
But Tiff was still working on the previous thread. "Let me get this straight - Your parents wanted you out of this group, why? Because of Farhad? Because he's Iranian?"
Eve glared at her. "My uncle is in Iraq, remember." Then she caved. "But, yes. That was it. Farhad's Iranian, he's a Moslem. They say he - " and she stopped. She couldn't bring herself to express it.
"I can't, Bev," Farhad said, breaking the silence. "I have to do what my father tells me to do. I'm not like you. The truth isn't something that's ... " he gestured with his hands trying to find the word, "that's elastic." It came easier now. "I respect my father because he is my father. I also respect you, and I respect Eve. Most importantly, I respect myself."
Eve's face attempted a smile. "So do I. I was angry with my parents and my first thoughts were to defy them. What they wanted me to do wasn't right. Farhad isn't - Farhad is a good student and he brings a lot to this project. We had a chance of getting a really good grade on this." She blushed. "Not that it's all about grades. It was just wrong to label him. And they wouldn't listen to me." She sniffed and started rolling her eyes around. Tears were forming. "It would have been embarrassing to ask Mr. Lynch to move me to another group. I couldn't explain it, I couldn't tell him why." She fixed her eyes on Farhad. "What did you say? What did you tell Lynch?"
Farhad lowered his eyes. "I said that for personal reasons I wanted to be moved to another group."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing. He just looked at me for a long while and then said yes."
Tiff huffed. "He knows."
Caleb agreed. "You bet he knows," said Tony.
Eve nodded. She sniffed again. "Farhad, I'm - "
"It's okay," he said quickly. "I too am sorry. I liked this group. Maybe not at first," he admitted. "But if things were different ..." And he walked away.
Tony shook his head. "He's just ... " but he had no words.
Tiff repeated her "Just medieval, man!" She turned to Eve. "You did the right thing."
"Did I?" Eve said.
Caleb sighed. "Maybe the right thing but the wrong way."
Tiff looked at Caleb in a sidelong way. "What about you, Caleb? How did your parents feel about you being in the same project as Farhad?"
Caleb started at the question and looked at the others. They knew he had lobbied long and hard to go to public school after being homeschooled most of his life. "Yes, well, about that," he began and then faltered.
"Yes?" prompted Tiff.
"Actually, I didn't tell them."

"I'm a Prat and I'm Proud"

2009-08-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

There is a person (for lack of a better term) running for Congress in my area who is proud of having invented a new term of abuse and puts it on his campaign mailers as one of his achievements. That this term, when critically dissected, has no intrinsic pejorative connotations, or any more than say, the words "bunny" (so cute!) and "jungle" (connoting luxuriant growth) do when separate, is immaterial. Most people are not familiar with Hedonism and, if they look it up quickly, will equate it with debauchery. Besides, it sounds like "heathenism"! So they will see the terms "secular" (omigosh, that sounds like "sexual"!) and "hedonism" together and picture scandalous orgies, people with no morals (because many seem to believe you can't be moral without a belief in some god) revelling in lascivious wassails instead of living with an ethical code based on rationality ... and revelling in lascivious wassails.
As a Secular Humanist (because there are Humanists who also follow the religion of their choice), I am insulted by this. I don't think that this represents my lifestyle (based on my personal Hippocratic Oath of "First, Do No Harm.") and it hurts my feelings to have my way of life mislabeled and ridiculed in this fashion. My first inclination is to, of course, turn the other cheek. I dunno, heard that somewhere. Recently, though, I have learned that stigmatizing people (say, by giving them an epithet not of their own choosing) is the easiest method of creating solidarity within a group.
This person wants to improve the cohesiveness of his target group by creating a sense of disgust in that group for another group. Now, I know that too many crazy people try to demonize behavior like that by linking it to Nazi Germany, but that is precisely how the Nazi's manipulated people. There are more positive ways to rally your troops, but the easiest way is this way: create a scapegoat. Blame them for all the problems. I'm not saying this is the eventual intent of this person. I'm not saying he pictures a Final Solution for all non-Christians. He just wants to get elected. I'm sure he thinks that when he is elected, he will be working for all of his constituents to improve their lives and that his god is behind him 1000%. He means no one any harm, he just thinks he invented something clever.
Let me put this question to him: if that clever epithet was a new one to describe African Americans, Native Americans, North Koreans, Jews, Muslims, investment bankers, or welfare recipients, would he have put it on his campaign literature? "This country is under threat from 'Kimchi Jong-Illers' - a term I invented." Not that he would have to worry about that voter segment in this population, but how would that look?
While it is now too late to take it back, I appeal to this person's profession of Christianity (which is all over his campaign mailer) and his better judgment to drop this name-calling of a segment of his constituency. It is beneath him. And, while it might be efficacious, it's denigrating and hateful and has made him look like a prat.

Now I Lay Me Down

2009-04-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

My sister used to enjoy making fun of how prudish I was. My nieces and their children look on me as some prim and proper creature who likes to turn film canisters into rockets but is otherwise dull. If I swear, my friends burst into fits of giggles. Avatars have given up hitting on me in Second Life (not that I'm complaining). How did I get here?

But is there anything wrong with being prudish at 13? Is it possible that their mother's stream of scorchingly blue vocabulary just made my limited use of "Aw, shit!" seem like no swearing at all to my nieces? Do I really swear that infrequently? I don't have a problem with swearing. Just today my husband and I were imagining David Sedaris's brother Paul as a spokesman for some product or another and both of us went through a conjugation of "mother-fuck" worthy of Carlos Fuentes. We chuckled at ourselves, not out of any kind of embarrassment or shock, but just at the juxtaposition of Paul (a person we don't know at all but seem to think we do) and, say, Aunt Ruby's Peanuts.

Okay, my first year of college, I have to admit that I consciously taught myself to say "Shit!" by repeating it over and over in the car on my way to class. And my sister's language did used to make me cringe. When she was dying, and her husband was playing the stereo too loud (or perhaps just the wrong music - she'd taken an unreasonable dislike to Leon Redbone years before), she raised her head up enough to tell me to go "Tell him to fucking turn that shit off!" I think my version of it was something in a hushed voice to the effect of, "She respectfully requests you turn the music down."

And I really do say, "Oh, sugar!" - but because I think it's funny.

I look back now and wonder why I should be the anomaly when I hardly recall our parents swearing. I could get into deep doo-doo for saying someone "crapped out," if my dad hadn't pointed out that it was a perfectly respectable gambling term. When I was eight or nine I clearly remember my mother starting to say "damn" and trying to turn it into "darn" and coming out with strange dipthong that sounded like "Darren." Sewing could even make her hurl out a very unusual "Hot damn!" which was worse, she informed me, than a regular "damn." I don't recall my dad swearing or even raising his voice. During their worst arguments, no matter how shrill my mother got, he remained calm and reasonable, and, boy! did that piss her off! The most I ever heard him say to her was, "Now, Ruth ..." Something like that would send her spinning out of control and lead to her calling him a "Buster" as in, "Look here, Buster! If you think ..."

So, as a young person, I had to resort to being whiny. I had no good vocabulary! I would stretch my sister's ordinarily monosyllabic name into three or four syllables and run it through my sinus passages. And she would call me names. She called me "The Modest Maiden." "You take that back! Mo-o-ommmmm!" I was also some kind of "virgin" as well, but I don't remember the adjective. This was because I liked to have the door closed when I was on the toilet. Silly me. What was that all about? To keep her from coming in, I started locking the bathroom door. It seemed as if she was always wanting to brush her hair when I was in the bathroom. Couldn't she keep a comb in her room? What was that dresser and mirror for? Geyahhhhd, Ayeeeunnn! It turns out she was just part cat. I can't go to the bathroom without a cat being upset if the door is closed.

Is this reaction so unusual? Am I the only person in the world who closes the bathroom door? I was in my family. I was also the only one who didn't scamper naked through the house. When we moved to the beach, we would shower off the salt and sand before entering the house after a swim. My dad would actually totally strip outside. At least my mom shed her suit in the laundry room. I often wondered how the neighbors felt about some seventy-year-old retiree rinsing his less-than beefcake form in the side yard. No one ever said anything to me.

How did I get this way?

The first year we went away for the summer vacation (always the same last two weeks is July like all IBMers and their vendors) without my sister, she went crazy. She had a week-long party. The nosy neighbor next door pumped her for information about it; she was sure there was an orgy going on. There was definitely a great deal of drinking, but that wasn't so unusual because drinking went on all the time in my family. My sister's friends came over and spent the night - and another night, and another and another ... We had three bedrooms in the house and they were all occupied. My sister told me that one of her friend's period started on my bed and that was the least of it.

Later on I went into my room and looked at my twin bed. It creeped me out that it had led a more interesting life than I had. I felt it had betrayed me somehow. How could I sleep on it again? My sister had thought it was a big joke: people having sex on her little sister's bed. I was disturbed, but not at her, which was the weird thing. I was upset with the bed. It didn't last long, though. You can only stay up watch television so long. Eventually, you have to go to bed.

I spent most of my life living down my sister's behavior. She wasn't a scholar, so I had to do well at school. This was something that was easier to achieve when she finally moved out of the house. She never did what she was told, so I was quick to obey. Her language made stevedores cringe; I spoke four languages (three of them badly). She had wild, unprotected sex, had children outside of marriage, died from cervical cancer; I couldn't get a date or even probably wanted one. She did the right thing and finally got married, had two children, and stayed home to be the perfect mom; I ran off to New York City to break into acting.

Now that our parents are gone, I don't have to live a contrary life, but I have done so for so long, I don't know what sort of life I would have wanted. There are things I don't attempt because she was good at them: pottery, mothering, training horses, pies. Okay, I do make pies, but they will never be as good as hers. I had a boyfriend (such a juvenile term!) who was so fascinated by one of her pies that he pried off the pastry layer by layer. "If you don't want that, I'll eat it," I told him. No way, he wasn't giving up that pie. He'd never seen anything like it. No one ever will.

I don't say these things about my sister to be mean. This is my last chance to contrast myself with her. From now on, I will be treading in virgin (so to speak) territory. I am taking the path she never took, going through the menopause she never achieved, getting old without her to forge the path for me. And really, the only thing I can think of to say is, "Oh, shhhhhugar!"

At Last!

2009-04-12T08:54:00.001-07:00

Someone must be mellowing in their Old Age. No longer can This Certain Person complain about the Season's Greetings cards I send out. I feel that now, and only now, Peace on Earth is within our grasp. And why is this? What is this magic, is it the Ineffable? Is it Easter?

No, of course not, it's My Birthday and I will thank everyone in the world to set aside their stupid, petty prejudices and join hands for a big lovefest in my name, amen.

Don't make me send you a card!

We Can't Have It Both Ways, Can We?

2008-12-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

The opinion on Christmas from B.S., former speech-writer for President N., [I'll just let both of those hang and make of it what you will] is making the rounds of the e-mail in-boxes again, although it's several years old. It seems to work in nicely with a previous post of mine, so I'll complain about it here. Mr. S., although Jewish to the bone, doesn't mind being wished a Merry Christmas because it makes him feel all warm and cozy about his fellow Judeo-Christian [Where's the Islam there? Shouldn't it be Judeo-Christ-Islamist?] believers and that's what I was talking about earlier. That's very broad-minded of him to accept the greeting as kindly meant and good taste of him to enjoy those over-decorated trees.
Where he crosses the line, though, is to expect everyone to feel that way, especially atheists. He describes how Christians probably feel pushed around about showing their religion and equates it to how he doesn't like being pushed around for being Jewish. It seems, though, that he is completely unaware that non-religionists have been pushed around. Atheists are supposed to take it. Sitting in his "beach house" (to separate that from some other house he might have) he feels sorry for Christians, a vast majority, and not for the little people who are starting to push back. I don't like being pushed around for being an atheist, and so for years I just didn't mention it. Even as a child brought up Christian I had trouble with public displays of my religion because I was only too aware that there were people who didn't subscribe and I could see myself in their shoes. Mr. S. seems to think looking at it from his shoes alone is good enough.
I'll grant you that some of our number could stand to shut up, even some intelligent high-profile ones. And Christians are free to complain about political correctivity swinging the wrong way on them, but they've had their day in the sun and their chance to run things better. And there were still hurricanes, floods, famines, and pogroms.
We worry about current events precisely because they are current and we base past experience on our childhood memories of being totally clueless. The 1950s were not the halcyon days of nuclear families and religious devotion. They were years of Cold War and witch hunts, peoples' lives ruined by rumor mongering. Do I remember any of that? Of course not, I was sent to bed before Huntley and Brinkley came on! The 1960s were years of political upheaval over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights. I do remember that, because I was sickened by images of war during the dinner hour. Fortunately, our area of Kentucky was not torn apart by riots ... like those of the white Bostonians rejecting school integration. This means, however, that I put out of my mind what wasn't happening in my happy little galaxy. I remember my home and family.
What is happening, contrary to what Mr. S. believes, is that there is a whole lotta demagoguery going on. People are being whipped up on both sides by individuals who enjoy power. These people scaremonger, but not with anything so blatantly ridiculous as the destruction of Christianity, because only the mentally ill would believe that could possibly happen (and on the other side, only the mentally ill atheists could believe Christianity in particular or religion in general can be toppled), but they start with little things, like the alleged War on that Holiday celebrating the birth of You Know Who. Everybody can get behind Christmas! Christmas is harmless! Why, even that Jewish guy with the beach house likes Christmas! If you can get people to believe the little lies, then the big ones becomes that much easier to swallow. If you believe the atheists are out to ban That Holiday, you can be easily led to believe that all religious holidays are up for the chop. And then you can believe these people are un-American. Then you think your elected officials should take a stand on the issue, and their seasonal greetings should say a certain phrase. And then you start scrutinizing what these officials do about their greeting cards, totally missing what they're up to on matters that do fall within their purview, like fixing the economy, or at least making sure that greed will not be given free rein to create "exotic financial speculations" again.
So what are atheists up to? Hell's bells, even if we were organized it would be impossible to say. There are as many kinds of atheists as there are religions. They all become atheists different ways: some are born into atheist families, some wake up one day and ask themselves whether they really believe all that, some wrestle with their beliefs ... and win, and some have had bad experiences. Some drop their faith suddenly, sometimes faith fades slowly away. Mostly I think these people want the right not to be marginalized. We're all hopping on that civil rights bandwagon that seems to be so handy. You wouldn't fault black people for having been marginalized all those centuries, would you? You wouldn't say, "Look, there are just more white people, so just go with the flow and keep your mouth shut. We're tired of hearing about all we've done wrong or are doing wrong and we aren't going to change anything just to make you happy. 'Majority,' ever hear of it? So stop making us feel bad."
Okay, maybe some of you would say that.

Oops, forgot to post this ages ago!

Just a Quick Kvetch

2008-12-26T08:21:00.000-08:00

I was buying a large jar of catnip (I can mention this now that the presents have been handed out) at K-Mart (where I go first before braving the insanity that is Wal-Mart) and was actually being checked out in a timely fashion (!!!) when the clerk asked me what catnip did to cats. "Oh, it gets them all excited and then they go all relaxed," I said, because I don't think anyone has successfully written a government grant to study this. I added, "My grandmother used to drink a cup of catnip tea when she wasn't feeling well."
The woman behind me said, "You know what catnip really is?"
And right there I was glad that I didn't add my grandmother used to meow after taking a sip to tease my mom.
"A phamacist told me," she announced smugly, "that catnip is the bad stuff left over from the marijuana. I used to let my son make tea with it, but I don't anymore. Not after hearing that." [As if there's a "bad" part to marijuana that's thrown away.]
I humphed. "No, it's not. Catnip is a plant from the mint family. I've grown it. It's nothing like marijuana."
"Well that's what the pharmacist told me."

I let that go. I'm still wondering how that information got garbled.
Did she make it up out of whole cloth?
Was the pharmacist pulling her leg thinking she'd be much to intelligent to really fall for that?
Was he suspecting that her son only called the stuff catnip because she'd found some substance in his room and gave it to said pharmacist to check it out?
Did the pharmacist actually mean "It's the equivalent of 'marijuana' for cats"?

For the rest of y'all, be assured that catnip is an herb from the mint family with the familiar square stem of the rest of the mints. You can buy it anywhere, including economically large jars of it at K-Mart. You can grow it in your yard without experiencing any awkward visits from Drug Enforcement (unlike those who grow the harmless and useful hemp plants that look like marijuana, have absolutely no drug effects, but are still illegal because of the resemblance).

Decades ago when the anti-drug programs were being foisted (and, I thought, wasted) on me, I wondered why I needed to know what uppers, downers, LSD, and marijuana looked like. Even as a teen I thought this would only make it easier to make a drug transaction (not falling for the oregano ... OR CATNIP in the baggie). I was a sanctimonious little horror for whom pressing her eyeballs until she saw colors was interesting enough. But now I see it would have been important so that when I became a mother and I chanced upon a ziploc of dried herb while nosing through my child's room I would not fall for the old, "It's just catnip to make tea!" And then, when that child wanted to know how I got so I could tell the difference, I could say, "When I was your age, they showed us what it looked like in special drug-identification classes." And I'd go mix me a margarita and put my feet up.

Yeah, lady, I was a child of the 60s! Don't try to tell me about catnip!

See if you can tell the difference!

Wrestling with Christmas

2008-12-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

Kathy contemplates the Meaning of Sensitivity

In Re: Snarky comments from friends.
Comment #1: "For an atheist, you sure know a lot of Christmas songs."
Comment #2: "Funny how many atheists celebrate Christmas."

Snappy (okay, not so snappy, more dilatory) retort to #1: It wasn't my idea to sing Christmas songs all the way back from Spartanburg.
Snappy (ditto) retort to #2: Funny how many Christians are actually celebrating Solstice with a Jesus veneer.

As an atheist, I feel perfectly entitled to put up an evergreen tree in the manner of my Germanic ancestors and celebrate the return of the sun in a dark and gloomy time of year. If I still call this holiday "Christmas," it's out of habit. Without the tree, the decorations, the twinkly lights, the dark would be unbearable.

I was, however, cheered to hear Nina Totenberg singing a Christmas song on NPR this Saturday morning. I remember thinking, Gosh, I thought she was Jewish! And she is, but her mother liked Christmas songs and Christmas trees. And there is much to like about them. When I was growing up, we had a Christmas songbook in the house and although I was unable to read music, I could read the words and had a good memory for a tune. I spent many a December singing Christmas songs. I loved to sing and I prefer old songs to new ones.

So, anyway, if Nina Totenberg can put up a tree or sing Christmas songs, then I can too. But that doesn't mean I think everyone should. I wouldn't call an isolated instance of a Jewish family with a tree and a few songs reason for all Jewish people to start putting up trees and singing "Adeste Fideles." That's up to them. I can only govern my own behavior.

The New Madrigal Voyces Edition of the Blonde Shikseh
The above photo was taken during my madrigal group's Christmas concert in Beaufort, SC in the early 1980s. Didn't have a problem singing the Gaudete then, don't have it now.

As a civilized being, if someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, I will return the greeting, the same as if they wished me Happy Hanukkah or Eid or Kwanzaa or July 4th. I might even thank them. I will not, however, wear the "It's okay to say Merry Christmas" button, because it's okay to say it to some people and not to others, others who perhaps recall a history of persecution by misguided Christians. You wouldn't wish someone a Happy Mother's Day if they'd just lost a child, would you? It pays to know something about the person you're laying a loaded greeting on. I've seen bad reactions from Jewish friends to Christmas songs ("Please don't start singing them until December!" - well, I agree with that) and cards ("Why are you sending me a Christmas card when you know I'm Jewish?" - Did that card say "Christmas" on it anywhere? Don't be such a touchy butthole!).

