Word Salad

Turf Wars in New Orleans

2012-02-25T09:02:00.001-08:00

Tuesday was Mardi Gras. Three years ago my friend D found out about a group that organizes bus tours from Baton Rouge to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The bus leaves from our large mall and parks at Le Pavillion hotel, from which it is a two block walk to the parade route stands at Lafayette Square, across from Gallier Hall. Included in the package are tickets to the stands and a late buffet lunch at Le Pavillion. For the past two years, John and I have been going along with her.

John grew up in New Orleans, so up until the year after Hurricane Katrina, we usually went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While his mother lived there, we stayed at her house the night before and went to the big potluck lunch at the house of a friend who lived just a few blocks off the uptown parade routes. For two years, we paraded ourselves as members of a small crew who owned a float in one of the truck parades. After Katrina, we began going to Lafayette for Mardi Gras instead.

Since we had always been uptown for the parades, I had never seen the Zulu parade. From our vantage point near Napoleon and St. Charles, we could see the Rex parade and the truck parades. I had actually attended two Zulu balls back when I lived in New Orleans during my first marriage, but never seen the parade. I know their was always a lot of grumbling on the part of members of our Mardi Gras crew about our parade getting off to a late start because the Zulu parade kept holding up Rex. The truck parades follow the same route as Rex immediately after. Zulu starts off at another point, but uses the same route as Rex downtown, which means Rex can’t start until Zulu is out of their way.

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club is the outgrowth of of a Benevolent Aid Society, a group of theater goers called “The Tramps”, and the Mardi Gras culture of New Orleans. They first paraded as Zulu in 1909 and first used floats in 1915. As the story goes, many of the floats were sponsored by local bars and the parade had to stop at each of these bars and mingle with the drinkers, leading to the parade having a somewhat chaotic and unpredictable route. It wasn’t until 1968 that they began parading on St. Charles and Canal Streets.

The Krewe of Rex is an older and more privileged organization. Rex was first organized and paraded in 1872, in honor of the visit of Russia’s Grand Duke Alexis Romanov. A song written for the Duke’s amusement, “If Ever I Cease to Love”, is the Rex theme song to this day and played by His Majesty’s Calliope, the last float of the parade. The first ball was held in 1873, presided over by the first Queen of Rex.

Aside from the obvious racial and social differences between the two groups, they also embody two different sides of Mardi Gras. Zulu is raucous and inclusive. You can pay your way onto a Zulu float. This years Zulu parade took 3 and a half hours to pass the viewing stand where we were camped, more than long enough to leave everyone feeling “enough already”. So far as I know, no one stopped at bars, but there were a lot of floats, bands, and groups of other kinds, like the Buffalo Soldiers. Zulu projects the attitudes of “Yes, we do have all day” and “Join us up here, why don’t you.” The Zulu Mardi Gras is Mardi Gras of the people, by the people, and for the people.

King Zulu 2012

The only way you can ride with Rex is to join Rex, and the only way you can join Rex is by birth or marriage. This year’s queen of Rex, or as they put it, Queen of Carnival, is Ella Monstead Bright, the great, great, great niece of the 1879 King Rex, William Mahle. Her cousin was queen last year. King Rex is always a ~~rich old white guy~~ distinguished member of the business community. The queen is a debutante.

The insularity of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras krewes led to the formation of two super krewes, Endymion and Bacchus in the late 1960’s. Endymion parades the Saturday night before Mardi Gras and Bacchus on Sunday night. They are known for their innovations in float design and for selecting celebrities for the reigning monarch. Endymion and Bacchus represent new blood and new money, as opposed to Rex’s old blood and old money or Comus’ old blood and no money. Comus used to hold the last parade on Mardi Gras night but stopped in the 1990’s.

The Rex floats, while not as expensive or expansive as those of the newer super krewes, are beautiful to look at and always tell a story. This year, it was Ancient American Lore. Fifty years ago, it would have been “Indian Legends”. The Rex parade is Mardi Gras by the right people, of the right people, and for the tourists. In the minds of not only Rex, but those tourists and the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding area, the Rex parade is Mardi Gras.

Rex Float

For those of us with no blood and no money, there are the truck parades. Sponsored by the Elks Krewe of Orleanians and the Krewe of Crescent City, the truck parades comprise individual truck floats decorated and staffed by small krewes or social clubs, organized under one umbrella organization which purchases insurance, sets the rules for how floats are decorated and how riders are costumed, and otherwise keep things organized. The two oldest parades in Baton Rouge, the Southdowns and Spanish Town Mardi Gras parades, are truck parades. Like Zulu, they got longer and longer until the city-parish government finally set a limit to how many units each parade could have.

John and I spent two years riding in the Elks Krewe of Orleanians parade with a krewe that unfortunately collapsed the third year when most of the elderly members either retired or died. Being in the streets on Mardi Gras is fun; riding on a float is even better. I get a phenomenal rush of power watching all those people in the streets begging for the cheap plastic beads in my hands. It also gave us something to do with all the cheap plastic beads we collected from the parades leading up to Mardi Gras. My usual parade experience consists of trying to catch everything within reach and plotting long, hard deaths for the people who catch the beads that were headed for me, and then two hours later asking myself, “What am I going to do with this crap?” Turf wars are not just for the krewes.

So it was with trepidation that my husband noticed me perusing the “Ride with Zulu” link the other day. “Why are you reading that,” he asked. “I was just trying to figure out why the parade was so long. If you don’t have to be a member to ride, that may be why.”

He seemed content with my answer, but it only took me three years to get him to accompany me to Antarctica. New Orleans is a whole lot closer. I’m biding my time.

Making Tracks

2012-02-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

If you go to this link, you can see a huge, searchable image of ancient elephant tracks laid across what is now a desert in the United Arab Emirates. They were made at least 6-8 million years ago, while the land was watered by a river, not the dry wasteland it is today.

According to Discover Magazine

There are many fossils of prehistoric elephants that show how their bodies evolved from smaller ancestors. But elephants are much more than just tusks and trunks. They have rich social lives, full of empathy, and their behaviours haven’t fossilised as well. We know that some elephants, like the mammoth and mastodon, spent some of their time in groups, thanks to the occasional trackways and mass graves. But the Mleisa 1 site offers much clearer evidence.
Studying it wasn’t easy. The site is too massive to photograph from the ground, but the individual prints are too small to show up on satellite images. To accurately map the trackways, Nathan Craig from Pennsylvania State University attached a small pocket camera to a kite and snapped a set of overlapping images from above. He stitched the images together into a single large mosaic, which you can see on Gigapan. By calibrating the aerial mosaic with measurements taken on the ground, the team could study the herd’s footsteps from the air.

Wired.com also has an article on the elephant tracks.

One day, sometime around seven million years ago, a herd of bizarre, four-tusked elephants crossed the desert that stretched over what is now the United Arab Emirates. Thirteen of the behemoths plodded along together, perhaps moving towards one of the wide, slow rivers which nourished stands of trees in the otherwise the arid region. Sometime later, a solitary animal trudged across the herd’s path in another direction. We know all this because paleontologists have found the tracks of these massive animals.
Scientists were not the first people to wonder about the fossil footprints. The huge tracksite – which stretches over an area equivalent to seven soccer fields – had been a source of speculation among local Emirati people for years. Dinosaurs and even mythical giants were thought to have been responsible for the potholes. It wasn’t until the spring of 2001 that a resident of the area, Mubarak bin Rashid Al Mansouri, led researchers from the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey to the immense fossil field.
Dinosaurs had not created the tracks. The snapshot of time represented by the trace fossils came from the Miocene, sometime between six and eight million years ago — all the gargantuan non-avian dinosaurs had died out over 60 million years previously. Based upon the geological context and what had been found in the area before, fossil elephants were quickly identified as the trackmakers. The site was named Mleisa 1.

If the world had had to wait for me to think of using kites to make aerial photographs of the tracks, it would have been waiting still. I think it’s the most creative use of a kite since Ben Franklin and his key.

It’s amazing what the tracks themselves can tell us about elephant behavior. Elephants travel in herds organized around a matriarch. When the males hit puberty, they set out on their own until they find another group to join. The lone tracks in this picture were made by such a male, not at the same time as those of the herd.

I’m grateful for the scientists who know how to give us these snapshots of long ago. Our lives are measured in decades rather than centuries, and we can’t run as fast as some of our fellow mammals, swim as well as fish or soar like birds, but thanks to the curiosity and inventiveness of some, we can look back over billions of years of history and see out for trillions of miles.

What could be cooler than that?

You Turkey

2012-02-20T10:22:00.000-08:00

For the last half dozen years or so, we’ve been eating Thanksgiving dinner at the house of a friend. Christmas we spend at John’s sister’s house every three years or so. When we’re home, we are more likely to cook roast beef or pork than turkey. So it has been several years since we’ve had a roast turkey in the house. Last week I woke up craving turkey, and since it was my turn to grocery shop anyway, I added turkey breast to the list.

I was actually able to find a fresh one (or possibly a previously frozen and then thawed one), which meant I was able to cook it for dinner. It was small, just under 6 pounds, but a 6 pound turkey breast is still a lot of turkey for two people.

Half of it I froze to use later in making chili blanco. A friend of mine substitutes turkey for the chicken and I’ve been wanting to try it. (Usually I substitute pork tenderloin for the chicken.) The ribs and breastbone of course went to make soup, one-third of which we had for a lunch, one-third of which is in the refrigerator for later this week, and the last third of which is in the freezer for another time when we are not sick of turkey.

I made turkey hash for lunch today, and half of that is in the freezer. There is still a large chunk of turkey left.

So I’m thinking of turning it into a turkey pot pie casserole to donate to St. Anonymous, which keeps a freezer of casseroles to donate to those who are sick, just had babies, or are facing other family emergencies which interfere with cooking. I can find a disposable baking pan. What I can’t find is a recipe I like. The classic turkey pot pie recipes I find are made to cook in a ten inch pie pan with crust on top and bottom. The casserole recipes I can find either call for prepared biscuit mix toppings or seem extremely complex. I want to make something that tastes good, which rules out the recipes that are essentially “toss diced turkey together with one can of soup and two cans of mixed vegetables and top with biscuit mix.” The recipients are already under stress; they don’t need bad food on top of it all. On the other hand, my main criterion for a good recipe is that after one or two go-rounds, I should have it memorized. (IOW, the only thing written by Julia Child I have around my house is My Life in France).

I would just improvise, but I need to include instructions for baking time and temperature with the casserole and while I’m perfectly happy to improvise those when I cook for myself, I want to make sure I give other people reliable information.

Maybe I should just make some more turkey soup.

Congratulations to Per Ahlberg

2012-02-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

Belated congratulations to Dr. Per Ahlberg on his having been elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Per Ahlberg is a paleontologist and Professor of Evolutionary Organismal Biology (stop sniggering and read that s-l-o-w-l-y; it means as opposed to molecular biology) at Uppsala University, Sweden. He also has a wicked sense of humor.

Dr. Ahlberg is not a personal acquaintance of mine, but I know of his election because we both post on TalkRational. Dr. Ahlberg posts things like,

Tiktaalik is correctly dated as far as I can judge. The best constraint on the human-zebrafish split is Guiyu oneiros, a lobe-finned fish from the Silurian of China described by Zhu and colleagues last year. Guiyu is a basal member of the coelacanth + lungfish + tetrapod lineage, and must thus postdate the human-zebrafish split. It is 419 million years old. The Polish trackways show that the tetrapod line had separated from the lungfishes and coelacanths by 395 million years ago.

I post things like, “It’s a house band that had a small cult following in the mid-90’s" in answer to questions like, “What is evo-devo?”*

So despite that nasty little incident in which Dr. Ahlberg called me a marriage wrecker, I decided to be the bigger person and offer him my congratulations anyway, here on my blog where he won’t read it, along with pretty much the rest of the population of the earth, including Sweden, wherever that is. Somewhere cold, is my understanding. Somewhere where having published a few (dozen, hundred, whatever) seminal papers on tetrapod evolution is considered reason enough to elect someone to a society that probably doesn’t even have fancy hats like the Swedish Chef Institute.

Seriously, though, Talk Rational is a fascinating place, especially the Life Sciences (formerly Evolution and Origins) board and the Physical Sciences message boards. Per is not the only working scientist to post there, although as most of them post under screen names, I tend to get the physicists confused with the geologists and the biologists. Since the whole point of Talk Rat is spirited discussion on a number of topics (science, politics, religion and secularism, mathematics, philosophy, history) plus more community oriented boards for discussing games, sports, media, pets, family and whatever, and since the moderating policy is fairly loose, the science boards tend to draw a number of cranks who are certain they can upend all of modern science by referring the resident scientists to badly mangled versions of the second law of thermodynamics, quantum physics or outlier statistics from poorly done experiments, or to the work of other cranks. The discussions that ensue tend to be highly educational for those of us who are really there to learn. As for the cranks themselves, they follow a derived set of laws that have been described as follows:

Laws of [Crank] Discourse on Internet Discussion Forums

First Law: All evidences for [standard science theory] are speculative. All speculations for [crank preferred theory] are evidential.

Second Law: One may escape intellectual responsibility on any issue merely by stating an intent to pursue it.

Third Law: If you have an objection to any point I’ve raised, I’ve already addressed it. No, I won’t tell you where.

Fourth Law: Unanswerable questions are invisible.

Fifth Law: The truth of all previously established facts and conclusions are subject to their being convenient to the argument I am presently making.

Sixth Law: Any claim . . . post[ed] on a new discussion board invalidates the refutations of the same claim . . . already seen and acknowledged on previous discussion boards.

Seventh Law: No matter how transparently pathetic . . . any [such] claims may be they can always be followed by something even more pathetic . . .

Eighth Law: Any thread where I'm getting my ass handed to me on the original topic can be prolonged indefinitely by the introduction of tangential diversions or an abnormal focus on meaningless minutiae.

These laws in their original have a particular poster’s name attached to them, i.e, “Poster Name’s Seventh Law”, but my experience is they apply to a number of people.

It is fascinating to me to see how often the credentialed scientists will post for pages on end patiently dismantling farfetched claims that they have seen numerous times before, even after it becomes obvious that they are talking to persons who are not arguing in good faith and operating on most, if not all, of the above laws. They do it for the lurkers, they say, and I am glad they do. I’ve learned a lot.

So again, congratulations to Per and a thank you to all of the scientists who see public education as one of their tasks in the face of the perverse determination of some folks to remain, blissfully or not, ignorant.

*In case, you are wondering, it’s not.

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T10:01:00.000-08:00

It is fashionable every February 14 for people to complain that Valentine’s Day is a “Hallmark holiday” and totally commercial and that they can show their love for their dear ones on other days. To which I say (although generally under my breath) “So what?” Chocolate tastes good. Flowers look pretty. Cards are cheerful. Go take your hipster disdain for happy-making things someplace else, thank you very much.

Three years ago, hubby and I were on an Antarctic cruise on Valentine’s Day. I bought him a large Valentine’s Day card before we left, and carefully kept it hidden and unmangled for close to a week before giving it to him on the day. He was thrilled and sent me belated flowers when we got back.

The day the flowers were to be delivered, I had a migraine and left work early. Hubby called work to find out if the flowers had been delivered, only to find out I was at home. He called me there and fessed up about the flowers. Meantime I was feeling better, and didn’t want to miss my flowers, so I called work to tell them I would be back in the afternoon. “You can’t come back,” said our panicked receptionist. It turned out they had told the florist to take the flowers to my home.

You don’t have that kind of delicious romantic mix-up in your life if you spurn Valentine’s Day.

When it comes to Valentine’s Day meals out, however, hubby and I have stopped going to restaurants on the actual day. We generally go a day or two later, when the wait staff is not rushed off its feet. This year’s plan is to go have lunch at Houmas House tomorrow, at the Cafe Burnside. We have eaten there before, and it is the perfect Valentine’s Day (or thereabouts) kind of place, plus the weather should be nice enough for us to stroll around the extensive landscaped grounds.

The crawfish pumpkin bisque at the cafe

Houmas House

I did give hubby his gift this morning, though. He buys most of his clothes at JC Penney, and ever since they instituted their new marketing plan, he has missed the $10 off coupons he used to get in the mail. So I bought him a gift card. He of course got me flowers and chocolate.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody.

Like Molasses in January

2012-02-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

Hubby and I managed to make it to St. Anonymous this morning to find out that Dr. J was preaching on the topic of repentance. It seems like Lent comes earlier and earlier. I wish people would at least let us get through Mardi Gras before crying “repent”.

It turns out, though, that the reason for the sermon was that back in August, when Dr J had requested suggestions for sermon topics, “repentance” was one of the many topics someone had asked for, and this was the first chance she had to address it.

Toward the end of her sermon, Dr. J used a historical incident as a metaphor for sin, the Boston Molasses disaster of January 15, 1919. I dimly remembered having heard about it before. Briefly put, as the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution was steamrolling to ratification, liquor manufacturers were trying to produce as much as possible before being shut down. Since rum is a component of molasses, the Purity Distilling company also stepped up its production of molasses, and its huge storage tank was just about full.

Then a freak warm spell hit, causing the tank to split and a flood of hot molasses to hit the streets, where the warm weather had lured people outside. Twenty one people were killed and many others injured. It resulted in one of the first class-action lawsuits in Massachusetts, and ultimately the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, which had bought out Purity, paid $600,000 in damages (worth over ten times that amount today).

Dr J likened sin to that molasses. It damages all in its path and you don’t know where it will go. Furthermore, you can’t get rid of it on your own. You need Jesus to wash you clean. In support of that latter point, she told us that the only way they could finally get rid of the molasses was to spray the area with water from the harbor. According to Wikipedia, though, “The cleanup took only about two weeks because of the large number of helping hands, more than 300 (Puleo, p. 132-133). It took over 87,000 man-hours (roughly the number of hours in ten years for one person working "24/7") to remove the molasses from the cobblestone streets, theaters, businesses, automobiles, and homes.”

To me, that seems to undercut her point about not being able to get rid of sin on your own. If the molasses had stuck around until a gully washer of a rain storm hit, it would have been much better for her case, but it sounds to me like human technology, not to mention elbow grease and persistence, finally got rid of the molasses.

Furthermore, Wikipedia claims that the story about the tank being full to make rum before Prohibition took effect is an urban legend, and that Purity distilled the molasses for industrial alcohol and never made rum. I don’t know that this matters to Dr. J’s argument.

At the end of the sermon, we were each given little bottles of molasses which we are supposed to keep out during Lent to look at every day and remind ourselves that God forgives our sins.

The molasses behaves as if it's been watered down.

“What are the bottles for?” my husband asked me later. “We’re supposed to look at them during Lent,” I began, but he interrupted. “No, what do they manufacture those bottles for?” I have no idea, actually. They are a little over four inches tall and look like they might have a use in medicine or chemistry. I doubt they were made for the specific purpose of handing out molasses in church.

My husband has a plan for the molasses, and it’s not to use it to dwell on his many sins (that’s what he has me for) or redemption. He’s going to use it to make the cinnamon syrup he puts in his coffee.

Sermons are wasted on us.

Jury Duty, the Sequel

2012-02-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

Remember when I wrote about my husband’s week of jury duty, and concluded “I know if I were ever charged with a crime, I’d want a jury that was serious and motivated to do a good job and not wishing they could be with their son at college or worried about being fired. Now that I’m retired, I could be that juror”?

Be careful what you wish for. This afternoon I received a summons to jury duty the same week my husband reserved us a cabin for an overnight stay in a state park. “You have to call right and get them to change it,” he said, speaking of the jury duty, not the cabin.

“Can’t we just change the reservation for the cabin?” I asked.

“No, we can’t. We’ll lose our money.”

I dutifully call the court and am told I should fax them a letter saying I had already made vacation plans, and fax any proof I had that we had done so. So hubby hands me the email confirming the reservation, which clearly states that we can cancel or transfer the reservation for a $10 fee.

“But you have to do that months ahead,” he states, erroneously. The email says 15 days. The reservation is something like three weeks away. (To be fair to hubby, he is struggling with our income tax and a little distracted.)

So I change the reservation, paying the extra $10 with my debit card. The customer service representative is apologetic, but the rules are the rules. I suspect they have had too many experiences of people making reservations and changing their minds or just not showing up.

The summons is interesting. It is a mix of archaic and modern language: “Bring this summons with you herein. Fail not, by order of the court” preceded “No shorts, no tank tops, no flip flops, no exceptions.” Newspapers are not allowed, but cell phones and laptops are. Nobody has ever been known to read the local news on a cell phone. It's not like they have an app or anything. I guess this means I can bring my iPad or e-reader, though.

It also says in bold print, “Any and all self defense weapons brought into the courthouse must be surrendered and WILL NOT be returned.” It’s not a self defense weapon, but I need to remember to leave my little Swiss army knife at home. I’m also not allowed to bring a camera, video camera, tape recorder, work tools, or chemical spray. That makes sense, except maybe the “work tools” part. I can understand them not wanting you to walk around the courthouse with a screwdriver or sledge hammer, but is a protractor a “work tool”?

I will have an account of my week of service when I am done. If this time goes the way the previous two did, it will be a very boring account.

On Foot

2012-02-08T16:54:00.000-08:00

Most women, when they spend $250 in a shoe store, wind up with something they are excited to wear on their feet. Maybe they buy a pair of knee length boots, or some peep toe pumps, or sexy sandals, or a pair of platform stilettos that would have Carrie Bradshaw in paroxysms of delight. (There was another word I was going to use there, but I try to keep a certain tone here.)

When I spend $250 in a shoe store, it’s to buy clodhoppers. Well, to be fair, clodhoppers plus orthotic inserts for the clodhoppers*. In this case, two pairs of orthotic inserts because I have another new pair of shoes that needed them, too.

