For your pleasure:
David Bindman, saxophone
Wes Brown, bass
royal hartigan, percussion
Art Hirahara, piano
David Bindman, saxophone
Wes Brown, bass
royal hartigan, percussion
Art Hirahara, piano
Saturday, April 4, 2015
When You Can No Longer Remember Shit ...
... make shit up.
As I see it you either turn 60 or you write a truthful memoir, but you can't do both. Because after 60 (or after chemo and radiation or post-partum or terror or other life-changing extended sleep-depriving events) you simply don't care that much for accuracy. You can't, it's an unattainable goal like having the body you sported at 20.
At first, this truth-bending shocked me and I would run down the street chasing some sentence that just popped out of my mouth, like, "Back in 1995 I was working for General Eclectic," hoping to tackle it and smother the inaccuracy before it embarrassed me. And then, when my knees started barking and my hip throbbed in tune to the universe, I stopped and thought, "Who cares?" Who cares if the year and the employer are wrong? I'm tryin' to make a point here, people. Whatever that was. I don't lie with nefarious intent, I simply have decades of memory to sift through and sort out and stuff got mixed and matched in my head and if I waited for my internal fact-checker to get back to me the people I'm talking to would be gone, asleep or dead.
So, onto haiku and aphorisms, scrupulous truth be damned:
Spring in New Haven
Now that the snow has left us
bereft of complaint.
As I see it you either turn 60 or you write a truthful memoir, but you can't do both. Because after 60 (or after chemo and radiation or post-partum or terror or other life-changing extended sleep-depriving events) you simply don't care that much for accuracy. You can't, it's an unattainable goal like having the body you sported at 20.
At first, this truth-bending shocked me and I would run down the street chasing some sentence that just popped out of my mouth, like, "Back in 1995 I was working for General Eclectic," hoping to tackle it and smother the inaccuracy before it embarrassed me. And then, when my knees started barking and my hip throbbed in tune to the universe, I stopped and thought, "Who cares?" Who cares if the year and the employer are wrong? I'm tryin' to make a point here, people. Whatever that was. I don't lie with nefarious intent, I simply have decades of memory to sift through and sort out and stuff got mixed and matched in my head and if I waited for my internal fact-checker to get back to me the people I'm talking to would be gone, asleep or dead.
So, onto haiku and aphorisms, scrupulous truth be damned:
Spring in New Haven
Now that the snow has left us
bereft of complaint.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Keeping a Resolution I Swore I Wouldn't Make
Judging from the grades I make in my math classes I'm not particularly good at Logic. Common sense I think I've got in abundance, but that other stuff (flutter of hands, rueful face...) You see, we went to visit some friends in Poughkeepsie this weekend past. It was combination housewarming and observance of the death of a guru, complete with meditation and a shrine and communion.
I have what I'll delicately called a perverse relationship to the spiritual arts -- I avoid them. In posts past I confessed to years ago in Brooklyn having a yoga teacher who loved me despite the fact that I Hate Yoga. Hate. It. And yeah, don't tell me it's good for me. I know that. What with this colossally shortened hamstring I'm sporting these days I can barely get down a flight of stairs, but you'd have to put a gun to my head to do anything about it except a few stretches and making Cuthbert drive me everywhere. But, as I've often written, I digress. (Embarrassment will do make you do that.) Anyway, Dear Reader, you'd be proud of me, I meditated. Really. I felt things I ordinarily would not have which while not always pleasant was interesting. All good. We drove to the hotel to sleep. Just before climbing into bed I ate a few apricots.
And that's where my troubles began. I woke up the following morning with a food processor dicing chicken bones in my gut. Not enough to deter me from eating breakfast, mind you, but enough to know that I'd better get home. So we called our friends just to say "so long and thanks for all the hospitality" and got invited over for tea. About 1/2 hour after arriving at their home I was pleading to lie down. I slept and slept and slept. Awoke, drank some herbal medicine, rattled around a bit, slept some more on the couch and then shuffled through the apartment to throw up in the toilet bowl. Spent an extra night in Poughkeepsie in case of encore.
Here's where the un-logic comes in: Meditation = puking your guts up. Oh oh.