It would be presumptive of me to think everyone should be open to this ... and a little presumptive of the other side to think I would mean ill by it, but the onus is still on my side of the net because I started it. Because I started it, I get defensive. And that is what I think is happening now. Having gone for decades of their lives wishing people a "Merry Christmas" willy-nilly, people are mystified to discover that occasionally this gesture was unwelcome for one reason or another. In typical human behavior (see my reaction to the holiday card above), we don't apologise. Instead, we blame the victim for being overly-sensitive when it is our own insensitivity that has caused the irritation. By God, they should accept that greeting! We hadn't meant any offense! Besides, they should believe in Jesus anyway! Do 'em some good! Lighten up, infidels! Because the President of a patchwork nation of different peoples puts "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" on the intensely impersonal bulk greeting card, some Christians are up in arms and start blaming ... the atheists. It's the atheists' fault that honest, well-intentioned Christians cannot go around wishing anyone they damn well please a Merry Christmas. And that is because the atheists have declared a War on Christmas. (Gosh! I missed that meeting!) There was an actual abolition of Christmas; it was by the Puritan parliamentarians in 1640, a bunch of Christian kill-joys if ever there were. They claimed (rightly) that Christmas wasn't a holiday mentioned in or commanded by the Bible and felt people were having too much food, drink, shenanigans, and goings-on. Instead, people should fast and think about their past sins. (Thinks about past sins and a dirty little smile sneaks across face.)

So what is my problem? You know what? I don't think I'm the one with the problem. What business is it of anyone else what holidays I celebrate and how? I'm not sacrificing chickens (nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it's just, well, yuck!) or dancing naked (okay, maybe I am, but you don't have to look). You mind your bidness and I'll mind mine. And let's try to live in harmony, which does not mean "all on the same note."

Shhh! Don't Tell the Middle Schoolers!

2008-11-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

On my other blog, the Staff Developomendo one, I have been reviewing books. I was required to start reading and reviewing YA/teen books and actually found some that were good, some that were really good, and some that were really good but I just couldn't bear to read them. My latest post there reviews a book about a Muslim girl who makes the choice to wear the headscarf (note I'm avoiding the use of terminology in case the darlings are searching on that term). I'm not putting the title in here because the little dickens hunt the internet for pre-fab book reports. In fact, according to Lijit.com, my book reviews are the most popular posts in any of my blogs.
The books I seem to enjoy the most are the ones that pat me on the back for my own world view and, consequently, wedge nicely into this blog.

The lead character's mother points out that some "people are paralyzed by their traditions and customs. It's all they know, so you can't judge them for following and believing what they know." She refers to Leila's mother discouraging school and wanting Leila to pick a husband and marry ... at age 16. But this is a lesson for all of us, especially me. Many of the people I see every day are like village people (not THE Village People, of course) who have only known this town, their friends and family, their religion. I should try harder to not judge them.
Also, the author makes an important point (one that I make, so you know it has to be important!) when Amal is asked to give a presentation explaining how Islam justifies the bombing in Bali. She retorts that she will do that if the Christian will give a speech on the Ku Klux Klan and then goes on to mention Israeli soldiers and the IRA. She left out the Jew who shot up the Mosque, and the Spanish Inquisition, and ... but you get the picture. I am grateful to her for the KKK reference, because although they were more recent I'd completely forgotten them and I just read Freakonomics which gave a detailed report of how many lynchings of blacks occurred per decade. Granted, they fell off as KKK membership increased, but only because the previous decades of violence had cowed the population. Not happy to terrorize just the black population, the KKK moved on to Jews and Catholics, because white and Protestant was considered "superior." Then there was the church bombing in Birmingham. Don't try to tell me Muslims arranged that! I can hear people crying out, "But they weren't real Christians; real Christians wouldn't do that!" Bingo. My point exactly. It takes all kinds to make up a world or a religion (or a non-religion). And you can't ... I mean, I can't go around blaming a whole religion for what a few did.
A few years back the annoying owner of an electronics store who likes to put annoying political messages on his sign put up something to the effect that while not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists ... well, you can see where that's going. My husband and I were outraged. My husband went in and revoked his custom, as it were. He'd had equipment in for repair. The reaction was, "But you aren't Muslim." Even someone, a nice person, said, "But it's true."
You just want to bang your head on the counter. How soon we forget! And how completely.

Stupidy, Stupidy, Stupidy

2008-11-09T08:13:00.000-08:00

I have this hanging over my desk at home, over my computer, as a reminder. I made it myself on Publisher, so the Greek isn't perfect - it ain't got the diacritical marks, or whatever they is. One day I saw this yardstick frame at Wal-Mart (back when I used to frequent Wal-Mart, before it became Wally-World, bigger than Alaska, requiring huskies and a GPS to navigate, and left an enormous empty shopping center on the other side of town) and thought it was perfect. I had also read an interview of Yehudi Menuhin in BBC Music Magazine and this quote jumped right out at me. So this is a primitive, real life mash-up.

The Greek means: Of all things the measure is man. I took Ancient Greek a coupla decades ago to see if Aristophanes was as funny in the original as in translation. (He is.) There's more to translation than just changing one word after another into another language, as those of us who use Babelfish or Google Translate or some other automatic device have come to understand. For one thing, there is interpretation. Protagoras does not mean that Man is the example from which all other things are judged. He means pretty much what Yehudi Menuhin is saying: that a person cannot judge anything except by his/her own experience. Menuhin takes a little longer to say that this experience colors that person's perception. Because Menuhin's interviewers had unhappy childhoods, they assume that his must have been unhappy as well.

I have taken this to heart, as you can tell by these framed quotes I keep in a prominent place (I spend hours in front of them). I use them as a yardstick for my own opinions and I have caught myself many times being guilty of this sort of prejudice. My main weakness is stupidity. I absolutely hate it when I am stupid, which is fairly often, really. This self-loathing can be debilitating, so instead of being more careful or more reflective, I project my anger on what I perceive as the stupidity of others. I try to stop myself doing this, take a breath, and remind little me that I make stupid assumptions also or act without thinking.
But ...
I can remain silent no longer.

Of all the stupid, stupid, stupid things I've heard lately is that this election of Barrack Obama is a signal of the End Times. I hear this at work (okay, not that strange, living in the Bible belt), read urban legend debunkings of Nostradamus spams, and I've even heard it on Second Life-of-all-places. In my memory, they've been presaging the End of the World since that idiotic The Late Great Planet Earth book came out in the 1970s and all the Christian-types in college were going on and on about it. Well, Hal Lindsey's deadline has done come and went, chilluns. I didn't give it much of a thought at the time because apparently the brand of Christianity espoused by my family was more of a Say Your Prayers, Behave Yourself and Be Considerate of Others flavor. I don't remember anyone making any kind of a fuss over the End Times, probably because they were like death - something you have no control over, so why worry about it?
I was asked at one point, "What would you think if 20% of the population suddenly disappeared one day?" Ummm, Good Riddance?

So naturally I'm greeting reports of people running out and buying up guns since the election results came out with my characteristic eye-rolling. It's all good for the economy, I suppose. In the midst of the Millennial Panic the most I did was buy a small, disposable alcohol stove which could come in handy in the event of another ice storm which we're prone to in this neck of the woods.

So what do I worry about? Oh, my retirement. I keep telling myself that economic thingummies are cyclical and this too shall pass. With any luck, I'll be able to retire during an upswing. Then again, maybe I'll drop dead before that. My mom said "You always worry about the wrong thing!" - meaning "you" in the sense of "a person." Me, I assiduously worry about everything hoping they will all turn out to be wrong.

And the rest of y'all? Use your heads, people! In the Middle Ages the Black Death killed off a minimum of 30% of the European population, a mini-ice age brought on starvation and was followed by global warming, the ruling classes plied their profession with rampant brutality, in the name of Faith torture and murder by Christians on their fellow Christians as well as non-believers were by-words, and if that didn't bring on the End of the World, I don't think we have anything to worry about now. It's All About You, innit? Well, it's time to look outside your house, your neighborhood, your church, your religion, your city, your state, your country, your landmass, your century ... and look at the Whole Picture. This world is going to end, and no one can know the time or the how. It might be one of them asteroidy things. So just shut up about it, mind your own p's and q's, help your fellow man whether here or somewhere you've never even heard of, and pray if you got 'em.

Yeah, or she'll scratch your eyes out!

2008-10-31T09:22:00.000-07:00

I Stand Corrected

2008-10-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

It has been pointed out to me that the loony Anti-Hallowienies are in a minority, even in this area, and that I'm not making anyone happier by complaining about them. The world is full of nice people, who are Christians, who enjoyed the make-believe of childhood and think the current crop of children deserve to have the same fun. Hurray for them and an eclair for both of us (yum)! They just don't come up to me after the Halloween storytime and say, "That was so much fun! Thank you for doing that."
No, wait. They do. In fact, they did that today.
Ummmmmmm ... nevermind. I take it all back.

But as happens everywhere, in all times, the retraction gets no recognition. The debunking of satanic abuse stories mined by Recovered Memory Therapy (now discredited as a technique because the therapist has ways of suggesting possible memories which the subject obligingly produces) squeaks away unheeded in the darkness.

Don't Listen to This Man

2008-10-22T15:56:00.000-07:00

He just doesn't understand candy! Candy corn is one of my favorites (but ONLY this time of year) and make awesome vampire teeth, hillbilly teeth, nose plugs, etc.
The particular hard candies pictured used to be my favorites, but I can't eat them now because anything that requires sucking on rubs holes in my mouth. I can eat one hard candy per day maximum.
I'd eat Necco wafers all year long, and as for the fun-size candies - fun-size must refer to his ... brain.
We give out atomic fireballs at our house because we just love 'em and we hate greedy bastard children. Kids with a sense of humor will love the atomic fireballs either for a palette cleanser after all the cheap chocolate or to bring tears to the eyes of their friends.
I remember Hallowe'en as some of the happiest times of my life, even with apples, raisins, and those horrible popcorn balls. Categorizing the candy and rating it was part of the fun! And you ate the icky stuff first and put the Mars candy bars in the freezer because they were awesome frozen and shattered with a hammer.
So, don't listen to this Ed Levine idiot! Kids like quantity of candy and as long as they can have a few goodies they'll be happy.

What in the Samhain?!

2008-10-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

I don't even like zombie movies, but I dress up for Halloween in Second Life.

There was a slight problem with storytime recently. I had a family walk out on my "If you're scary and you know it" song because they "don't celebrate Halloween." I know these people are out there. Usually they don't come to storytimes during October. Five minutes later a grandmother showed up with a child who was allowed to "make a face, show his fangs, etc." so I got to do it after all. I don't suppose it would have bothered me to the point of lashing out at the mother if she hadn't kept repeating that she didn't "want to be disrespectful." That "but I will" hangs in the air, doesn't it? She said it over and over and all I was hearing was "disrespect" - although I'm not sure whose actions it described.
This is like when my dad was telling me I was a good girl. "You're a good kid, you are. You are awfully good! Awfully, awfully, awfully good." I heard the "awfully" part and I heard it as "awful." So what I was hearing from this mom was "disrespect." I told her it was all right, but that she didn't need to repeat it.
No, she could make her apologies and just leave quietly. I have nothing to say to someone from some bizarre cult that abjures innocuous celebrations because of ignorance and hearsay and thereby engenders unnatural fears in her children that this holiday silliness is real, lending it much more power than wearing masks and making believe ever could.
But I could be wrong.

Being an honest person, I feel compelled to investigate my knee-jerk reactions and hold them up to scrutiny. In the opinion of this town (if they were aware of it), I too belong to a cult. I am a non-Christian in the holes of the strap of the Bible-belt. I've been to meetings that start with Christian prayers. I'm hounded by proselytizers. I'm asked stupid questions ("Are Catholics Christian? My preacher says they worship Mary."). There's a fragmentary church on every corner, exhibiting the definition of paranoia, blaming everything outside yourself: Those people are wrong and are going to hell; we are the only ones who know the right way (and I'm not too sure about you). The churches get smaller and smaller. They believe slavishly what they are told. They don't want to think for themselves, either because they don't trust their abilities to reason or they're just plain lazy. Again, that's just my opinion.

Most of these people have not ventured far from home and don't realize that there are other valid ways of life. I'm not saying that going begging from house to house and accumulating more candy than someone should reasonably consume in six months and scarfing it down in a matter of days is a good idea. It was, however, a cherished memory of childhood. Children enjoy being scared under safe circumstances. Having some sort of major holiday each month to mark the passage of time or to use as a teaching point is a good idea. Ancient traditions must have something important that they bring to our lives if they have been kept up this long and, as long as they aren't hurting anyone (other than making us enormously fat), are nice to keep.

I do believe in gorging oneself before winter, putting up lights and decorations to cheer the darkest part of the year, and celebrating new life in the spring. Therefore, I decorate for Christmas, I return the greeting when people wish me happy Christmas, I can sing carols, go to Christmas parties, send out cards (carefully not mentioning Christmas), do Christmas storytimes, and get all teary over the Christmas Story. Just don't make me do any praying or show up at your worship service. I will wait respectfully while you pray, but leave me out of it. So, when someone takes their holier-than-thou stand with me, I will get a bit huffy. I think, I've put up with you [insert rude plural noun here] down here for eighteen years and I'm getting fed up with it. You're only doing it to get attention.

Let me ask myself an honest question: Would I tell Christmas stories to little Jewish kids (despite the unlikeliness of this happening in my current location)? Hmmm, I've got me there. No, I would not do that and would not rail against it if their mom got up and said, "We don't do Christmas." Of course, I do give Alex a hard time for giving me a hard time over the "Christmas card." "Why did you send me a Christmas card when you know I'm Jewish?!" I didn't send you a Christmas card, Alex, I sent a Season's Greetings card with a Hanukkah stamp to let you know that I am well and I'm thinking about you although I wonder why if you're going to be such a butthole about it and next time it might be the Eid stamp, so watch it.

Anyway, are these examples actual equivalents? Let's look at this again.
Halloween: an American holiday that up until a short time ago was celebrated almost universally with happy, over-sugared children in schools, neighborhoods, and even churches. Currently linked to Satanism through spurious so-called histories and urban legends, but more likely a conspiracy of the candy manufacturers, dentists, and the weight-loss industry.
Christmas: an almost world-wide holiday celebrated only by Christians who have been historically documented less than 400 years ago to burn at the stake people who would not adhere to the exact dogma espoused by the local authorities (and let's remember that Protestants did their fair share of torture and murder as well, so don't get all "Those were Catholics, not us!" on me).
I don't see a real comparison, do you?

But it's time to put myself under the microscope and find my own prejudices. Ah, and there it is looking me right in the eye: July Fourth. I've written about this in another blog. Patriotism is right up there with religion as far as dangerous hobbies go. Red, white, and blue is a terrible color combination and love of country has unfortunately turned into a litmus test. Do I have pride in my country? Of a sort. It might not be like yours, waving the flag and talking about how wonderful it all is and cheering on the politicians of choice. Again, it takes into account that there are other ways of living that are just as valid. I don't want to praise my country to the detriment of another. What about the American people? I feel a kinship with them that I don't feel for those of my forebears. Germans are scary and talk funny. Americans share a common culture with me (except those non-Halloweenie people), but I do not say that this culture we share is better than anyone else's. It's just one that we share. Our government? It's messy, but it works well enough and doesn't seem to be any better or worse than anyone else's.
Would I go to a Fourth of July party? Well, it's a party, isn't it? You betcha! Would I wave a flag? Maybe, but flag-waving makes me uncomfortable. I'd sing the few patriotic songs I know because I learned them in school, although the national anthem is starting to get out of my range. It would help if I could feel good about my country again, if it didn't invade other countries or bomb other countries (perhaps I should be grateful we don't bomb ourselves but maybe that's next), or continually bully other countries into doing something (not that we're the only ones who do this) they'd rather not, even if they're being really naughty. I don't think I'd be described as patriotic by most people and that wouldn't really bother me.
The salient point, though, is that I would not show up at a friend's picnic in early July and then walk out on it because it was a July Fourth Party. "Sorry, I just don't do patriotism. I don't mean to be disrespectful ..."

I'm embarrassed to be caught at a Fourth of July Party in Second Life. OMG! I'm even waving a sparkler!

Jonathan Miller Is Dead Wrong

2008-10-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Well, let's just say, "That's his opinion."
I have always (well, at least since the 1970s) thought of Miller as a genius and a hero. Who else could make John Cleese, at the height of his cranky goofiness, into a sex symbol by casting him as Petruchio and then having him play it dead straight (save the chicken clucking instance)? Cor, that would take godlike powers! I was on tenterhooks as the crew rushed to tear off the mask and bring him back after an apparently deadly demonstration on the effects of removing the carbon dioxide feedback from the body's emergency response. I had memorized the skits in "Beyond the Fringe" and even performed in one in a college theatre class.
So when my friend Alison said they could still get tickets to "An Evening with Jonathan Miller" at Regent's College if I was still interested (it was a week after my father had died while I was in London), I said "Hell yes!"
I had pictured a large, darkened lecture hall and a tiny figure on a stage with a podium he would probably ignore. Instead, it was a small conference room in full lighting with a comfy chair and a bar at the back. Fortunately, orange juice was available because I'd tied one on the night before with Lorraine and I don't really need to do that two nights in a row.
We met Alison at the Baker Street station, because we had no idea where we were going. She led us through Regent's Park to the entrance to the college where her other friend Jonathan (no relation, or at least not one he mentioned) awaited us. The man with the reservations, Alex, showed up a bit later. Alex had apparently caused quite a stir trying to get tickets, having to call successive numbers and wheedle information out of people. The lecture was probably London's best kept secret. Then he had to call again on the day of the lecture to squeeze out two more tickets. This must have caused the organizer to come to the utterly false conclusion that this was on the behalf of two important but incognito foreign dignitaries.
Dr. Miller came in early to scout out the venue and sample the oj and I fancied he gave me a Special Smile. Later, he was dragged to our group by the organizer who introduced him to Alex and then he inquired as to who had come from the farthest away. For one awful moment I thought of Alison, who is Australian, but she's been living in London for eight years now. I believe I jumped up and down and squealed, "That's meeeeeee!" totally forgetting my long-suffering husband and channeling Dr. Dick Hertz. We had an absolutely exquisite chat where I swooned all over him and expressed my concern about the demonstration in "The Body in Question" and he allowed that four people since he did that demonstration had died as a result. About this time I totally lost consciousness and started speaking to him in an uncharacteristic southern US accent. It was one of the happiest moments of my life (that did not involve Indian food ... or my husband).
His lecture began perhaps a little far back, with his father's history and career in groundbreaking psychology. Then he decided he'd talked about himself enough and entertained questions from the small but adulatory audience. Oh, and one crank case who reminded me of the late Greenwoodlian, Dr. Marvin Chipley, only slightly more together. My husband and I sat nodding happily through Dr. Miller's views on just about everything: education is now complete bosh (hear hear!), there is no god and what a silly notion that is (amen, brother!), "concepts" are ruining theatre (oh, oh, oh! that gives me an idea!), the only things that are worth learning are the things that are difficult (took that one right to heart and planned a rant all around it). Then he expressed, cheerfully, his utter regret at having given up on his medical career and that is right where he lost me. Theatre was just too easy, and, as we heard, the easy things aren't the worthwhile ones.
I suppose he has a right to his own regrets. Far be it from me to dictate his emotions. What he is not taking into account is two-fold.
Number one: Theatre is easy for him because he did all the difficult research on it in his medical career. He studied human behavior in all its minuteness and made the lateral leap with that hard-earned background into its use in theatre thereby improving productions such as "The Taming of the Shrew" with John Cleese beyond all knowing. He managed to take an English translation of Cosi fan tutte (anathema! anathema!) and make it palatable to me who believes that any opera translation is an abomination and a true lover of opera will take the time to learn the bloody language it's in so no time will be wasted on the supertitles and the beauty of the mixture of music and the language it was written for will blaze through. Where was I? Oh.
Oh, yes, it might be easy ... for him ... now. On top of this is his ability to communicate it to the performers and amaze them with the simplicity of something that is, in fact, not simple at all. It is not even simple to be yourself when you are confronted by a group of people who are focused on everything you say or do and, if it doesn't interest them, will lose that interest in you. Much more difficult is being someone else, or one of your many other yous. Suddenly you have to think about how you are moving, the subtleties of speech, and what your next line is. After you've done this for years then, yes, it's easy.
But no, it's not trivial. And therein lies my second point.
As a neurologist or any other sort of doctor, you are limited by the number of people you can actually see as patients in your lifetime. In a much shorter spate of time, Dr. Miller has brought joy, laughter, and a vastly improved "The Taming of the Shrew" to millions. I suppose if he continued in medicine and developed some treatment, some cure, some insight into disease he could possibly reach the same amount of people. That, I think, is what we in the US call a "crapshoot."
Perhaps what he means is that theatre isn't serious. It just doesn't carry the gravitas of medicine. I take issue with that as well. I believe we are much the poorer as humans without good theatre or any of the other arts. The body keeps the mind alive, the mind keeps the body in good order, but the arts are what make us human, civilized beings who think beyond where their next curry is coming from (although I have to admit that is pretty crucial). They instruct and elevate. They are not trivial.
I've been to doctors and I've had therapy and it's all been very helpful. I, however, would just as soon have a good laugh, get totally engrossed in a good book, or somehow be taken out of myself for a short time. All this makes my life bearable. I hug the memories of his "easy" work to me and they make me smile. So all in all I'm glad Dr. Miller made the greatest mistake in his life.
That being said, Dr. M, any chance of a bunk-up?