The second pair of shoes at least look like something I actually wear on purpose. Back in the fall, I saw a pair of oxfords in a J Crew ad that looked perfect for my new corduroy jeans. I was fairly sure my podiatrist would not like me wearing a pair of J Crew oxfords (unless perhaps he is in the market for a new boat), but I decided to see what New Balance’s sister brand, Aravon had in the way of similar shoes.

What they had looked an awful lot like my SAS Free Time shoes, shoes you have no doubt seen on your hairdresser, nurse, or dental technician at some time or other. Not exactly the sassy, casual look I was going for, but since I was reminded of SAS, I decided to look into what they had available.

What they had wasn’t bad. Their Take Time shoes aren’t quite as fashionable looking as the ones I had originally seen, but they don’t scream “orthopedic shoes” either. I tried them on in both a 7 and a 7 and a half, and decided I needed the 7 and a half.

When I say “try them on”, I mean one size on each foot. The size I needed was a display model and the clerk could not find the other shoe. No problem. They would just order them for me.

Weeks went by, and no word. I actually forgot about the shoes, and by time I remembered, it was December and I needed my spare cash for gifts. In January I called about the shoes. They had never ordered them, but promised they would. Two weeks later, I called again. A shipment had arrived, but they hadn’t opened it yet. They promised to call.

The next day I was in Lafayette. I found their SAS shoe store, and the shoes, in my size. I grabbed them while I could.

The shoes are extremely comfortable, but the built in arch support isn’t sufficient for my flat feet. (Nowadays, they say “flexible arches”. It figures that the only flexible part of my body is the part that I would prefer not to have flex.) No problem, I figure. New Balance makes very nice arch supports, thoroughly approved by my podiatrist. So that is what I was doing in the New Balance store today, buying arch supports for my new shoes.

Once I was there, however, I realized I might just as well go ahead and replace my sturdy, if unexciting, athletic shoes. They have been redesigned, I am told. They are lighter yet provide more support. They feel fine on my feet in the store. I am a little disconcerted to see when I get home that the one review of the new model on their website is from a disgruntled nurse who hates them and went back to wearing her old shoes; however, I know from experience that I have one month to take them back if they aren’t suitable.

The inserts I may be stuck with, but that’s okay. Sooner or later I’ll be in the market for another pair of shoes.

*The clodhoppers are New Balance Motion Control running shoes, in which I do not run. For some reason, the NB people advise me to buy them a size larger than my normal shoe size, but they refuse to throw in a red nose and orange wig.

Seriously

2012-02-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

This morning I came across this link in a discussion on another blog:

McGill: Consequences to Raising Teacher Pay

State Sen. Shadrack McGill [of Alabama] defended a pay raise his predecessors in the Legislature passed, but said doubling teacher pay could lead to less-qualified educators . . .

McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.
"He needs to make enough that he can say no, in regards to temptation. ... Teachers need to make the money that they need to make. There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you're paying education, you know what's going to happen? I've heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education's going to go up.' That's never proven to happen, guys.
"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach . . .

"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.
"If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance."

I am not making this up, seriously. Check the link. I posted it on my Facebook page with the comment, “Where do they even find these people to elect them?” A friend replied, “Come to Utah and I’ll show you.”

I live in Louisiana; I don’t even have to go that far.

Here’s something Senator McGill hasn’t considered. What if low paid teachers are susceptible to bribes, too? Some mediocre student whose parents have deep pockets might wind up getting admitted to Harvard, taking a place that rightfully belongs to an eighth generation legacy with a trust fund.

That would be awful! Raise those teachers salaries, I say.

Like A Dog

2012-02-03T14:55:00.000-08:00

I’m not really a dog person. My husband and I are cat people. We’ve had up to five at a time living with us, although only two are right now. But when I saw the book How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends at our local library, I thought it sounded interesting enough to take home and read.

I found it slow to get into, not because it wasn’t interesting but because the author, Mark Derr, covers a lot of territory. The book is not only about the evolution of the dog, but of the evolution of the human as well, beginning in the late Pleistocene era when both were members of what Derr calls “The Guild of Carnivores”. It is also about the sciences that allow researchers to trace the evolution of the dog from the wolf. The book is not exactly a cozy read, but I kept at it because I found the information fascinating, and as Derr was careful to build on information (and repeat as necessary from chapter to chapter), it became easier to read as I went along.

Looking at dogs from the perspective of a person born in the late 1940’s, I have always known dogs as companion animals who did no work and lived under the supervision and control of humans. Leash laws are a comparatively recent event in my life time, and some dogs, owned and stray, did roam around our suburban neighborhood, but most dogs were kept in the house or the yard and walked on a leash. The few people I knew well who had dogs (we never did) actually had purebred dogs, but I couldn’t have named more than 5 breeds: collies, cocker spaniels, dachshunds, poodles and German Shepherds.

Reading Derr’s book broadened my view. After discussing fossil finds and theories on the evolution of the dog, Derr takes us back to the end of the latest ice age, with packs of wolves and communities of humans traveling and hunting together “to meet the constant needs for company and security”. He suggests that humans (and pre-humans) and wolves observed each other at the hunt and may have learned from each other. As people began to settle down in communities, socialized wolves and dog wolves found it safer to give birth and raise litters within or near the confines of human communities, especially as humans would often help with raising the pups. Humans were able to take advantage of the now evolving dog as workers and sometimes food. The author traces how dogs spread out across the world, sometimes with humans and sometimes not.

By the time of the Romans, guidelines were promulgated for the kinds of dogs best suited for different tasks. Large, stout black dogs, Molosians, were preferred for protection, and long, lean swift white “cattle dogs” for herding.

By the Middle Ages, small dogs were being bred as lady’s companions. Derr reveals rigid class rules for dog ownership: large hunters and small companion dogs were the province of the nobility, but yeoman were allowed medium size dogs for farm work and protection.

Of course, Derr discusses dog breeding and how the goals of producing desired traits in dogs often leads to health problems being bred in. He also contrasts the lives of dogs in less developed nations, where it is possible for dogs to associate themselves loosely with a given human family and still largely live, roam and breed on their own, with that of dogs in developed countries. As Derr puts it, in discussing tests of dog’s attention to a human handler,

“The underlying supposition is that the dog exists in a healthy fashion only within human society, but that is a limited view that denies the dog its true niche in the border zome where the human meets the natural. . . Attempts to make the dog a milquetoast who waits all day in a steel crate for the objects of its desire to come home at the appointed hour and take it to the dog park, following the daily drill, deny the dog its freedom. Producing purebred dogs with known debilitating diseases and disorders disrespects dogs and people.
The impetus behind scientific breeding was the desire to improve upon nature. Arguably, it has failed to meet that goal, which should be rethought. People crossbreeding dogs, searching for animals with intelligence, with ability and desrie to learn and act - whether to play Frisbee or ball or search for victims of disasters or explosives or otherwise devote their talents to a satisfying task - present the outline of a different approach to breeding and raising dogs, one that seeks to honor and set right our ancient relationship.”

If you like dogs, or like history, or like learning about evolution, you will probably like this book.

Darn! I Don't Live in Canada

2012-02-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

Usually, I don't envy people living in Canada at this time of the year, when it's 75º here in Baton Rouge and 39º in Toronto. But tomorrow this move is opening in Canada, and while it will be playing soon (if not already) in a handful of cities in the US, none of them are near me.

I guess I’ll just have to wait for the DVD.

Recluttering the House

2012-01-31T14:21:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, we put the house up for sale intending to move to Austin to be near my son. After six months, the house hadn’t even shown once, so we took it off the market intending to try again in a few months. In the meantime, son spent most of one year in Paris and then was sent to London. His company has now opened a branch in London, and my son is working there and no longer owns his condo in Austin.

One of the first things we did when we listed the house was to pack up a bunch of odds and ends we figured we could live without for a few months. Most of the boxes have been piled in one of the two guest room closets. Then we bought an artificial Christmas tree that arrived in two big boxes which are taking up space in the walk-in closet in my office. I decided that perhaps I should free up space in the guest room by unpacking those boxes. After all, we had been living without those items for at least two years, so most of them should go to the thrift store, right?

I should know better than to expect anything to be that easy.

First of all, there were the craft items given to us as gifts from our friends in Hungary. When I first visited and they offered to take us shopping, I expressed a preference for seeing locally made crafts. Every Christmas since, I have been receiving hand painted wooden spoons, specialty jars for condiments and honey, Christmas ornaments, ornamental plates, and one year a decorative bull whip, which is sitting in an African basket on top of the blanket chest in the living room. The wooden spoons and and a three-compartment condiment set were among the items packed, and I couldn’t make myself part with them. I compromised by getting rid of some silver plated bar tools we had been given years ago by a friend of my son, and putting the spoons where those items had been.

Then there were the nutcrackers, which in Louisiana double as crab crackers. If we ever do have our big seafood boil, we will need them, but I made room for them by getting rid of miscellaneous cheese serving implements that we never use.

One surprise was my spring form baking pan, which I thought was in its old spot in the mud room. The baking pan is the sort of thing I don’t use often, but when I need it, there is no substitute. So it is back in the mudroom, with no obvious candidates yet to take its place in the donate box.

Then there was the small box with my elephants. Back when I went to Zimbabwe, I bought a soapstone elephant. I found a few more elephants at home to keep it company, and before I knew it, I had an elephant collection. Friends and family who know I collect elephants buy me elephants when they can’t think of anything else. A few of them were allowed to remain on my bedroom bookshelf, but several are in the small box. The box is now in a new location, though, inside antique washstand that serves as my bedside table.

Adding to the menagerie are the six painted parrots that my husband bought at Iguazu Falls. “I guess you want to keep them,” I said. “Yeah, we can use them at Christmas, “ he said. “We can hang them on the tree.” They’re about 5-6” long, but they are now in a drawer in the dining room with the Santa wall plaque waiting to see how that works out.

Then there is the mandoline that his sister gave us one year for Christmas. We never figured out how to use it and it sat collecting dust, which it hard to remove from something with sharp blades. It’s a pricey little item, though, and I hate to just give it away. We decided to use it sometime in the next few months, and if we don’t, to donate it. I know how that goes. Three years from now it will still be on the back of the pantry shelf.

I did put some old patterns and unopened packages of cording in the donate box, along with an unused spiral notebook, some ski goggles I bought to use as sunglasses in Antarctica (since they went over my glasses), a cup holder from Adrienne, Texas, the midpoint of Route 66, and a small coaster with a child’s prayer on it that I suspect was MIL’s. The box is looking quite empty.

The majority of the items are framed family pictures. I’m not sure where we used to keep them all. Perhaps new items have taken their place. I can’t really get rid of them, but at least I can get everything down to one box.

Didn’t I have a plan to declutter this space once?

Gentleman

2012-01-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

I often wonder if more people stayed awake in English class, if there would be fewer grammar fails like this.

A friend of mine posted this picture recently on Facebook, and I did not want to interrupt the flow of “so true” comments to say, “Grammar fail! Victim blaming!”

That’s why I have a blog, after all. So let’s take the smallest issue first. What on earth does, “I often wonder if more girls were willing to be ladies, more guys would feel challenged to be gentlemen” even mean? I think that last clause is supposed to be “would more guys be challenged to be gentlemen” or possibly “if more guys would be challenged to be gentlemen” or perhaps in the first clause "wonder" should have been "think", but as it stands reading it is an exercise in WTF? On so many levels.

Then of course there is a larger issue (no, not the largest one, not yet) - is it women’s fault if men do not behave as gentlemen toward other men? Because, I mean, Republican debates. Michelle Bachman is out of it now, so we can’t blame her. Maybe we can blame their mamas. Their wives. The catering help. Or maybe we can expand the concept of politeness to cover how we relate to everyone, in any context, not just potential romantic partners in a dating situation. It just seems to me that if you always respect the rights of other people to be different from you, whether they are explaining their (oh so different from yours) politics or telling you no, they don’t want to come up for coffee, it would be more obvious that a man always has the choice to be a gentleman. In fact, he’s the only one who can make that choice for himself.

Men themselves have pondered the question of how a gentleman treats another man. There's the story that President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals in 1929, saying, "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail." The idea that a man being a gentleman only counts in his interactions with women doesn’t make sense, considering that until recently, matters of diplomacy were only conducted among men, whether gentle or not.

Then of course there is the obvious largest issue of victim blaming. To be fair, the blogger who originally posted this picture (and identified it as reblogged . . . from dapperdean, originally from alovefromabove) did say “I fully believe this goes Vice Versa as well”.

(I’ve revised this whole last section because what I had written before seemed both obvious and puerile.)

Of course the worst thing about the caption is that it falls into that whole category of “if only women would” speculations about how the world would be a better place “if only women would” make some change that is either very difficult, vaguely defined, or completely counter to what some other person thinks women should do to make the world a better place, if not all three. This is not to say that the world couldn’t be a better place if we women made some changes in our behavior, but that’s because the world would be a better place if we people made a difference in our behavior. Reducing our carbon footprint, thinking about what charitable gestures would better serve their recipients instead of our own convenience, learning more about the character and abilities of the people we vote for rather than just their allegiances, those are a few of the things on my list of how to make the world a better place. Not one of them requires wearing a crinoline.

For that matter, being kinder to people around you, being magnanimous when others seem unkind, noticing if there is some small thing you can do that would make someone around you more comfortable, like giving up your seat or holding open a door, are also actions that might make the world a better place. These are the actions of a lady. They are also the actions of a gentleman.

All that is needed for a man to be a gentleman is for him to make the choice to be a gentleman. He’s the only one who can make that choice for himself.

Now This I Can Actually Afford

2012-01-27T15:57:00.000-08:00

After my first outrageously expensive attempts to put together an outfit with Polyvore, I found one I can afford. Everything here but the shorts (which I already have) and the shoes are under $30. Oh, wait, the earrings are $135, but I don’t wear earrings anyway. I just tossed them in because they look pretty with the rest.

I don’t really need to buy the top because I have two turquoise tops, one a plain cotton sweater and the other a T shirt with glitter flowers. So I really just want the cuff bracelet, the belt, the purse, and the shoes. Well, not those shoes, I have a similar pair in mind, because they are at store near me and I need to be able to try them on. The shoes I want are expensive, but all my shoes are, because of my feet.

The purse, belt and shoes, plus the tops I already have, will also go well with my new white jeans.

The purse is interesting. It is made in India out of recycled tires. I’m trying to stifle that little voice in my head that keeps pointing out that any environmental benefit that arises from it’s being made of recycled materials is going to be offset by its having to be shipped from India to Louisiana. I’m also trying to stifle the little voice in my head that keeps pointing out that I have a plain black purse that is more versatile and has compartments, which is a feature I like in purses. But it just looks so perfect with the outfit. Besides, if I buy it I will be propping up the world economy. I can rationalize with the best of them.

I don’t know what it is with me and clothes these days. Thoreau once said, “I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” I’m not sure that retirement is an enterprise, let alone one that requires new clothes. Perhaps I am a new wearer of clothes. Thoreau seemed to approve of those.

"Some things are more important than fear."

2012-01-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

I had not heard of the book, Allah, Liberty & Love, by Irshad Manji, until seeing this video on Pharyngula earlier today. Extremists from the group "Sharia4Belgium" stormed the author's book launch in Amsterdam and threatened to break her neck. I don’t have anything to add to this story other than my best wishes for Irshad Manji.

Travelin' Through

2012-01-23T12:46:00.000-08:00

January 19 was Dolly Parton’s birthday. On January 19, I was not much worried about Dolly Parton, writer of the Oscar nominated song Travelin’ Through, because I was on my way to Lafayette, Louisiana with my husband, who was attending a conference there. He was going to be gone overnight, so I decided to tag along and find ways to amuse myself.

As soon as we got to the hotel, I was confronted by large posters advertising the exhibit DINOSAURS: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries at the Lafayette Science Museum. The exhibit is a traveling exhibition organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in collaboration with the Houston Museum of Natural Science; the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; The Field Museum, Chicago; and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh.

I put “seeing bones older than mine” on my Lafayette to-do list and went. I got there to find a few busloads of school children lining up outside. Several of them waved at me as I walked to the door, and one of them held the door open for me.

Admission was $5, but senior citizen admission was only $3. I didn’t realize what a bargain that was until I got inside and saw the first item in the exhibit - the world famous T-Rex skeleton from the Museum of Natural History. The last time I saw that I was the age of the children on the buses.

I hadn’t brought my camera because I didn’t think the museum would allow picture taking, but they did. I took what dim and blurry pictures I could with my handy iPhone. Since Lafayette is a little more than an hour from my door, I may go back before the exhibit closes March 11th and take some better shots, and just look at it again.

A large part of the exhibit dealt with new discoveries in the biomechanics of dinosaur movements. There was a 1/10 size model of a T-Rex walking

and a huge metal diplodocus skeleton designed by computer software that was first developed to model how the diplodocus may have moved. Three large screens showed pictures representing how the muscles may have attached.

A sign in the biomechanics exhibit discussed how juvenile animals may have moved differently from adults. I read it as school children ran, skipped, and bounced by me. You think?

There was also a beautiful diorama showing how what is now Liaoning Province looked 130 million years ago. Next to the diorama was a display of the actual fossils discovered there. As I looked at one I realized I had been seeing pictures of it for years. Now I have seen the actual fossil.

I’ve also seen the fossil of Bambiraptor, discovered by a 14 year old on his family’s ranch in Montana, and so many more.

An amusing part of the exhibit was a display of the packing crates used to ship the exhibit. The museum didn’t have storage space for them, so they made it part of the display. I thought that was clever, and actually quite interesting.

I don’t know how much of an impression the exhibit made on the children bouncing their way around me, but I was thunderstruck. Traveling through time to the days of the dinosaurs, I tipped a mental hat to the many scientists who bring these days to life for us, as well as the many staff and docents in small town museums throughout the country who try to educate us all, especially the juvenile members of our species, who still travel at a bounce.

Glimpse of Gaia

2012-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

You may be aware of the recent case in Rhode Island in which a teenager, Jessica Ahlquist, sued the Cranston school board for having an obvious sectarian prayer hanging in the school gym. U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux agreed that the prayer constituted a violation of the U. S. Constitution and ordered it to be taken down, after the school was offered a chance and refused to amend the language to remove references to “Our Heavenly Father”.

As a result, Jessica has been quite predictably* been the subject of threats and abuse. When the Freedom From Religion Foundation tried to send her flowers, two florists in Cranston refused to deliver the order. A third florist in a nearby town at first agreed to deliver flowers, then reneged when he became the subject of threats.

Finally, the owners of Glimpse of Gaia, in Putnam, Connecticut, 24 mile from Cranston, agreed to send the bouquet and added one from a Cranston, RI couple (not themselves, as I stated until corrected by TRiG).

As a result, there has been an outpouring of support on Glimpse of Gaia’s Facebook page, and people who want to support both the business and Jessica Ahlquist have been ordering bouquets, some to be delivered to Jessica herself and others to be delivered to local nursing homes and hospices, and in one case, the Putnam Police Department.

One of Glimpse of Gaia’s owners, Sean Condon, responded quite thoughtfully to the two critical emails he received. His response, and the less than thoughtful answers he got back, can be seen on the Glimpse of Gaia Facebook page, linked above.

I’m writing about this not because I want to drum up business for Glimpse of Gaia, but because I am enthralled by this outcome of hate and malice. As a result of two florists who outright refused to deliver flowers and one more who was pressured not to, strangers in nursing homes and hospices are receiving beautiful bouquets. A business that did the right thing is receiving more business. In this one instance, at least, love overcame hate.

With flowers.

*One wishes it were not predictable, but I’m not going to pretend we live in some alternate universe where it’s not.

Summer

2012-01-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

I have discovered a new way to waste all my time, actually two new ways. One is Pinterest.com, which lead me to polyvore.com. Polyvore is a shopping site which allows you to create outfits by dragging clip art together, sort of like playing with paper dolls only without the dolls. Since I have a pair of black shorts, I decided to look for co-ordinating items, and assembled the outfit below.

When I saved the outfit, I titled it "Summer".

I wouldn’t have thought to pair the shorts with a pale gold top, but I found the hat, which led me to look for a top to match the tan stripes in the hat, and that led to the blouse. Then I looked for a scarf and that scarf! Stripes just like the hat, and yes, the predominant color is navy, not black, but there is black outlining the navy zig-zags and some of the flowers. So the scarf led to the purse and the sandals and bangles are pretty self-explanatory.

So now I want this outfit. I want this outfit despite the fact that the price of the components, minus the shorts, since I already have shorts, is around $560, which is more than my clothes budget for the entire season. $255 of that is the scarf. So if I lose the scarf (but I love the scarf), that gets it down to around $300. There is a problem with the top, though: the largest size it comes in is too small for me. Take away the scarf and the top and that leaves $160. The bangles have to be ordered from the UK, though, which means shipping costs. Besides, while I like the idea of the bangles, I don’t like the actuality of bangles. I’m constantly fighting to keep them from falling off my arm.

Okay, so lose the bangles. The shoes, the hat and the purse together are about $150. I don’t know about the hat, though. If the crown fits, fine, but if it’s too big the brim will be down around my chin. So that leaves the purse and the sandals. I have black sandals and without the hat, top and scarf, the purse makes no sense.

So problem solved, right? I can’t buy this outfit: it’s impractical, its expensive and parts of it won’t even fit me.

Sigh. Sometimes I hate common sense.

Scoreless

2012-01-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

It’s been a bad time for sports fans here in Baton Rouge. The BCS Championship Game has come and gone and LSU lost. Not only did they lose, they were held scoreless, the first shutout in BCSCG history. LSU fans are in a funk, to put it mildly.

Even worse, they aren’t able to vent about the big loss through their usual outlet, radio station, WSKR the Score. As of New Year’s Day, the Score, a local sports talk radio station, is now Hallelujah 1210, a gospel station. Rumor has it that radio hosts got a call from management the day of the change; other staff found out by email. There was an article in the local paper last Saturday, but it was in the religion section and talked mostly about the new format, not what happened to the old crew.