Since Sunday I've barely eaten, mostly out of fear of which end and at what velocity will the food come out. And slept of course. I'm sticking to bland food and juice until then. Usually when I'm as stressed out as I am these days I'll eat anything. Just put a piece of wet sheetrock on a plate in front of me, and it's gone. No problem at all. But these days I'm giving food the side eye. Which is fine since I dropped a couple pounds that I sure don't need. Whether I'll continue when my stress = binge eating gene reactivates is unlikely, but for now it'll do.
All this to say that I am all kinds of tired. And the great David Carr has died. Namaste.
I have what I'll delicately called a perverse relationship to the spiritual arts -- I avoid them. In posts past I confessed to years ago in Brooklyn having a yoga teacher who loved me despite the fact that I Hate Yoga. Hate. It. And yeah, don't tell me it's good for me. I know that. What with this colossally shortened hamstring I'm sporting these days I can barely get down a flight of stairs, but you'd have to put a gun to my head to do anything about it except a few stretches and making Cuthbert drive me everywhere. But, as I've often written, I digress. (Embarrassment will do make you do that.) Anyway, Dear Reader, you'd be proud of me, I meditated. Really. I felt things I ordinarily would not have which while not always pleasant was interesting. All good. We drove to the hotel to sleep. Just before climbing into bed I ate a few apricots.
And that's where my troubles began. I woke up the following morning with a food processor dicing chicken bones in my gut. Not enough to deter me from eating breakfast, mind you, but enough to know that I'd better get home. So we called our friends just to say "so long and thanks for all the hospitality" and got invited over for tea. About 1/2 hour after arriving at their home I was pleading to lie down. I slept and slept and slept. Awoke, drank some herbal medicine, rattled around a bit, slept some more on the couch and then shuffled through the apartment to throw up in the toilet bowl. Spent an extra night in Poughkeepsie in case of encore.
Here's where the un-logic comes in: Meditation = puking your guts up. Oh oh.
Since Sunday I've barely eaten, mostly out of fear of which end and at what velocity will the food come out. And slept of course. I'm sticking to bland food and juice until then. Usually when I'm as stressed out as I am these days I'll eat anything. Just put a piece of wet sheetrock on a plate in front of me, and it's gone. No problem at all. But these days I'm giving food the side eye. Which is fine since I dropped a couple pounds that I sure don't need. Whether I'll continue when my stress = binge eating gene reactivates is unlikely, but for now it'll do.
All this to say that I am all kinds of tired. And the great David Carr has died. Namaste.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
In 1934 Stars Fell on Alabama
This will be short. Last week's entry was full of typos (now corrected) and if I type more than a few lines today's post will be, too. But I wanted to share the news that I had The Perfect Day™.
No work work or personal paperwork to do that would result in a fine or a shutoff if not submitted.
No math work (because I lost my nerve and didn't deign to find out what classes I needed until -- oh snap! -- it was too late to enroll).
No meetings.
No reason to leave the house because we had the 4 food groups:
1. booze
2. coffee
3. carbohydrates and
4. half 'n half
No visitors and no phone calls to make or receive.
But, as rare as All the Above are in my life what made it le jour juste was that I got to quilt all day and all night stopping only to eat and drink and check to see that Cuthbert hadn't electrocuted himself trying to change the light switch in his office (not that that, frankly, would have stopped me but I digress). The day was perfect because I went into my office/studio at 9:30 in the am and didn't stop cutting, stitching and piecing until about 11 pm last night when I could neither see nor cut straight. (See Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and the concept of flow.) Just had to share that and what, you may ask, does that have to do with stars and Alabama?
Nothing at all except at this age I'm waxing lyrical about all the wonderful things your kids do when they are young young and I am confusing my oldest with my proxy granddaughter and so for the umpteenth time I told Cuthbert about my early days of living in Brooklyn and taking the 9 year old to the library to do a social studies assignment and she, for reasons that eluded me then and now, chose the state of Alabama, and when I swept into the children's section to pick her up she was finished and wanted to read it to me and it began: In 1934, stars fell on Alabama .... And it is a moment like that makes your heart break and you remember why you love them so even though they cost you money and sanity and by their very existence prove that you are not invulnerable as long as there is at least one someone that you would die for.
And now I'll return to something that I gladly live for, quilting. Adieu.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Skunk in Estrus
How I wish that the above title had the qualifier "Saturday Poetry:" in front of it. But it doesn't, which means that what I am about to tell you has no redeeming literary value, that there are no inherent metaphors, no larger lessons to be learned.