In Memoriam

2008-09-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

Mmmm, That's Bass

2008-08-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Manhattan, where I lived for 3 years. Okay, can't really prove it. You'll just have to take my word for it. I do my best to tell the truth.

It's a shame I don't have any photos from New York. There is no proof that I lived in Manhattan and no pretty pictures to make this story less wordy. Besides, it starts back in South Carolina with the Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend, or WSEB as he shall hitherto be known. Before I go on with this story, in the interest of fairness I will point out that the WSEB has actually apologised to me, in writing, for the whole shebang. In his defense, he pointed out that he was going through some turmoil at the time. In his defense, I point out that I can be a rather substantially-sized pain in the patootie.

Our main problem had been an inability to break up. I blame him for this. He directed the relationship and if he said we were broken up, then, by Om, we were bloody well broken up. He had, however, made some plans to attend a professional conference and for me to meet him there before breaking up our relationship. It seemed a shame not to have me around. He was planning to do some networking and he was hoping I could help. Probably a large part of our breaking-up problem was that we were so damned civilized about it. "Sure," I said. "Happy to help." Besides, it was in South Carolina and not too terribly far away from where I lived. It wouldn't actually put me out.

I had recently been outlet shopping with my sister and had purchased (on the strength of being a single woman again) a wonderful dress that was strapless and backless and held up solely by the power of molecular attraction. It was mostly white with tiny stripes of color running through it diagonally. The bodice clung and the skirt fanned out alla Donna Reed. I was on an Amalfi binge in those days and had some white heeled sandals with teensy straps. Yeah, okay - not Jimmy Chu or whatever, but I really liked the style Amalfi put out and they were all leather, so they would be good for dancing. (My feet now shudder at the memory of dancing in such things.) I brought this outfit along.

I actually attended at least one session at this conference, which was not in my field, and argued with the WSEB later about it. My main job, though, came up at the wine and cheese (Free booze? I'm there!) reception. My former beau explained that he would be chatting up future interviewers and my job was to line up the next one for him. He gave me a list of people he wanted cornered and the order he wanted them in. We all wore those adhesive, "Hello, My Name Is" labels. This is just the sort of thing I am utterly unable to do for myself. However, doing it for someone else is something radically different and seemed like fun. They were all men, so I would hold his drink for him and point my strapless bodice at the next victim. You'd think that what with all of them being professional psychologists that they would not fall for this. You'd think they'd say to themselves, "Look at that brazen and not-that-attractive hussy thinking she can point her highbeams at me and lure me to her!" No, men seem to be men. They were front and center in less than two minutes and I would charm their professional socks off of them until the WSEB was done with the previous employment candidate. To this day I wonder if they got together later and compared notes. "Did you see how that one guy brought a babe with him to line up interviews? How much you think he paid her? Ya think she was a pro?"

It wasn't a long evening, just one of those six-to-eighters where people drift off when the wine runs out. The WSEB didn't have many people he wanted to chat up and soon I was left holding his plastic cup and plastic hors d'oeurves plate with nothing to do. I noticed that there was another young person who was at loose ends and I leaned forward to check his nametag. It said "David Wechsler Revised." Ahhh, an alias! I recognized the Wechsler Revised as one of the intelligence tests the WSEB had studied. He had studied them by testing his friends, me being one of them at the time. (His conclusion was that I was an "underachiever.") I turned the same machinegun turrets on David Wechsler Revised I used on the others and beamed. "I know enough to know that can't be your name," I said cheekily.

He invited me to some radio station wingding that was going on in another part of the hotel. I had to admit that I was "sort of" with someone, but that it wasn't anything serious. I picked up the WSEB's reaction on my radar. He was disturbed. But David Wechsler Revised and I had a nice chat, exchanged numbers, and it was a long time before we met up again, but we did get together.

The next day, the WSEB apologised for his reaction. He admitted that he had said that our relationship was over and I certainly was free to find someone else and that perhaps he was having trouble letting go. And he had been drunk. And so was I. He had managed to score some interviews and it looked like he would be able to move to an area even closer to where I was living. Shortly after he moved within 100 miles of me, I moved to New York. That relationship was just not getting the chance to die the death.

Now, I told you that whole story, as Bill Cosby says, to tell you this one.

It was in New York that I ran into David Wechsler Revised. He was from Manhattan and had gotten a job as a liaison between a corporation and a group that supplied the less mentally abled into the workforce. His job was to keep tabs on, among other people, the mailroom guy who came to the office where I was holding a temporary job and hung around me, nominally creeping me out.

David Wechsler Revised and I met for drinks one night. Thrifty person that I am (or is that "cheap date"?), it was my intention to order a beer and nurse it for a while. I asked the waitress what they had on tap and stopped her litany at the Bass Ale. "Oooo, I'll have a Bass!" I said, thinking it would be smooth and filling. David Wechsler Revised, who had been bingeing with friends the night before, ordered an Amaretto and soda, hoping it would not reopen any wounds. This meant nothing to me. I had a good friend (also male) who regularly ordered Amaretto Sours because he wasn't much of a drinker and they were tasty. At least, he claims they were. Amaretto is something I use in baking, not drinking. But what other people opt to imbibe is up to them. The waitress, however, said, "Oh, Role Reversal tonight?" I thought that was pretty funny, but David Wechsler Revised took it in the gonads. "Geez!" he said. "Geez!" This went on for quite a while. Another trained psychologist allowing himself to be manipulated by chance comments (or wanton mammaries)! He never got over this and claimed that she was not getting a tip from him. (I actually sympathize. I've been the target of a humorous waitress myself. It was a Girls' Night Out and as the orders went around the table they were all for a "White wine." When it came to me I ordered a pitcher of beer, figuring I'd order once and not have to keep calling her back for another leg like the others were bound to do. Besides, it's more economical in a pitcher. Said the waitress, "You wanna straw with that?" Nope, she wasn't getting a tip from me.)

I was reminded of this story tonight when we met friends for dinner at Orde's of London. Our cat sitter had made a date with a customer at her place of business a couple of weeks ago and had met at this restaurant for a drink where she would then try to talk him out of a first date dinner at Captain D's. To my mind, the suggestion of Captain D's for any meal was a permanent deal breaker, but my friend ... has no man-sense apparently. She ordered herself a Chardonnay and waited. When her date arrived, he asked for a beer and then became incensed at the price Orde's was charging: $4.00. He couldn't let it go and eventually he had to leave to go drink somewhere cheaper. Abandoning her is a deal breaker for my friend, but she likes having a good story to tell. Last week we were at Disney World staying in the Sheraton Mouse Prison (don't get me staaated), The Dolphin, where a beer or glass of wine was $8 and a soda was $5 at the conference reception. I had to text her to tell her to tell her "friend" that the beer was $8 out here.

I'm really no better than her date. I went on and on about the price of a drink and the price of everything else there, totally ruining my own vacation. The killer was the $10 per exit charge for self-parking that, in the end, didn't even turn up on our bill. But each time we left the park my mind went "ka-ching!" and I added the cost to our dinner bill or the run to the drug store or my bead store trips. My only excuse is that I am not a professional psychologist. It should be easy to manipulate me and make me unhappy. Well, not really "easy." And not "should." In fact, I think I'll go work on that. My own shrink says I need to have a good, long talk with that person in the mirror.

Well, if I have time ...

The Day I Threw a Table at My Sister

2008-08-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

Cartoon that pretty much sums up my relationship with my sister.

For the record, I did go through a period of time when I was about 15 that I lifted weights. I think that lasted 10 minutes. I am built like my dad, large muscles over a sturdy frame. My sister was built like my dad ... on grow pills. She was at least three inches taller than he was. I was visiting her home in Greensboro and was about to sit down in a recliner when I saw the little table next to it had a broken strut. "Oh, when did that happen?" I asked, thinking it had something to do with the even better developed children she had. "Don't you remember?" she said, settling into the other recliner. "You threw it at me and broke it."
Like many baby-boomers, I lived through the sixties and seventies and I know it's possible to lose track of every little thing that happened to one in those colorful days. I may joke around with my friends and claim to be having " LSD flashbacks," but it's all talk. My sister, nine years older, made a big deal over my putative forays into counterculture. I say "putative" because I was a Young Republican during a time when it was not very popular, making me a pariah in my day. Not many drugs actually came my way, but neither did I escape their siren song. I did, however, roll my eyes as my sister sniffed and proclaimed she never did drugs, as she held a frozen daiquiri in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Doubtless you are imagining me in some rollicking (if infrequent) drug-induced fit throwing furniture at my defenseless and sober sibling. I didn't imagine that for one red second. My mind, still pretty sharp in those days, hurtled back to an incident in the early 1960s when we lived in Cincinnati. My sister had pushed me to my limit. As a child, I was pretty laid-back, albeit whiny. You could mess with my head all day long and just get your name strung out in several extra syllables and a penetrating nasal whinge. "Aaaaaeeeeeeeyyunnnnn!" Or, I might perhaps have recourse to our mother, whom I refered to as "my mother," much to my sister's consternation (but let's face it, when you have kids nine years apart, you're a different person by the time the second one comes along): "Maaaaaoooummmmm! Aaaeeyun isn't staying on her side of the caawaaar!" This, of course, cut no ice with our mother. One time she even got out of the car and walked home because she couldn't stand listening to us bicker in the back seat.
But in this case it was 1963 I was no more than nine years old, making my sister twice my age and twice my size. She was frequently left to babysit me and used that time to torture me in various ways: making me wash and dry the dishes when instructions were clearly left for us to divide that chore; creating unfair guessing games to humiliate me for her amusement; calling me names. And one night she just pushed me too far. I shoved the table. I didn't even shove it at her. I just had to take out my frustrations on something. I shoved a small drop-leaf table. I do not recall it breaking, but that just might be all those slaughtered brain cells from my counterculture past. Years later I recall one more incident where I pushed everything off the top of my dresser and she immediately accused me of throwing things at her. "I'm telling Mom," she said. I wish I had thrown them at her.
She did love me, though. She bought me presents, took me to movies, took me to fencing lessons and paid for them. She honed her mom-ing skills on me. She made birthday cakes for me and threw birthday parties - and then stepped in and made herself the center of attention. Years later I had friends who did the same things. Cindy would throw surprise birthday parties for me (I lost my appetite for birthdays early on, necessitating the surprise factor) and invite men she wanted to date. I'd come home from work and find my mother looking shamefaced. "What is it?" I'd ask. She'd moan, and then finally admit she'd been talked into another surprise birthday party after I had made her promise not to fall for it again. And Cindy was late ... again. I had wondered what all the idling cars were doing down the street. To this day I don't mind people knowing how old I am, but I hate birthdays. I'm 54, by the way.
If my sister were alive today (she isn't always speaking to me in my memory), I'd ask her why, if I'd broken the strut on that tiny table around 1963, it was not repaired, nor even looked as if it had been repaired in 1978 when she brought it up. It had been through at least two moves, if not four, and never been at least glued?! Was it thus as a constant reminder of my alleged violent temper?
No, it's just Aaaeeeeyyuuunnn messin' with my head again. Amazing she can still do it, and that I let her do it, from beyond the grave.

Can you tell I've been reading David Sedaris again?

Notes I made about the story when I was in Florida:

Why It Took So Long for Me to Get Married

2008-08-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

Serial Fiancee and Mother Superior, partners in crime

Had a nice chat with the chiropractor today (after killing myself doing die-cutting) after all his patients left. Mentioned how Christine Baranski (since "Cybill" and now in "Momma Mia") reminds me of my dear friend NamelessHussy. I'm not allowed to talk about certain aspects of our time together. If she wants to tell stories on herself, that's up to her (ask me to remind you, Dear). But in "Momma Mia" they actually call Baranski's character a "serial fiancee." I'm just sayin'.

NamelessHussy used to say she liked to go out with me, because when she went out with other women, they just used her to attract men. NH would tongue-lash them away, and the other women would provide these reprobates with a soft landing. I didn't operate that way. If we went out together and some creep tried to chat her up in some obnoxious fashion (and NH particularly disliked the braggarts who tossed out their resumes as if they meant something), we operated like a well-drilled volleyball duo: she set 'em up, and I spiked them - wham!

Example: Oxford cloth shirt and power tie started in on NH with a "Why won't you go out me?" barrage and she finallly wheeled on him. "I won't go out with you because you wear those Euro-fag tasseled loafers." He was now dead to her, but he's still hanging in mid-air. He turned to the fat girl with the pleasant but dull face and tried the sympathy angle. "I had to wear these. I fell out of bed and hurt my foot," said leeringly as though there was something more than sleeping going on. "If you were doing it right, you wouldn't have fallen out," I pointed out cheerfully. "Jeesh!" he said, "Jesus!" and left both of us alone the rest of the evening. High fives, teammate!

I didn't do this just when NH was around. I also had a running game going with a male friend who continually tried my patience with innuendo along that same line. "Why aren't we sleeping together?" "Is that why we don't sleep together?" We don't sleep together, dear one, because it ruins friendships, just see if it doesn't. "I'd like to test that theory." And I kept count. "That's 37." It was more a game than anything, and one that I wasn't really winning (but he wasn't getting laid, either, so maybe it was a tie). It did, however, hone my skills. That and several years of back-and-forth with gay men gave me a competitive mouth. I'd like to think that I didn't start anything. I only volleyed back when it came into my court and I only go for the joke, not really the kill.

Still, it does keep the gene pool at a distance, dunnit? In the end, I had to be approached by someone gently. I then gave back the same way. I'm just a parrot, repeating what I hear. Y'all keep that in mind when you go a-courtin'.

Pinhead Rant About Pinheads

2008-07-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a waiting room today while some pinheads complained about waiting in waiting rooms. One had waited for almost 90 minutes to see a doctor for 10. Yeah? Try doing that while escorting a patient with Alzheimer's who asks you every five minutes why we're there! Tell me, who doesn't spend far too much time waiting for a doctor to only have 5 to 10 minutes actual consultation. At least he had a book with him. I always take a book when I go to the doctor or the dentist because everyone is forced to wait forever.
Then he complains that some Mexican family got 30 minutes with the doctor. Hmm, "family." That would be at least three people? Even if it comprises only three people, it would be 10 minutes per person, right? And taking into account the possible language difficulties, there would be even less actual facetime for each patient.
"Ah was bohn heyah! Lived heyah mah whole lahf! And they can be illegal and get the same kir!" Really? How do you know they're illegal? Not every foreigner in this country is here illegally. If you were a visitor in a strange land, would you want the receptionist yelling at you in the Official Language (in case you're deaf as well as stupid) that you will just have to wait until the doctor has seen all the valid citizens before you get worked in?
"Ah have insurance!" Well, if they don't, they pay a lot more than you and your insurance does. And they have to pay cash. That's at a doctor's office. In the hospital emergency room it might be another story. Something about a Hippocratic Oath.
I have a friend who is at the mercy of another country's healthcare system. They put cash machines in the hospital because non-citizens pay cash up front. Is that how we want to be?
And this conversation goes off on another tangeant about how few senators voted to make English the Official Language of the United States. Why should they? We've gone for over 200 years without needing to establish an Official Language. And what really scorches my plums is that these are the same people who got their panties in a twist when France started cracking down on all the English being used in signage. "We saved their asses in World War II," they crow (although I haven't heard anyone who actually served in the armed forces in that time period make that statement), "and this is how they treat us!" La chaussure is on l'autre pie now, eh?*
"The clerk gave me a form in Spanish!" Maybe they were all out of the ones in English. By the way, do you go on like this in front of your Spanish-speaking customers?
I hope, I really hope, that after all these centuries of back and forth that the Spanish-speakers get the upper hand and force this whole lazy lot to learn some Spanish. I want to see Spanish everywhere, and why not German? BMW has saved the upstate's ass by putting one of their plants here. And let's show that we're "better" than the Froggies and translate everything into Frog as well. What about Chinese? I've always wanted to learn Chinese.
Petty little pinheads who need something to complain about! There's food on their table, clothes on their back, a roof over their heads, all the bad tv anyone could possibly watch, and very few bombs dropping about their ears. They have no justification in complaining about anything a-tall.
* Junior senator from Georgia says, "We have a saying: 'E Pluribus Unum' -- and the Unum, unity, oneness of America should be officially the English language. It's what's going to bind us together, ... and it's, I believe, critical both economically as well as societally (sic) to have English as the official language in America." Ummm, I believe "E Pluribus Unum" is actually in Latin, thankewverymuch. It is to larf! Moi, I wish they'd translate all that crap into plain English, don't you?

I Was a Female Impersonator

2008-06-23T17:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry, no photos. I don't even know if any were taken. Halloween was coming up, and, after the release of "Victor/Victoria" I had the idea of dressing as a female impersonator. I was living with Fred-the-make-up-artist at the time and he asked me what I wanted to do. If I was going to be seen with him, it had better be good. I told him. His expression was blank for a few seconds and then the idea grew on him. He liked it. He liked it a lot.
My job was to find a dress. I was hoping to find something cheap and slutty on E. 86th Street where, Fred claimed, prostitutes hung out. They were utterly invisible to me. What I really needed was a Salvation Army store, but I didn't know of anything like that in the upper east 80s. Apparently, "cheap" was not an E. 86th Street description. I found instead a grey silk dress that had long sleeves (the better to hide arm hair), a scarf, and a sash that one could throw together in interesting ways, if one isn't me. I have no ability there, but I figgered Fred did.
Fred acquired a red wig that would do Danny LaRue proud. He explained what he would be doing to make me look more like a guy trying to look like a woman. "I'll cover your eyebrows and draw in new ones above them," he told me - which explains the perpetually surprised look of some FIs.
For my part, I took my bra and stuffed it, clumsily. I wanted it to look stuffed, so I balled some tissues and put them on top of my breasts and maybe a few to the side.
Fred was initially excited about his own costume idea, which reminded me of those spinning paint things you do at carnivals, but he really got into doing me up: gold over the brows, exaggerated lips, etc. It wasn't his first FI job, but this was a new twist.
Our first stop was a party on the Upper West with some of Fred's friends. One of them was a young guy who had a part-time job as a clown, so he had a ready-made costume for all occasions. I don't recall his name (sorry! waited too long to write my memoirs, didn't I?), so I'll just call him Bubo the Clown. On the Upper West, I was crossing my legs ankle to knee, in keeping with someone less-familiar with transvestitism. Bubo started lecturing me on the proper way for ladies to cross their legs. I listened studiously, agog. Really? How fascinating. Fred eventually stepped in to set him ... straight. "Marf," he explained, "as in Martha. This is my roommate." Bubo actually gasped. "Oh, nooooooo!" he wailed. He was horrified that he'd made some sort of gaff, but I was quite chuffed to have actually fooled someone.
It was then decided we should test the costume on a tougher audience. We were going to go to the Christopher Street Parade, the Gay Halloween Mecca. I already was regretting my heels, spiky and pointy-toed.
At the parade, I had Fred and Bubo as heralds, proclaiming the arrival of this Beautiful Woman. I got whistles and leers. It put me in mind of Pres's experience on Christopher Street when he was walking with me. He'd become frustrated because he wasn't being "cruised." Then he remembered that I was with him. Duh! He had expected that he would still be looked at, eye-contact would be made, but a woman at his side disconnected him from a familiar world. Now I had the reverse on them. The laugh was on them, the men who mistook me for another man ... dressed as a woman. At one point, someone grabbed my ass and then shrieked, "Omigawd! It's a real woman!" The three of us burst out laughing. I waved airily at my admirers. I didn't have many in my drab, everyday existence. It was fun to steal some attention from gay men, to be cruised, whistled at, fondled, and to horrify. After all, it was Halloween.
Halloween is Everyday in Second Life. Anyone can be disguised. People can be fooled. This is something that I avoid doing, probably because it is outside of Halloween or April Fool's Day when license is granted. I don't consider the multitude of avatars I keep "on hangers" in my inventory to be fooling anyone. They still carry the label "Lludmila." I may act slightly differently with each of them on (wearing a male av I resist some of my squealing noises: Ewwww! OoooOOoooo!), but it's still me back there behind the mask behaving in what I hope is a reasonably normal fashion. It's much easier to pad the bra ... or even squish it down with the sliders. I can be fatter, thinner, prettier, younger, older than I am in RL. It might be my lack of imagination, but I can't bring myself to stray too far from my real self.
A strikingly beautiful older woman was in the library today and because we were short-handed, I was at the front desk doing her library card. She had written her birthdate down and I realised ... she was five years younger than I was. Aw, sh111111t! I was thinking 60s! SH1111111T!!!! She's not even 50!!!! How old must I look? Whatever age it is, it's nowhere as good as she looks!I used to have an imagination. What the hell happened to it? Right now I just seem to imagine myself too old. arrrrgh!