There is another local station with a sports talk format, but it is an ESPN affiliate broadcasting mostly nationwide programming, with one local afternoon show on weekday afternoons and a few others scattered throughout the week.

I never realized it until after the station changed formats, but the Score did not hire and pay most of their hosts. The hosts paid the station for their time slots and then sold their own advertising to make what money they did. Only one host was an employee of the station, and he was on hiatus. There are rumors about why that is, too.

So now there is a hot mess - hosts who sold advertising time they cannot deliver, advertisers whose products may or may not be suitable for a gospel format station. (Our barbecue platters are perfect for your next tailgate - uh, dinner on the grounds.) Nobody official seems to want to talk about why the change was made so abruptly with no warning to the people whose livelihoods were being affected.

Local sports fans, of course, are burning up the message boards talking. It takes their minds off the Big Loss.

Panorama

2012-01-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

I have finally unpacked the Mikasa Fruit Panorama dinnerware and have it sitting in the cabinet over the baking center. We’ve even been using it for dinner several days a week, although if hubby sets the table, he uses our old Walmart china.

The dinnerware

With a wine goblet we already owned

With a Village Pottery Della Robbia egg plate from Hungary

I don’t remember why I kept the Panorama dinnerware in the attic for so long. I think it had something to do with being afraid to break it, although it is probably sturdier than the Walmart plates. In unpacking the plates, which were in their original boxes, I discovered I had been wrong about one thing. MIL had used some of the original set; just not the second set. She kept the original box, because she kept everything.

Unpacking and using the china of course reminds me of Eloise, my late mother-in-law. I have a lot of reminders of Eloise around the house. For one thing, there are the afghans. When Eloise’s sister died, she left behind her a lot of unused yarn in 1970’s earth tones and day-glo colors. Eloise, being the thrifty soul she is, crocheted the yarn into hideous but practical afghans. We have three of them, in addition to a quite beautiful afghan that I am not allowed to use because the cats might destroy it. I finally dealt with one by hiding it in a duvet cover, but the others, despite all my attempts to hide them, keep popping up around the house, at least in winter. The cats, I might add, are completely remiss in their duty to destroy the ugly afghans.

Rolled up afghan

It took me years to realize that Eloise was not just expressing her practical side in using up the last of her sister’s yarn. She was mourning her sister, and making sure that she would be remembered. If I had succeeded in banning the afghans from the house, I would have succeeded in banning a good bit of my husband’s family history as well. So I have made my peace with the afghans*, and try to use them as a reminder that I am not always right.

Her china and her silver represented something to Eloise, too. She and her mother and sister grew up poor after her father died, although helped out by her Uncle Charlie, who lived next door. Things improved for her during the second world war, when she moved to Washington and held a job in the then equivalent of data processing. She even got to see Eleanor Roosevelt up close once on an elevator, and often spoke of how Mrs. Roosevelt was not as unattractive as people say.

But it was as a married woman she achieved financial security, and she was extremely proud of the fact that her silver set had a butter spreader for every place setting, and her china had eight pieces per setting. That may have been why the gift of dishes was a sore point, although her relationship with her daughter was always rocky anyway.

I can relate to her being proud of all her pretty things. I’m that way myself, which is why I worried for so long that her pretty things were choking out my pretty things. It was John’s Aunt Mary who showed me another way of viewing things. When we visited her and Uncle Jack, she gave me a tour of her house that included many items which were gifted or inherited. She seemed to get a lot of pleasure from them.

I realized then that rather than seeing my MIL’s things as stuff competing for a place with my stuff (current or wished for), I could see it as part of the panorama of family history. Items that I had tucked away on drawers were given pride of place, at least on a rotating basis.

I’m a rich woman, really. I have butter spreaders.

*Some poor child writing a current events paper for school is going to Google that phrase and be completely confused.

Excerpt

2012-01-16T11:04:00.000-08:00

Back when I wrote It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, I started out with a second paragraph that reflected one of my reactions to the first line of A Christmas Carol, but on editing the post I realized the second paragraph didn’t fit with what I had started to say. I kept it for a rainy day. It's raining, so here is how the post originally started:

“Marley was dead, to begin with.” I am rereading A Christmas Carol. The beloved tale that encourages generosity, celebration, family feeling and empathy at Christmas and all other times begins with the words “Marley is dead”.

As I read them, I am put in mind of the words of that other merry Victorian prankster, Robert Browning. Do you remember reading or hearing these lines as a child?

The year's at the spring,

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his Heaven—

All's right with the world!

They are from a longer dramatic work called Pippa Passes. Pippa is a young girl who works at a silk mill in Asolo, Italy. She is spending her one day off a year out in the sunshine, walking the town and singing. As she sings the lines above, she passes a house where a young wife and her lover have just murdered the wife’s elderly husband. Hearing “God’s in his Heaven”, they are stricken with guilt and commit suicide. No, I did not make this up. I think the Victorians had more of a [morbid] sense of humor than we give them credit for.

In the course of her wandering and singing, Pippa also inspires an assassination. I hope none of her descendants turn up on American Idol.

Extremely Annoying and Incredibly Sad

2012-01-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

Usually when I go to see a movie, it doesn’t occur to me that it may have been based on a book. I had heard of The Help and Eat, Pray, Love before I saw the movies, The Help because it was recommended by a friend and Eat, Pray, Love because it was the basis for a sales campaign by World Market. I did not know that The American was based on A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth until after I had seen it.

I don’t like reading books after I have seen the resulting movie because then I can’t get the actors’ voices out of my head. If you’ve ever read The Julie/Julia Project, you know that Julie Powell is not Amy Adams. So when it did occur to me that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close might be based on a book, I decided to search my Kindle before searching movietickets.com, and that’s how I found Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel.

The main narrator in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is nine-year old Oskar Schell. I say “main narrator” because there are three different narrators in the book. In addition to Oskar, we get to read letters written by each of his grandparents, his grandfather’s letters having been written around forty years before the action in the book takes place, and his grandmother’s letters being written contemporaneously with the events in the book, although that is not clear until the end. What is also not clear is how the reader ever gets access to the letters.

Oskar is also an unreliable narrator. He is an unreliable narrator for reasons inherent in being nine years old: he has a limited understanding of other people’s behavior, limited access to facts that are relevant to his situation, and limited interest in understanding any point of view other than his own.

Oskar is variously described in reviews as “precocious”, “unusually intelligent”, and “not a typical nine year old”. Of course he isn’t. He’s the author’s conception of a precocious nine year old as shaped by the author’s need to have a coherent first person narrator, and possibly as shaped by the author’s recollections of himself and his friends at the age of nine.

Nine year olds are funny. They are still children, but in many ways you can see the emerging adult they will be, not just in temperament (which is apparent in infancy), but in the way they speak, the gestures they make, the sense of humor they show, the facial expressions they use. They can go back and forth between babyishness and a seeming adult sophistication so fast it gives you whiplash. So the author’s choice of a nine year old as not just the main character, but as the main narrator, makes a lot of sense.

The problem is, nine year olds, even very smart nine year olds, just aren’t that coherent. Ask a nine year old to tell you about a favorite book, movie, or TV show and three sentences into the narrative you will find yourself asking questions to keep oriented. Children that age are still in the process of developing a sense of what the listener needs to know. They are much better at it than their three or six year old selves, but not good enough to sustain a book.

So the Oskar who narrates the book is not believable. The Oskar who is a character in the book, however, is. Oskar’s father died in one of the Twin Towers on September 11, and Oskar is trying to come to grips with his father’s death. Oskar’s mother also has a male friend, Rob, and Oskar not only resents and dislikes Rob, but also the fact (as he states it) that his mother is moving on with her life.

Oskar also has a therapist that he sees on a regular basis, with whom he has no rapport. The therapist is a stock character: child psychologist who has no rapport with children. This therapist is necessary because Oscar’s interactions with him give us another view of Oskar, but a therapist who could actually make Oscar feel safe to share his hurt about his mother moving on with his life would give us an entirely different story, one the author doesn’t want to tell. For a reader who isn’t, like me, standing outside the story thinking, “This just doesn’t work”, that would not be a problem, but I kept wondering why Oskar’s mother didn’t just find him another therapist, especially when it becomes clear she has her own disagreements with the man.

It’s not as though she is without financial resources. She and Oskar continue living in the family apartment in Manhattan, one that is large enough that Oskar’s father has his own closet. This is an important plot point. Oskar goes into the closet one day, notices that his father had his tuxedo laid out on a chair in the closet, and in the course of other explorations, finds a key. Oskar sees the key as a message from his father and embarks on a search to find the lock it goes to, and the message it holds.

And when I say “embarks on a search”, I mean literally wanders around Manhattan on his own for hours at a time. It turns out that Oskar’s mother is not not nearly as clueless as she seems all along (remember, Oskar is an unreliable narrator), but even so, Oskar is allowed a lot more latitude than one would think is prudent for a nine year old in a big city.

This is true despite the fact that Oskar has an overprotective grandmother who lives across the street. Oskar has only been able to get her to allow him to bathe alone by holding a piece of her knitting yarn as she sits outside the door, occasionally giving it a tug. Grandma has reasons for her issues, as the reader finds out in the course of reading letters she writes to Oskar. The letters are another example of the author choosing a narrator for convenience, not realism. In the first letter she writes, Grandma goes into detail about her sex life with Grandpa, in a way that one would not expect her to do with a nineteen year old grandson, let alone a nine year old. It is not clear from the book that Oskar, as opposed to the reader, ever reads the letter, but still. It seemed like every three pages I found myself saying, “What are these people thinking!”

And yet, despite the book’s flaws, I found Oskar’s story compelling and true to the incredible sadness and confusion that comes with losing a parent at an early age. Even if Oskar’s mother, grandmother, and therapist had been far more adept in dealing with his pain, they still would have been helpless in the face of his grief. When a child loses a parent, there is no good thing the other adults in the child’s life can do. Oskar tells us this, in the way perhaps only an overly precocious, unrealistically articulate, badly supervised and unreliable nine year old narrator could.

The Wrong Person

2012-01-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

In the past few days I have followed a crooked trail from Fred Clark’s summary of a book by Mark Driscoll to a blogpost called So You Think You’ve Married the Wrong Person.

The “so you think” is a dead giveaway that the blogger's conclusion, even not having met you and knowing nothing about you and your spouse, is going to be “well, you thought wrong, bozo”. (“Bozo” is not stated, merely implied.)

The post is a short one, and starts out with:

From time to time I hear a husband or wife wonder if perhaps they made a mistake in marrying the person that they did.
Things have usually gotten pretty bad by the time this question arises. Maybe the differences between the husband and wife are much greater than either one anticipated. The husband is neat, the wife is messy. The wife is talkative, the husband is quiet. The husband is always on time, the wife lives more in the moment. The wife is social, the husband is a homebody. These differences, which were initially just an irritant, have grown into something massive. What was once a tiny gap has become a great divide.

Pretty bad? Here’s my list, culled from real life and internet blogs and message boards, of things getting “pretty bad” that cause people to reflect that they might have married the wrong person:

1) A spouse having multiple affairs and giving the other spouse an STD;

2) A spouse who cannot hold a job, not because of the poor economy but due to inability to get along with supervisors;

3) A spouse who is an alcoholic, gambler, or unrestrained spender;

4) A spouse who treats the other spouse purely as a source of supply, of sex, personal services such as housekeeping, or of income;

5) A spouse who is abusive towards the children;

6) A spouse who is abusive to the other spouse.

To be fair to the blogger, however, it may just be the case that when he meets spouses involved in those situations, they aren’t just wondering if they married the wrong person. They’re pretty damn sure of it.

The post goes on to quote some words of Paul Tripp and then to conclude:

Your marriage, and the struggles in your marriage are not an accident. Even if you married a non-Christian, you’re [sic] marriage is not an accident! God is sovereign over all your struggles and sins, and he is using the differences between you and your spouse to bring himself glory and to make you more like Jesus.

I am trying to put myself in the mindset of those who are regular readers of The Blazing Center and whose beliefs would make this comforting advice. I am failing dismally. If you are miserable in your marriage, at war with your spouse and worried about the effect your quarrels are having on your children, I don't think a glory hound god who did this to you on purpose is going to make you feel better. This post makes me feel like a cog in the machine of God’s Greater Glory, Inc rather than as if I matter. Furthermore, rather than my spouse being considered an actual person in his own right, he’s apparently God’s object lesson for me. I don’t know about God, but I see my spouse as so much more than that.

The blogger has added a “side note”, which I don’t remember being there the first time I read his post, but it may have been. It goes

There are obviously a thousand different variations on marriage. If you are in an abusive marriage, I am not saying that you need to stay in the path of harm. That conversation should be had with your pastor or another wise Christian.

No, that conversation you need to have with the police, or an attorney, or an expert on spousal abuse.

I understand that the author of the post is speaking from a faith tradition in which marriage is forever. That is why he cannot bring himself to utter the word divorce even in cases of abuse, preferring to pass the buck to some other pastor or “wise Christian”. That’s why he trivializes the concerns of people whose marriages are in trouble. Those of us who have spouses who merely talk more than we would like don’t necessarily think we’ve married the wrong person. We think we need to buy more earplugs, and maybe some duct tape, but we don’t think we’ve married the wrong person.

My first marriage was to the wrong person. Although I grew up in a liberal Methodist church that tolerated divorce and although I was not a practicing Methodist at the time, I took seriously the vow I made “until death do you part.” I took the vow seriously through years of verbal abuse. When it began to seem that the death in question was likely to be untimely, likely be violent, and likely to be mine, however, I decided “I didn’t sign on for this” and threw my now ex out of the house. I like the way Wayne and Tamara Mitchell put it, “ When you married for better or for worse, the worse refers to life, not what the wrong person decides to put you through.”

The funny thing is, though, for most of my marriage, I thought we were right for each other. I thought I was a good person to deal with my ex’s volatile temper, name calling, and threats, because I was brave enough to stand up to him and not be manipulated by him. If he hadn’t progressed to physical violence, I would have stayed in a bad marriage and agreed with the writer that no one is perfect.

I like to say that when my ex beat me up, he did it in the kindest way possible. He came home from work, picked a fight over nothing, and worked himself into a rage with no participation on my part. There was no room for me to say, “Well, maybe if I had . . .” As a result, when I met my husband, the right person, I was free to marry him. And you know what? He talks too much. When we are going somewhere, when he says he is ready to leave what he really means is he will spend the next ten minutes heating his to-go cup of coffee, looking for his car keys, wallet, and sunglasses, and going back into the house to check if he left something on. He refuses to get rid of items I see as junk and clutter.

And he has his list of my little irritants as well. Despite all these, we are amazingly in synch. If he says he is thinking of something, it’s very often the same thing I was thinking of as well. If I have a yen for nachos, he is likely to come in from some errand he is running and say, “I thought we’d go get Mexican tonight.” We have the same values, the same political views, and many of the same interests.

It’s more than that I am just physically safer with my husband. If I had stuck with my ex, I would never have known the well-being that comes from a relationship with someone who actually is the right person. I probably would have agreed that people divorce too easily over the wrong things.

As it is, I consider myself fortunate that when I was dealing with a bad marriage, I didn’t go to anyone like the author of So You Think You’ve Married the Wrong Person for advice. He would definitely have been the wrong person.

Small Accomplishments

2012-01-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions, I like to look back on the year past and make a list of things I accomplished. “Resolving the Middle East situation” and “curing cancer” have never made my lists and never will, but it’s nice to know that I can achieve goals, even without a set of formal resolutions.

So here is the 2011 list:

I donated about 4 boxes and 4 bags of things I no longer need to the Boys and Girls club and about half as much again to Goodwill. I took care not to give them anything dirty, stained, missing parts, or dangerous, but I can’t guarantee that nothing was useless or outdated.
I bought clothes that I actually like and I make myself wear them. I say “make myself” because even when I have nice things in my closet, I tend to wear beat up T-shirts. The beat up T-shirts are gone, except for two or three I keep for painting and other dirty jobs.
I also make a point of wearing my jewelry instead of letting it sit in my jewelry box unseen.
I started an exercise program. Unfortunately, my efforts at exercise class resulted in the infamous broken foot, but I can now both ride a bike and walk fast enough for thirty minutes to raise my heart rate and break a sweat.
I restructured my daily eating habits to include more fruit, nuts, and yogurt and several days a week, to eat my main meal in the middle of the day and a lighter one in the evening. I also lost 17 pounds.
I started baking yeast breads again.
I got the photographs I took in Africa digitized and on a disk. We won’t say how much that cost.
I wrote 120 blog posts, compared to 18 in 2011 and 26 in 2009.
My good friend D and I meet several times a month for walking, lunch or day trips.
I kept in touch with friends from work and met them for lunch several times.

Feel free to add small accomplishments (or big accomplishments) of your own.

It's All Their Fault

2012-01-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

A story greeted me this morning in the People section of our local newspaper: Expert: Women in ’50s may have triggered obesity issue. Women in the 1950s were regularly blamed for many things, so I suppose this shouldn’t have surprised me. Furthermore, the booming economy and loosening of wartime restrictions on food products like sugar, meat and butter, women’s return to the home when they were kicked out of their wartime jobs, and the increasing availability of convenience foods like cake mixes, probably did change family diets in the fifties.

That isn’t what our expert meant, it turns out. No, the problem is what young mothers of the fifties were doing while they were pregnant with us baby boomers. Fitness and nutrition expert (according to the article) Melinda Sothern

has a theory that the tide of obesity that has swept the nation in the last two decades had its roots in what young mothers did, or didn’t do, in the postwar, suburban sprouting 1950s.
. . . [S]he thinks the obesity rates soared just when they did - in the 1980s - because a generation of young women decades earlier smoked, spurned breast feeding and restricted their weight during numerous, closely spaced pregnancies.

Okay, let’s say she’s right. Were these young women smoking, restricting their weight, and bottle feeding their babies in defiance of the best medical advice of the time? Not really.

“Sothern points to her own family as an example of the obesity trinity in action.

Her mother was told by her obstetrician in the 1950s to gain less than 20 pounds during pregnancy. Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day was a good way to keep the weight down, the doctor said. [emphasis added by me, because somebody had to.]

Later in the article it is mentioned that women who were pregnant in the fifties were advised to gain as little as 10 pounds a pregnancy.

So why does the headline say “Women in ‘50s may have triggered obesity issue” rather than, “Doctors in ‘50s may have triggered obesity issue “? Or to be less pejorative, “Medical advice in ’50s may have triggered obesity issue”? True, the choice of “women” rather than “doctors” may have had to do with space considerations on the part of the headline writer, but the headline does seem to reflect the emphasis of the article: not on the bad medical advice women of the decade were given, but on the women’s behavior that resulted from that advice.

When I was in graduate school, the speech department occupied a small section of the medical school. During a bout of ovarian pain, I consulted some of the obstetrical textbooks available, and was that ever an eye opener. The text book writers infantilized women and encouraged their doctors to do likewise. Your OB/Gyn was not just a person with a specialty that you paid for advice the way you consulted your car mechanic about your car or your butcher about how to cook the Sunday roast. He (and most likely he was he) was a father figure who saw you as a bundle of irrational actions wrapped around a womb.

There was no internet, no trained midwife, no nurse practitioner to consult. It was Dr. Know-it-all or nothing, and Dr. Know-it-all knew nothing about nutrition, mom’s or baby’s. It was not his fault. In advising his patients to restrict their weight gain, he thought he was giving the best medical advice of the day, advice that would prevent the problems he ultimately, if our expert is right, caused. But to say “Women in ’50s may have triggered obesity issue” and ignore the reasons that women in the 1950’s acted the way they did is to obscure the problem that our expert is trying to solve. Sometimes even the best educated members of our society don’t know enough, and what they think they know is dangerous. It’s not their fault. Medical researchers are trying their best to learn the healthiest ways to live, but it takes time and some wrong guesses to do so.

But it’s not mom’s fault, either. She was trying to give her baby the best start she could by following her doctor’s advice. The unthinking tendency to generalize about women of the 1950s (not all of whom were pregnant mothers, some of them were grandmas who were ridiculed for reminding their daughters that they were eating for two) is cruel and unhelpful. It’s not science to ignore the societal factors that led pregnant women in the post WW II era to take bad care of themselves during pregnancy thinking that they were doing the reverse. It’s the same old mom blaming, repackaged.

Answers

2012-01-04T15:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, time to match the famous first lines listed in It Was A Dark and Stormy Night with their respective works, although I am sure anyone who was interested has Googled the ones they did not know. It turns out the line “It was a dark and stormy night” made famous by the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, was also used as the opening line of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle.

Thank you Amaryllis, Dr. Ngo, and Nenya for your contributions.

Call me Ishmael. Moby Dick
Marley was dead, to begin with. A Christmas Carol
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis
There’s my last duchess, painted on the wall . . . My Last Duchess, poem
I sing of arms and the man. The Aeneid
Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. Exodus
Happy families are all alike . . . Anna Karenina
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. The Hobbit
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.”* Little Women
To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman. A Scandal in Bohemia
In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. Job
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day. Casey at the Bat, poem
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. The Wind in the Willows
All children, except one, grow up. Peter Pan
My mind now turns to stories of bodies changed into new forms. Metamorphoses, Ovid

Poems contributed by Amaryllis:

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary... The Raven
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood... The Road Not Taken
Because I could not stop for death... Death
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan... Kubla Khan
Let us go then, you and I... The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
The went to sea in a sieve, they did... The Jumblies
I met a traveler from an antique land... Ozymandias
Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert... To A Skylark
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways... Sonnet 43 Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms... La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Let me not to the marriage of true minds... Sonnet 116, Shakespeare
When I was one-and-twenty... When I Was One-and-Twenty
Listen, my children, and you shall hear... Paul Revere’s Ride
So. The Spear-Danes, in days gone by... Beowolf

I must admit, I thought the line for The Jumblies belonged to Winken, Blinken, and Nod.

This one from dr ngo, which I had to Google:

He was born with the gift of laughter, and a sense that the world was mad. Scaramouche (I was way off with my guess of Pudd'nhead Wilson.)

And finally, from Nenya:

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. A Tale of Two Cities
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice
In the beginning was the Word... The Gospel of John
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 1984

So I Have All This Stuff

2012-01-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

Two months ago, I wandered into an antique/gift shop next to the place where I get my hair done. As I looked around, I saw some green dishes and serving pieces that looked very similar to a small cabbage-shaped soup tureen I had bought in Tennessee this past summer. I don’t need the green dishes, but I asked the owner how much they were. She said she had really only bought them to accessorize the cabinet they were sitting in, which was for sale, but she would sell me the whole set for $28.00.

The cabbage soup tureen

I decided I really should talk to my husband first, not because of the amount of money involved, but because he’d have to live with them, too. My husband didn’t have any major objections, but he did ask the obvious question, “Where would you put them?”

So while I pondered this problem, weeks went by. John started to organize some financial records and noticed he didn’t have all the statements for our savings account. “I keep them up here,” I said, pointing to the cabinet over the baking center. This led to a round of moving the statements to his files, shredding old duplicate checkbooks, and otherwise clearing out the closet. Suddenly we had room for the green dishes.

What I didn’t have was $28, what with Christmas and all, at least not until the end of December. No rush - the store owner hadn’t intended to sell the dishes anyway, and if she did sell them to someone else, I knew it wasn’t to be.

In the meantime, as John brought down Christmas ornaments from the attic, he decided to take stock of what else was up there. Some of what else was up there was cardboard boxes with glassware that had belonged to his mother. “Why are you holding on to that stuff?” I asked. “Because the appraiser told me it was antique,” he replied.

“Well, maybe we should bring it down from the attic”, I said. (Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!) “Oh, you know what else is up there? Those dishes your mom gave me.”

I was referring to a set of 8 place settings of Mikasa Fruit Panorama that my sister-in-law had given her mother about twenty years ago. My MIL took offense at the gift (something of a hobby of hers) because she already had dishes, and never opened the boxes. So when MIL moved from her house to a retirement home, she gave me the dishes. I had intended to use them, but they wound up in the attic with her other possessions, and whenever I thought about getting them down, it seemed like too much trouble.

The cleared out space over the baking center would be perfect for the Mikasa, however. As for the antique glassware, it could go in the big armoire that is cluttering up the living room and serving no useful purpose. Well, it held a few of the Christmas decorations, but they are now in plastic tubs in the attic with their buddies.

As for the green dishes, in the big Christmas decoration reorganization, I freed up shelf space in the mudroom. I had a hair appointment this morning, so the plan was go back to the shop and buy the green dishes, if they were still there.

But yesterday John decided to bring the boxes down from the attic. “How many do you want me to bring down?” he asked.

“How many are there?” I asked, picturing maybe three boxes of crystal. “Ten or twelve,” he replied.

Oh, dear. When I said to bring the boxes down from the attic, I thought we were talking about maybe 16-24 glasses, not every bit of kitchenware MIL had ever owned. Now I remembered why the boxes were up in the attic to begin with.

We settled on bringing down six boxes to start with, not counting my Mikasa dishes, and to go from there. I quickly discovered that the boxes labelled “Antique Glassware” should have been labeled “collectibles that are currently popular but may not be 13 years from now”, and ones that were unlabeled should have been labelled “miscellaneous kitchen debris collected by an 80 year old woman who never threw anything out”, and “miscellaneous knick-knacks with which you can clutter up every surface in your house.” That’s why the boxes were in the attic.

Once the first few boxes came down, however, it was clear they all needed to come down. The boxes are disintegrating, the items in there are speckled with black coffee ground like matter that my husband assures me are roach droppings, not mouse droppings (I have roaches in my attic, what a comfort), and my husband actually let me add a few items to the box we were filling for Goodwill.

Some of the items, it turns out, are big platters, serving bowls, and a punch bowl. They will not fit in the armoire. My husband wouldn’t give them to Goodwill. My shelf space in the mudroom may be gone. John did suggest we could get more plastic tubs and put anything that doesn’t fit in the armoire back in the attic, but I wonder how happy he will be to do that if I bring more dishes into the house.

I didn’t even look in the shop when I went for my haircut today. Maybe the green dishes are all gone to a good home anyway, one where their new owners don’t have quite so much stuff.

I'm Not Tebowing; My Shoelace is Untied

2011-12-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

I am worse than the average three year old when it comes to shoe laces. Due to my various foot issues, I have to wear lace-up shoes, at least most of the time. That would not be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that my shoes keep coming untied. Sometimes it’s because I step on the ends of the laces, causing the bow to pull out, but most of the time they just work their way loose for reasons known only to themselves and God.

It’s almost always my right shoe, too. You would think if it were the way I tie my shoes, both bows would come undone roughly the same amount of the time, but no. And yes, I have tried double knotting the bows, and it gives me maybe an additional thirty minutes before the bow comes undone and I have to stop and tie it up again. So if you come upon me somewhere kneeling with my head bent, looking like this, I am not praying. I am tying my shoe. Again. I don’t even pray for my shoes to stay tied. I mean, the Lord helps those who help themselves, right?

It’s not that I have any objections to public prayer. If you want to kneel, or daven, or paint Matthew 6:5 under your eyes on game day, I won’t make a fuss. Public displays of piety , especially Christian ones, are common. When Juicy J and DJ Paul won the Oscar in 2006 for their song It’s Hard Out Here for A Pimp, Juicy J’s first words were, “Thank you, Jesus”. So if you want to establish your bona fides as your kind of Christian, not one of those people who write lyrics like,

Its f***'d up where I live but this is how it is
It maybe new to you but it been like this for years
Its blood sweat tears when it comes down to this shit
I'm tryna get rich before I leave up out this b****
I'm tryna have thangs but its on aon [sic] a pimp but I'm praying and hoping to god I don't slip.”

I can see how your public displays of piety have to get more and more out there, given that all kinds of people, even rappers and hip-hop artists, feel entitled to say, “Thank you, Jesus”. That’s the nature of arms races. They push us to extremes. Jesus would understand.

It’s just that if I see you kneeling with your head bowed, I’m going to think you’re tying your shoes.

Loot

2011-12-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

My son spends Christmas Eve with his dad and stepmother’s family when he is in town. His stepmother’s family has a large Christmas Eve family brunch and that’s when they do their gift exchange. In the past, John and I have spent Christmas Eve going to see the bonfires on the levee and then to the 11 PM service at our church. We usually get home around the time that Neal does, so in the past we have opened our gifts around midnight and then slept late the next morning before having yeast-raised pancakes for breakfast.

This year, Neal decided to stay overnight with his dad. He came back to our house after noon Christmas Day, giving him just enough time to fix his spinach madeleine in time for our 2 PM dinner. So we didn’t open gifts until 3:30 or so.

When you get to be my age and have to devote a lot of time to divesting yourself of all the stuff you have collected in a life time so as not to be overwhelmed with it, the fun part of exchanging presents is giving gifts, not getting them. Four years ago at Christmas, present buying was easy. Then as now, LSU was selected for the BCS Championship Game, which, just as now, was in New Orleans. So gift selection was simple: I spent a small fortune on Stub Hub buying 2 tickets to the game, one for Neal and one for John.

I put John’s ticket in a small box, wrapped in LSU wrapping paper. I put that box in a larger box, wrapped in neutral paper, and put that box in a larger box, and so on five boxes deep. They read “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Valentine’s Day”, “Happy Anniversary”, “Happy Birthday” and “Happy Father’s Day”, in order of decreasing size.

For Neal, I did the same thing, with “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Valentine’s Day”, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day”, “Happy Easter” and “Happy Birthday”, in order of decreasing size. Only inside the smallest box was a gift card for an electronic’s store.

I keep forgetting my son isn’t a spoiled teen any more. I was expecting him to anticipate a ticket and whine about it (good-naturedly) when none was forthcoming. However, he simply congratulated John on getting the ticket and admired his own gifts (an LSU tie and some electronic device he had wanted). Later, I had him help me set the table (another Christmas tradition, since table setting was his first chore as a toddler). After handing him the napkins and silver, I handed him a sign I had made thanking me for the ticket, with the ticket clipped to it, and said, “And you are going to need this sign to hold up when you go to the game.”

They were both ecstatic, as was I when LSU held up their end of the bargain and walloped the Ohio State University for the national championship.

This year I made it clear early on not to expect a repeat. Tickets are selling on Stub Hub for about the amount of my monthly Social Security check. John wanted the hammer drill and Neal wanted an iPod Nano. I also got some surprise gifts: a cashmere scarf for Neal and a gift card for an office supple store for John, who needs a new printer. John also found Neal a collapsible cart to take to the market, which is several blocks from his flat in London. Neal was thrilled; he and his roommate had been saying they needed such a thing. My husband shares his mom’s gifts for finding handy gadgets.

Neal bought John the shredder he wanted, in which I took a proprietary interest, since I probably used our existing shredder more than John does. The new one reduces paper to confetti, 8 sheets at a time, and takes on CD’s, DVD”s and credit cards as well.

Neal gave me some coasters. Yes, John got a fancy shredder suitable for a small office and I got coasters. They are handmade, marble coasters, purchased at Agra, India, made from the same marble as the Taj Mahal and inset with lapis lazuli, turquoise, tiger stone, and other semi-precious jewels, each one a little different from the last, but I have fun telling people that my son gave John a new shredder and me a set of coasters.

Not the kind that sing "Charlie Brown"

Neal also gave me the elephant for my elephant collection.

It is strange how events in my life tend to repeat. Many years ago, my dad gave me a set of coasters. It wasn’t exactly a gift, he just needed some to set his ever-present coffee cup on when he came to visit. The coasters were mass produced out of wood and cork, but they were precious to me and I hung on to them as until they fell apart or got lost over the years. Now I have a replacement, from his grandson.

I love Christmas.

The Shopper in Aisle Six

2011-12-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to Target for a few last minute items for the Christmas menu. I needed evaporated milk for the pumpkin pie, Red Hots or similar cinnamon candy for the cinnamon apples, apples for the cinnamon apples and a pineapple for the Williamsburg centerpiece. Neal is making us Spinach Madeline this year, and I suspected he needed a few other items, but when I left he was taking a bath and I knew from days of old that he could be asleep in the tub for half an hour or so before he emerged.

Cell phones are lovely. By the time I bought a gift certificate at Office Depot and a few toys at the pet store, I figured Neal would be out and coherent, so I called from Target to ask what he needed. He needed chopped frozen spinach, shredded cheese and evaporated milk, and celery and garlic salts but John was checking to see if we had those. Could he call me back?

I picked up an 8 ounce brick of sharp cheddar and was heading to the front of the store when the phone rang. We had the celery and garlic salts at home, but he needed 2 cups of the shredded cheese. I told him I had bought 8 ounces, and that with what we had at home should be enough to shred into 2 cups. “Mom, he said with infinite patience, “They make bags of cheese that is already shredded. I need one of those.” I tried to explain how easy it is to shred cheese, but he was adamant.

“Okay”, I said, “I am walking back 7 aisles to the back of the store to swap the cheese in for the shredded kind.”

“That’s good,” he replied. “People need to walk more. Now that your foot is better, you need the exercise. You should thank me for this.”

I keep hearing from my younger internet buddies that they have parents who still keep those adult children under their thumbs. Are there classes you can take to learn to exercise that kind of power? Just asking, no reason.

“Do you want three blend cheese, sharp cheddar, mild cheddar?” We settled on sharp, and I went back to my pursuit of evaporated milk, which we both needed. In the process, I passed the aisle with the gin, which I needed, but I can’t drink these days. It interferes with my medication.

We discuss how chopped the chopped spinach needs to be, and I bypass “cut leaf” in favor of old-timey boxes that clearly say “chopped”. (To be fair, my son is a southpaw in a world of right-handed knives and that may contribute to his dislike for shredding, chopping and otherwise prepping food himself. On the other hand, cheese graters are ambidextrous.)

“Love you,” he said before hanging up. “Love you, too” I replied, adding “a little less at the moment than when you are across the ocean”, but only after he had hung up.

“If I were evaporated milk, where would I be?" I mused out loud, then answered myself, “On a beach in Cancun, sunning myself.” I found the evaporated milk. They had two kinds, name brand and house brand, but the only house brand kind they had was fat free. I’m making a fricking pumpkin pie, who would I be fooling with fat free evaporated milk? I think I asked myself that out loud, too.

I cruised the candy aisle twice, but no Red Hots. Their were cinnamon gummy bears, which I bought because I love cinnamon gummy bears, but they won’t melt correctly. Fortunately, there is such a thing as cinnamon extract, which would work better than the Red Hots for flavoring. I can even add some to the whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. (Pumpkin pie, whipped cream, you can see why I thought non-fat evaporated milk would be silly.)

My favorite checker is there, and her line is short. I hear her telling the customer in front of me, “Target does not do the drama” at Christmas. Uh-oh. Well, she didn't make any such promises about Target's customers.

When I got home, my son looked at the picture on the front of the box of spinach and was concerned it wasn’t chopped finely enough. I tried to explain that pictures on the front of food boxes mean nothing, but he called his stepmother for consultation. She assured him that anything that said “frozen chopped spinach” was perfectly fine.

“Attention associates: We need a clean-up in aisle 6. A customer seems to have melted.”

The Williamsburg centerpiece is the thing with the pineapple on top.

Comings and Goings

2011-12-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was supposed to be a happy day. My son was due to come home from London to spend a week with us before flying to Paris to spend New Year’s Eve with friends. His flight was due in a little after 6 PM and we were going to pick him up. We had offered, via email, to take him out for dinner on the way home, but he thought he might be too tired after 16 hours in the air so we bought cold cuts and made potato salad for a fast fix dinner once we got home.

I have finally become used to how little time I get to spend with my son on his visits here. Even when he’s staying with us, he stays up late, sleeps late, and goes to visit friends, his step-siblings families, and of course, his dad and stepmother. We pencil in a few lunches and/or dinners and wave at him as he goes by.

Yesterday morning John’s former boss called looking for a ride to a memorial service. One of John’s former coworkers, the former boss’s secretary, Jane*, had died. The memorial service was in Baker, not far from the airport, actually, at 3PM. The airport is on the opposite end of town from us. We could easily make it to the service, but then we’d have just enough time to bring former boss home, turn around, and head back to the airport. Either that, or former boss could come hang out at the airport with us. He decided to find his own ride.

This has been a very strange December. In addition to John’s uncle and coworker dying within a week of each other, the father of his sister’s oldest friend also died. We spent one Friday a week ago at his funeral in New Orleans. All three of these people had lived long lives. Jane, as the youngest, was about to turn 80. The tragedy in Jane’s story was that her younger daughter Kelly* had died just a few weeks before, of a drug overdose, after a life punctuated by trips to rehab and jail. Jane, who was already doing poorly, quit eating and refused a feeding tube.

I never met Jane, but I felt as if I knew her. For at least a year, maybe longer, not a day went by without a Jane story from John. Jane was a character. She filled people’s lives with laughter, however unwittingly.

At the memorial service, I heard of another side to Jane. There was the younger Jane riding a horse, getting a music degree, and posing for a “beauty shot” in her bathing suit. There was the Jane who worked hard to support her daughters when she was left on her own. There was the Jane who made sure her grandchildren had hot meals while their mother, as her husband put it, “was away”. There was the Jane who always wanted to look good - and that led to a typical Jane story. One day she called a coworker to see if her could figure out what was wrong with her pencil sharpener. “Miss Jane, what is all this gunk?” he asked. “My eyeliner,” she replied.

Looking at pictures of all these Janes, I was surprised to see that she actually looked the way I expected. “Are you sure I never met her?” I asked John.

After the service, we made it to the airport with time to spare. Neal’s plane actually arrived a little early, in contrast to the flights coming in from the east which were badly delayed by storms. “Do you guys still want to go out to dinner?” he asked. It turned out he had run into some old friends in Dallas who were taking a different plane to Baton Rouge but were going to be at a local campus hangout, the Chimes, later in the evening. If we stopped there for dinner, we could then leave him with his friends and he’d grab a ride home later.

Okay, the cold cuts will keep. We had a nice leisurely dinner. Neal admired a ring I was wearing. “I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I’m leaving it to you in my will.”

“I’d rather have you. Can I swap it for you?”

After dinner, Neal found his friends and we headed home with his luggage. On the way home, I had to laugh.

“This has to be a new record,” I told John. “He didn’t even make it home before leaving with his friends.”

Then I think of Jane and Kelly. My son is not on drugs, in and out of prison and rehab. He loves his family, all of his family. We’re lucky, all of us.

Life goes by so fast. There’s no time for keeping score.

*not her real name

Fleur de Lis

2011-12-21T14:39:00.000-08:00

The last time we went to Fleur de Lis for pizza, it was also during December. I know that because it led to my thinking that during December, even ordinary events seem “Christmasy”. I find myself wondering what December would be like if there weren’t a major holiday dominating it: the weather getting colder, the days getting shorter, and no lights, decorations, special music or general feeling that the month is headed toward something. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, if you live in the U.S and don’t live in a cave, you can’t avoid the way other people’s Christmas shapes the month.

Before you tell me that December would be like January, I should remind you I live in southeast Louisiana. January 6 is the start of the Carnival season, so we change our red and green wreaths for purple, green and gold, replace “Jingle Bells” with Al Johnson singing “Carnival Time” and keep right on partying. Besides, in January, the days get longer. By the end of the month, that nice cozy feel that late December has to it is disappearing.

But I’m getting sidetracked. I meant to write about the Fleur de Lis. It bills itself as a “family restaurant - children welcome”, but when I first started going there in the 70’s it was to drink with friends. You probably have a bar/pub/restaurant like it somewhere in your town: a place that apparently hasn’t been remodeled since it was built and looks like it wouldn’t pass a health inspection unless the inspector arrived accompanied by a guide dog and holding out a palm, but that the locals all know it and fill it up in droves because the food is good and the drink is better.

The Fleur de Lis is a midcentury modern building (it opened in 1946) with stucco walls painted pink and a neon flamingo lighting up the front. Inside it’s dark, and the acoustic tiles on the ceiling have been stained by decades of smoke before smoking was banned in restaurants here a few years back. The chrome and vinyl seats look like they could be the originals.

The menu consists of pizza, pizza, and oh, yes, pizza. (Well, there is also something on the menu called pickled eggs.) The pizza is rectangular in shape, with a thin but chewy crust, the way I like it. As the restaurants owners tell the story:

Fleur de Lis was out of town on a gravel road, back in 1946, when my family bought it. It was a cocktail lounge at that time . . .
My grandmother decided to make a small pizza as an appetizer. It was enjoyed so much by the customers she began to sell them. Then she realized they needed to make a larger size. The small pizza was made in pie pans she brought from home. So she brought a cookie sheet and the "square" pizza we are famous for was born. Of course the pizza is actually a rectangle cut into small squares, but everyone loves to refer to them as a square pizza, which is just fine with us.
My parents began to run the restaurant in the 80's. Their goal was to make it a family restaurant where families are welcome to bring their children; an aspect still important to us today.

So Saturday we went there for pizza again. It was my turn to treat. I didn’t have cash on me, and it turned out (I had forgotten) that they don’t take credit cards, but they do take checks. We had the large “Round the World”, with no pepperoni on my half and anchovies (for me) on the side. The total tab was under $15.

I think we need to make it a December tradition.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

2011-12-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

Having reread the words, “Marley was dead, to begin with” and inspired by Kit Whitfield’s recent deconstructions of first sentences of novels, I begin to think of other first lines, the ones that when you hear them, you can automatically place in their respective works. This is the list I came up with:

Call me Ishmael.
Marley was dead, to begin with.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
There’s my last duchess, painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive.
I sing of arms and the man*.
Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.**
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.”*
To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman.
In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.
The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day.
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
All children, except one, grow up.
My mind now turns to stories of bodies changed into new forms.

Six of those lines have been translated from other languages, but I think at least four of those should be recognizable anyway. I’ll post sources another time. Feel free to add any of your own in comments.

* That’s not the whole first sentence, but if you are going to recognize it, that’s the part you’ll recognize.

** I know, that’s not the first line of the book, but I would argue that it is the first line of the story.

Little Known Christmas Fact

2011-12-19T06:55:00.000-08:00

When the Wise Men traveled to Bethlehem, they brought along a cat, who gave the infant in the stable the gift of comforting purrs.

It's a Wrap

2011-12-16T14:47:00.000-08:00

My husband wanted a hammer drill for Christmas, specifically, a DeWalt hammer drill, not cordless, that Lowe’s had for a good price. We don’t do surprise presents - he took me to the shelf and pointed it out to me. A few weeks ago I went to the nearest Lowe’s to buy one. They had one left on the shelf, and it looked as if it had been previously opened, as the nearby clerk confirmed.

So I waited a few days, until the day of my ophthalmologist appointment, and went to another Lowe’s which is one exit down the road from there. They, too, had only one left on the shelf, and it was fastened with a wide piece of tape, but the tape looked as if it could have been the original packaging. So I bought it, and left it in the trunk of my car to await an appropriate time for me to bring it in the house and wrap it. (We don’t do surprises, but we pretend we do.)

I do not like wrapping packages. I'm not good at it, and don't like my uneven results. We used to have a store near us that did gift wrapping, but it went out of business when a Mailboxes, Etc (now The UPS Store) moved in a block away. For a while, another packing and shipping store had a gift wrap service, but they discontinued it a few years ago. So I am on my all thumbs own when it comes to wrapping. I use a lot of gift bags, but the drill is too heavy for that solution.

Wednesday, after driver safety class, John decided to go replace a front tire on his car that he was worried about. It was the perfect time for me to bring the drill in from the trunk, wrap it, and put it under the tree. As I wrapped the package, I heard rattling, which worried me.