More Cross-Pollination

2008-06-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

Cartoons I did in the 1980s of Fritz and his then wife. Calling him a Nazi is a little unfair - but doesn't really stop me. Always go for the joke.

What a horror to discover that one of your dad's favorite relatives is an unrepentant Nazi, replete with German accent. That he was a decorated (Danish Modern, perhaps) Navy veteran of the Pacific Theater seems incongruous, but true. This is Cousin Fritz. He was to my dad all that was manly and admirable: he got into knife fights, he traveled the world, and probably killed some people. It seems to be one of my dad's greatest regrets that he didn't stick with the Army so he'd been able to fight in WWII.
When I met cousin Fritz, he was a fat, disgusting old man with unpopular (with me) views on Jews and Blacks. They were in collusion, of course. And that was what was wrong with this country. "Don't worry," my mother told me later, "we'll be dead soon and our ideas with us." But she was wrong. The ideas are still floating about, literally, in my wateraerobics class, Omblastit! It was cousin Fritz who provided us with the (what appeared to me to be sanitized) Ruhe family tree. Dad used to say that there were some possible Jews in there, especially with names like Ruhe and Seele, beautiful names that mean "peace" and "soul" in German. You wouldn't hear anything like that from cousin Fritz! There was quite a bit of family tree trimming in Germany, to make your background more palatable, and to save your sorry white ass.
Before WWI, our family received letters from the Fatherland begging that no one join the army and end up fighting their own family. I don't know of anyone the right age in that family to do so. Dad says it was awkward at school having a German name and accent. He also mentions getting in a fight with another boy, but doesn't link it to this.
Fritz fighting was another thing. Fritz had a touchy sense of pride. He was the farm manager for a nearby farm, after working on my grandparents' farm in upstate New York. He was a chaparone (or what my dad calls a "chaparoon") for the two daughters at a dance. When one young swain told the girls to get rid of the "guard dog," the girls made the mistake of telling Fritz about it, as though it were a great joke. "Dog, eh?" he said, and pulled a knife on the guy and suggested they take it outside.
At the same time that Fritz came to America and stayed with my dad's family, another cousin from a different branch came. Dad had nothing good to say about this dandy who arrived with a suit of formal clothes and seemed unfamiliar with farmwork. I think Adolph later had an illustrious career in the laundry/dry cleaning business.
My money is on Adolph, actually. I wish Dad had more stories about him and fewer about Fritz. In the end, Fritz lived in a house packed with newspapers he didn't throw out. His wife had left him (they had not been married long and she told my mother to never marry someone without first checking the state of their bathroom) and he ended his years without indoor plumbing or hygiene of any kind. I think my dad admires that.

The cartoon above comes from a collection I put together while working at the law firm. I can't publish much of it because it's a.) 99% in-jokes 2.) contains material relevant to on-going litigation and lastly, it would be a total bitch to scan and cut and paste, something I did with family pictures, but am not doing for this. I do go back over the cartoons and think some are funny and some show just how painful my life was at the time. sigh.

Cross Pollination from the Work Blog

2008-05-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a small town at the furthest reaches of the commuter train to Manhattan in the house of lesser-known comedians. My mother, whose other abilities at oil painting, flower arranging and decorating I did not inherit, married a man with truncheon-like wit and they both consumed cocktails with like-minded neighbors for inspiration. They led inebriates in sing-alongs from the IBM songbook. They named their dogs after the IBM president, in the event that there was a bonus for that as well as for naming children after Tom Watson.
Then there was an annual New Year's progressive dinner party in the neighborhood that included most of the families on the street and ended in a colossal binge at our house. My sister told what I considered to be exaggerated stories that likened these middle-class suburban gatherings to Roman orgies but the most I ever saw was the traditional stroke of midnight kiss, admittedly pretty sloppy one by that time. Having drunk and eaten their way all up and down Vassar View, the celebrants would then pick up our "Twelve Days of Christmas" placemats (which Mom only used for decoration ... and caroling) and tramp through the snow to the only house in the neighborhood whose occupants were never invited to this event and treat them to a sort of cheerfully loutish shivaree.
These nice people who were so rudely awakened each year were the Bradys. They were dignified people that the other neighbors were too chicken to invite to such brawling festivities. It's not as though they were aloof. My mother went over there fairly frequently to have coffee with the elegant Catherine Brady. She liked her coffee served very, very hot - but then wouldn't drink it until it was almost tepid. Her husband was a very quiet and reserved gentleman with a dry wit who worked as a stockbroker on Wall Street, and their son P. T. (or "Petey," an adult in college when I knew them) a cheerful character who teased me about the plural of "moose" and took his bride on a camping honeymoon that featured sleeping bags that zipped together.
The family was alternately worshiped and razzed because they seemed so sober and upright. Catherine Brady was a cousin of Joel Chandler Harris of Uncle Remus fame. I was told this in awed tones although at the time I had no clue who this Uncle Remus guy was.
As if the annual shivaree wasn't enough, my mother once sent me over to Paul Brady with a sponge sandwich to see if he would eat it. Never mind that we'd never taken a sandwich to him before or that he'd just been outside spraying the ornamentals with insecticide. Mom carefully made a sandwich out of a thin, dry yellow sponge, two slices of white bread, and mustard. She wrapped it in wax paper (as was done in those days before little plastic baggies) and, giggling, sent me across the street with the unlikely comestible.
It says volumes about me that I undertook this delicate mission for her. This was the same woman who sent me out in the yard with a salt shaker to catch birds (the same wheeze her mother used when she wanted some peace in the house). At last I would be in control of the joke! I could barely contain myself, but knew that a straight face would be necessary. In the end, Mr. Brady had the good grace to at least attempt to take a bite because he could see how crushed I was that he was suspicious of a highly unlikely sandwich. I took great pleasure in admitting it was a sponge after his teeth were in it.
Older than most of the people on the street even then (and most of the others were in their forties and fifties), the Bradys senior must be long gone. Om alone knows what they made of the antics of their silly neighbors.

A Little Sophocles

2008-05-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

Sold American!

2008-04-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

At long last I have finished this book, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890 - 1945 by Charles F. McGovern. I need to preface my remarks on it by admitting that I do not recall ever discussing anything concerning this topic with Charlie in the time I spent living in the half-a-house he and a friend of mine rented. Therefore, this is not a "why the hell didn't he mention me in his acknowledgements when there were six pages of them and he mentioned everyone else who walked by" essay ... regardless of how it sounds.

We talked of plenty of other stuff, mostly his roommate and my friend who is a pretty colorful character. And of course we would talk about me, or, rather, I would talk about me and he would listen. Charlie is an Olympic Champion at Active Listening. "Talk to me," he would say and then nod audibly through the whole shebang. He did this for me the first time we talked, which was actually when I had called from New York and was trying to reach his roommate. "You sound upset," he said. "Talk to me." Why his bed did not "groan from the weight of grateful women" is beyond me (or maybe it did and I just wasn't around). He listened, he played guitar, and he was immensely entertaining as an armchair commentator on the World Series. "Hal Laneah [aka: Lanier]? Hal Laneah?! Where do they dredge up these third base coaches?!" I can't watch sports unless I'm with someone who takes it personally. Then it's fun. Well, fun to watch the paroxysms.

But, to The Tome. I'm not through with the footnotes yet, but I did slog through the text. And I mean "slog" in the nicest way. This is the meaty prose of the dissertation, lightened hither and yon by Charlie's inimitable wryness. Example: subheading in chapter 7: "Slaughter on Madison Avenue" - great balls o' fire, he even worked in a musical reference! Further on, he remarks that "in the early 1930s the Buy-ological Urge [as expressed by Better Homes and Gardens] seemed less frequent than cicadas." This topic is actually one of my pet bugbears. I am a fan of Consumer Reports, which I refer to before all major purchases (using the library copy - tee hee!) I was crushed when the kids' version, Zillions, went on-line where I couldn't read it. There was a time that I wandered around ranting that our economy was based solely on the exchange of cash for crap, yards of crap, endless steaming juggernauts of crap. And what was worse, there seemed to be no way away from it. I truly hoped that this book would tell me where this happened (which might lead to a way away from it). Not wishing to provide any "spoilers" to my posse of reader, the book does not do this. You can start reading again, Bob. Anyway, it's never one defining moment. This is a process beginning in the 1890s and on-going to our day and beyond. By "beyond," I mean more than in time, but also geographically. Consumerism seems to be the Ice Nine that will doom our civilization.

If Charlie's book does anything, it confirms my fears (not really immediate fears, but deep ones) about business and advertising. In the three years before I moved in with Charlie and Our Mutual Friend, I lived in Manhattan and took the occasional job in an advertising and/or public relations firm. These jobs might last a day or a week. In one case, it lasted about half a week until I became disgusted by the practices of one agency and started to feign illness so I would not have to go back and be a part of it the next day. I knew admen and PR people were soulless bastards who callously labeled the public in denigrating terms (even before I saw the Goodies "String" episode). That wouldn't surprise or bother me to see it confirmed. The work this particular agency was doing on behalf of a pharmaceutical company wouldn't have seemed half as bad if they hadn't been so covert about it. Why was I not given the job of typing up a particular letter, that was then put in an envelope and the copy and the mag-card (remember mag-cards?) put in a locked cabinet? Hmmmm.

I really do not remember how I got my hands on the letter. No, I really don't. It didn't take long, though. They were hiring a writer to create a "professional newsletter" about a particular therapy that would push a medication that hadn't fared too well in testing (not being particularly effective and causing problems to the user). Okay, that's not so bad. They had, however, developed a similar medication for the same condition that was more effective and had fewer side effects, but they were planning on releasing that later and getting their money out of the development of the inferior treatment first. The free newsletter only had to go on for two or three issues before disappearing. It would be provided to doctors who specialized in treating this ailment. This is all you need to explain my opinion of pharmaceutical companies and the whores they hire to represent them.

In another all-about-me anecdote, after I moved across town, Our Mutual Friend came to visit and after hours of playful banter, excused himself and used the bathroom. When he came out, he commented that he'd looked at the personal care products that were in the shower (interesting - they wouldn't be readily viewable). "Are those yours?" he asked. I allowed as they were mine. "I didn't recognize a single brand," was his comment. I said I didn't buy by brand. I look at the ingredients and then I smell it. If it's body lotion, I might taste it as well (just in case I got lucky, really really lucky). He had visited once when I was braising some root vegetables and beef bones to make soup stock. "Boy, it sure smells good in here. What are you making?" I told him and he looked at me curiously. "Why do you do that?" And then he answered his own question, perhaps with a touch of sarcasm. "So you know what's in it?" Bingo.

So, I have a lot of weird stuff in my bathroom. So what? There are plenty of people who will run out and buy ... whatever the expensive shampoo stuff is. Can't even remember the name of the brand. Admen would be appalled. I buy the store brands and the off-brands because I was raised that way. My dad pontificated about the cost of the corn that went into a package of cornflakes versus the price and how the national advertising drove up that price ... at the breakfast table. Over his cornflakes. A kid can go one way or the other because of that. I went that-a-way.

So now, thanks to Charlie, I want to read Veblen and bust the stranglehold business has on our society ... excepting, of course, my husband's business which should thrive and everyone should have a lovely Harmonic Capo whether they have a guitar or not. Get out there and buy, y'all!

The only thing worse than the crushing realization that we cannot get off this tiger of relentless consumption of crap, is the knowledge that we're infecting the rest of the world. We rape the natural resources of other continents, we allow their people to be enslaved to make our crap that we just throw away, and, on top of it, they want a piece of the crap-cycle themselves. But despite the major depression this brings on (well, on me, anyway), imagine the fun of researching this by poring over old magazines! Look at the cover of the book! And there's more inside the book - some absolutely appalling ads supporting business interests, not just promoting products. During the Second World War, production of consumer goods was curtailed for the war effort, but the producers didn't want people to forget their products or for the dreaded consumerists to get the upper hand, so they promoted themselves. American GIs were out there being killed for Kelvinator. They were dying so that the folks at home could some day enjoy the benefits of modern appliances again. Never mind that Hitler guy and his crazy ideas about non-Aryans. Advertising didn't care about anyone who wasn't white and middle-class. The freedom we fight for now is the freedom to choose Maytag over GE!

America has some bizarre potlatch society (this was another one of my rants from back in the day) where we have to have more than anyone else or better or newer and we just throw things away when we get bored with them. I include myself in this group. My boombox eats the cassette tapes? It won't pick up NPR anymore? Time to buy a new one! (Actually, if I tried to take my boombox to the local repair shop, I'd get eyes rolled at me by that arsehole ... again, and my husband would probably disown me because he hasn't forgiven that arsehole for the "Not all moslems are terrorists but all terrorists are moslem" on his marquee, which I have to admit is pretty unforgivable - how soon we forget, eh?) I saw a cd-player in a catalog once that held 100 cds and I was waxing all rabid about "Who would have that many cds?!" when I stopped and thought a moment and went to count mine. I had over 150. Key-rist, I'd need two of those players! Just because I don't buy ... hmmm, brand name still escapes me - blah-blah shampoo doesn't mean I'm not a die-hard consumer! Just look at the desk in front of me: big-ass monitor, printer/scanner/copier, digital camera, headset with microphone, speakers and a sub-woofer, and a little brush for getting the cathair out of the keyboard.

A little brush ... for getting cathair ... out of a keyboard.

I am currently engaged in a great experiment (no caps) in which society can be re-created in better ways. Thrilled at the outset, I plunged into Second Life (registered trademark lalala) to see what people were making of this virtual world. I found the library ... I heard about the sex clubs (big deal - all new genres and formats will first be used to titillate and finally frustrate the dateless) ... but mostly it seems to be about shopping. Making things and selling them. Huge malls spring up:

Lludmila overwhelmed by glittery crap.

And, of course, I'm there. I don't have any money, because I didn't think I needed any. You don't need to eat or sleep there, so what do you need the money for? You can create your own clothing out of nothing. What am I doing there? Pursuing the freebie. The size of my inventory is something outrageous. Do I ever throw anything away? Even the ugly clothes? Apparently not! If I actually had money here, I can't imagine what depths of consumer depravity I'd resort to. Today I saw for sale a gynecologist's table, with a "fist animation" - for only $99L! This is less than half a penny. And I don't even need a house to put it in! I can store it in my inventory, "just in case!" And I have not spent one dime in this place. I can earn money just by "camping" (usually just sitting in a chair to plump up the location's usage statistics) or by getting an actual job (a virtual friend recently had an opening for a hostess in her cafe). I usually win my Lindens at trivia quizzes. Most of this virtual money goes to tips at locations where I hang out. Occasionally I will purchase an item, but most of the things I've gotten have been free. I subscribe to a blog that will tell me exactly where to find free things and what they look like. When I'm poor, I resent other avatars that have "homes" they've furnished and fancier clothing and accessories than I have. This has made me all the more acquisitive ... in-world. Money seems to be piling up in my real life bank account because I don't have time to go out shopping for my real self. I wonder how many other residents feel the same.

Below are some March 2008 spending statistics from the SL website. Apparently, there are a lot of us out there handing over virtual money. The great thing about this virtual world business for economists is that every niggly little transaction is recorded. Raw numbers are posted on the website along with astounding graphs. Don't you just love graphs?

Monthly Spending by Amount (2008 March)
Transaction Size - Residents

1 - 500 L$ - 119,205
501 - 2,000 L$ - 63,940
2001 - 5,000 L$ - 48,453
5,001 - 10,000 L$ - 34,651
10,001 - 50,000 L$ - 59,092
50,001 - 100,000 L$ - 12,818
100,001 - 500,000 L$ - 9,338
500,001 - 1,000,000 L$ - 769
Over 1,000,000 L$ - 506
Total Customers Spending Money In-World - 348,772

The net result of this, is the exchange (between residents) of Linden dollars that are the equivalent of over US$25,000,000. Yes, I put the proper amount of zeros there, but I'll spell it out for you. Avatars spent over twenty-five million US dollars in the month of March. On what? On Things That Don't Even Exist. Charlie, put that in your Kelvinator and smoke it.

I Take It All Back

2008-02-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

Former Post: This weekend I got a message on my Facebook account from someone who thought he remembered me from many years ago. I replied, jovially, that if he was the one who had us over for dinner and got all stressed out by it, then we did know each other. I was sincerely glad he looked me up. No, really. I haven't heard from him since. He didn't friend me or reply. So I think it's only fair that I post these records of the event mentioned above, which was a lot of fun ... for the guests anyway. I have our version and his version. The truth, if such a thing exists, is somewhere in between. You figure it out.
New Post: He was just really busy, in and out of town. Claims to have found one of my cartoons. Hmmm, I wonder which one, eh? eh?
Moral: Friend me. Friend me right away, or else!
New Moral: Maybe not everyone checks their Facebook account 20 times a day.

My Penance for Warm Winters

2008-01-27T08:14:00.000-08:00

This is just a little present I found attached to my dad's mailbox. I certainly will "keep this flyer for future reference." Now I know exactly whom to not contact if I need pressure washing or cosmetics. I wonder if Avon allows the inclusion of religious tracts in their reps' advertising.
This whole thing has sooo much wrong with it I don't even know where to start. Okay, here's a good place. This tract is equating AIDS with sin. Sure, it says we are all sinners because we are all born that way, but who really reads these things carefully?

And is advertising for your business really the best way to proselytize? It's one thing to put the "Smile God Loves You" on your flyer, but including a tract?

I suppose the "Smile God Loves You" is meant to brighten your day. The believers can look at it and be reminded (if they feel that way) to be happy in their lives because even though their marriage is breaking up, their kids are in trouble, they've lost their job, and their mother has some painful, terminal illness, at least God loves them. Even if no one else does. Even if He sends them these trials while the neighbors don't go to church and seem to be enjoying prosperity and laughing a lot.

The unbelievers can feel a stab in the eyeball and have a nervous tic the rest of the day ... or perhaps they scan the document, redact any personal info, and post it on a blog thinking they are making it look ridiculous. That would only work, I suppose, if anyone actually read the blog.

It seems long ago and far away that things religious did not annoy me. I laughed at alleged "Buddhists" in Massachusetts who hailed me on the street and tried to tell me that if I chanted "Ohmanipadmahummm" over and over that I would get what I desired. The thought of using religion to get material goods was repugnant to me, but one nut on the street did not make me want to not say "Happy Dhamma Day!" and spin a wheel for Buddhist friends (okay, friend singular). I put up a Christmas tree, wished people "Happy Christmas!" (Where appropriate), and got all teary over the story of the Passion. It's a good story.

Then I moved back to the south and things changed. My elderly mother was harassed by other old ladies who told her she would burn in hell. Everywhere I go, gatherings are begun with Christian prayers. For years I bowed politely out of respect, but now it's starting to get on my nerves. I've started asking for the "Eid" stamps at the post office to put on my greeting cards. I put Hanukkah stamps on the "Season's Greetings" cards I send to Jewish friends and still get "Why are you sending me a Christmas card when you know perfectly well I'm Jewish?" messages back. I'm beginning to understand that. (Not totally, Alex - since there was no reference to Christmas, Christ, or even Santa on that card!) I feel like a minority here and each reminder of it raises my hackles.

I think everyone should live for a while as a minority. We should send southerners to California, maybe, and make them listen to that New Age piffle for a year or so and then debrief them. "So, Mrs. Knotwattle, how did that make you feel? Are you any more inclined to use crystals and prayer wheels in your life?"
Extreme beliefs beget opposite extreme beliefs.

And I haven't even gotten started on that tract. It never ceases to amaze me how Christians can side-step what Jesus actually said and go back to the Old Testament and pull verses out of context. Love the Lord with all your heart ... and give away all your riches, that's the baseline. Don't go mining another religion's ancient texts for juicy bits and making up arcane rigmarole to keep the sheep in line or scare up more converts.

This tract is intentionally inflammatory. Comparing sin to AIDS is not clever. It obliquely demonizes homosexuals (the group most often associated with AIDS). It endorses intolerance and breeds hatred. A stupid person reads this and thinks, It's okay to hate queers (black people, muslims, insert long-suffering minority of your choice), sin is in their blood. And don't try to tell me that people are not that stupid. No one (not even yours truly) reads something to change their minds. They pick out only the parts they want to see and use them to bolster their (my) own cherished opinions.

Sin is everything that is wrong ... with someone else. Even though this tract directs you to look inside yourself, people so rarely do this. Vast herds of Stupid People are convinced that AIDS is God's punishment visited on sinners. This is, by the way, the same God who loves you so much that you should be smiling! Never mind those hemophiliacs that became HIV positive through transfusions before they were able to screen the blood and the donors for that. They, no doubt, were just being "tested." There's no need to look to God for punishment when we so effectively bring it upon ourselves. We start wars. By "we" I mean people, not just the United States, although we seem to start more than our fair share. We pollute our environment and poison our own bodies. There is plenty that is not our fault as well, but as it rains, my father says, "on the yust and the un-yust yust the same," let's not blame God for any of it. Bad things happen to all kinds of people for no particular reason as well as happen through their own doing. It's not our job to assign blame, we need to deal with the aftermath.

I'd like to see tracts that say "Love thy neighbor" or "Whatsoever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do to me." Go do some good things for someone else, regardless of who they are. Visit them if they are ill. Feed them if they are hungry. Find jobs for them if they are willing to work. Show others a good way to live instead of shaking your fingers at them. In sooth, though, 'twill never happen. Religion seems to be about us versus them. We're right and you're wrong, so you: are going to hell/don't deserve help/need a whole new government.
How did we get it so wrong?

"I realize there are people out there who don't love their fellow man," Tom Lehrer said, "and I hate people like that."

Pitty Poo

2008-01-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

Marlene pointed out today that a mutual friend from the Bad Old Days (some of which I am no longer allowed to mention in her presence) has published a book. She discovered this in the process of googling her name, as one does. Her name turned up in the acknowledgments section (I don't dare call it "page" because of the length). "He mentioned just about everybody from back then!" she claimed. Sure enough, he mentioned his old girlfriend and his roommate that snaked his old girlfriend, and more people that I recall from those days. Marlene is astonished that she was mentioned. She was more mildly surprised to find that I wasn't. Nope, I checked that long list pretty thoroughly and I wasn't there.
Not that I need to be.
I only lived in that house for a half a year.
I was only there when all the poo hit the propeller.
And I've been acknowledged before. See for yourself in John Jakes' best seller North and South. And again in Steve Naifeh and Greg White's Pulitzer Prize winning biography Jackson Pollock: an American Saga.
So, I don't need the mention. I mean, I actually did some work on those books. Steve jokingly referred to me as the foremost expert on Lee Krasner at the time of her death because of all the transcription work I had done.
That isn't what hurts.
It takes me back to a very painful time, a time of rejection, manipulation, and hostility and brings it all back to me. So today I have held my own little pitty party. I boo-hoo'd a bit. Then I got angry all over again at old stuff.
I am so thankful to have found Bob. Bob is a wonderful man. He tried to cheer me up by claiming that the way our state is, anyone who didn't like Obama wouldn't like Hillary either and it wouldn't hurt Obama if people voted for other people down the list, like John Edwards. Nice try!
If not, maybe we'll both mope around this evening over a bowl of ice cream.

A Rant I Thought of After Passing a New Bank

2008-01-26T09:47:00.001-08:00

Last year a yobbo (a lout or a yokel - I just looked it up) wrote a letter to the editor of what passes for a newspaper in this town of a sole equine quadruped complaining that some of the new buildings (the bank I glanced at on my way home from a pleasurable Indian meal, for instance) being put up in the selfsame town had taken on the appearance of mosques. The letter-writer was complaining about this, as if it were a terrible thing.
Now, this complaint of his has two things wrong with it. First of all, he is an idiot. Okay, it has three things wrong with it. I'd have to get out a thesaurus to do justice to his idiocy, stupidity, ignorance, and headuphisassedness, not to mention out-and-out bigotry. And I mention "bigotry" as if it were a bad thing. Hmm, maybe that makes four.
A mosque is a building used for public worship by Muslims. Muslims worship the same God as the Jews and Christians - they call this divine being Allah, which means "The God." We are not at war with Muslims. Muslims are not bad people. Anyone who thinks only Muslims are terrorists have either very short memories or very, very narrow vision (or else they are stupid, ignorant idiots with their heads up their nethers). Does Northern Ireland ring a bell? Remember all the trouble those "heathens" got up to? How about the insane people who bomb women's clinics and threaten the employees? The guy who shot up the mosque? What were they? Let me think - they start with "C" and "J." Hmmmmmm.

Here are two examples of mosques (although I realize they can come in all shapes):

Now, by way of comparison, here are the local buildings in question:

Ahhh, I see. They all have domes! And here in the good old U. S. of A. We don't use domes in our architecture! Thomas Jefferson would never use one of those heathen domes for anything! Our Great Nation's Capitol would not sully their grounds with buildings with any domes on them!
Whatta moron! Okay, so he's Architecturally Ignorant. And he's a bigot.

So, let's recap:
This man is (choose four) an idiot, a very stupid person, an ignoramus, a fatuous ass, a lout, an inbred hayseed, a witless yokel, a moronic bumpkin, a ... ummm, I'm running out of steam here ... Get your own thesaurus.
This stupidity has led to incorrect deductions which make him bigoted, narrow-minded, intolerant, and prejudiced.
These buildings no more resemble mosques than they resemble Monticello or the many Catholic (which, contrary to stupid people down here, is a form of Christianity) cathedrals in Europe.
Even if they did resemble mosques, if, for instance, they had minarets and nice courtyards in the front, there would still be nothing wrong with that, except that one of them is a bank and that would be blasphemous. If that were so, Muslims everywhere should take offense, not the other way around!
And I don't want to hear another thing about it! (/me walks away muttering "Idiots! Morons!")

Thanks for Reminding Me

2007-12-10T08:43:00.000-08:00

Now ...
and then ...

I don't have any photos from this period, more's the pity (probably get some good blackmail out of it). Okay, there's this one, which I scanned recently and comes from the tail end of my stay in New York. My Glamorous cousin Marylynn and I went to Tavern on the Green. This was just prior to her trip to Russia and she is wearing her red Red Square dress, which is entirely and utterly backless. Hope she has a nice wrap in case it was chilly!
This weekend I was reminded of a number of things having to do with theatre (which link directly to NYC, but also elsewhere) and thought I'd better write some of them down before I forgot them - not impossible considering I can barely remember what I did yesterday.
I had gone to NY to audition for shows and do the Theatre Thing. One did this by reading the trade papers, finding audition ads, calling for an appointment/sending in the 8x10 and resume (if not a cattle call) and hustling over to the locations. One was the marvelous Ansonia Hotel, the home-away-from-home for many in the biz. Others were in catch-as-catch-can locations (Let's see how many dashes I can use! They're free!). One in particular was in the auditorium of the New York Times newspaper building.
The ad had been for redheads, which I was at the time, although this photo might not show it very well. Red fades, you know. A company was going to put on a production of "The Taming of the Shrew," a show I love, having seen the BBC version with John Cleese who shocked everyone by doing it abso-tootin-lutely straight (except for one tiny bit where he clucked like a chicken) and a Spanish golden age drama by Calderón de la Barca, "Life Is a Dream." Coincidentally, I had been a Spanish major and had memorized Segismundo's famous soliloquy ... in Spanish. And I swear this was entirely a coincidence.
The audition was at an awkward time for me. I was working as a temp and the audition was right after work, not giving me time to change. I was wearing a grey/lavendar wool suit, a polyester blouse (probably - although I did have one silk one that was white), and some Italian heels that cost what at that time (for me anyway) was an unheard of $84 plus NY tax. Should have bought them in Boston. No tax on clothing in "Taxachusetts." Go figure.
So, that is how I showed up: red hair, tight wool suit, hose, big fake pearls that would make Barbara Bush envious, and expensive leather shoes. We were to meet in the lobby and, you know, it was obvious who was there for the audition. It was redhead central. I thought this was really funny, but then I think everything is really funny.
All us alleged redheads were herded into the auditorium and the woman in charge (let's call her Hilda for want of her real name) sighed and announced that "some" of us apparently had (message) services that had not given us the part of the message that said to "dress for movement." I had actually talked to a live person and knew for certain that no one had mentioned that. I checked later and there had been no follow-up call to add it. Bitch. She meant me.
She then described some of the other shows this group had put on. The latest one, and the one that stuck in my mind, was "The Merchant of Venice." They had created a concept on this poor play wherein the performers were concentration camp inmates who were being forced to put on TMoV. Extra actors entered in German uniforms and holding machine guns, marching the prisoners in, glaring at both actors and audience. OMG.
Does anybody remember that movie, "The Goodbye Girl"? There's a Shakespeare group whose director wants Richard Dreyfuss to play Richard III as a screaming queen? I'm sitting in the auditorium thinking, "This is the group! This is the group Neil Simon was talking about!" They also wanted to do "The Taming of the Shrew" as a sort of Buzby Berkeley thing. Well, I could almost see that. Almost. I wasn't sure what they were going to do with the Calderón piece, but by this time I was pretty sure that I did not want to be part of it.
I love auditions. I enjoy rehearsals. Performances are a pain. Auditions are The Thing. In an audition, you can spend a couple of minutes doing a part you have not the slightest business playing. And if you don't really want the part, if you've just found a long-term temp job that is loaded with perks and gives you a huge office with a view of the ... the ... Empire State Building, then an audition gives you the chance you've always wanted to be a complete and total asshole. I felt my adrenalin surge. This was my moment, my destiny called me! And though it may be just once in a lifetime ... I'm gonna slam-dunk this audition!
But first, I had to go through the hazing process called "The Warm-Up."
"Okay, everyone," said Hilda. "Let's all get up on the stage here and sit in a circle!" On the floor, I might add. So be it! I was younger and more bendy, although my skirt resisted. We were going to play the Memory Game. The guy directly on my left started. He said his name. The next person to the right (that's-a me!) said his name and then her own name. That's easy! Skinny Dude, Marf. The next person added her name to the list. I could see where this was going. Even in my early 30s my memory was mush, especially with names. They were going to come around again and I'd have to do everyone. I studied. Feverishly I worked on learning the names as they went around the circle. I tried to make my face look neutral, but I could feel the sweat running down my spine. Some of the women were faltering, and they were barely halfway around. Sure enough, they made me do the whole list ... they also went a few more people past me to lead me to believe I wasn't being singled out.
One test down, we lay down and made a sound symphony with just tones to warm up our voices. Then, one by one we went up on stage to do our humorous and dramatic monologues. In order to finish my monologues (you are often cut off early), I had developed some eight-line ones, poetry or lyrics, that I could do quickly but that still ran a gamut of feelings. I don't remember what my dramatic one was, but when I led off with it, the group laughed. I say it was dramatic, which doesn't mean it wasn't wry, but when I finished, I announced that as they had laughed at my dramatic monologue, I would have to substitute another. Oh, sure! Actually, I had planned this.
"Since you are planning to do Calderón's "Life Is a Dream," I'll do Segismundo's soliloquy. Unfortunately," I added in my patent off-hand manner, "I only know it in Spanish." With that, I threw myself against the back wall and proceeded to eat scenery like nobody's bidness.
"¡Es verdad!" I shouted. "Pues reprimamos esta fiera condición, esta furia, esta ambición - por si una vez soñamos y si haremos pues estamos en un mundo tan singular, que el vivir solo es soñar ..." I went on like this through the entire soliloquy until I ended it, flat on my face: wool suit, fake pearls, Italian shoes and all. Dead silence. I haven't been that proud since. Well, except for the day that someone called me an "asshole" for reminding him of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" all afternoon. Ahhhhh, that felt soooo gooood!
Oh, and for a treat afterwards, I got to do an improvisation with Skinny Dude and Short Dude. Skinny Dude is the bastard who called me and did not tell me about the clothes for moving. He was gonna pay. Each auditioner was given pretty much the same improv. Short Dude would try to make us laugh. I don't laugh when I don't want to. Full Stop. Now, for those of you who don't "do" theatre, I might have to point out that the whole point behind improvisation is not "to win." It is to create something together (if you are working with someone), to show thinking on your feet and cooperation. But, the situation being what it was, my whole purpose in life that day was to win, to flatten these people like 'possums on I-75.
The next improv? I was to try to kiss Skinny Dude, who would be oblivious to my intentions regardless of what was going on. Short Dude was to try and stop me. Ohhhh, they picked the wrong dude. And the memory of the looks on their faces still has the ability to make me giggle. A shiver of pleasure runs through me as I see the look on Short Dude's face change after I've made a couple of feints, harrumphed in disgust, and then picked him up bodily and set him behind me. I just put my hands in his armpits and lifted him. Carrying people my own size on stage was my specialty. This guy was a flea. And again a surge of delight as I remember the look on Skinny Dude's face. Talk about a deer in the headlights. I grabbed the front of his sweater and he tried to make a break for it. I hung on and, as he reached the end of his yarn, he toppled and I swung him to the floor, straddled his inert frame, and kissed the bastard. Actually, he was quite cute - despite the two inches of roots where the natural hair color was belying the black he'd had for TMoV.
"Is that it?" I asked, glancing up at the audience and Hilda.
"I don't think so!" said Skinny Dude, who pulled me down and kissed me back.
Sometimes life just doesn't get better than that.
Oh, I'd like to say they called me and begged me to do one or both of the shows and that I'd airily turned them down, but I think we know better. Not a sausage.
Instead, let me include a totally imaginary, fictionalized, untrue fantasy of the company's conversation later that evening.
Skinny Dude: I liked her.
Short Dude: Jesus Christ.
Hilda: No, she's immature. She can't follow direction.
Skinny Dude: She's got a prodigious ... memory!
Short Dude: JEsus!
Hilda: No, forget it. She's not what we're looking for.
Skinny Dude: Are you kidding? She's got Katharine written all over her!
Short Dude: I need a drink.
Hilda: I'm telling you, forget it. I'm not working with her!
Skinny Dude: Let me just call her ...
Hilda: I said, No!
Short Dude: You are such a masochist!
Skinny Dude: I'm calling her. She seems like she'd be fun.
Hilda: If it's a date you want...
Short Dude: He doesn't want to date her, trust me.
Skinny Dude: I'm calling.
(Exit, not pursued by bear.)
Hilda: I don't believe it. She's a scenery chewer!
Short Dude: My armpits still hurt.
Hilda: I can't believe anyone thinks they can land a part that way.
(Skinny Dude re-enters.)
Hilda: Well?
Skinny Dude: I got her roommate and he laughed at me. Then he put her on, and she laughed at me and said she wouldn't be caught dead in one of our productions.
Hilda (in meltdown): That bitch!
Skinny Dude: But we're meeting for drinks at Uncle Charlie's Friday.
Ba-boom!
End of Fantasy.

The Story I Will Never Write

2007-04-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

It being excruciatingly close to my birthday, I got to thinking recently.
There is a story in my life that I will never write. I have had all sorts of bizarre experiences, but the most bizarre will never issue from this keyboard, any other keyboard, or any of the myriad forms of writing that exist. And the story that I will not be able to tell is of the one where I give birth.
I can tell the one story about the time where I might have been pregnant. I have a blind terror of pregnancy, because it is something I have never experienced and so I fear it. It is a life changing experience and I don't take change well. The scariest part is that once I have passed through that experience event horizon, I think, Oh, that was nothing! I can do that a thousand more times! And the last thing I or anyone else on earth needs is a thousand of my babies. But that's what happens. Once I have an experience under my belt, I turn into a ditto machine and I do it over and over.
To prevent this, I have never been pregnant. I have never carried a child to term. And I have never given birth. You can say all you want about what a wonderful experience this is, I can read all about it, I can watch Jennifer Anniston on "Friends" fake it to much canned laughter, but it has not happened nor will it ever happen to me.
Therefore, there will be no amusing, traumatic, poignant (a word that a Tidewater English teacher I had pronounced "pwahg-nent"*), hilarious, or otherwise interesting story about me breaking water, having contractions, having false contractions, panicking my husband, exciting my mother, alarming the neighbors, getting stopped by state troopers, having flat tires, giving birth in the back seat of a taxi, demanding painkillers in an Exorcist voice, screaming invectives at my bewildered husband when he tries to coach me in the LaMaze breathing while inflicting cold irony on my obstetrician, sharing wisecracks with the nursing staff, loping like an orangutan to a bathroom dragging my IV on a wheeled stand, finding my emotional balance when confronted by a terminal cancer patient, threatening friends who arrive with videocameras, suddenly going back into labor to give birth to an unexpected twin-triplet-quadruplet-etc., being forgiven for the stream of invectives by a frazzled but proud father, blogging the whole thing on MySpace, and passing out from happy exhaustion after a job well done or crying inconsolably over sixteen hours of pain in vain. I will have no funny stories about the nursing bra, incompetent baby-changing (I hope - I could still get stuck with that for someone else's kid, I suppose), and a thatch of outrageously colored hair that is quickly superceded by four years of bald baby girl with a pink bow taped to her head (as was done for me).
No, the only stories I will be able to relate (or even relate to) are about me. I was born, but I don't remember it. I wasn't born blogging, nor were my parents. My sister is no longer around to describe the series of failed pregnancies that preceded me nor to pointedly not tell about how she wandered off when she was supposed to be in a neighbor's care and stepped into a yellow jackets' nest and wound up in the hospital at the same time as our mother.
And then there's that one time (referenced above) that I thought I might be pregnant because I had skipped a period and was nauseus each evening. Yes, I know it's supposed to be morning sickness, but I have a tendency to get things backwards and at the time I was going through a phase where I ate dinner things for breakfast and finished off the day with a bowl of cereal. It seemed logical that I might have evening sickness in that case instead. I don't recall if I'd been having sex at a time prior that would have put me in the early stages of pregnancy - probably not. My friend Cindy was also skipping, but she felt she at least had an excuse. We considered moving to Charleston and she could have the baby there and we would each tell people it was the other person's baby, thereby covering the embarrasment. In the end, our periods returned naturally and the need to leave town (it was the 1970s and there was still a stigma to unwed motherhood. In fact, according to my state supplied health insurance, pregnancy was not covered if I was not married) evaporated. Yes, years later when I was married I had a skipped period, but by then it could just as easily have been menopause as a pregnancy.
So, I've never been pregnant. And the only reason I'd ever want to be is because there's this smug superiority to deal with from the women who have been through it, the same smug superiority that I wield when I have had an experience someone else has not. It's as if I am not a real woman if I haven't been through this. No one ever actually says this out loud, but their actions and their looks at the rest of us hiss it in a nasty, nasty whisper. What is it, some sort of exclusive club? Faugh! In fact, they are probably just jealous that we can still stay out late, need no babysitters, buy toys for ourselves, never deal with teenagers, not have to pay for some ingrate's college, don't have some out-of-work adult child move back in just when we thought we were free and clear, and never, never, never have to set a good example.
So that is the story that will never be told. You will never have to read my amusing tales of motherhood. I will never show you photos of children or grandchildren or bore you with details of their unexceptional lives.
Remember, you never read it here.