That night, we went to Lowe’s for John to buy blades for his jigsaw, and I noticed the shelves were now restocked with drills, and that each package was fastened with a flat plastic ribbon circling the package in both directions. I started worrying that I had bought a drill that had previously been opened and returned.

So Thursday morning, I snuck the package out from under the tree and hid it, plus the receipt, in a bag of old ornaments that I had promised to take to the thrift store. I headed to Lowe’s with my wrapped drill and told my story to the customer service rep. She agreed they could swap it out, but she had to unwrap the box first to make sure it wasn’t damaged, because if it was, I’d have to take it back to the store from which I purchased it.

Once she unwrapped it, she asked, “What makes you think it’s been opened before?”

“Because it just has that one piece of tape and the ones you have on the shelves now have binding on them.”

“Well, let me check with someone from that department.” A few minutes later someone else came by, looked at the package, and said, “Thats the way they pack them.”

“Then why is it rattling?”

“That’s the way they pack them.” He offers to open the box and check that everything is there, which it was, rather loosely packed but still in its plastic bag. He also explains that when they stock the shelves, they are only required to put the plastic binding I saw on items priced over $100; somebody may have chosen to put it on the smaller items, but they don’t come from the factory that way. “We’ll take it back if you want. It’s up to you.”

I decide to take it home. The clerk threw out my torn wrapping paper for me and put another piece of tape on the box. Now I had the problem of finding another opportunity to wrap the box again. Fortunately it came sooner than I thought,when hubby needed to make yet another trip to Lowe’s to get new weatherstripping for the front door. As soon as he was out of the driveway, I grabbed the box from the trunk, rewrapped it in the same kind of wrapping paper and ribbon, and stuck a tag on it and put it back under the tree. By this time, I've had enough practice with it that it actually came out looking decent.

It doesn't matter. Next year, I’m getting him a fruit basket.

Death At Christmas

2011-12-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

My husband’s Uncle Jack died early Monday morning. He was the husband of John’s father’s younger sister, whom I met once when we stayed at their house on the west coast on our way to Alaska for a cruise. They were extremely hospitable to us and we enjoyed our visit. Aunt Mary’s cooking was better than anything we had on the cruise.

Uncle Jack had been ill for over a year. It started with anemia from internal bleeding, which led to a stroke. He never recovered entirely, and had a series of mini-strokes until he finally lapsed into a semi-comatose state and stopped eating. His health directive ruled out tube feeding, and in a few days he was gone. The immediate family is having a small, private memorial service, so we sent flowers and a letter of condolence, feeling that sense of helplessness you do when you are far away and can’t be of any practical use.

Uncle Jack’s death reminded me of other deaths my family has had at Christmas. When I was nine my Grandma L, my stepmom’s mother, died of kidney disease after a long illness. (Since she was a Grandma, she seemed very old to me, but was really not even 60 years old when she died.) We took down the tree the day after Christmas that year, but thereafter my mom did her best to make every Christmas festive for us. She’s the one who set the example I follow of decorating everything in the house that can’t actually move out of the way. She also baked cookies (the rest of the year she wasn’t much of a baker) and prepared special dishes for days in advance. Each year mom would complain that she hadn’t been able to get us much for Christmas, but I was always pleased with my gifts, and looking back, I appreciate that she did not let Christmas become a sad time of the year for the whole family when I know she missed her mother very much.

Not quite ten years ago my godfather died the day before Christmas Eve, from a fall down the basement stairs. He was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and was not supposed to go near the stairs, but probably forgot. I wanted to go to Ohio for the funeral, but a snowstorm was moving in and my godmother pleaded with me not to. I didn’t want to add to her worries, so once again, we sent flowers and our sympathy.

I know that people die every day, and that some of those deaths will be at Christmas, just as some will be on some otherwise nondescript day in mid-August. The absence of our loved ones is no less felt at Christmas because their deaths occurred at another time of year. Still, when I hear of a death at this time of year, the little kid part of me wants to holler, “That’s not fair.” People should live to see one last Christmas.

Little Old Lady Driver Class

2011-12-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

My foot is still not quite up to Little Old Lady Exercise Class. My knees are getting stronger; I can actually pedal fast enough on the exercise bike to get my heart rate up. I even walked up the ramp to the P-MAC on two occasions to go to basketball games instead of taking the elevator. “Jumping around”, in Dr. S’s words, is still not advised.

My dear hubby found me a substitute, however - Little Old Lady Driving Class. It’s not just for little old ladies (well, neither was the exercise class). It’s actually a class sponsored by AARP for drivers 50 years old and older. Hubby found out about it when he called our insurance company to find out of his rate would go down now that he is driving fewer miles a month. It turns out it does, a bit, but what really makes a difference is this driver safety class. It saves him $40 every six months. I’m not sure yet what it saves me, but it will be something. So he signed us up.

The class took four hours (almost to the minute), and consisted of videos, lecture discussion, and a pre- and post-test. The time went by relatively quickly. Subjects covered were how minds and bodies change as we get older and how it affects driving, eight safety strategies, other road users and how to respect their road usage, knowing our roads and highways, understanding our vehicles, and judging our driving fitness and knowing when to retire from driving.

A sobering thought: death rates from motor vehicle accidents climb dramatically once you hit age 75. For women my age, there are just over 2 deaths per thousand crashes. For 75-79 year olds, that rate climbs to 4 deaths per thousand and for 80 years old and older, almost 7 deaths per thousand. For men, those rates are even higher and climb more steeply as they age.

As we went through the material covered, I realized I hadn’t taken a driver’s test of any kind since I moved to Louisiana in 1972. I’ve kept up on changes in the law (for instance, you now have to turn on your headlights as soon as it rains enough to turn on your windshield wipers; that didn’t used to be the law until some time in the late 80’s), but some things I really just did not know, like how far you have to stop behind a stopped school bus. Usually I just hit my brakes as soon as I see the driver activating the stop signs, but one time I came up a slight hill on a four lane highway behind a stopped bus and did not know how far behind I needed to be. (Thirty feet, in Louisiana.) I did not know who has the right of way when entering a roundabout (the drivers already in the roundabout), although I’m pretty sure I would have reacted correctly when faced with the situation. And it turns out I have been taking some risks in driving on the road with big trucks: cutting in too closely when passing them and then slowing down, and hanging out in their blind spots.

At least I behave safely around railroad crossings. If a gate is down and/or the bell is clanging, even if the train is not in sight, I won’t drive around it to get across the way I have seen some drivers do. I also do not walk on railroad tracks or stand too close to them.

So the class was worth the $14, even without the insurance rate reduction. (It’s $12 for AARP members.)

After class, hubby drove us to the insurance agent’s office with our class certificates in hand. As he chattered away (distracted driver), he was reminded of something he needed to convey with a gesture that took at least one hand off the wheel. “Sweetheart,” I pointed out mildly, “Didn’t we just finish taking a driver’s safety class?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, then proceeded on with his anecdote. Fortunately we made it to the agent’s office without causing an accident.

Because I really, really would have hated to explain that one.

Peace Offering

2011-12-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Truffle is a warm and friendly cat with me. He is especially warm and friendly when everything is going his way: when I feed him his treats, when he gets to snuggle on the electric blanket, when he’s sitting on the edge of my chair getting his ears scratched.

He is not warm and friendly when he has to see the vet. That’s when he turns into 13 pounds of snarling muscle. At least, I think he weighs 13 pounds. At his most recent check-up, last week, it was impossible to get him on the scale. It was impossible to take his temperature. It was just possible to give him his shots with both vets and one assistant holding him down. Dr. Kate was also able to check his heart rate while he was wrapped in a towel snarling at us. “You would think his heart would be racing, “ she said, “but it’s not.” Great, I’m the mom to Hannibal Lector cat.

So I decided that since I am retired and have time for these things, I would make the vet some homemade goodies for Christmas. The vet’s office is less than half a mile from my house, so it was no trouble to drop something off. And what could be more appropriate than homemade truffles? Made with dark chocolate and decorated with white chocolate and chopped macadamias, they would reference our black and white cat, D’Artagnan, as well. Isn’t that how cute?

I have a recipe for no-cook chocolate truffles, but I decided to try something new, specifically, the Chocolate Truffles Recipe from the Simply Recipes website. It looked easy, especially if I skipped the optional flavors and went with basic vanilla. I could roll one third of them in cocoa, one third in chopped macadamias, and drizzle one third with melted white chocolate. How easy is that? as Ina Garten would say.

I keep forgetting that Ina Garten is a professional chef, and I’m not. Still, the recipe is easy. However, it does not make as many truffles as the recipe says: I was only able to make 25 of the size shown. It’s also harder to roll the truffles into balls than it is with my no-cook version. We have a melon baller someplace in the attic that would have made the job easier, but if I went to look for it I'd be there until Easter.

After they’re formed, the truffles have to sit in the refrigerator overnight before you can roll them in toppings. They aren’t really hard to make, just fussy.

Rolling one third of them in cocoa was easy. I was even able to round them off some more. Rolling in the macadamia nuts was harder because no matter how finely I thought I had them chopped, I’d keep finding big pieces that wouldn’t stick. Drizzling with white chocolate was where I ran into trouble. I had to guess at the proportions of cream and baking chips that would let me drizzle yet still harden as it cooled. I guessed wrong. Even worse, my attempts to drizzle a few lines over each truffle resulted in blobs rather than stripes.

Okay, they are homemade, right? We aren’t going to worry about the little stuff. I packed them into a tin and took them over to the vet’s office. “Thank you”, said Kim, the receptionist, as I suggested she might want to keep them in the refrigerator. “What are they?”

“Truffles,” I answered. A brief puzzled expression passed over her face and then she realized I meant the candy and opened the box. (After all, I’m the mom to Hannibal Lector cat.)

So I think Truffle will be welcome there for another year, but next year, I'm sticking to cookies.

Destiny

2011-12-09T15:56:00.001-08:00

On January 9, 2012, 7:30 PM local time (1:30 AM GMT), the Louisiana State University (LSU) football team will play the University of Alabama football team in the BCS Championship Game for the national collegiate football championship and a horrendously tacky looking but much prized Waterford crystal football.

For my readers from outside the US, that’s American style football, as played at the collegiate level, not what the rest of the world calls football and we call soccer.

LSU has won every game so far this season, for a total of 13 wins and no losses, against a brutally tough schedule. Alabama has lost one game (to LSU) and played one game fewer, since they didn’t play for the Southeastern Conference Championship. (For those outside the US, the college and university football teams are divided among regional groups called conferences. If there are 12 or more teams in a conference, the conference subdivides into divisions and the two division leaders play each other in a championship game for a slightly less tacky trophy and a banner. And bragging rights.)

In the time between now and the game, fans of each team will be talking smack, making bets both monetary and not, and making fun of the other team and its fans, mostly its fans. The real purpose of the teams is to serve as tribal totems. The teams themselves are pretty much composed of decent young men who are hoping to hone their athletic skills and go on to play professionally. The tribes of fans are pretty much composed of idiots.

Last time LSU played in the championship game, I bought John and Neal tickets on StubHub.

So I look forward to the morning of January 10, 2012, by which time all this will have been settled, for good or ill. (Hubby and son are alumni of LSU, so “good” is defined as an LSU win and “ill” as an Alabama win.) In the meantime, I speculate, as sports events cause me to do, whether the winner of this game is predetermined or not. For some reason, I don’t wonder that about other events in life. It’s not that I think that football games fall into some special category of events that are predetermined while everything else is in free fall. It’s just that I don’t usually worry about predetermination. I don’t see any way of deciding whether events are predetermined or not, and if there is no way to know something, I prefer to use the brain space on reflecting on those problems that do have solutions.

A year or so ago I read a discussion on Talk Rational regarding whether the omniscience of God made free will impossible. I tried to follow the arguments, but they pretty much made my eyeballs itch. I don’t know enough philosophy to know when someone is making a reasonable but difficult to follow argument and when someone is just bullshitting. I read Daniel Dennett’s Freedom Evolves, a book that can best be described as “dense”, but can't remember most of it two years later. So don’t count on me for a nuanced discussion of the problem of free will.

I’ve had reason to think over the years that I’m glad I can’t read the future. Once while reading an account of a murder trial in our local paper and realizing that the victim was a woman whose son was one of my little clients fifteen years before; once when a childhood friend who had attended my mother’s funeral died six months later of a longstanding heart condition; once when watching the Southern Yacht Club burn down in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. My graduate school boyfriend had taken me to the Yacht Club with friends of his who were members and I felt grown up and sophisticated. It’s probably also just as well I couldn’t foresee that the young man, who was brilliant, was also going to develop a mental illness that cut short his promise and left him on disability.

But my not being able to predict these outcomes does not mean that they weren’t already set in motion years before I arrived on the scene. The domestic violence that led to the murder, one friend's heart disease and the other friend's mental illness, the corruption and mismanagement that led to the levees failing didn’t just happen one day. They all had deep roots. But were they unavoidable? That I don’t know.

Compared to these events, football games seem uncomplicated. There are only two possible outcomes: either Team A wins or Team B does. Of course, on the way to these outcomes, unpredictable things happen: a ball takes a funny bounce, a referee misses a call, a receiver drops a pass that hits him right in the hands. Later fans of the losing team might think “If only Eric Reid hadn’t made that interception on the goal line”, but what does that even mean? If that one event had changed, what else would have had to change? And would it have made a difference to the ultimate outcome, or would something else have gone wrong?

What I know is that on the morning of January 10, 2012, either Alabama or LSU will have the crystal ball - the crystal football. The other kind of crystal ball, no one has.

Foreign Exchange: Part 5, Mademoiselle from Armentieres

2011-12-08T17:50:00.001-08:00

After our experience with Eric, I was willing to call it quits, but John wanted to try for a happier experience with another student. We found Laura, a young lady from France (but not Armentieres) with excellent English skills and a happy looking smile. She responded to our first email, but we didn’t hear more from her until she actually arrived. Like Eric, she flew to Baton Rouge, so we didn’t have to drive to Houston to get her. Unlike Eric, she seemed happy with the city, her room, the restaurant we took her to for dinner. “She seems like the anti-Eric," I told friends.

As it turned out, although Laura was far more polite (and not depressed), she, like Eric, arrived with the idea of finding a different family as soon as possible. To help her make friends, I introduced her to my co-worker’s two teens. Actually, I invited them to come to the water park with us, but since my co-worker had a membership, she offered to take them all. Laura had a good time.

Labor Day weekend we made plans to go to Tennessee to see John’s sister and family and do some sightseeing on the way home. At the last minute, Laura had a request. She wanted to stay home with the T family and go tailgating with them. We agreed, but realized this was a bad sign.

In the meantime, the situation at Laura’s high school was getting worse. When the influx of students from New Orleans had arrived the year before, the Baton Rouge students were sympathetic. By the time the next school year started, lines were being drawn, and fights were breaking out. A few times the police were called. I couldn’t blame Laura for feeling frightened and frustrated.

Once again the T children approached their parents about hosting our student. My co-worker was afraid it would interfere with our relationship, but I assured her it wouldn’t. Laura wasn’t our possession or prisoner. If she would be happier somewhere else, more power to her. The T’s applied to AFS and were accepted as host parents. Laura transferred to the school in their neighborhood and said goodbye to us. I wished her well. She had an enjoyable year, from what I heard, and still keeps in touch with her host sister.

As for us, we agreed it was time to stop hosting students while we had three happy experiences and two unsuccessful ones. We visited Anett in Hungary twice, once the summer after Eric left and once the spring we went to visit Neal in Paris. On the first trip, I had bought a necklace for Laura, a swan-shaped charm on a chain, which I gave to my youngest niece instead after Laura left.

Looking back on our experiences with our young friends, I can see some surprising similarities. Counting my son, I’ve lived with teens from four different continents and can confidently say that they all keep vampire’s hours, use their floors for storage, and think the center of the universe is a little closer to their belly buttons than it actually is. On the other hand, all of our students, including Eric, were willing to lend a hand with household chores and picked up after themselves fairly well. I did notice that they each stopped making their beds in the morning after a few weeks. I wish I’d kept a chart; I’d be willing to bet the rent money it was the same number of weeks for each of them.

We’re still in contact with Chan, Anders and Anett. Anders even convinced John to join Facebook. If I hadn’t had those three in my life, I probably would never have been to Thailand or Hungary (we still haven’t made it to Denmark), and possible not yet have been to the Grand Canyon (we went with Chan) or Hawaii (we went with Anett).

I think about Eric from time to time and hope he is doing well and that someday he’ll return to the US under happier circumstances. Laura I’m sure is doing well.

Would I advise other people to become host parents? I think it’s wise to know what you are getting into. You can make lifelong friends, or you can find yourself with an unhappy teenager who expected something different and wants out. I’m glad we hosted students, and I’m glad we finally stopped. It was a season in my life, and I look back on it fondly.

Christmas Decorating

2011-12-07T09:14:00.001-08:00

When I am daydreaming about Christmas treats, one of my favorite daydreams is that someday I will be able to hire a floral designer to decorate my whole house for Christmas. Since my hunch is that would cost my entire budget for my someday Australia trip, it is likely to remain just that, a daydream. In the meantime, I try to accomplish what I can can, leaving my house with that loving hands, done at home look, blended slightly with that chewed on by the cat look. Neither look makes it into the Christmas editions of my favorite magazines.

The cake recipe is from Southern Living. Usually my cakes don't look this pretty,
but the directions and pictures were easy to follow.

The dining room, Christmas 2004.

One year I spent a small fortune on a matching wreath, swags, and wall hanging baskets for the front porch. The calico wreaths someone had given me for Christmas 25 years or so before had given up the ghost, several live plants had died in the wall hanging baskets, and I decided I could spend some money on decor that would last me another 25 years. The swags hung from the original front porch light fixtures. Then the light fixtures broke, and I couldn’t find replacements with quite the same configuration. That actually worked out well, because I put a swag on the back door and the other on the light fixture at the side door, and voila, the whole house looked cohesive. (“Cohesive” is a decorator term meaning the opposite of that mix of stuff you inherited from grandma, stole from mom, and found while dumpster diving.)

This year, hubby made a live wreath from the trimmings from our enormous Christmas tree, and complained about the wreath hanger making marks on the frame of the storm door. So now the live wreath is on the back door, the faux wreath is on the side door, and one swag is back in front.

The poor little Christmas cactus is hanging in there.

John's live wreath, with a purchased bow

The side door

If the outdoors looks cohesive, the indoors is a different story. The indoors looks like a moderately sized explosion took place in Hobby Lobby. The way things look in my head and they way they look in three dimensional space is laughably different.

There is, for instance, the tree. Thirty seven years ago, one of my little clients gave me a beautiful velvet ornament she and her mother had made for me. It was a turquoise color, that over the years faded to a seafoam green and now to a beige with a tinge of green, but the lace foil and synthetic pearls are still as good as ever and I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. It did, however, spark the idea to have a tree with all unique ornaments. Most of the ornament sets I have are themes: the old Sears Christmas Around the World ornaments, The Wizard of Oz ornaments, A Christmas Carol ornaments, nursery rhymes ornaments, but the ones that are duplicates are left over from another tree in another house. In someone else’s hands, that might have looked charming; in mine, it mostly looks mismatched. Since a lot of the ornaments are gifts, they are staying. I can actually remember each person who gave them to me, and part of the fun of decorating the tree is remembering each person and hoping they are doing well.

The bottom is empty because of the cats.

The Nutcracker tree in the back room

Then there are the collections, most of which are also gifts of mugs, candle holders, and ornaments too heavy to hang on the tree. There’s an angel collection, a snowman collection, and a Santa collection. This year, I added an impulse purchase to the Santa collection: a two and a half foot tall Native American inspired Father Christmas that the owner of the Native American shop in Cherokee, North Carolina let me buy for 20% off after I drooled over it for half an hour. When I put it on the bookcase with the rest of the Santas, they looked like the mismatched impulse purchases they are. Finally, I moved them across the room to the built in bookcase and distributed them among the shelves so they are still grouped together, but a little less dissonant. I think. The angels are on top of the first bookcase and the snowmen are on the desk.

I think he needs a sled.

Finally, there’s the mantle. The mantel sports faux greenery, cast iron stocking hangers, candlesticks, and this year, the Santa picture that I can never find the right spot for. There used to be a perfect spot for the Santa picture, on the wall that is now the home for the armoire. There is another suitable spot for Santa on the back wall, but that’s where we put the tree. So Santa is now hanging on the mantle, only a few inches too high, and hubby is tired of messing with it. I can’t blame him.

The stockings in the middle are handmade. The one on the left, my mom crocheted, and the one on the right, my MIL made for Neal.

So maybe someday I will hit the lottery, hire that floral designer, and have a house that will make you all green with envy. In the meantime, well, it’s Christmas. Isn’t that the time for loving hands, done at home?

Another "it seemed like a good idea at the time" purchase,
a souvenir of Branson, on the baking center in the kitchen

Advent

2011-12-05T07:39:00.001-08:00

Wrapping

In packages of tinsel flimsy

Hopes that this will be the one time the children

Cease their quarrels,

And wrapping, in sturdy boxes, strapping taped protection

Against the guilt of being miles and years way

From a place no longer home,

And wrapping

The hope that a small gift will arm against

The jealousy of friendship

And wrapping

The boxed reminders that the year just passed

Is counted out in broken promises, lost hopes,

And goals as distant as Atlantis,

I remember

That in just such demon days

As winter swallowed daylight

Seekers preached

The birth of the Sun,

The birth of the Son,

The birth of the Light.

Advent,1984

I'm Not Visiting Australia Anytime Soon

2011-12-03T06:56:00.001-08:00

As I have written before, I have a plan to see all seven continents and all fifty states before I die. Well, I have a plan to see all seven continents and all fifty states that’s contingent on my not dying in the next five years or so. I’ve been to 39 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, and six continents, so it’s not unreasonable to think I can make it, unless I get hit by the Hypothetical Evangelists’ Best Friend Bus tomorrow.