*Okay, this could be "poin-yant," or "pwahn-yant" or the fully frenchified "pwahn-yong," but it just can't be "pwahGG-nent" and I was aware of this even as early as high school.

How Does Nora Ephron Get Published?

2007-04-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

I picked up this cd of Nora Ephron's book - something with a title about not being happy about her neck. Anyway, I'm listening to this and my first thought is how ever did she get this published? I am 53 (or will be soon), I've got surgery in the neck area coming up, and I can in no way relate to this problem with the neck. What's with the turtlenecks and scarves? Then she goes into her life in New York City. I should be able to relate to that. But she talks about an apt. she paid a $24,000 (yes, that's right) key fee for. She was paying more a month in the 1980s than I earn a month now. Perhaps this is amusing to other people who had eight room apartments in New York.
The next thing I wonder is why on godsgreenearth they allowed this woman to read her own material? Her speaking voice is driving me crazy - and that's saying something after I endured a computer-generated voice reading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, a book larded over with t' broad Yorkshire dialect and all. The eerie feeling you were being read a children's book by Stephen Hawking aside, I was sucked right into the story and mostly forgot it was a machine.
This is Ephron's real speaking voice? I just get the impression that she has tried to slow it down, which only makes the s's hissier and her final t's like tiny hammers on metal. I'm sure when she talks normally she picks up the pace ... and in fact, has some pace. This audio book reminds me of a truism I used to have about poets, that they should never be allowed to read their own material. I have since revised this opinion, as there are some poets who read beautifully. There are some authors who make great speakers and do a boffo job of reading their material, even when you think they wouldn't (Kaye Gibbons comes to mind).
Fran Lebowitz is just plain funny. I read Metropolitan Life when I first moved to New York and laughed my arse off. Dodging dog poo is indeed an Olympic Event. I don't know if I'd let her read it to me, though. I'd audition her first. Then I might recommend a nice out-of-work actor to read her stuff and she can just lick her wounds all the way to the bank.
I'm not saying I could read Ephron's material any better. I bet she's drop dead hilarious in person. But talking and telling stories is not reading written material. Ask anyone who's ever corresponded by audio tape.
Maybe I just can't relate to her lifestyle. Sorry, Nora, I'm just not getting it.

Snore?

2007-03-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

Mij and Marf "Wedding" Photo

I don't know where this memory came from, but it popped up recently. While living in New York with Fred, we would occasionally take in people who were trying to break into the city. We were a sort of launching pad, if a very small one. We lived in a studio apartment and Fred and I were very much in each other's pockets. So, taking in a third party was a stretch. We tried to confine it to people we knew and liked from back South.
This brings in someone I will, to protect his anonymity, call Mij. Our Dear Friend Mij Mubnergard came to stay with us. Now, Fred and I (and I can admit this now that my mother is dead) shared a sofabed. Mij had to sleep on the floor, when he arrived, on the sofabed cushions. We wanted to give him time to get on his feet, leave the nest, fly on his own - yadda-yaddah. As it happened, he would be getting a little extra time because I was scheduled to go to Cambridge to see Temple at Harvard Law School. I would be gone a week or more. Undoubtedly, I would be sharing Temple's bed as well (sorry, Mom). Before returning, though, I gave Fred a call to see how things were going.
"How's Mij?" I asked.
"Still here," he moaned.
"Oh," and a thought occurred to me. "Should I find another place to stay?"
"No, no," Fred insisted, "come home!"
When I arrived I found that Mij had made himself at home, moving to the sofabed. Fred had done his best to make things uncomfortable for him. He insisted that Mij stand out in the hallway to smoke. At night, though, we were all in the same bed, Mij then Fred, then me. It was ... cramped.
Most of the time we weren't all in the apartment together. Mij and I would be alone waiting for Fred to finish a show for the night. Don't get me wrong, we loved Mij. We enjoyed each other's company, it was just too small a space for three people.
One day Fred made a strangled noise from the kitchen area. He was standing at the clothes closet (in the kitchen) and holding a white shirt at arm's length.
"Look at this!" he squawked and I dutifully moved the six feet required to get from the couch to the kitchen.
It was one of Fred's shirts. The collar of the shirt was almost black with dirt. "He must have worn this for a week! And then hung it back up instead of putting it in the laundry pile!" Fred was very particular about his clothes and his appearance. Mij had not asked to borrow a shirt. He'd worn it until dirt was ground into it.
"He has to go," said Fred.
"Don't do it when I'm here!" I pleaded. I hate confrontations.
Later that week Fred called me at work. "What are you doing this evening?" I didn't have any plans and I said so. "That's fine if you want to go out with your friends," he said, pointedly.
I sucked in my breath. "This is it, isn't it? You're going to tell him to go."
"I thought Mij and I would go out for dinner," he said.
"He's there, isn't he?"
"That's fine. Some other time then." He was going to let Mij have it, firmly, and then he was going to go off to work, leaving me to deal with the shrapnel. I stayed away as long as I could.
When I got home, Mij was standing in the hallway, smoking. He asked me about my day. And I returned the favor, as if I didn't know what had gone on.
"Fred told me I had to go," he said, putting out his cigarette and following me inside. "But, you know, it's just as well. I just can't stand the snoring anymore."
"Snoring?" I began, worrying that I might have been disturbing his sleep.
"Fred's snoring. It's just too much. I can't take it."
"Snoring?" I reiterated, "but Fred d-" and I caught myself. I had never heard Fred snore, and he was usually asleep first. He was intentionally turning to face Mij each night and snoring very loudly. Such genius!
After that, Fred and I agreed on some rules for houseguests, who, like fish, take up way too much room after three days. We had three basic rules for the House:
1. We Share Everything (towels, tableware, food, bevvies, space).
2. Anyone who spends the night has to meet the approval of both residents because
3. See rule number 1.
A couple of years later, I was the one who got the Dinner. Fred was crashing and burning and didn't want me there when it happened. We went out for dinner and after we ordered he said that he had to tell me something. He told me I had to move out and once he'd told me, he felt better and tucked in when the food arrived. My salad turned to ashes in my mouth. Oh, well. What goes around, comes around.
I moved in with two other people and decided it was time to leave New York. One of my new roommates, let's call him Nad, was a backstabbing little trick who lied about the cost of the rent so he could charge us girls more and get a free ride. When I was packing to leave, he switched sweaters on me (we had bought identical sweaters) because he had torn the armpits out of his. Nad was the nightmare roommate I had not experienced until then. He did have his good points, though, I must admit. He had good taste in boyfriends and we enjoyed some Metropolitan Opera perks thanks to him. This just goes to show that it's not always who you know that counts, but with whom who-you-know is sleeping.

The Sedaris's Are Not Dysfunctional

2007-03-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was in LibraryThing this morning reading posts on librarians who librarything and blog when I followed some links to a review of a book by one of my favorite authors. The reviewer referred to the Sedaris family as dysfunctional and that while the reviewer laughed at the stories, they also made the reviewer sad. I started to submit a comment, but it wasn't working and the site didn't accept it. Fortunately for you, hahaha!, I saved the comment and I add it here:

You know, I get a completely different reaction to Sedaris's family, but then I have read just about all his books (there might be one I missed). His family was deeply involved in each other and his parents apparently supported him in all his crazy incarnations (until it became obvious that he was gay and his father threw him out, but apparently his father has gotten past that). If anything, they were too much in each other's lives.
Despite all the cigarettes and alcohol (which look normal by 1960s standards) of the parents and the apparent drug use of the children, they are functioning pretty well. The Sedaris kids were "encouraged" to do volunteer work in the summers and to take music lessons (which they were allowed to discontinue when they showed a lack of interest or aptitude). Despite their upper middle class status, they did not consider "menial" jobs beneath them. They rally around each other when things go wrong.
My reaction is often one of delighted relief, mostly that his family, while entertaining, was not mine. Yet at the same time, I am envious of their spirit and lack of reserve. My family is northern euro and despite the eerie parallels (IBM, drinking-which goes with the IBM, moving south, an overly-thrift-conscious dad, live-in granny of foreign birth, my move to Manhattan to pursue acting of all things), they come off as, well, boring. This leads me to the tentative conclusion that Sedaris may be, how you say, exaggerating the seemingly dysfunctional bits just a wee bit. And I seem to note that they come off as being very, very ... happy.

That was all I had intended to put in there, as it was just a comment on the review, which shouldn't be longer than the review itself, right? And I left out the bit about how much I just plain love David Sedaris. I stood in line for over an hour (it might have been two, I'll have to ask my husband) for his autograph on his cd, "Live at Carnegie Hall," but that is nothing compared to the amount of time he sat there autographing. Yes, he's making money (ca-ching! ca-ching!), but he stayed until the absolutely last person got their autograph. He spoke with people as if he really liked them (perhaps he's just hunting for new material). He presented new material at his reading, rather than capitalizing on his old stuff. And then there are those eerie parallels.

I was an IBM child. Even after my dad left IBM, we were still tied up in the IBM satellite system of friends and vendors. My parents were drinkers. They had been smokers, but gave it up fairly early. All of my dad's friends were grateful because Dad was a terrible mooch. In the end I think they only gave it up because it was an expense. My mother did some occasional smoking and tells a story about how after one of her Kaffeklatsches we, and I was only three or four, shared out a Turkish cigarette whose colored paper matched the theme colors for the party. As a family we would eat the wine gelatin that was leftover from such frolics, right down to the family beagle. Tommy (named after the IBM president, the dog's full name was Thomas J. Watson Shopmyer Jr. the Second in a comic parody of the habit of naming a child after said prez in order to get the $50 bonus) would whimper and whimper until he got the gelatin, which he ate gingerly and spit out the grapes.
My parents and their friends used to get drunk and then pull out the IBM songbook for a good old, drunken sing-along. Now, my sister claimed that our parents' parties were just short of orgies. And she actually went so far to say to our mother when she was married and had children, "Mother, we have nice parties." [Mom's retort to that was that she had "fun parties."] Speaking as someone who sat in my sister's laundry room and translated the subtitles on the x-rated movies for one of her and her husband's legally blind friends, Blind Fred (he could not see well enough to follow the video and read the subtitles), I can't recall my parents' parties being quite as "nice" as that. Yeah, the adults jumped up and kissed each other at midnight on New Year's Eve, but I don't recall any couples under the table or in a spare bedroom. Of course, I was nine years younger than my sister.
I'm beginning to suspect that my sister could have written some Sedaris-type stories about our family that I just can't. I am loath to exaggerate. I scruple to misrepresent. It's one thing to write wild tales of fiction, but I can't do it about me or my family. Consequently, these Tales of the Blonde Shikseh wind up being almost funny. My experiences are not quite adventures. For this, I apologise, but at least you know that, barring my infamous poor memory, everything that I have written here is factual.
The cartoons, though, might have a teeny bit of exaggeration.

Doin' the Dishes

2007-03-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

I have learned that older people don't see well. Or hear. This is doing the dishes without my sister, while I was living as an adult (in my 40s) with my parents between jobs.

Doin' the Dishes: The Beginning

2007-03-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

These things always start somewhere. My mother recounted to me how her mother and her mother-in-law behaved when they were both visiting at the same time and offered to do the dishes. No, really. Would I lie to you?

Son of Doin' the Dishes (Part the Third)

2007-02-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

All true; all factual. Relationships with our siblings just don't get any worse than this ... without the actual shedding of blood. Inside some of us, the younger siblings, there is a well of anger and frustration just waiting to get out. Unfortunately, some of us don't get to release that and we wind up punching refrigerators because our mothers informed us that our older siblings, as large as they might be, have little feelings that are easily hurt. We have to "make nice." This will serve us well (?) in our future where we will run into this same type of relationship again and again and again. To be fair, it is because I look for these people. It's a relationship I am comfortable in. Phew! How sick is that!?

Doin' the Dishes Part 2

2007-02-07T18:47:00.000-08:00

I can't tell you how many times this was enacted. The only over-the-top part is where my sister grabs me by the throat. She never did that. Otherwise ...

Doin' the Dishes, Part the First

2007-01-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

This hearkens back to the days when our parents would leave us alone and my sister (who was nine years older) and I would have this wrangle over who would do the dishes. There's a double issue here: dishes and my relationship with an older sister who adored me ... but.

Richard Hertz, MD

2006-12-30T06:18:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, there were two people who lived together in a very, very, very small apartment. They both liked movies, but one of them liked movies more than the other. One of them would sit through any movie at all no matter how bad it was. The other would walk out of a movie if it failed in any way to live up to expectations. Oddly enough, the one who really loved movies was the walker, and his name was Fred. The other one, who only sort of liked movies but was willing to sit through nearly any swill rather than embarrass herself by walking out was called, let's say, me. Anyway, I knew of Fred's proclivities and he was aware of my inertia and the spooky brew of our tendencies was about to come to a boil.
Richard Gere had been in another movie that was playing not too far from where we were living on the Upper East. I had never actually seen a Richard Gere movie (although I'd seen clips from "American Gigolo" and hadn't really liked what I'd seen) and it was a rip-off of a French film (and I had to look it up on imdb.com to recall the name, otherwise I'd be making a total arse of myself with possible titles such as: Blowing, This Blows, Barking, etc.) and renamed "Breathless."
Not long into this spleen-jerker, I started wondering how Fred felt about the film and if he was about to walk out. I had never walked out of a film, but I was now ready for a new experience. I didn't say anything and we sat through the whole, long, ghastly turd. Afterwards I mentioned to Fred that I would have walked out of that one if he wanted to and he said that he was staying put because he knew I didn't like to walk out. Then we both started laughing and went in search of a watering hole in which to sluice away the bad taste in our mouths.
We had passed a watering hole called Uncle Charlie's North. This was patently a gay bar, as its brother in the Village was. But we also patronized a gay bar up in our neighborhood called Brandy's, and didn't think anything of it.
The clincher on this deal was that Uncle Charlie was having a happy hour for the next 40 minutes or so, making it a wise financial choice. The counter bar was crowded, so we ambled off to a quiet corner to sip our beers and trash the waste of celluloid we'd just suffered through. The first round went fairly quickly, having also demolished a container of over-salted, over-priced popcorn at said "flick." After the second round, though, Fred claimed he was tired of braving the group at the bar and being ogled (which I never knew he ever had a problem with), and he told me to make the next trip.
Because we'd been sitting by ourselves and absorbed in our mutual grievances, I hadn't really looked around the bar, but standing in a short line at the counter for the last happy hour call, I realized that I was next to the only other woman in the place and all the monitors were showing male strippers (a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned). This may have shown on my face, for a denizen of the barstools leaned back and said, "Don't worry, Honey, we don't bite!" To which I retorted rather quickly, "Oooooo, I wish you would!"
This seemed to entertain my new friend, which he intended to be. He invited me to bring my escort to the bar (where, happy hour closing out, there was now room). Fred reluctantly joined us.
Perhaps I should describe Fred a bit, explain what he was doing in New York and our relationship. When we met in South Carolina, Fred was a hairdresser and we dated. Fred has a lot of gay friends. Fred moved to New York to work on Broadway, and he did; as a hair and make-up man he worked on "Cats" (very tiny perm rods), "Amadeus," and "Doonesbury: the Musical," to name a few. In New York, however, our relationship was different. Wisely, we were just roommates. Fred, however, should have been having no problem in this bar. It took several drinks to loosen him up.
Our new friend and benefactor (he was now buying) was absolutely delighted with the two of us. He pardoned himself at one point to go to the men's room. I had to check with Fred who was going from "I'm not all that happy here" to "Well, okay, if you're having a good time" when the bartender, using the same microphone he'd used to announce the last happy hour call, called out, "Phone call for Doctor Hertz! Paging Doctor Dick Hertz!" and our benefactor, just coming around the corner bleated, "That's meeee!"
To this day I only know this man as Dr. Dick Hertz. If he mentioned his name, I did not retain it.
Dr. Hertz convinced us to go to another bar in the Village and we all (as he had some other friends) piled into a taxi. The next thing I remember, I was on a dance floor dancing with someone I did not know. There were all men around me, mostly bald, bearded, pierced, black leather-clad. Notably, one of them was wearing some sort of studded black leather halter and black leather shorts, and probably a black leather, studded dog collar. This was a new experience for me, and I was grateful for it. However, it was a "school night." Our intention had been to see a movie and perhaps consume a beverage or two.
After the song, I located the bar and found Fred sitting there looking shell-shocked. "Where are we?" I yelled over the music. "We're in the Village," he told me, "at a bar called The Monster." "How did we get here?" "I don't know," he admitted, "but I remember something about a taxi ride and someone named Dr. Dick Hertz."
Right on cue, the good doctor came up to us shouting, "That's meee!" We thanked him and made our way out. Nothing looked familiar. We spent the next couple of hours wandering around the Village, trying to find a subway and our way home. At that hour, the subways were coming right seldom and we had to take three to get back home. After the subways we had to negotiate the eight blocks from Lexington and 86th Street (where Fred claimed to see prostitutes all the time and I never knew what he was talking about) back to our apartment.
I look back and shudder at the escapades I had in New York and am amazed that nothing ever happened to me. I am thankful, though, that I don't have stories to tell about bondage clubs or being mugged or other more lurid fare. I'll leave those tales to others. A couple of decades down the line when I'm appalling my great-niece and -nephews with stories, the contrast between my grey head and wrinkles and the mild excitement of these stories will be enough to make them goggle. Well, at least they will goggle the first few hundred times.

Best Wishes in the New Year

2006-12-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

2006-12-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

Been thinkin' about anger today. I've been blowing up over little things, but it's the big things that you have no control over that are the most painful - and they just fester away until someone does something stupid and Kaboom! So what am I so angry about?

Well, I suppose I'm still mad at my sister for dying. Of course, that means that I need to feel guilty about being mad at her for something she had no control over. She gave those cancer treatments her best shot. So I will instead have to be mad at her for all the little things she did to me over the years, although I doubted she could have helped herself there either. She could have completely ignored me all her life. She was nine years older and by default an only child.

Instead, she played with me. She played "camping" with me ... by setting a fire under my crib. She played "Ed Sullivan Show" by using me as one of those large balls acrobats spun and tossed with their feet. She played poker with me ... before I was able to read, so I had to run into the kitchen to ask my mother what my hand was. Yes, all the games seemed to have me on the losing side, but she was actually playing with me. Rare were the times that she tried to keep me out of her hair by, say, tying me to a rocking chair with my own summer camp lanyard braiding. I was very, very lucky.

My sister had a lot of power over me that I was unable to combat. If I refused to play along with one of her schemes and ran and locked myself in my room, she would stand outside and alternate between threatening me and acting pitiful ("Mom and Dad like you better ...") until I gave in.

Decades into our relationship, we met at our parents' house and I made some remark to the effect, "You're not as tall as I remember." She was always sensitive about her height, which she claimed to be no more than five foot twelve inches. "That's funny," she retorted immediately, "You're every bit as short as I remember."