We even had a plan to see the last continent, Australia, next summer. My nephew was getting married in Hawaii, where he is stationed, and as we were making tentative plans to go, John said that as long as we were going to Hawaii, we might as well go on to Australia. (There is a reason I love the dude.)

Alas, three weeks later, the wedding was off, and the combatants, uh, former lovebirds, are no longer speaking. I did mention a few times that we could still plan a trip to Hawaii and Australia anyway, but we didn’t get any further than discussing it.

Then came the news that a friend of mine is getting married in Colorado. The wedding is at the end of next summer. We are friends because we belonged to a weight lifting email list. A smaller list of five of us spun off from the larger one, and while the larger list is no longer active, the rest of us keep in touch weekly. I’ve actually met bride to be and one other member in real life. It would mean a lot to the bride to have us all at the wedding, and fortunately, we are all able to go.

Denver is to the west of us, but not so far west that it leads you to think that once you’re there, you might as well hop on over to Oz. Colorado is right next door to Utah, one of the states I haven’t yet been to, so I’m hoping to convince John to come with me on a drive to Mountain Meadows to see the memorial to the Baker-Fancher party. Maybe I can point out Utah is closer than Australia.

Okay, so Australia isn’t going anywhere. We, however, were going somewhere last night, a party sponsored by some engineering group that John belongs to. John bumped into a former coworker, Li, and as I sat on the other side of John at the bar drinking Diet Coke and trying to make out their conversation over the live music, they talked shop. Suddenly John turned to me and said, “Li is going home to China for a visit in 2013.” As I was about to wish Li a happy journey, John added, “Do you want to go?”

“Sure, why not?” I said, since “Sure, why not?” is pretty much my standard response to all proposals of travel coming from my husband, especially in bars. “When in 2013?”

“Oh, late,” Li informs me. Okay, lots of time to pack. Our itinerary includes Beijing and some other city I couldn’t make out over the music but I have lots of time to find out picky little details.

So how far is China from Australia, anyway? It never hurts to dream.

Christmas Letters

2011-11-30T11:55:00.001-08:00

Christmas letters have a bad reputation. Miss Manners does not like them, many readers of the old Ann Landers and Dear Abby advice columns of years past wrote in to say how much they despise them, and one year MSNBC even had their readers share their most notorious ones. One wonders from which dregs of humanity those folks who actually send those letters are recruited, since everyone professes not to like them. So it is with much trepidation I confess, I like Christmas letters.

I have liked Christmas letters since I first started receiving them 40 something years ago, and only started sending out my own six years years ago, so I don’t think I’m being self-serving when I say I like them. My Christmas letter started out as for my siblings only, one year when I was facing surgery shortly after Christmas and needed to spread the news. In the past two years I have added one other person to the list, my godmother, the only surviving member of my older generation of relatives.

The MSNBC feature described Christmas letters as “a litany of bombastic bragging disguised as holiday cheer.” To which I say, “Yeah, so?” If you write me to say you bought your husband a new Lexus for Christmas, it doesn’t take anything away from me unless you stole it out of my driveway. (Which you couldn’t have, since I don’t own one.) If you have a new job, a promotion, or the world’s cutest puppy, I will raise my glass in a toast and then drool over the puppy pictures. What exactly is wrong with getting other people’s good news?

It is precisely when I am feeling my lowest and most depressed that I seek out other people’s good news. I used to say that if I could be the good fairy at a child’s christening, I would give that child the gift of being able to rejoice in other people’s good fortune, because then she would always have something to be happy about.

So while we are on the subject of bombastic bragging disguised as holiday cheer, I will share a story about my son, although it didn’t happen at Christmas. He was in the computer club in his high school, and the club was chosen to participate in a contest in Cincinnati. Unfortunately, they couldn’t take everybody, and my son, a lowly freshman, was left behind. “They’re even going to get pocket money,” he grumped. “A concept with which you are totally unfamiliar”, I added dryly. He actually was chosen as an alternate, but since everyone else remained hale and hearty, he didn’t get to go.

His buddies won second place, however, as he came home to tell me excitedly when they got back to school. “They even got a trophy!” he added. “They kicked butt.”

I used to say that if I could be the good fairy at a child’s christening, I would give that child the gift of being able to rejoice in other people’s good fortune. Then one day, I realized that’s exactly what I had done.

How’s that for bombastic bragging?

Oh, Gee

2011-11-29T06:50:00.001-08:00

In addition to my regular annual checkup with Dr. N, yesterday was my annual eye exam. This was no accident; when Dr. N schedules appointments for her patients, she looks for appointments they already have and schedules around those. This is handy for people who live far away or whose insurance only charges one copayment per day, but it always makes me nervous that I will miss an appointment.

Dr. N saw me promptly, however and came bearing mostly good news. My blood work looked good and my total cholesterol had dropped even more.

So then it was on to my ophthalmologist, Dr. Hottie. No, I don’t call him that to his face, but he is a sight for sore eyes. First I had something called a visual field test, and had to push a button every time I saw a flickering light. Then the standard vision test, then I had my eyes dilated and got the standard glaucoma tests. Somewhere in there, a technician took pictures of my optic nerves.

By the time Dr. H came in to see me, I was checking my watch wondering when I’d get out of there and if I’d have enough time to go buy my husband’s Christmas present at Lowe’s. I wasn’t expecting to hear that I have glaucoma. My left optic nerve is showing signs of notching on the lower margin, and I have corresponding “shadowing” in the upper left visual field. (The eye is flipped with respect to the optic nerve, the lower nerve innervates the upper eye and vice versa.) Dr. H reassured me they had caught it early. He also explained I have low tension glaucoma, which wouldn’t have been diagnosable by a standard test of eye pressure. In low tension (or normal tension or normal pressure) glaucoma, eye pressure is normal but the optic nerve shows damage anyway. Treatment is the same: eye drops to lower eye pressure and if that doesn’t work, surgery to increase drainage of eye fluids. Ten percent of people with glaucoma can lose their vision even with treatment.

I cannot figure out if I am the healthiest sick person I know or the sickest healthy person I know. What I do know is that I have an interesting reaction to bad health news. Whatever anger, fear, or self-pity comes along later on, my initial reaction is always the same: shame. If something is wrong with me, I caused it.

I don’t think I’m the only person who reacts that way, either, because we have the Adam and Eve story to suggest that this is a pretty widespread belief. If human beings feel soreness and pain, and eventually die, it must be because we did something wrong. We must have brought it on ourselves some way. Women must have done it, because we’re the ones who bleed mysteriously. Shame and pain, they’re almost sisters.

Today I’m feeling a little calmer. I have drops to put in my eye each night and I go back to Dr. H in a month to see how they’re working. Other than that, there isn’t anything I can do. This isn’t something that diet and exercise will fix. This isn’t something that requires major lifestyle changes.

Oh, gee. I wasn’t expecting this.

So Maybe It Was a Little Excessive

2011-11-28T16:45:00.001-08:00

Sunday morning I went to the emergency room. It wasn’t anything life or death. I had sliced my finger the day before while making lunch. (My husband’s first question was, “Was it one of our new knives?” They aren’t really new; we had simply sent them back to the factory to be sharpened, but I was able to reassure him that yes, they are really, really sharp.) It took some time and many, many paper towels before I was able to get two bandaids on it. I decided if it was still bleeding in half an hour, I’d go to the urgent care clinic, but half an hour later the bandages were clean. I had an appointment for a checkup on Monday (actually today), so I figured I’d be okay letting it wait.

But as the day went on, any pressure on it made it bleed and hurt. Ochsner’s urgent care clinic hours were over by then. I finally found their website’s guide to when to seek emergency care, and realized I didn’t know when I’d last had a tetanus shot (one of the indicators to seek care under “Lacerations”) and hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at the cut so I had no idea how deep it was. That night I had a hard time sleeping with the pain and felt some nausea, not to mention throbbing, signs of possible infection. So at the crack of dawn, I told hubby I was going to the ER. He offered to drive me.

As it turned out, the cut wasn’t as bad as I feared. I had missed the six hour window for getting stitches, although Dr. B wasn’t sure I would have needed them anyway. There was no infection, but she prescribed an antibiotic just in case. They dabbed on some ointment and slapped on a regular bandaid, except it was 1” wide instead of 3/4”. They wrapped it looser than I had with my bandaids, eliminating most of the throbbing. I left with instructions for wound care, the rest of the ointment, and prescriptions for the antibiotics and some pain pills. I was only given those after I paid my $100 copay.

Note to self: next time you slice an appendage, do it on a weekday.

Since I was apparently not dying, I was able to go ahead with my plans for the day, making cornbread for the Chili Cook-Off. I made chili for the Chili Cook-Off one year, and won third place, with my version of Chili Blanco. I replaced the chicken with pork tenderloin, slathered with cumin and slow cooked the day before. The recipe requires a lot of slicing and dicing however, not to mention the one-day head start, and I am feeling a little off that sort of thing right now.

So instead I decided to tackle a nice, simple recipe: Yeast Raised Corn Bread. The only cutting it required was snipping the 2/3 cup of chives. Most of the kneading is done by a stand mixer with a dough hook (which I just happen to have.) We also had a box of vinyl gloves which my husband uses when he’s staining wood projects, so I could protect my hand while not risking the lives of people with latex allergies.

The recipe calls for fresh chives and fresh or frozen corn. I had actually picked the recipe out two days before, and since John was going to the store anyway, had him buy frozen corn and chives (otherwise I had planned to use canned corn and freeze dried chives, which we had on hand).

The first snag I ran into was with the chives. By the time they were all snipped, what looked like 2/3 cup turned into more like 1/3. Then there was the corn. The only frozen corn my husband could find was corn in butter sauce. I wasn’t sure how the butter sauce would affect the recipe, so I decided to use the canned corn after all. Once drained, the 14 ounce can was closer to 1.5 cups instead of two, but I decided that was close enough.

The recipe is really easy, although time consuming as yeast recipes are. Almost all the work is done by the mixer. I ran into yet a third snag, however. I added the flour/salt mixture until the dough left the sides, but not the bottom, of the bowl, just as the recipe said. Then I turned the speed up to medium, just as the recipe said. At that point, the dough, which had been behaving perfectly, began sticking to the sides of the bowl again. All I can think of is that the higher speed caused the canned corn to begin secreting liquid. I added a little more flour. When it was time to turn the mix out on a board and knead it a few times, I covered the board about 1/8” thick with more flour. By time I kneaded it a few times, it was perfect: easy to form into a ball and put aside to rise. I use a trick I learned from the Farm Journal Book of Breads: put the bowl with the dough into a cold oven and put a pan of hot water on the lower rack. Dough rises perfectly every time.

When it came time to shape the dough into balls and put them into muffin tins, I ran into my final snag. I have old muffin/cupcake tins, dating back to the 1960’s and 70’s. I don’t know if the recipe’s inventor uses larger muffin tins or if the extra moisture/flour caused a problem, but there was just too much dough for 18 muffin cups, something I did not realize until I had cut the dough into 18 pieces. So I grabbed two cookie sheets, rolled the pieces into balls and placed them on the cookie sheets to bake.

They wound up flattening out a little and looking like hamburger buns, but they tasted great. There were enough chives to give a nice sprinkling of green, but not enough to give a true chive flavor, so they really needed the 2/3 cup, but the amount of corn seemed sufficient. Most of the rolls disappeared at the chili supper, but I managed to snag two of them to bring home and we used them tonight to make pulled pork sandwiches with leftover pulled pork I found in the freezer. Toasting brought out the corn flavor even more.

If I make them again (which I probably will because hubby loves them), I’ll either make 24 rolls in the muffin tins or make 15 hamburger buns-sized rolls on the cookie sheet. Then I can freeze them and pull out as needed for pulled pork, beef, or chicken sandwiches.

So maybe my trip to the ER was a little excessive. Maybe making a yeast version of cornbread which takes four hours instead of the Jiffy Mix version was a little excessive. It’s a great recipe, though. My recommendations would be to use the full amount of chives and use either fresh or frozen corn, not canned. Also, don’t slice your hand while chopping celery the day before, but you probably figured that one out already.

Thankful

2011-11-26T07:43:00.001-08:00

I had much to be thankful for this year at Thanksgiving. First of all, I’m thankful that I am able to afford retirement. I’m thankful we were able to visit my son in London, and I’m thankful for my husband taking good care of me while I was laid up with a broken foot. I’m even thankful for the bad housing market that prevented our selling our house and moving to be near our son as we had planned, because he’s now sold his condo in the states and is working in London for at least a year.

Of course, I’m thankful for the big-hearted friend who invites us and around three or four dozen other friends and relatives to her Thanksgiving feast every year.

But there was one thing that put a damper on my thankfulness this year. D’Artagnan, our new kitty, went missing. He followed Truffle out the door as usual at 6 AM Thanksgiving morning, but he did not start yowling to be let in fifteen minutes later. An hour later Truffle was in, but no D’Artagnan. As we left to go to my friend’s house, still no D’Artagnan. I figured he would be waiting impatiently outside our door when we got home, and didn’t worry about it.

Thanksgiving dinner was even more crowded than usual, but we did reconnect with old friends. The blessing this year was a blessing over the bread delivered in Hebrew and then translated into English (we’ve had Catholic and Baptist blessings in the past, so this was new). People spoke animatedly over the upcoming LSU-Arkansas game and we teased one friend over not having worn his Arkansas shirt.

When we got home, Truffle was waiting impatiently for us, but no D’Artagnan.

Friday morning I made posters and taped them out around the subdivision, and posted a “lost” notice on Craigslist. By Friday night when I went to bed, still no word. I heard John disable the alarm and open the front door at one point, but he had been checking the front door pretty frequently, as had I.

D'Artagnan's picture from the "Wanted" -er-"Lost" poster

This morning Truffle woke me up to let him out at 6AM, as usual. I disabled the alarm and went to the front door to let him out. A desk chair was parked under the door handle. As I turned to go ask hubby what was up with that, I saw a familiar black and white furry form by my feet.

“Where have you been?” I exclaimed. “He came in last night,” my husband explained. “I think he’s been in someone’s house, because he wasn’t hungry or thirsty.” He had put the desk chair by the door so I wouldn’t let the cat out again.

Did I mention I’m thankful for furry companions who wake me up at ungodly hours of the morning and keep me up all hours of the night and rip up my furniture and leave paw prints on the windshield of my car? Because I am.

Foreign Exchange: Part 4, The One That Got Away

2011-11-22T12:34:00.001-08:00

After Anett, I wanted to try again for a student from South America, and we found Eric, from Chile. Our first few students had to be picked up from Houston, but Eric flew from Houston to Baton Rouge and we picked him up at the airport. He seemed quiet, but he had had a busy few days in Houston after his long trip, so we figured he was tired.

When he got into his room he asked, “What’s that smell?” We didn’t notice anything unusual and Eric decided it was “just the smell of the house”. When Anders was with us, he had left some sweaty gym clothes on the carpet for a few days and we did notice a musty smell but we had cleaned the carpet. We took Eric out for dinner and he fell asleep soon afterward and slept for most of the next day.

We found out later that when Eric woke up Sunday he had called our AFS rep and asked to be moved to another family. In fact, he really wanted to go back to Houston and be placed with another family there, because he did not want to be in Baton Rouge at all.

The next weekend, we took Eric and another AFS student, also from South America and staying with a family halfway across town, to the water park and then to a Mexican restaurant. They conversed to each other mostly in Spanish. At this point we still did not know Eric was looking for a new family.

Eric did tell us that he almost did not get his visa to come to the U.S. The immigration official in charge of his case kept saying no and Eric finally had to meet with him in person and insist. In light of later events, we wonder what the immigration official saw. We became certain that Eric had decided to ask for a new family even before he met us, so maybe he indicated something of the sort to the immigration officer.

We also learned from Eric he had been responsible for his younger brother’s care since his dad left the family and his mother had gone back to work, and that he missed his brother badly.

I tried to make Eric feel happy and at home. Friday afternoon, which I had off, I made him empanadas, a food he especially liked. I consulted him over the recipe and followed tips he gave me. It took all afternoon, and while he seemed appreciative, I could tell he still thought of us as strangers and not people who wanted to make him feel welcomed.

Shortly after school started, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. We had only a tropical storm, but school was closed for a week and I had most of the week off as well. I took Eric to the house of a co-worker who had two teenagers, a son and a daughter. He enjoyed himself there and the family liked him as well. The three teens cooked up a plan for my co-worker and her husband to become his new host family, but her husband did not feel comfortable having a strange young man in the house with his daughter. So that fell through.

When school started again, things got even worse. Katrina had sent a lot of refugees to Baton Rouge, and since no one knew when the schools would be up and running again in New Orleans, parents were advised to enroll their children in the school nearest to where they were. Eric’s high school was flooded with new students, and the guidance staff was overwhelmed. They tried to make time for Eric, but it was difficult. Eric was frightened that another storm would hit us, and, it was becoming apparent, badly depressed. I arranged for a pediatrician acquaintance of mine, an immigrant from Colombia, to see Eric when he started to have stomach pains. Dr F attributed the pains to homesickness and tried to convince Eric he’d feel better if he gave it some time.

We were still trying to make Eric feel welcomed. We took Eric to a Latin American festival held by a local church. He didn’t like it that most of the food and entertainment was Central American. He did run into Dr. F at the festival and was touched and surprised that Dr. F stopped to have a conversation with him.

Eventually, Eric decided to go home. By this time, the school nurse had opined that he needed to be on anti-depressants. My view was that if he needed to be on anti-depressants, he needed to be home with people who loved him and could monitor him effectively. However, although Eric wanted to go home and we wanted him home, his mother did not agree. It took a few weeks for her to agree to his going home. I could understand her point of view. She had paid a lot of money for Eric to come to the US, and I suspected she wanted him to have some time free of home responsibilities.

In early October, we said good-bye to Eric. He wrote us a letter, which he read us, thanking us for hosting him and offering to show us around Santiago if we ever visited there.

I was perfectly willing to say good-bye to being a host parent forever, but John wanted to try again the next year. And thereby hangs another tale.

The Renaissance Festival

2011-11-21T10:21:00.001-08:00

When the Byrds recorded Renaissance Fair in 1967, the first Renaissance Fair in the United States, in California, was only four years old. By the time my son was in middle school in the 1980’s, there was a Texas Renaissance Festival in Houston, and most local schools went there on field trips. By 1999, Louisiana had its own Renaissance Festival*, held on ten acres of piney woods northeast of Hammond. As the website explains:

The village of Albright is approximately 10 charming acres of tranquility. Upon entering the majestic front gate, visitors will be greeted by the many residents of Albright, whether it be the Baron, the Mayor, the Inn Keeper or countless others.
There are delightful aromas and sounds filling the rustic streets of Albright. From bagpipes to the hammer dulcimer, from roasted pecans to garlic mushrooms, your senses are delighted at every turn! For fulfilling your thirst, there are many beverages from which to choose. The coffee shop offers tea and hot cocoa while the Painted Badger Pub and King Head's Tavern offer various spirits. A variety of soft drinks are found throughout the village. Piper's Pubs bring you many delicious flavors of root beer and cream ale.

Opening Procession

Opening the Gate

Lute Player

Fire Eater

This is the kind of menu you plan when you're stoned.

Or so I've been told, I wouldn't really know.

Joust

I went to the first festival with a friend to celebrate her birthday. While we were there, I bought her a pair of earrings of her choosing and bought myself a ginger beer in a ceramic bottle that was supposed to entitle me to free refills forever. The ginger beer tasted like ordinary root beer; I didn’t make it to the next year’s festival and soon I stopped seeing advertisements for it, so I assumed it was no longer being held. The ceramic bottle made it into a donate pile.

A week or so ago, I saw a full page advertisement for the Louisiana Renaissance Festival on the back page of Red Shtick, a local humor magazine. (Well, some of us find it funny.) “I didn’t know they were still holding that,” I said to my husband, “Do you want to go?” He hemmed and hawed and finally allowed his arm to be twisted. So Saturday we went.

The festival was much as I remembered it, including the place that sold the root beer. If I had still had my ceramic bottle, I would have got a free drink. (I really need to stop watching Hoarders; so far this year it’s cost me $66.) There are more attractions - I don’t remember a wine tasting (sold out), whiskey tasting, or Tea with the Queen from our earlier visit. The attractions I wanted to see, the Joust and the Birds of Prey Exhibit were still there. There were also three jugglers/fire eaters, two of whom were going to participate in a contest on a stage covered with mousetraps right before closing. We left before then.

Many of the attendees were in costume, although not necessarily Renaissance costumes. One woman I saw wore a Star Trek costume. There was a shop (shoppe?) where you could buy or rent a costume if you wanted. The festival site advertises itself as a wedding venue but there were none taking place the day we were there.

“I like this better than the State Fair or the Angola Prison Rodeo”, my husband said. Someone who does not know my husband might think he meant next year we’ll be going to the Renaissance Festival instead of the State Fair and the Prison Rodeo. Someone who has been married to my husband for almost 24 years knows it means we’ll be going to the Renaissance Festival in addition to the State Fair and the Prison Rodeo.

I looked for possible Christmas gifts at the vendors’ booths but didn’t see anything suitable for the people I buy for, at least not for a price I could afford. There were some lovely bits of handblown glass for mind blowing prices. The glass blower gave demonstrations on the hour and interspersed glass blowing lore with lifestyle advice and political views. No one argued with him, he was holding a wand full of hot glass. I liked him.

In addition to the joust, the birds of prey, the juggler/fire eaters, and the glass blower we saw two comedy acts and a bagpipe/belly dancer act. I’m not sure how historically accurate it all was but it was a pretty day to be out in the piney woods. The festival is going on for three more weekends, so if you happen to be in the vicinity of Hammond, Louisiana looking for something to do (and believe me, if you happen to be in the vicinity of Hammond, Louisiana you will be looking for something to do), go visit the festival.

*According to the Renaissance, Medieval and Pirate Faire Directory, 44 states currently have Renaissance, Medieval and/or Pirate Fairs, at least if I counted correctly.

The Bank of Mom

2011-11-17T09:40:00.001-08:00

When I was growing up, my parents had one income, five kids and no spare cash. It was just understood that once you hit eighteen, you were going to need an income of your own. My older brothers lived at home for a few months after they started working, and then they joined the military. I went off to college on the bountiful grants, scholarships, and really cheap loans available to members of the Baby Boom generation, the same whiny ass generation that is rapidly developing amnesia in its old age and thinks it made it on its own with no handouts. My younger brother did the same.

My son, however, was reared with a different set of expectations. I started saving before he was born to make sure he could go to college loan free. With only one of him and four wage-earner parents (he does have two step-siblings), he had a pretty cushy life. He did start earning his own way even before he left college, working twenty hours a week and full time summers at a computer job that paid well more than minimum wage to pay his living expenses while his parents paid tuition, fees and books. I was surprised he made it through college given how much he hated school and how much he could earn without a degree, but he persisted. He has been self-supporting ever since, for the most part, but every so often when he does get in a jam, he relies on the Bank of Mom.

From what I can gather, polling friends and relatives, he is not alone in this. They all make occasional-to-frequent small loans to offspring who don’t seem to have emergency funds. Mine seems to be at the head of the pack when it comes to paying back in a timely manner, too. So my fears of enabling a dependent lifestyle seem unfounded, especially since I’ve only loaned him money about four times in ten years and it’s all been paid back.

I can certainly understand why the Bank of Mom is an attractive alternative to other banking options. The Bank of Mom does not demand collateral. The Bank of Mom will even make you an interest free loan to pay back the high interest credit card bills you ran up wining and dining your college girlfriend who then dumped you for a medical student. The Bank of Mom is open at 2 in the morning when you are stuck in an airport in Paris because you forgot to tell your bank you’d be overseas for several months and they shut down your debit card over those funny looking charges. The Bank of Mom was actually open because she was awake with abdominal pains that had her wondering if she needed to go to the emergency room, but at least she wasn’t awakened from a sound sleep. After half an hour of dealing with the airline, the pain went away anyway, so apparently it was nothing serious.

The Bank of Mom does have a pesky habit of posting, “Did you make it home okay?” on your Facebook wall when she hasn’t heard from you after paying for your airline ticket, but at least she doesn’t charge interest.

The Bank of Mom also doesn’t charge picky exchange fees when you and all your money are in London and you get a reminder of a bill you still owe back in the U.S. The Bank of Mom didn’t even demand a coherent explanation of what the bill was for.

And when the Bank of Mom sends you birthday and Christmas cards, they are picked out especially for you and not part of a mass mail out of hundreds or thousands of similar cards. A dozen or so similar cards, tops.

So for those of you who still deal with the Bank of Mom, or its affiliate, the Bank of Dad, I make a plea. In exchange for the non-existent interest, the convenient hours, the outstanding customer service, and the speed with which a loan can be arranged, extend a little tolerance for the loan officer who posts “Did you make it home yet?” on your Facebook wall. Before you start complaining how that embarrassed you in front of your friends, ask yourself, where were those friends at 2 in the morning when you needed the loan?

Anadama

2011-11-15T07:58:00.001-08:00

I used to love to bake. I learned to bake bread when I was in graduate school, and home-baked bread was often the only bread I could afford. I tried all kinds of breads. I bought The Farm Journal Book of Homemade Bread, which I still have and which has all kinds of short-cut recipes, such as CoolRise French bread and brioche.

One of the cliches that puzzles me about baking is that baking recipes, unlike other recipes, must be followed precisely and don’t allow for innovation. It seems to me that if that were true, there would only be one recipe in the world for banana bread, or whole wheat bread, or ordinary white bread. I’ve even run across more than one recipe for croissants, which are all kinds of fussy to make. Somebody must have been playing around with these recipes.

So I am perfectly happy to mess with baking recipes. By swapping out cottage cheese, instant minced onion and dill seeds in Dilly Casserole Bread for Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese soup, chives and parsley, I made a batter cheese bread that got honorable mention in a local contest.

My favorite bread recipe to mess with is Anadama Bread. My Farm Journal book gives the history of Anadama Bread as follows:

A Massachusetts fisherman, tired of the cornmeal mush his wife, Anna, spooned up for meals, added molasses and yeast to it and baked the first loaf of this bread while muttering “Anna-dam’er, Anna-dam’er” (or so the legend goes).

A batter bread with the addition of something thick and mushy allows for a lot of messing around with. The Book of Homemade Bread even offers one such variation, with oatmeal substituted for cornmeal. My own variation is made with a can of sweet potatoes, blended to a mush. It gives the taste of potato bread but is a lot faster and easier to cook.

I had promised to bake pumpkin bread for the UMW fall bake sale, and had actually been planning to use my trusty Anadama recipe with a can of pumpkin in place of the cornmeal, when I saw that Libby makes a pumpkin bread kit, with all the ingredients for two 9x5 loaves or three 8x4 loaves (or one 9x13 pan or cupcakes). Recalling that quick breads seem to sell faster than yeast breads anyway, I opted for the easy path. The kit even came with a glaze to put on top. What could be easier?

Saturday evening I baked the three 8x4 loaves in disposable pans. After cooling the breads according to directions, I put them back in the pans and glazed the tops. I wrapped them each in plastic wrap, not too tightly so as not to mess up the glaze. I thought about putting them in the refrigerator, but I had read somewhere that putting baked goods in the refrigerator dries them out faster, and it was a cool night. I thought about moving them across the room to the baking center, but I’d have to clear it off. So I left them on the counter near the window.

When I next looked at them Sunday morning, little black specks were moving across the glaze: sugar ants. I said a quick “Anadama!” or at least one syllable thereof and thought frantically for a moment of just scraping off the glaze before realizing the ants were all over the pans and the bread had to be tossed out. If I had made the yeast bread, this wouldn’t have happened. If I had just moved the bread across the room to the baking center, it wouldn’t have happened. I donated the amount the breads would have sold for to the bake sale and made a note to call the exterminator the next day.

I’m still going to try the Anadama pumpkin bread just for fun. I’m not going to leave it anywhere near the window.

An Atheist in a Foxhole

2011-11-15T05:32:00.001-08:00

This week St. Anonymous had a Veteran’s Day service. It was also the day for the fall UMW bake sale and I had promised to bake pumpkin bread, so I had to be there. (There is a sad story connected with the pumpkin bread, but that’s for another post.)

The Veteran’s Day service was very moving. Pictures of veterans and other memorabilia decorated the narthex and the altar, and interviews with vets and their families provided part of the sermon, which was based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Yeah, well, that’s Dr. J for you, but it fit.)

Since my dad was a World War II vet, I began thinking about him, and realized it’s been fourteen years, almost fifteen, since he died. It hasn’t seemed like that long. As I was lost in bittersweet recollections of my dad, Dr. J, as I think of our pastor, in speaking of a veteran she had known at another church said, “And he always used to tell me that there are no atheists in foxholes.”

“Somebody ought to tell her about Pat Tillman”, I thought in passing, before another realization hit me. My dad had been an atheist in a foxhole.

I’m sure his dog tags listed his religion as Catholic, and my dad was never very forthcoming about his atheism, but he was always honest about it with us kids, or at least with me. He didn’t try to attack the religious beliefs I held as I was growing up, but he did talk about his own lack of belief. He even tried going to church with me for a while, but he just didn’t believe any of it. I’m not sure he would have called himself an atheist, but the word fit the beliefs he held when I was growing up.*

So on our way out of church, I took a deep breath and said to Dr. J, “I think you need to know that my dad was an atheist in a foxhole.” I hope I didn’t say it in a mean way (I tend to sound harsh sometimes when I mean to be matter of fact), but Dr. J, sweetheart that she is, immediately got it. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I will never say that again.”

When I got home, I dug out the interview that an Associated Press reporter, Kenneth Dixon, did with my dad in January of 1944, at a field hospital in Italy after the Battle of San Vittore. Dad wasn’t wounded, but he had strained his Achilles tendons and could hardly walk. (I come by my bad feet honestly.) My brother Frank, his oldest child, had been born eight days before but he didn’t know it yet.

The reporter captured my dad perfectly. “The short, dark infantry lieutenant with the shock of curly hair and a three-day growth of beard was talking a blue streak.” (I used to say that my dad was the first man I ever saw wear an Afro.) Dad had gone to Italy in May of 1943 as a replacement officer after going through Officer Candidate School - a "ninety day wonder".

“I joined this outfit when it was policing up the brass after the Tunisia campaign. Man, that’s tough. When you come in you’re a brand new shavetail. No battle experience, but the GI’s under you are all veterans . . . They’re thinking wothehell does this guy know about war and you can’t blame them. They’ve seen it and you haven’t . . . And then when you get a little outaline they start talking about Hill 609 and Kasserine Pass and . . . all you can do is sit back in the corner and shut up.”

“But now there’s a lot of difference. I can talk with them. They know me and I know them and we’ve been across the Volturno together and up Mt. Pantano and into San Vittore and after this I can talk about those places. Jeez’ it’s great.”

After the war it didn’t seem so great. He did share some stories with us (the ones he could tell), but he could never reconcile himself to the idea he had killed people, even though he knew those same people would have killed him. Dad told us his senior officer wanted to put him in for a medal but he declined.

Kenneth Dixon ends his story with this:

He got up to go out to the ambulance to be taken back to the station hospital. Hobbling through the door he said, “Anyone who doesn’t want to be in the infantry is crazy.”
“What about those who do want to be in the infantry?”asked a grinning corporal.
“They’re the craziest of all,” quipped the lieutenant from Brooklyn.

*Later in life, in his late 60’s, dad became a Rosicrucian when he was introduced to that belief by a childhood friend with whom he had reconnected.

Jury Duty

2011-11-14T07:45:00.001-08:00

My husband has jury duty this week. From all the moaning he’s doing, you would think he’s about to ship out to Afghanistan for an indefinite tour of duty. Keep in mind, hubby has never had jury duty before. I’ve had it twice, including the week my son was going off to freshman year of college in another state. So you can imagine how sympathetic I am.

As I may have mentioned before, hubby, like me, is retired. The times I had jury duty, I was employed and had to cancel clients. Since after the first day of jury duty you may or may not have to return and if you do return you may or may not have to stay all day, it was hard to know what to tell my employer about when to expect me and who to cancel. Employers, at least mine, also seem to have a funny attitude toward jury duty, one that can be summed up as “You mean you’re too stupid to know how to get out of this?” Of course, they don’t exactly put it that way.

Hubby, on the other hand, is down to waxing the furniture as a way to fill his time, so you think he’d be jumping for joy at the idea of having something to do, but he’s not. For one thing, they won’t let him bring coffee or snacks into the jury room, although there is a little cafeteria in the courthouse. He did bring a book.

In neither of my two stints at jury duty was I selected for a jury. The first time, I got as far as being interviewed as a potential juror in a tort case, but was rejected by the plaintiff’s attorney. The second time, I had actually been called to jury duty a few weeks earlier, but my boss complained that week was bad for me to be out and asked if could get it moved to another time. The problem is, when you do that, you have to show up at the time they reschedule, which was, as I mentioned above, the week my son was leaving for college. Thanks, boss. Fortunately, my son had to leave on Thursday and all juries needed for the week were filled by people who were not me by Wednesday evening, so I got to go embarrass him on his first day on campus after all.

That’s the down side of jury duty. In all likelihood, you are going to sit around in a big room with no coffee being excruciatingly bored while attorneys work out plea bargains. After the first day, you might get told to call the next day and see if you have to come back, or you might be dismissed early in the day or early in the week, but you can also be kept waiting around all day. The powers that be can’t tell you that the attorneys are trying to work out a plea bargain because if the attempt fails and a jury is called, that knowledge might prejudice the jury against the defendant.

On the other hand, you could be like my former co-worker who got selected as a juror in a murder case and be sequestered for two weeks. From what I am able to tell browsing the newspaper, there are no big cases coming up in court this week, so I think hubby is safe.

I know if I were ever charged with a crime, I’d want a jury that was serious and motivated to do a good job and not wishing they could be with their son at college or worried about being fired. Now that I’m retired, I could be that juror.

I just don’t like the part about no coffee.

Once Again

2011-11-14T07:15:00.001-08:00

Last week, feeling guilty about having missed church for a while, I stumbled in on Stewardship Sunday. We were supposed to have filled out pledge cards to put on the altar. I vaguely remember getting one at home, along with a letter asking us to pray about what God wants us to give.

Okay, maybe if I prayed about what God wanted me to give, I’d get different answers, but when I merely think about giving, what goes through my mind is:

“There are people in this community who are hungry. You should give money to the Food Bank.”

“Winter is coming, and some people can’t pay for heat. You should give money to Power to Care (a charitable program run by the utility company to help people with their utility bills).”

“With winter coming, kids need coats. You should give money to Pat’s Coats for Kids.” Sometimes it’s fall and children need school supplies.

“Christmas is coming. Some parents can’t buy toys for their kids. You should buy some for Toys for Tots.”

So that’s where my money for charitable giving goes, along with a few other organizations (the non-profit agency I used to work for, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a monthly amount to FINCA, occasional small amounts to MSF). I also do listen to the little voice that tells me that as long as I keep going to church I probably should give them some money to keep the lights on. It’s only fair.

I just have a hard time believing that any money I give to St. Anonymous is money given to God. All the pastors we’ve had have as much as said so, but if you can get your hands on a copy of the budget (and it’s a lot harder to do that than it used to be), you don’t see any amounts listed for Hope Ministries (the food pantry) or the prison ministry, or any other charitable giving. There are many opportunities to give to missions: you can bring food items for Hope Ministries, you can bring toys or gifts for the elderly at Christmas, you can buy salsa or baked goods to support the children’s home, you can bake cookies for prisoners and buy “manna bags” for the homeless. But that money you pledge each month? Once the pastor, staff and the light bill are paid, the majority goes to the “music ministry” and “children’s ministry.” No, the “children’s ministry” is not an outreach program to supply coats or school supplies or dental care to those children who need it and can’t afford it; it’s Sunday School and youth groups. The music ministry is of course the choir, some members of which are paid.

I have nothing against the music ministry or the children’s ministry and I love our new pastor, but to me all this seems upside-down. If I’m going to donate 10% of my retirement income anywhere (and that’s a big if), the bulk of it is going to go to the organizations that feed the hungry and clothe the naked and otherwise help people who are in need. Secular community organizations seem to do a good job of that, at least when they have the money. So that’s where my money is going to go.

And if Pastor J doesn’t like that, she can take it up with God, because if I remember correctly, it’s actually his idea.

Baby Steps

2011-11-10T20:41:00.001-08:00

Years ago, I met a group of online friends through a Get Organized interest group on AOL. As AOL went through changes and the message board disappeared, we became an email support group and then Facebook friends. As we supported each other through project after project - decorating, de-cluttering, dieting and/or exercising, finding new careers and getting our children through their teens, our unfailing mantra was “baby steps”. There was no project so big or daunting that it could not be broken down into small steps and achieved a bit at a time. For us, baby steps were a useful tool to achieve worthy goals.

In the last few days, it has occurred to me that baby steps can be just as useful in taking you to places you don’t want to go. Like most of the rest of the country, I have been riveted (horrified, but riveted) by the sex abuse scandal at Penn State. (Warning: that link contains disturbing references to child sex abuse.) I have been particularly interested in the disagreements over whether Coach Joe Paterno did enough in 2002 by reporting what he heard from Mike McQueary to Athletic Director Tim Curley and VP for Finance and Business Gary Schultz. Why didn’t he call the police? Why didn’t he insist McQueary call the police?

I can see how it happened, though. By the time McQueary told Paterno, the immediate emergency was over. So even if Paterno’s first thought was, “Mike, you’ve got to call the police right now”, I can understand a little voice saying, “Maybe I should give Curley a heads-up first. What if he gets calls from the police or the press and has no idea what’s going on?”

And once the decision was made to tell Curley and Curley set up the meeting with McQueary and Schultz, I can understand Coach Paterno thinking it was all being taken care of, and letting it go. One little baby step leading to the next.

I can understand the chain of events, but the problem is, nothing got done and Jerry Sandusky was able to spend nine more years victimizing boys. When a logical seeming chain of events leads to a horrific outcome, something is wrong with the logical seeming chain of events. There were a lot of people who knew about bits and pieces of what Jerry Sandusky was doing for years, and yet nobody stopped him.

I can think of times in my own life when baby step by baby step, I talked myself out of good deeds I meant to do or into bad decisions. I can empathize with Coach Paterno. Most of the time when I hear people say, “I can see myself doing that” the unspoken end of that sentence is, “so it was okay to do”. I see it differently. I can see myself doing that, but that doesn’t make it right. It just means that you don’t want to use me as a moral exemplar. I’m not going to hold up liquor stores or kick the cat, but if I wander into a moral gray area, I might wander back out on the wrong path.

So, yes, I can see how it happened, but that doesn’t make it right. Nine more years of victims makes it very far from right. Sometimes we do the very human, understandable, wrong thing, and need to live with the consequences. Sometimes we get there by baby steps.

Foreign Exchange: Part 3, the Daughter We Never Had

2011-11-09T16:19:00.000-08:00

So we had two successful experiences with foreign exchange students and were looking for number three. I really wanted to find a student from South America, but none of the student profiles seemed right. We looked into getting a young lady from Moldavia, but another family had already invited her. So we invited Anett.

Anett was a 17 year old HS junior from Hungary, with a wide smile and seriously fashionable looking glasses. Her English skills seemed good enough for our local high school, and she projected an outgoing personality and ability to make friends in a new setting.

Anett turned out to be the daughter we never had. We enjoyed our years with Chan and Anders and still keep in touch with them, but with Anett we really bonded. Unlike Chan and Anders, who had a lot of complaints about American high school academics (with which I could sympathize), Anett seemed to accept things as they were.

While I was helping Annett unpack and settle in, I saw a picture of her with a young man. She indicated that that was her boyfriend. “How old is he?” I asked. “Twenty-six.” She laughed at the expression on my face, and told me her parents were unhappy when she started dating him, but were okay with her dating him once they got to know him.

While we were talking privately later on, John said her parents probably sent her to the U.S. to put some distance between her and the boyfriend, figuring he’d give up and move on. If that was the plan, it didn’t work. They’re still together seven years later and talking about marriage once she graduates from college.

Of course, they talked every day via our computer, a mode of communication Anett used to keep in touch with her parents and friends back home as well. AFS recommends that students write home only once a week and call home only once a month in order to be able to bond with their host family. Anett bonded with us just fine, though, so I gave up worrying about how often she called home. She’s still the one who emails the most and whom we visited twice. Not only is she my Facebook friend, but her mother and brothers are as well.

All of our students inspired upgrades in our mode of living and Anett was no exception. One of her activities at home was going to the gym so we looked for a gym to join, and finally settled on the YMCA. We’re still members. I had a problem with classes there, though. Any time I found what started out as a low impact aerobics class, the teacher would quit or switch class times and be replaced by someone who had us running and doing jumping jacks. I finally settled for using the walking/running track and sometimes the weights, although I had weights and a power cage at home. Anett enjoyed the classes and the treadmill.

Anett’s English was amusing. In Hungary, they apparently do pronouns differently from English because everybody was “he”. Even when she learned the word “she”, Anett would apply it to men as often as to women. It took months for her to get them sorted out and even then, she still made errors. She had what I considered a charming Hungarian accent, but like most people speaking a foreign language, she didn’t hear it. While we were shopping for her prom dress, a saleswoman asked her where she was from. Later Anett asked me how the woman knew she was from somewhere else.

Actually, I thought even without opening her mouth, Anett looked European. Her style was more polished, her hair and glasses had a high fashion look, and she preferred her clothes to fit a little more snugly, although not in a way that looked trashy. I always joked that if you could get a quarter between Anett and the waistband of her jeans, she would complain they were too big.

Of course, a few months of American cuisine took care of that problem. Chan was the one who taught us that AFS stood for “another fat student”. Neither of them got anywhere near close to what you would call fat, but they both lost weight once they got home to their own countries. I could never understand that in Anett’s case, either, because Hungarians eat paté and cold cuts for breakfast, and think ice cream is a perfect snack at ten in the morning. Of course, they have walkable cities and probably just move more than we do.

While Anett was with us, we took her to New York to spend Thanksgiving with my family and to Hawaii on a cruise. She also spent a week with John’s sister in Tennessee after school was out, in addition to going on a trip to Colorado with Young Life. School in Louisiana ends in late May, so our students have about a month after school ends before they have to go home. Chan used some of the time to go to Florida with friends. Anders hung around with us.

The summer after she left, we went to Hungary to visit Anett and her family. We spent a week with the family in Eger and then a week at a hotel in Budapest with Anett and her family visiting us each day to take us places. Several of their friends joined in to entertain us: we had dinner at one of Eger’s best restaurants, a joint welcome dinner and birthday celebration for Annet’s father’s business partners wife. Unfortunately, the birthday girl only discovered that it was a shared celebration when she got there. We’re not her favorite people. Other friends and family variously held a dinner party for us at their wine cellar (or as Anett put it “wine celery”), had us as guests at their summer cottage, or fed us home made sausage for dinner. We also got to attend a wedding (not the reception, but we got goodies to take back to the hotel) and were serenaded by gypsies in a wine bar on the Street of Beautiful Women. A week later I was back at work being drooled on by three year olds and reciting, “I think of this as a temporary exile”.

It’s a good thing we had such a wonderful time with Anett, because the next two experiences were, well, educational.