I worried about our relationship when our mother (I almost wrote "my mother," and usually caught hell for that when I said it in front of her, but we were figuratively raised by different mothers) was gone. We had both gone down to help our parents make their final move and were clearing out the attic, finding boxes that hadn't been opened since the previous move. My sister found something she wanted for herself. I was living in an shared apartment, so I wasn't even thinking of keeping anything I ran across. Mother was always after us to to find things we wanted and tag them for the future. She put my name in an antique clock that I expressed an interest in. It would stay with her and our Father as long as they lived, but we could claim it afterwards if it had our name in or on it. So my sister asked me if she could have this item. I have absolutely no recollection of what it was, but she claimed it would mean a lot to her. I had no interest in it. "You can have the next thing," she said, seemingly sweetening the pot. I have no interest in it. She could have it. Minutes later she found an extremely ugly hand-painted (by some unknown relative, no doubt) plate. "You can have this!" she said. "I don't think so," I retorted. "I get to choose what it is and it's not that ugly thing!"

After that, I really worried about what would happen when it came to divvying up the junk my, I mean, our mother collected over the years. As usual, and as Mother always said, I was worrying about the wrong thing. Now all I have to worry about is whether my nieces will want any of that junk! But at the time I worried that it would be just one incident like that after another. There would be bartering going on of byzantine convolutions. We'd probably have to get someone to come in and value every last teacup.

Later, in the year before she was diagnosed with cancer, we were playing cards at her house during the Christmas holiday. I hardly ever play cards anymore, mostly because no one I know plays. She was losing. I had won about three games in a row and I could see the consternation growing on her face. I was quite giddy. I never win games when I play them with her. In fact, I thought for years that I was rubbish at games because she always beat me. I reluctantly joined into a Monopoly game when I was in college because I was so bad at playing, but I walked all over those people. They started glaring at me (I'd gotten the utility monopoly) as they paid out, grumbling, "You sure you don't play well?"

So there I was, winning! This was my time to get up and do the end-zone dance. I didn't though. First of all, I had to check her face to make sure she wasn't letting me win, just to pounce later. Instead, she looked so unhappy that I kept playing so that I could intentionally lose (without being detected, which was a big worry) and she would cheer up. Not being quite as competitive as she was, winning wasn't such a big deal. (When you lose all the time you don't develop a competitive spirit. In fact, you can become quite opposed to competition and stressed out by it.) I didn't need to display my hubris by crowing over her losses. I held them tightly and secretly to my chest and hugged them, feeling I was an adult at last (at what, age forty?) having finally beaten a life-long adversary.

Within a year she was having radiation treatments for cervical cancer and then I wondered about my winning streak. She had been hemorrhaging so badly that she was passing out when she finally called the doctor. She may have been ill for ages and not known it. I may not have been so clever after all.

Her legacy in me is that streak of anti-competitiveness, which doesn't necessarily translate into teamwork, but I will try to undermine competition with the suggestion of all-working-together. In graduate school I was horrified when someone I very much liked in the first week, suddenly went all competitive on me when the opportunity arose. We didn't get along again until the end, and now he's one of the few friends I have left from that phase of my life. He was called Pete, and I referred to him as "ComPete" in disgust. After we noticed that people were hoarding books from the library on quarter-loan, I suggested we pick ones we would all need, check them out for the quarter, and keep them in our graduate-assistants' office (a pokey hole on the modern language floor). I even added one of my personal books to the collection.

During the written exams, they put all the foreign languages in one room and left us otherwise unproctored. They figured the presence of other departments would keep us honest. Fortunately, the competition broke down enough so that we were able to help each other when we were at a loss for a word. The only one who complained was the one German Masters Candidate, but we said we'd do our best to help her if she needed it. If someone got lost, everyone stopped what they were doing until a solution was found.

I never got my master's degree, but I did get farther in my education than my sister. It came to my attention when I was in graduate school that as soon as she moved out of the house, my grades in school got better. I'm not sure what was affecting them, the continual assertion that I was stupid (or uncoordinated, or knock-kneed), or taking up my time playing with me. But she did play with me. I have always looked for friends who were like her, not in the superior way she had, but in having lots of ideas of things to get into. I don't have many such ideas, moi.

My sister made several attempts at college, but never managed to pass Freshman English, which only became more difficult each time. Mother said she got her Mrs. degree, which is what counted. I think after that Mom decided her job was over and she could relax. My sister's marriage lasted until her premature death, which is more than many can say, and she raised two children who have their own families. I can give her no better accolade than she would have used herself: Not Half Bad!

Oh, here's another

2006-12-15T20:53:00.000-08:00

I hope this one can be read. This is the transcription of an actual event. I was appearing the "The Mousetrap" with a group of experienced repertory people. My character was stuck in a scene where I had nothing to do or say for what seemed like twenty minutes. At that point I had a one-word line to justify my presence on stage. I spent most of that time going over that one word to make sure I didn't screw it up, which I have been known to do, only to hear that one word delivered by someone else (who was supposed to say something along the line of "But that's crazy!"). What to do?! What to do?!
Years later one of the other performers was doing a crossword puzzle and came across a clue for a six-letter word for "nonsense" that had a "p" and an "f" in it. Up until then, she thought I'd made the word up.
Hey, I'm not that good!

Cartoon

2006-12-15T20:45:00.000-08:00

Click on the cartoon to see it larger.

The Eyes of Yoko Are Upon Us

2006-11-24T13:12:00.001-08:00

I had not been in New York very long. I had already been ejected from two living spaces (or ejected from one and on the way out from another) in less than two weeks. It was lunacy to have come up here. Perhaps I was under the impression that being born in Poughkeepsie made me a native of some kind; something other than an Upstate Hick. Our family had lived all up and down the eastern U.S. and the last place we had settled was South Carolina. I had left a small town where I knew everyone’s face (names will always escape me), and taken the train to Manhattan.

A friend was waiting for me there, and I spent some time in her hotel for Middle Class Women. Hmmm. They had a funny idea of what constituted “middle class.” I was appalled by the conditions and the rent. Renee told me I could only stay so long and then I would have to find another place. I had no idea how to go about it. Renee even had to tell me how to use public transportation.

“Take these quarters and put them in your glove,” she said. It was February and quite cold. The New Yorker in me rejoiced at the “briskness” of the air. The South Carolinian was freezing. “Put them in the change slot and ask the driver for a transfer.” Renee was talking to me as if I were a kindergartner. “He will tear off a transfer and hand it to you. Keep that with you to give to the driver of the next bus.” Looking back at this now, I am amazed by how naïve I was. Naïve enough to not know how to use a bus. Naïve enough to think I could just take the train to New York City and find a place to stay and work. Naïve enough to try to go to auditions. You would have thought I was eighteen. In fact, I was twenty-eight. I was a late bloomer.

I moved into the YWCA on Lexington Avenue, which I was later convinced to be run by Nazis. I only had so much money on me and the manager wanted me to cough it all up to hold the room for another two weeks. The room was tiny and infested with roaches. They weren’t the giant, glossy palmetto bugs of coastal South Carolina, but tiny German cockroaches that ignored you because they knew they would be around long after humankind died out. They crawled all over the tiny sink in the room.

I have a problem making decisions. Once the decision is made, I can follow it through, but I will walk up and down the street until I am utterly exhausted before I will be able to choose a place to eat. I was there with limited money. I had $8,000 in the bank, had budgeted $2,000 to set myself up in New York in 1982, but was only carrying a few hundred. There was no use telling the manager of the Y that if I gave her the money she wanted, I would have nothing to eat on for the remaining two weeks. That was my lookout. I told her anyway. There were plenty of women clamoring to pay $20 a day to stay in that miserable cockroach spa, she told me. Pay up ahead or leave.

I opted to leave … at the end of the week. Then I went searching for something to eat. Up and down Lexington Avenue I went, marveling at the Citicorp building, looking like a modern mucilage bottle. I looked in the face of everyone in the street because knowing each and every one of them was a stranger was liberating. I had moved from a place where all faces were familiar. It never kept me from doing stupid things, but it was stultifying. All new faces were so refreshing! They were inspiration! Well, they were at first. Then I got hungry. Up and down I walked, looking for something affordable and reasonably nutritious. This let out all cozily standardized fast food outlets. I could get a Whopper for ninety-nine cents, but I’d also get heartburn.

If I tell you that in the end I bought a container of unsalted freshly-ground peanut butter at a health food store and some Stoned Wheat Thins, you would not appreciate the chasm of indecision I inhabited for some hours. Up and down, across and around, “No, not there, or there, or there, but what about, no – no – no.” Back and through, pacing, pacing, then plodding, and then staggering. Up, down, back, plod, stagger, stagger. It reminded me of all the dates I spent with men waiting for me to make up my mind about where we should have dinner. One of them drove around a traffic circle waiting for me to decide. “I’m going to drive around this traffic circle until you decide,” he said. Then he got mad at me when that ploy didn’t help me come to a conclusion. It did not and still really does not matter to me where I eat. If he’s paying for it, he should eat where he would find something he’d enjoy. Round and round and round … and in the end the place I chose gave me food poisoning. Back and forth, counting my cash in my head. What makes the most sense? Down and up, and you get the point, but I’m still not making up my mind. I wondered if I would starve to death first.

And in the end, I should have gotten the salted.

New York City had only started on me. I walked back to the Y one evening, and had begun another unpleasant conversation with the Kommandant when another woman threw herself through the door breathlessly. “I’ve been mugged!” she cried. “When? Where?” we asked her. “Just now, just down the street!” She had been following me when a man stepped out from the shadows and demanded her purse. I had not heard anything. I had not been mugged. I decided not to report this to my parents. I did, however, call my friend Temple in Cambridge, Massachusetts and tell him.

Temple had been very encouraging. He had accidentally ended up at Harvard Law School when a film director apprenticeship had gone sour on him. He had taken some test to get into this program. He had wanted to practice for it, but his parents refused to pay for that. They would, however, pay for him to take the LSATs. He considered that the LSATs would be good practice for the film director test. He returned to Kentucky complaining that people in Hollywood never answered their phones. “They just sit in the Jacuzzi and drink martinis,” he said bitterly. His parents, he said, would pay for him to go to law school. “I think Harvard,” he said. “All the great theatre people have moved from Yale to Harvard. I can keep up with theatre there.” “What makes you think you’ll get into Harvard Law School?” I scoffed. “Oh, when I took the LSATs, I checked the boxes for Harvard and Yale and some others to have the scores sent to,” he said blithely. I still didn’t believe he would go to Harvard. “Ask me what my percentile ranking was on the LSATs,” he continued in the same blasé voice. “What was your percentile ranking?” I sneered. “Are you sitting down?” he asked. Yes, I was sitting down, silly ass. “Ninety-eight point six,” he enunciated. I blanched. “Sounds normal to me,” I sniffed finally.

Okay, it may have been another number, but it was in the high nineties. I’m not very good with numbers. Case in point: Just before I left for New York, I received a letter from Temple. There was a check in it. It was yellow, I remember that much. I was touched almost to tears. I read the letter through the moisture in my eyes. He knew that New York would be expensive and he’d enclosed a little something to help. I glanced at the check, verklempt. I looked at it again. Now, Temple and I have a dispute going on this. He claims it was only for four hundred million dollars. I say it was for six hundred million. Whichever it was, it made me laugh. I showed it to my mother. She shook her head … and then she laughed.

As New York worked its alienation magic on me, I grew closer to despair. I was eating a meal every day that I could barely swallow. I needed milk badly. I needed a real place to stay and a job. I needed a plan.

Instead, I wandered around the area aimlessly. I wandered into Bloomingdale’s. All around me people, mostly women, bustled around. It was worse than the sidewalks outside. Inside Bloomingdale’s you had to dodge the perfume testers as well. I had no idea where I was going. I was stuck in the cosmetic section and I had no interest in cosmetics. Overly made-up women and supercilious men waylaid customers as they tried to pass, hawking expensive and pointless (in my eyes) wares. I had no words for my feelings. Empty? Alone? Ummmmm, nope, no words, no thesaurus. Suddenly I noticed that there was no longer anyone in the aisle where I was. I looked around a bit. There was not a soul in any part of the cosmetic area. What had happened?

Slowly I turned around. Coming up behind me was an enormous man, thick and centered like a wrestler. I almost did not notice the tiny woman slightly ahead of him and to the right. I stared. Her form finally took shape and separated her from the bulk of her companion. I looked straight into the sunglass-clad eyes of John Lennon’s widow of only a little more than a year. Behind Yoko’s shades, I saw the feelings for which I had no words reflected in the dark of her eyes. I turned and fled.

That night (well, maybe it was; that would make this story much tidier), I had arranged with Temple to move into his dormitory room at Harvard. I took the train the next morning.

And thereby hangs another tale.

I Have a Sock Full of Cash ... On My Arm Pt. 2

2006-11-24T12:58:00.000-08:00

I made myself a nest and prepared to continue reading for three hours. Fortunately, I had more than one book. The magazine stand seemed to carry commuter comestibles, such as coffee and donuts. It was actually nice and quiet. There was none of the bustle and noise of Penn Station. Okay, it was creepy, but I became absorbed in my reading and time, in consideration of the surroundings, crept by.

When he first came in, I had noticed him. You can’t help but notice when one person is added to a building with only two others in it. This likewise made him aware of me. He was dressed in a grey sweatshirt and pants, with a stocking cap of navy blue to keep off the Boston February chill. He bought a coffee and donut from the magazine stand and chatted with the proprietor. Casting about for a place to sit and enjoy his snack, he picked my bench. I observed his approach from the corner of my eye, trying to look totally involved in my paperback. I wished vainly that he would find somewhere else, but he stopped very close and asked, oh so predictably, “Is this seat taken?”

My memory is not good enough to reproduce the entire conversation. There was a time when I could claim to quote it verbatim, but I am long past that, fortunately for you, my gentle reader. The gist of it was that he was in the Navy and out for his run. He had not behaved well when he was younger, hadn’t paid attention in school, but now he was pulling himself together and planning to go to college on the G.I. Bill. He was handsome and earnest. And he owed it all to Jesus.

I had thought to have escaped that when I left South Carolina. I politely expressed my admiration for his resolve. He thought perhaps that his example might provide inspiration for me. Well, now, that’s curious. I realize that I bumbled my graduate work, and am not the best of students. I was and still am lazy intellectually. Okay, and physically. School was only a lark for me and here was someone who wanted to better himself and was putting himself through the rigors of the military in order to get the wherewithal to go to college. My background, while middle-class, was privileged, probably, compared to his. I was embarrassed. It was with a certain amount of reluctance that I admitted to having been to college and two years of graduate school. I was between jobs at the moment and just traveling to visit friends. I became conscious of the money in the sock on my arm and in my bank account. In our family, talking about money was worse than talking about sex. It was an intensely private thing. Discussing your money was boasting. Out here in the metropolis, it might be dangerous. That’s why I had my money in a sock up my arm.

Somehow I had to convince this young man that I was fine, without letting him know I was sitting on a pile of cash (although there was just a few hundred up my arm, I could call my broker at any time and have him wire me more) and was just waiting to be picked up by a friend without giving away how long I was going to have to wait. Just because he (literally) had Navy written all over him didn’t mean he couldn’t lurk somewhere and bop me on the bean to get whatever it was he wanted. Anyone could get a buzz cut and buy a sweatsuit with “Navy” on it. If he really was in the Navy, maybe he had been on ship for months and wanted ... wanted – aaaaagh! It didn’t bear thinking about!

I was not convincing. Apparently. He couldn’t believe that a.) someone with a college degree would be out of work and surrounded by bags sitting in a railway station; b.) that if I had any money I would be just sitting there; and c.) that an intelligent person would come up with such lame assurances as “I’m okay, I have some crackers and peanut butter with me.” He did eventually get up and leave. I watched him throw away his cup and papers (maybe even the Boston Strangler was tidy – whoa! The Boston Strangler?!) and walk out. I relaxed too soon. He came purposefully back, pulled a dollar out of his pocket and tried to give it to me. He told me I could buy a donut with it. He was so kind and I was such a coward. The realization hit that he actually thought I was homeless. I made a mental note to wash my hair first thing. I refused the dollar as politely as I could. I was not homeless. Were I to give up on New York, I could return to a house on Hilton Head Island, find another job there, or just sponge off my parents.

He finally gave in and left. I was rescued a bit earlier than expected by Temple and Tommy. I told them my story, still a bit shaken, but trying to make it funny. I stayed a bit with Temple at the law school. By the time I was ready to go back to New York, I had a place to stay. In very little time I was working and going to auditions. I didn't have a job all the time, I shared an illegal sublet with Fred who was also in and out of work. In the back of my mind, though, there was the knowledge that I would be able to successfully panhandle. Well, people might give me money, but apparently I had trouble accepting it.

I Have a Sock Full of Cash ... On My Arm Pt. 1

2006-11-24T12:57:00.001-08:00

I had been through Pennsylvania Station before when I first arrived in New York. It was bustling and full of places to sit. I had purchased a ticket to Boston to stay with my friend, Temple, when New York finally proved too unwieldy for the likes of me. Although I was leaving, I still planned to go back. A plan, that’s what I needed. My current plan was to stay with Temple at his graduate student dormitory at Harvard University. They had a spare room on his floor for the occasional visitor. I could stay there for a couple of days, but then another visitor was coming and I would have to move out … and into his room.

I had slept in Temple’s room many times before, notably when he won me for a week in the famous “Win A Marf” contest. He had submitted several pages of activities (most of which involved massages) and reasons why he would want me to visit, three letters of recommendation, and an 8x10 inch glossy. At that time he had been fired from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, probably just by being himself. He talked his way back into his apprenticeship long enough to tell off Jon Jory and quit. One of the reasons I should visit had been that as he had been fired, he had lots of spare time on his hands with which to entertain me. Being the sympathetic sort that I am, I had a glass mug engraved with the motto: “I’ve Been Sacked by ATL.” So, I was slightly disappointed to learn that he had been rehired and then quit. Would this lessen the impact of my gift? And “I Quit ATL” would have saved me some money, if I’d known.

All this is just to show that Temple and I were as close as two non-sexually intimate people could be. I had always been torn about Temple. I would easily slip from adoring him to fearing him, a trait I can now put down to immaturity – mine, too. It’s hard to describe the ease with which Temple lept into emotions. I move very slowly from one feeling to another. Temple could be cracking jokes one minute and in someone’s face and threatening them in another. He never threatened me, but his reactions to another driver cutting him off in a parking lot (jumping out of the car and yelling and waving his fists), scared the bejesus out of me. He’d leap back into the car afterwards, start to back up, and then look over at my horrorstruck face and say, “What?” as if he’d all ready forgotten the whole incident.

Temple was a refuge for me at this time. I’d been spooked out by the empty void in the glasses of Yoko Ono and ran to his side. Okay, I called him and he invited me to stay. He had classes all day, though, and wouldn’t be able to pick me up until after 7 pm. In his first year at Harvard Law School, he did not have a car, so he had to rely on his friend, Tommy McKinley, to drive him to the station. Had I been confident in my public transportation, I could have taken the T on my own. Today I would do that. Back then I would wait mouselike in some hole waiting to be picked up.

I had to be out of my room at the YWCA on Lexington Avenue by a certain time, and although there were plenty of trains going to Boston all day, I thought I would wait at Penn Station until the departure of the one that would drop me off in Boston closest to my pick-up time. There was plenty going on in the station: places to eat, to buy magazines and books, people watching to do. I had bought a book and planted myself on a chair in the waiting area with my luggage around me. My money, rather less than the $500 I’d started out with, real life being an expensive arrangement, was in a kneesock that I kept up my sleeve on my forearm. I had priced money-belts and other security devices before venturing to New York (especially on a train where one slept in a chair – I’d read Emil und die Detective!), but had shown myself to be the apple that didn’t fall far from the tight-wad tree. Instead, I took a favorite tan kneesock that had developed holes, and converted it into an armband that could hold money or my lightweight, nylon wallet. I thought myself very clever. It is a family tradition to believe that anyone could pay for something, but the Smart Person does it himself. Our house was full of things my dad had built or repaired in the most Byzantine method imaginable, such as a ceiling storage area in the garage he [operant word:] tried to chin himself on for the benefit of some prospective home buyers as well as rendering the untrained outsider unable to turn on our television or start his car. This has led me to pointless and time-consuming activities such as making my own coconut milk, graham crackers, puff pastry, etc.

I felt secure in my decision and the plan at hand: read until lunchtime, eat, and read some more until my chosen train departure. Temple and I would have dinner (at his expense, of course, because that’s what he was like: generous to a fault with his parents’ money) after I arrived. I had some of the salt-free, barely-edible, formerly fresh-ground peanut butter and crackers if I got hungry in the meantime. It was all under control.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take New York into account. While Amtrak was not currently killing passengers and gangs of thugs were not roving train stations, I still managed to attract the disruptive element. I was in my chair, reading happily, when a figure stopped in front of me. I looked up to see a seemingly nice little old man standing before me. “Your train!” he said. They hadn’t called my train. My train wasn’t for three hours yet. They had just called a Boston train, but not mine. I tried to deflect him. “No, it’s not –,” I started. “You take this train,” he commanded. He wasn’t official, just an thin, old man, dressed nicely with suit, tie, and a hat. Thinking he might know something I didn’t (although I had no idea how he would know I was on my way to Boston), I got up and took the train. I took one last look to see if he’d wanted my seat, but it was still empty and there were plenty more around.

I can wait just as easily at the Boston station as here, I thought. Boston’s another big city, their station is probably comparable. Ahem. That was before the renovation of South Station. When I arrived that day at South Station, I found a derelict station with one magazine stand and some dingy and vacated retail spaces. The seating was just wooden benches that had no one else on them. Not even bums bothered with South Station. I found a payphone and called Tommy to leave the message that I had arrived early. Tommy, whom I had not met, offered to come and get me, but I decided to take my chances with an “empty” building so that Tommy would not feel obliged to entertain me. It should be an indication of my continued naivety that I preferred a decrepit public space to the comforts of an actual apartment with a Harvard student in it.

Preston et le Tour de Manhattan

2006-11-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

My late friend Pres visited me in New York when I was on the Upper East Side. He wanted to go on a walking tour of the island, so we set off toward Midtown one morning. Now, Pres had already come from where he was staying on the Upper West Side, so he had already traversed Central Park. Having no proper job (and I probably didn’t either at the time), he had very little money so we lunched on day-old bagels. We visited Leonard Bernstein’s office (where I saw my first Gold Record, as well as my second and a host of others), and walked and talked all the way down to the Village. We walked along Christopher Street and stopped in at a shop called “The Leatherman.” I’m not a leather person myself and I didn’t recall ever seeing Pres in anything not preppy. Pres seemed to be getting quieter. Finally he relaxed a bit. “I just figured out what’s wrong,” he told me. “I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t being cruised. It’s because I’m with you.” Ah, the other men weren’t checking him out and that had been worrying him. We weren’t holding hands or anything. My presence was enough to render him off-limits. I suppose that also explains why he went into the leather shop, to make himself a bit more visible. Then again, a man interested in black leather is not automatically gay.
We continued down to the Battery where Pres considered taking the Staten Island Ferry to look at Miss Liberty, because he was too cheap to actually ride on the one to Liberty Island.
Instead, we started home. We were probably heading straight up First Avenue to go to my apartment, because we made desultory plans to take a bus if it just happened to come by when we were near a stop. That never happened. We walked all the way back. The sun was starting to go down. This may not seem as much of an adventure to you, but look at a map of Manhattan and figure out how far we went. We were gone from ten in the morning until dusk with nothing to eat but lightly stale bagels.
Pres dropped me off at my apartment and then said he would walk back through Central Park to the West Side. “But it’s getting dark!” And I insisted he take a bus. I knew I was worn out. That was probably the beginning of my varicose veins. And Central Park is dangerous in the dark. He insisted he’d be fine. And it took another decade and AIDS to finally get Pres.
Pres had been a good friend. I had met him the summer he debated telling his parents he was gay. (He told me later his dad responded to the news with, "You know, I sort of suspected something, but I didn't want to say anything.") His parents had a place on Hilton Head and Pres had come up from Florida to stay with them a while. We met at an island disco, since that was all the rage at the time. He asked me if I thought he should tell his parents and I'm always for telling the truth. I had met his parents at that point (and worried that they were giving me the eye) and thought they were nice enough folk and could handle it.
He called me one day to tell me the cat was now officially out of the bag. Then he invited me over to their place for cocktails and dinner. It was my turn to feel awkward. I felt as if I had been party to some sort of deceit in being a cover for Pres's homosexuality. No, no, no, he told me, they liked me and would want to see me again. So I went.
Pres introduced me to many of my firsts: first time on a tandem bicycle, first time the handlebars of a bicycle, first time on some sort of cycle holding a glass with bourbon on the rocks and worrying that we would fall, the glass would break, and a large shard would go straight into my heart, first time in a Rolls Royce, first time in a car that may or may not have been Taken Without Consent (Pres was a doorman at the time at a posh downtown Boston hotel).
He told me that he was HIV positive the day he came to visit me after my accident. He said that if he developed AIDS he wanted to go back to Florida where it was warm. As it turned out, his mother cared for him and his partner until they died ... in Maine.

Oh, what a silly bunt.

2006-11-14T09:16:00.000-08:00

I have a friend, a dear, dear friend, who has a great story. Even though I'd dearly love to be, I can’t be the one to tell it. She's actually working it up for probable publication. My husband wondered if her version and mine would match and I said they would have to be pretty close because she doesn’t actually remember the incident and has to rely on my memory of it anyway. She can flesh it out, though. I will say that it involves a reasonably formal dinner party of mostly Harvard Law School Students, my friend and her Mormon boyfriend, using the Lord’s name in vain, and a crude, colloquial term for a particular area of a human female’s anatomy. And it wasn’t really funny at the time.

The Man Who Came to Dinner

2006-11-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

I met many people at Harvard Law School during my Boston hiatus. One of them was a tall, lean, and muscular Austrian (accent on the lean) named Heinrich Willke. After graduating from Harvard, Heinrich was unwilling to go into the workaday world, so he started another advanced law degree at NYU. This put him in the part of town with the best falafel shop in the world. For 75 cents (in 1980s money) you got a great sandwich. Heinrich looked me up in New York and introduced me to The Best Falafel Sandwich. At that time a ride on the subway was 75 cents and then went up to 90. (Later I was worried that the Falafel sandwich price would go up with it, but it didn’t. )To repay Heinrich for treating me to The Best Falafel Sandwich (quite a stretch for him being a student and always short of cash), I invited him to dinner on a particular date about a week in the future.
Living in New York is exhausting. I used to say that one could not manage more than three errands in one day. Bit by bit I was accumulating all the things needed for dinner with Heinrich. I dragged home to the studio apartment one evening after work the chicken, which was going to be the centerpiece of the dinner. Sodas would be too heavy to carry along with the other groceries and I was leaving them for the last night. It was just too much to walk mixers back from 86th Street and Lexington with the groceries.
Fred was home for a change. He was having one of his simple dinners of popcorn and Coke. I had made the pie for dessert and was still running elaborate plans for the chicken through my head as I relaxed.
The buzzer went off.
Now, those of you who don’t live in New York City probably don’t realize that people do not just drop in on each other. Fred and I looked at each other. Then I got up and pressed the intercom. “Who is it?” I asked, tremulously. “Iph eye ncck.” Fred looked up at me. “Who is it?” “It sounds like … like Heinrich!” I whimpered. The intercoms are notorious for garbling just about anyone’s words, but I’d caught enough of it. “I thought he was coming tomorrow.” “Yeeeessss!” Fred didn’t bother to get up, but he held his next mouthful of popcorn poised in his hand.
This is one of those slo-mo-moments where time drags out, like that Einstein guy said. I hope it didn’t seem like the eternity it was to me to Heinrich. I buzzed him in.
“What are you going to do?” Fred asked.
“Have dinner,” I said.
Fred put his popcorn up and rushed around trying to find things that would go together (all we had for beverages was Fred’s open bottle of Coke, vodka, and a bottle of Château Neuf du Pape, which probably didn’t go with chicken, but would have to do) while I just fired up the oven and threw the chicken in a pan.
Heinrich came in and we served him lukewarm lashings of vodka and Coke, red wine, and plain baked chicken topped off with some sort of fruit pie probably.
To this day, as far as I know, Heinrich has no idea that he was not, in fact, a fashionable hour late, but 23 hours early. He may think that I am a terrible cook and an indifferent or disorganized hostess and he is free to think that rather than think he committed any sort of social gaff.

The Best Part

2006-11-12T20:15:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I left this out. It didn't occur to me until the drive home from Greenville tonight.
One of the reasons I was extremely sorry I couldn't attend the bar mitzvah was the venue.
"You must come!" the mother told me. "It's at the Horn and Hardart."
"The Horn and Hardart?!" I exclaimed. "The bar mitzvah is at the automat?!"
They all nodded. "It's very nice," she told me, "they cater."
Oh, good. Somehow I was picturing putting quarters in slots.

Are You Jewish?

2006-11-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

Temple and I decided that, like Jonathan Miller, we are only Jewish among anti-semites. The difference, of course, is that Miller is Jewish, although a famed rationalist/atheist. My answer, when I am asked, is "Does it matter?" If they say no, then I say I don't have to tell them because it doesn't matter. If they say it does matter, then I tell them I won't tell them because it shouldn't matter. This tortured the Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend for a while because he was considering the possibility of becoming the Wicked Step-Ex-Fiance. I gave in eventually only because I can't lie, although the look on his face because he couldn't quite be sure was priceless. I also gave in to the wife of a Presbyterian minister because she was looking for a Jewish person to explain things. Like what? Ritual cleansing? What's Kosher so you can have someone over for dinner? Why we killed your god? Key-rist!
Do I go around asking people what their affiliations are? I hope not.
You find out soon enough.

The Shayner Yid

2006-11-12T13:23:00.000-08:00

After New York I moved to Boston. After doing more theatre there than in New York, I applied for a job at a law firm. My dear, old friend from college, Temple Dickinson (who is not Jewish despite the name ... not that a sensible person would think so, but not all people are sensible and he used to get Hannukah cards from one of the other paralegals) told me that they were always looking for more paralegals at his firm to go through a huge document production in a massive national litigation. And, despite my connection with Temple, I was hired.
I met some great people, most of them a great deal younger than I was because they were either just out of college or on summer break from same. One of my favorites was Jere Beck. Jere was a paralegal who was desperate to write comedy. He would write small jokes on post-it notes and read them to us during break. I can't describe Jere without referring to his brother, who looked just like Elliot Gould. So, picture Elliot Gould shorter, slender, and very very blond with bluer than blue eyes. Jere was a nervous type. He literally exploded with laughter when he found something funny.
When Jere was young, his parents split up. He said it was all for the best because they fought constantly and lop-sidedly. His mother would yell and his father would shut down. He'd leave the room and she would follow him, keeping up her end of the argument. Unlike his other siblings, Jere took sides. His father, in his opinion, was wrong, dead wrong, and that was the end of the story. Being the nervous type myself, I can just imagine how painful that was to listen to.
Jere and I were friends, just friends. I was going through a fallow period on that front at that time, one of many, so I was used to it. One day he invited me over to watch a movie, one of his favorites. He was even going to drive me so either I didn't have to take the T or he wouldn't have to explain to me how to get to his place. Jere had a car ... in Boston. I was carfree since my move to New York. He said that his family was coming over. I had heard so much about them, I thought it could be interesting or stressful, but I picked interesting.
Because he drove me straight from work, we got to his place early. He had a lot to do to get ready, etc., so he asked if it would be all right to leave me in the living room alone. That was fine with me.
His mother showed up early. She was tall and pleasant, if a bit intense. Again I felt the eyes on me. Jere introduced us and went on with his mysterious tasks. His mother asked me what my name was again and how it was spelled. Then she asked me when my birthday was. I don't like giving out my birthday. I don't mind people knowing how old I am, but I don't like giving out the date. She was sweet but insistant and I got this bizarre idea that, like my old friend Kathy's mother use to do, she was going to have a private investigator check me out to make sure I was suitable and not just some ... blonde shikseh out for the family money. That didn't seem logical. Because Jere had sided with his mother, his father wouldn't give him any money. But I supposed Mrs. Beck didn't know I knew that. She took out a small pencil and a piece of paper and wrote it all down. Then, after studying it for a minute, she gave me a horoscope reading. Well, hot-damn! I can't tell you what a relief that was. I had been picturing trying to reassure her that I was not after Jere and our relationship was not like that (which inevitably leads to further explanations about how this could be despite the son in question being a "real catch").
Slowly, the rest of the family arrived. We all sat around the room and watched "The Coco-Cola Kid" - a movie that I wouldn't show my mother.
It seemed a rather odd evening, although I couldn't put my finger on it. Was I so imposing that Jere felt he needed his whole family on hand to keep the evening from looking like a date?
It was all explained the next day, although it didn't make me feel any better, when Jere thanked me for coming over.
"That was the first time my parents have been in the same room together without fighting since before the divorce," he told me. I was there to make sure they behaved themselves. He hadn't told me, of course, so that I wouldn't be nervous.
This is not unlike my elderly aunt Cordella not telling us that she intended to die on the trip we all went on to Europe in 1972. She told my mother this on the plane on the way back. "I wanted to die while I was doing something I loved," she said. My mother had cared for Cordella all through Europe, where locations were recalled by how many angina attacks she had, as in, "Oh, Salzburg, that's where I had three!" "Cordella!" my mother shouted over the airplane noise, "we wouldn't have known what to do with your body!" "Oh, that wouldn't have been a problem," she said, "I looked it up before we left." "But you didn't tell us!" my mother pointed out. "I didn't want you to worry," Cordella replied. "You couldn't have told us if you were dead!" she was told. Oh, she hadn't thought of that.

Tourist Haven

2006-11-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

My cousin Marylynn Ginsburg in her Red Square dress (for her trip to Russia) which has no back took me to dinner at Tavern on the Green along with the Drummonds, her friends from Rancho Palos Verdes. Marylynn is the glamorous one in the family. I was apparently poor and in need of a good meal. That dress is just hanging off of me. Today Marylynn calls herself "sexy, single, and seventy." Not bad for a former farm girl!

Celebrity Impression

2006-11-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

I have picked out some sunglasses in the Village. I bought two pairs that day from a street vendor.

Washington Square

2006-11-12T13:13:00.000-08:00

The Drummonds (friends of my cousin Marylynn) doing the "model walk" with me in Washington Square, 21 April 1985. I am back to being the (dirty) blonde shikseh after having red hair for a couple of years.

Eponymous

2006-11-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

For three years I lived in Manhattan. I am originally from New York state (an upstate hick), but my family had been steadily moving southward until we wound up in the southeasternmost corner of South Carolina. After a number of years of being a big fish in a little pond, I decided to go somewhere where nobody knew my name. I moved to New York City.
New York is a city full of stories, they just need someone with some flair to write them. I don't have that, I only have the stories. This is my favorite.
I was living in the worst apartment building on 82nd street on the Upper East Side, a mere block or two from actual luxury at either end. It was a studio apartment with a former boyfriend as the leaseholder. That's another story.
I was out late on a Saturday morning to pick up some things from the grocery store. I had one of those ubiquitous two-wheeled carts and, for a change, I had gone to the smaller grocery east of us instead of the Grand Union with the enormous pear out front on 86th. Living on a shoestring, I was always looking for a bargain somewhere. To get there, I had to pass a large apartment building with a lobby and doormen. I was on my way back, with a full cart when I was stopped by an attractive but snappish young man who was looking for a deli. "Not what they have in there," he indicated jerking his head at the grocery, "a real deli where I can get a sandwich." I knew just such a place. There was a great deli on Second Avenue. I directed him westward and gave him the particulars of the place. He was so grateful, but still snappish, that he asked if I would like to go.
It was still early for lunch, I had to take the groceries back to the apartment, and this was a stranger who accosted me on the street, so of course I said I'd go. We strolled back up 82nd Street to my drab apartment building and he started telling me about how he came to be looking for a deli (so unsuccessfully) at that hour.
"I'm here for my cousin's son's bar mitzvah," he told me. It was his job to give the opening blessing. Andrew (let's call him that because I promise I can never remember names) had taken the early train in from Boston. He was interning at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. That was nice. I had a friend at Harvard Law School. I went up there occasionally to see him. When he got to his cousin's apartment building, he couldn't get upstairs. The intercom system was down and the Nazi doormen were unable to reach his cousin. So there he was, hungry and nowhere to go.
We reached my building and he offered to carry the cart upstairs. I said he could help, but that it wasn't that heavy, but he insisted on carrying. On the way up the stairs he told me it was the first time he'd picked anything up since he'd had the casts removed from his arms. Hmm, I thought, he's starting the Guilt Thing early. "Casts?" I asked. Yeah, he did gymnastics and was working out on the rings when he snapped both his forearms. I looked him over. I'd seen male gymnasts before and none of them were that tall.
I unlocked the door, hoping my roommate, Fred, would be up. He had just gotten up (he worked on Broadway, keeping late hours), but the sofabed was still out and he hadn't dressed. Fred had an impressive physique from the waist up, but no ass. His chest was covered in mounds of hair of three different colors. He had a carefully trimmed beard. He was wearing tiny silken trunks and no makeup. I told him we had company. I explained to Andrew that as Fred and I had once dated, he felt it his duty to vet all my male companions. His excuse was that People Knew that we lived together and if they saw me out with someone else, they wonder why I wasn't with him. So, my male companions had to pass inspection. Fred looked him up and down as I put away the groceries and explained that we had met on the street and were going to the Second Avenue Deli for a sandwich. Fred then said Andrew looked "okay."
As we left the apartment building, Andrew decided that he would try his cousin one more time. We walked east to the fancy-shmancy building and when we got inside, the doorman explained that they had been able to reach his cousin by contacting someone else on that floor and he was to go right up. Andrew then explained he was going to leave me in the lobby. My recollection of the lobby was that it was pretty large and modern with lots of white marble. Andrew was leaving me there because if his cousin knew I was there, I'd be invited upstairs. If I went upstairs they would invite me to the bar mitzvah. If I went to the bar mitzvah, for the rest of his life Andrew would hear about the Time He Brought the Blonde Shikseh to his Cousin's Bar Mitzvah.
That was fine with me. The bar mitzvah was that afternoon and I had other plans. It was a shame, because I'd never been to a bar mitzvah and it would probably make a good story. Whatever I was doing was something I couldn't get out of because I remember being disappointed. Andrew left me in the lobby and I pulled off my mittens and undid my coat and scarf to wait. He was gone a very long time. When he finally reappeared, he explained that he was almost unable to get away at all. The only way he escaped was he had to admit that he had someone waiting downstairs for him. Now, of course, they had to meet me. There was no way out. He went all Dennis Leary on me, bent over, gesticulating, and running his hands through his hair.
We got on the elevator while he coached me.
"I'm really sorry, but if they invite you to the bar mitzvah, tell them you have something else to do this afternoon."
"I do have something else to do," I said.
"They're going to insist," he added, all stressed out.
"It's fine. I have some other commitment."
"And if they ask you, your last name is Schwartz!" he groaned.
Tch, such misery! Why all the tsimmis?
In the apartment, I was surrounded by the whole family. The women had their hair coiffed and protected by toilet paper swaths (as my mother used to do), but, like the men, they were in jeans and shirts. I was introduced all around as "Marf," something Andrew considered to be neutral. Their hungry eyes were on me and it occurred to me that, being in his late 20s, Andrew was being pressured to bring home possible marriage material.
They wanted us to stay and eat there, but Andrew squashed that one.
They invited me to the bar mitzvah and I told them truthfully that I would love to go, but I had a prior engagement.
Andrew extricated us as quickly as was politely possible and we walked silently to the elevator. Inside the elevator he sighed and relaxed and I, unable to contain myself any longer, burst out laughing.
"What's so damn funny?" he asked.
"Schwartz," I said.
"It was all I could think of. It's a good thing they didn't ask."
"You don't even know my last name!" I said.
"Well, what is it?"
"Shopmyer."
"Oh hell, " he said, somewhere half-past relief, "that would have passed."