I Bought a Knife

2011-11-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

Not a cooking knife, I had those. And I am not planning to go on a killing spree. I needed a pocket knife. I’ve needed a pocket knife for a few decades now, but it only occurred to me today that I needed one and could actually buy one.

What happened today is that I bought a new pair of clip-on sunglasses to replace my old ones, which broke. It had been cloudy most of the morning, so I was able to drive around without them, but the clouds broke as I was coming out of the store with my new sunglasses. “Oh, good,” I thought. “I have sunglasses to wear.”

They were in a plastic case that opened easily. None of that hard clear plastic stuff that takes a low grade explosive to remove, or barring that, a scalpel. Once I got them out of the case, however, I was stymied by something else - a tag connected to the bridge between the lenses with one of those plastic filaments. I could wear the sunglasses, if I was willing to give up being able to see.

At that point it occurred to me that if I had a simple, ordinary pocket knife, I could have clipped that sucker off and gone on my merry way. Instead, I squinted my way home and used kitchen shears to free them.

(It also occurs to me that when I make the simplest purchases, things like sunglasses that I need if I want to avoid cataracts, they are encased in so much non-biodegradable packaging, which took who knows how much fossil fuel to make both for raw materials and energy, that my carbon footprint on the average day rivals Bigfoot’s. I try to respect the earth, I really do, but I need a little cooperation from people who design packaging.)

I didn’t want one of those gung-ho Swiss Army Knives that comes with attachments to do everything from opening wine to storing your computer files. (Seriously, they now come with 16 gig USB flash drives.) I just wanted a blade, nail file, and scissors.

I persuaded hubby to come with me to the Bass Pro Shop. I like to have hubby come with me on errands because that way we take his car and I don’t have to buy gas so often. His car uses less gas anyway, making it good for the environment. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I found one, the Wenger Esquire Swiss Army Knife, that had what I wanted plus a few extras I can live with: toothpick, tweezers and key ring. The problem is, the blade is only 1.75 inches long. I was hoping for something a little more bad ass, but the pocket knives that had blades the size I wanted did not have anything else but blades. I’m afraid if I tried to use them to remove tags from products, I’d remove a finger or two in the process.

Besides it was fairly cheap. That’s important, because I know what is going to happen. It’s going to live in my purse, and one day I’ll be about to hop on an airplane when the X-ray machine at airport security will find my knife, and I’ll wave good-bye to it as a TSA official confiscates it so that I don’t use it to hijack a plane.

But until that happens, I’m prepared for anything on the go. Broken nails, tags on my sunglasses, splinters, sesame seeds caught in my teeth. What more can a girl want?

The Agony of Da Feet

2011-11-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

Even though my broken metatarsal has healed, my feet still have the problems that have been plaguing me for years: arthritis, scars from the joint replacement on my right foot, stiffness in my plantar fascia, and arches that flatten easily and need support. My spending three months wholly or largely off my feet has weakened the muscles that support all this mess, and it’s still hard for me to gauge how much I can do before I start causing pain.

I’m talking about normal activities of daily living here, not aerobic walking and certainly not jogging. I have been walking for exercise a couple of times with a friend, but not yet at a pace that would get my heart rate up. The kind of activity that seems to stress out my feet is having to walk to get somewhere, especially over terrain that is at all uneven. Unfortunately, the results don’t usually show up until a day or two later.

For instance, when we were in Branson, we walked down a long hill to get to what was described to us as an upscale shopping area. I was picturing Rodeo Drive East, but actually it was just the stores I shop in at home. I’m not certain Kirkland’s and The Gap count as upscale, but there was one shop selling high priced hand bags. (I didn’t go in.) At any rate, the hill itself was steeper than I’m used to, living in an area that’s flatter than Kansas, but it was two city blocks, not the side of a ravine, and even climbing back up was easy when I paced myself. I felt happy that I could finally do normal activities again.

Two days later, when I was back at home, my right foot started to hurt. I felt the pain in the arch itself, but if I rubbed along the metatarsal, that triggered a dull pain, and my foot felt the “buzzy” feeling I recognized as inflammation. I was convinced I had broken that foot.

My more sensible nature made a deal with me. If the foot was still hurting by the following week, I’d make a doctor appointment. One day before the deadline, the foot stopped hurting, and has been fine, with only a few random twinges, ever since.

Last Sunday, hubby and I went to a local fair. The fair, a fundraiser for the Jaycee’s, takes place on a large open plot on the edge of town. The walk from the parking lot was quite a hike in itself, and the walk to the junior rodeo being held in conjunction with the fair was down a slight but bumpy incline with irregular footing, and of course, we walked the entire fairground before taking a seat in the music tent. Still, my feet felt merely tired, not sore, when I got home. So I went ahead with plans to go walking with a friend at the mall the next day, and the day after that I went grocery shopping.

Wednesday my left foot felt sore. The pain was located just below my ankle, but again, the metatarsal seemed like the trigger point and even a small amount of walking around the house caused pain that took a long time after I sat down again to go away. I was sure I had re-fractured the foot.

Again I made a deal with myself: keep off the foot and see how it feels Monday. Today it is back to normal.

I tell myself it’s normal to feel uneasy after the bad experience I had. Twice now I’ve walked around on broken bones for over a month before getting help. I don’t want to make that mistake again. Another break in the same spot is likely to mean surgery, and considering my experience scarring up after my toe joint replacement, I’d prefer to avoid that. At the same time, the more I stay off my feet, the weaker my muscles will get and that will leave my bones less protected, not more. So I’m like Goldilocks in orthopedic shoes, relying on trial and error to find the amount of movement that is “just right”.

Let's hope the bears don't get me.

All Saint's Day

2011-11-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

All Saint’s Day is November first, and in its older named of All Hallows or Hallowmas, gave us the name Halloween, from “Hallow Evening”. When I was growing up, you could still see the spelling “Hallowe’en”, although usually in older literature. Now it seems to have completely disappeared, which is okay with me. I could never remember exactly where that apostrophe went. All Saint’s Day, according to Wikipedia, is

“a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by parts of Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. In the Western calendar it is the day after Halloween and the day before All Souls' Day.
In Western Christian theology, the day commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in Heaven. It is a national holiday in many historically Catholic countries. In the Catholic Church and many Anglican churches, the next day specifically commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. Christians who celebrate All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day do so in the fundamental belief that there is a prayerful spiritual bond between those in purgatory (the 'Church Suffering'), those in heaven (the 'church triumphant'), and the living (the 'church militant'). Other Christian traditions define, remember and respond to the saints in different ways; for example, in the Methodist Church*, saints refer to all Christians and therefore, on All Saint's Day, the Church Universal, as well as the deceased members of a local congregation are honoured and remembered.”

I used to think All Saint’s Day was another name for All Soul’s Day, but I see they are two separate days. All Saint’s Day celebrates the first string and All Soul’s Day, the bench warmers.

Every All Saint’s Day my late mother-in-law would go to the cemetery where her family was buried to put flowers on the graves. This is the custom in New Orleans, as well as (so Wiki tells me) “Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Chile, France, Hungary, Italy, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, [and] Spain”. The New Orleans custom could have come from the French or Spanish or both.

New Orleans being a semi-tropical city and my mother-in-law having had quite the green thumb, she was always able to find enough in her garden to make a good show. Unless it had been unseasonably cold, there would be late roses, mums, and possibly a few remaining zinnias and cockscombs, which MIL always called “rooster combs” to my great (and secret) delight, plus a few other flowers I never knew the names of.

MIL was always giving me cuttings from her garden. I still have a white rosebush, gladiolas, and something red that looks like a lily but isn’t that started life in her garden. I wouldn’t have a garden at all if it hadn’t been for her, but I have nowhere near her green thumb. It’s all survival of the fittest out in my yard.

Once MIL moved to a retirement home in Baton Rouge, my husband would drive her to New Orleans on whatever Saturday was closest, after purchasing flowers from the grocery. Skipping Christmas or (even worse) Mardi Gras would not have been as major a departure from What Is Right as neglecting the duty to the dead.

So on Tuesday I reminded John that if he didn’t want his mother’s ghost to rise up and haunt us for the next year, we had better get ourselves to New Orleans sometime soon with some flowers. “Oh, I forgot about that”, he said. This morning he decided it would be a good day to go. This morning it’s raining.

None of the fittest having survived out back, we are having to take purchased flowers, but that’s okay. The important thing is to be there and remember.

And not to get haunted.

*Not so much at St. Anonymous. We had one preacher who remembered All Saint’s Day, but he left abruptly for reasons that were not officially talked about, but everyone knew.

My House Smells Like Lemon Pledge

2011-11-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it did this morning, anyway. Now it smells more like the lentil soup I’ve been cooking, but when I woke up this morning around eight or so, my husband was wandering around with a dust cloth and spray can in his hand, dusting. Dusting is nominally my job, but I only get around to it every three months or so, because I hate it. I hate all forms of housework except cooking and laundry. I don’t exactly like laundry, but I find it inoffensive.

John is the kind of person who has to be busy. I’m the kind of person who thinks sloth is a hobby. Since he retired, John has repaired everything in the house he could find that needs repairing, repainted the living room, after swearing for years that he couldn’t move the armoire to paint behind it, repainted the bathroom and the mudroom, changed out several light fixtures, cleaned out the storage shed next to the carport, practically rebuilt the pergola, and polished the headlights on my car with a kit he got from Auto Zone. He also does all the yard work (frequently at 6:30 in the morning) and almost all of the housework.

What I’ve done since I’ve retired is played a bunch of computer games and bought a bunch of clothes.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I started a regular exercise program, which led to my breaking my foot and not being able to do much of anything for months thereafter. I decluttered 4 bags and 4 boxes of stuff for a fundraising drive back in February and have since gotten rid of 4 more boxes, including a skirt I could now fit into again and wish I had back. I’ve been writing blog posts several times a week. And I do batch cooking of soup, chili, and spaghetti sauce a few times a month so we have easy fix meals in the freezer.

Just yesterday I did our first big grocery shopping in over a month. After recovering from sticker shock at the check out counter, I came home to find John mopping floors. Grocery shopping wasn’t the end of it. I made a marinade for the chicken breasts. I marinated them overnight and then wrapped them and put them in the freezer. I did the same with some skirt steak and store bought marinade. I was feeling very virtuous until I woke up to the smell of make-believe lemon.

I had planned to make the lentil soup anyway, but not first thing in the morning. I found it hard to sit around reading the paper with John spraying his way through the house, so instead of having the soup for dinner, we had it for lunch. Dinner is going to be the steak sandwiches that I originally planned for lunch, dressed up with Gorgonzola butter and roasted red peppers. And maybe onion rings.

Hubby is getting a lot of mileage out of one can of Lemon Pledge.

A Streetcar Named Depressing

2011-10-31T14:59:00.001-07:00

We have season tickets to our local Little Theater performances, as I may have mentioned before. This year, the second performance is of A Streetcar Named Desire, a show I had no desire to see. I read the play when I was in high school, and have seen snippets of the movie on TV, although I have never wanted to watch it all the way through. I can’t imagine why not: domestic violence, rape, slut shaming, stigmatizing of mental illness, what’s not to like.

John wanted to see it, so I went along. “There is not one likable character in the entire play,” I grumbled, “And the general theme seems to be ‘Eat or be eaten’. Not that I want to bias you or anything.” (Later he was to comment, “The doctor seemed nice at the end”.)

Back when I lived in New Orleans, I tried to work out the streetcar route Blanche Dubois took to get to her sister’s house, although by then all but one streetcar had been replaced by buses. As I’m sure many a tourist has found out, it can’t be done. Tennessee Williams selected the real New Orleans street names for their symbolic value, not the accuracy of their transit routes. So our play arrives already loaded with three streetcars’ worth of symbolism. That makes it hard for our characters to function as real people.

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with the characters. I really do. Blanche’s story is heartbreaking. Stanley finds himself paying for the extended visit of a woman who has said she finds him subhuman, and who he believes may have cheated his wife out of a small fortune. Stella is putting up with their feuds while pregnant through a New Orleans summer. I can sympathize, I just don’t like any of them.

I remember discussing the play with some friends back in high school. Somehow the question was raised of whether you would rather be a Stanley or a Blanche. I am ashamed to say that I did not know back then to point out that those aren’t one’s only choices in life. The play’s ambiguous treatment of violence leaves me wondering whether Williams knew those aren’t the only choices, either. Williams gives a chillingly accurate depiction of domestic violence in Stan and Stella’s marriage, right down to the way everyone except Blanche shrugs it off with, “They’ll be okay. They’re crazy about each other.” Blanche’s sexual activity is presented as far more shocking and deserving of censure than is Stanley’s willingness to use his fists on his pregnant wife.

Even before Stan becomes openly violent, we can see the classic signs of an abuser. He responds to one of Stella’s requests with an affronted “Since when do you give me orders?” and answers her reluctance to do something with “I told you to”. It’s obvious where the power lines are drawn in this family. Stan also assumes wrongly that Stella’s lost inheritance is half his, but inheritances and property owned before the marriage are treated as separate property in Louisiana. At the same time, he treats his income, which is community property, as all his. The day after Stanley hits her, Stella tells Blanche that Stan doesn’t give her “a regular allowance” but that he gave her ten dollars “to make up for last night”. So to Stanley, what’s Stella’s is his and what’s his is his. Blanche quite rightly sees this as frightening, but because Blanche’s opinion of Stanley is mixed up with her ideas of gentility and breeding, she can’t make her case convincingly. Stella doesn’t see herself as being in trouble, and Blanche might have been just as critical of a working class descendent of recent immigrants who treated Stella with gentleness and respect.

So there’s a tragedy brewing here, and it’s not the one that ends the play. In the scene with the poker game and the following one, we see the whole cycle of violence: the tension building phase, the violent outburst, and the honeymoon, starting with Stanley’s poignant calling to Stella in the street and continuing with his giving her ten dollars. What Stella doesn’t know is that in the cycle of violence, over time, the honeymoon phase becomes shorter and shorter and eventually ceases to exist.

Stanley blames Blanche for the growing cracks in his marriage, and begs Stella to remember how they used to “get those colored lights going”. Unfortunately for Stan, Blanche is not his real problem. Even if she had stayed in Laurel living out her role as the dipsomaniac school teacher who only sent Christmas cards, another relative who drinks constantly, invades their privacy, takes a lot of baths, and shows only a tenuous grasp of reality testing is about to arrive on the Kowalski doorstep in the form of a baby. Blanche provides a foreshadowing that I doubt the author intended, but one way or the other, the honeymoon is going to be over.

In the meantime, there is Blanche. Blanche with her pretensions of gentility even though she has a sex life. How dare she. And how dare she have had sex with other men and not be willing to put out for her suitor Mitch. True, it is hard to make excuses for her sexual exploitation of one of her students, but five years later in Tea and Sympathy, Laura Reynolds will have sex with one of her husband’s students and she’s the heroine, not a slut. Of course, Reynolds only motivation is to keep the student, Tom Lee, from thinking he is gay, or so she tells herself. In the 1971 film, Summer of 1942, Dorothy, a recent war widow, has sex with a 15 year old in what’s billed as a “coming of age” movie. Two other movies from the same year, Red Sky at Dawn and The Last Picture Show featured relationships between teen boys and older adult women. So why does poor Blanche, who at least has the excuse that she is permanently stuck at 16 herself, get blamed for a relationship with someone who is over the age of consent? Blanche is a snapshot of mid-twentieth century attitudes toward women and sex: don’t have sex because you like it, do it for someone else; once you have decided to become “promiscuous”, there is no going back to restraint; and worst of all, sexually active women are more horrifying than violent husbands. Mitch could say with a straight face that Blanche is “not clean enough to be in the same house with my mother” while he plays poker with a man who punches his pregnant wife.

In reading reviews of the 1951 movie version, I found out something I did not know. In the film version, Stella leaves Stan after he rapes Blanche, because the Hays code demanded that rape must be punished. Here’s something I never thought I would say, let’s hear it for the Hays code. The Hays code only allowed the rape scene to be shown at all if done “tastefully”. One reviewer commented that when scenes omitted by Hollywood censers were added back in later years, the rape actually appeared “less brutal”. Yes, what we really need is a less brutal, more “tasteful” rape in a drama about pretense and reality. Damn, I need to quit buying these cheap irony meters.

Williams was not happy with the “Hollywood ending” of the film and I have to say I agree with him. Stella is not going to leave Stan, because she has nowhere to go. As we learn from Blanche, all their family and property are gone. With Blanche committed to an asylum, Stella has nobody and nothing but Stan. She tries to pretend that the rape is just one more of her sister’s fantasies, but she knows the truth. Stan knows she knows the truth. Stan is going to have to punish her more and more for knowing the truth.

The final irony is that as Blanche is taken away, the victim of her delusions, everyone else can pretend that they have no delusions of their own. Stan can pretend that soon he and Stella will get those colored lights going again. Stella can pretend that the rape only happened in her sister’s imagination. Mitch can pretend that his friend’s violence is somehow more defensible than his girlfriend’s sexual past. And the audience can pretend that years down the road, Stella and Stan won’t have a tragedy of their own, one that could easily end with one of them dead. Blanche, the victim of illusions, saw that more clearly than anyone else.

Shrinking

2011-10-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Since I broke my foot I have lost around 12 or 13 pounds. I haven’t been on what I call a “real diet”. I’ve just cut down on portion sizes and cut out sweets and fatty snacks. I’ve actually added more nuts, fruit, and yogurt to my diet after seeing the study on foods that are associated with gaining and losing weight long term in adults.

I’ve also been gradually increasing my exercise, but I did have a set back one week when my right foot started hurting. I was afraid I may have broken it, but right around the time I was getting ready to call for an appointment with my foot doctor, it stopped hurting. I’m doing one day a week bike riding and one day walking with a friend at the mall and am about ready to add some light weight training.

So I have been shrinking. I now have five pairs of jeans I can wear: the two new ones I bought plus three I had outgrown. More importantly for my budget, I can now fit into a misses size 16 again instead of a woman’s size 16, a change that not only expands my selection of clothing but also saves me around $5-$10 per item of clothing in the places where I shop. The corduroy 14 wale pants I just bought would have cost $5 more in plus sizes. A pair of ponte knit trousers costs $10 more for plus sizes. A cashmere cardigan costs an extra $20.

I suppose the rationale for the price difference is that plus sizes use more fabric, but that doesn’t explain it once you start looking at numbers. A misses size 18 is actually slightly larger than a woman’s (plus) size 16, but costs less. Tall sized pants use more fabric than petite sizes, but don’t cost more. The size difference between a misses size 2 and a misses size 18 is the same as the difference between the misses size 18 and the plus size 24, but the size 2 doesn’t cost any less.

Besides, the price difference doesn’t hold for men’s clothing. A pair of Land’s End men’s chinos costs the same price whether you buy a waist size 30 or a waist size 46. That 16 inch range is about the same as the difference between a Misses size 12 and a Woman’s size 26 in women’s chino pants, but the woman’s size 26 will cost you $5 more ($10 for some styles). It’s true that a men’s cashmere sweater in Tall sizes costs $20 more than the same sweater in regular length men’s sizes, but it’s strange that men pay a price penalty for being tall whereas women pay a price penalty for being wide. When you consider that some research shows that height correlates with higher income, there’s a least a possibility that taller men can afford the extra cost. For what Precious Ramotswe would call “traditionally sized women”, that explanation doesn’t work.

So it’s not fair that my reduced size is saving me money, but I’m not sure I could drum up interest in an “Occupy the Garment District” movement. Although if I did, I’d at least have a few things to wear.

Walkin' After Midnight

2011-10-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

I go out walkin'

After midnight

Out in the moonlight

Just like we used to do

I'm always walkin'

After midnight

searching for you.

(Alan Block and Donn Hecht)

I have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing my cats. I hold whole conversations with them (both parts) and attribute to them all sorts of knowledge and common sense. Then when they go ahead and act like cats, I’m frustrated.

When I first got Truffle, I had to sign an agreement that he would remain an indoor cat. Truffle, however, never put his paw print to the page and when he saw Poppy going in and out, he decided to follow. I tried to keep him in, but he could slither pretty fast. So my compromise was to make sure he was in at night before I went to bed. For a few weeks that meant I was searching the neighborhood until the wee hours, but he finally started coming in on his own by ten, most of the time. Every three months or so, he’d stay out until 2 AM, but mostly he was in by what I jokingly referred to as his curfew.

Then we got D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan is a young cat and still loves to play, and his favorite form of play is wrestling with Truffle. Truffle will put up with D’Artagnan for a while, before smacking him one or chomping on him, but he’s also spending more time outdoors. Over the last week or so, Truffle has been staying out late (and probably smoking nip with his deadbeat friends).

One night he didn’t come in at all. John woke up at five and went out looking for him with the flashlight. A few minutes after John gave up, Truffle appeared at the window. Mama was not happy with him.

That night, D’Artagnan decided to go outside, too. We got D’Artagnan in, but Truffle was still outside. Around midnight, I slipped outside to look for Truffle. I walked around our half of the block and didn’t see him, but a few minutes after I came in, Truffle again was at the window.

So the next night, I tried again, this time around ten. Sure enough, about two minutes after I returned, Truffle was there.

“This is easy”, I thought. (Always a bad thing to do. With Truffle, nothing is easy.) The next night Truffle came in early on his own, but D’Artagnan was still out. I was in my office playing a computer game when I heard John calling D’Artagnan. “I need to go tell him to shut Truffle in the back when he opens the door”, I thought, only too late. D’Artagnan was in, but Truffle was back out. So I put on my shoes and went walking. Truffle came up to me and headed home with me. Problem is, when I got to the door, he hared off in another direction.

I finally got him in at 2 in the morning, after two more walks. If this keeps up, I’ll at least get my exercise. I had a calm, reflective talk with my husband on the subject of being more careful with the cat.

Last night, Truffle was in by 9. He’s mama’s good baby. He knows when his curfew is.