I have a problematic relationship with animals -- those I babysit, those I eat, those I share a homestead with. On my watch dogs and/or cats have died, gotten pregnant, become incontinent, and showed signs of severe neglect. I've had fish burn to a crisp in my oven, baby possums walk into my kitchen, and now I am resigned to living atop of a skunk family.
This is not Pepé Le Pew and the missus I'm living with, folks. These skunks burrowed in last year having realized that they'd found digs underneath my office, a 12' x 16' heated "cabin", not to mention that Mr. Softee next door puts tons of food out for the feral cats and so there you have it -- luxury digs and a 5-star eatery one yard over. They hit the jackpot these skunks did, and now the female is in heat, the feral cats are getting on her nerves and about every other day, if I'm in my office long enough I hear the hiss-thunk-hiss of an interspecies battle to the death, count to 10 and then wait for that first whiff of mad skunk as it evaporates its way upward. The office stinks. I stink and b'leve me when I tell you that the stink sticks.
Cuthbert, lover of all things gun, has been sighting the skunks from our bedroom window which faces the back yard. Only problem is that he's not certain the scope is set right, and I've told him not to do anything fancy, especially, particularly if I'm in the office, because godknows where the bullet will end up. Even if he hits the skunks from 20 feet (a nice little trig problem), if he wounds and doesn't kill, well, imagine what the skunks will do. So, then he decides to move the .22 down to the kitchen, and stand behind the curtains like he's in a skunk blind and wait for the little bastards to head out to Le Kibble, and then shoot them. But, I suspect they just hauled a SubZero into their burrow and neither Cuthbert nor I have seen them make a nocturnal trip lately. So, that plan's on hold. Then someone else said, er, you should bait some fishline with meat and follow where they take it and then what?, put foam insulation or boiling water in the burrow? Yeah, that sounds like fun -- as they drown or boil they spray like hell and then decompose underneath my office, and the next thing I know the UN Commission on Genocide is knocking on my door. So, that plan's a non-starter. It's time, we realized, to call in some pros. The conversation will go something like this:
Cuthbert: We need 2 skunks trapped before Valentine's Day which is when She Skunk starts to breed.
Skunk Trapper: No problem.
Me: Oh! Do you release them in the wild so that they can live happily ever after?
Skunk Trapper: Whatever you want, ma'am.
Cuthbert and Skunk Trapper exchange the whatevah look men exchange with each other whenever there is the opportunity to kill something. A contract is signed. I stipulate that it be done when I'm gone. And as soon as these tenants are removed I'm putting barbed wire around my office.
Other than that, life's great. Et toi?
Thursday, December 25, 2014
25 December 2014
So many things going on. So much on my mind. And like almost everything else I'm responsible for these days, I lose track of it, i.e., my thoughts, in a matter of minutes. Oh. Well. Merry Christmas to those for whom it still matters. I've been up since 2:30 this morning, a consequence of a changed schedule (the university is closed through New Year's) and too much contact with other human beings. This is what happens to introverts when their social quota is exceeded.
Anyway, here's what I find interesting:
1. It would be a good idea, at least in these United States, to put a moratorium on receiving gifts by the age of 40. That way, you have (hopefully) a couple of decades and change to give them away and you don't have to rush. I've owned (and lost) more than I either need or want for a long, long time. Lately I walk around with a mental Post-It tagging who should get what. The sentimental items are the hardest. I don't want my family to be asking each other why I saved one pecan in my mementos box. (A love story.) They can understand the Jesse Jackson for President 1988 button, and I expect them to get a good price for it on e-Bay. But, some of the other stuff, all they'll say before they throw things in the dumpster is: what was she thinking? So, to spare my feelings after death and to spare my family work they won't want to do anyway, I often wish that I had fewer things to decide what to do with. In our family we've gone the quick and dirty route before (see Annals of Marriage, 2009: Cuthbert Burns Down the House Because He Didn't Want to Clean the Bathrooms). But, you can't do that too often. Anyway, file this under First World Problems.
2. Ray and Janay Price. I finally get it, after reading about the longer version of the Killa-from-Manila tape. Those two met when what, they were 15? They complete each other; two halves who make a whole.
3. Today is quiet. Eventually my niece and her mother will come over to exchange gifts and eat. The grown kids are doing their thing(s). The brothers, theirs. We'll all see each other when we see each others. A few phone calls to friends and family far and wide. I wonder when time management self-help books are written if anyone thinks to advise one that if you just omit Christmas you probably gain about 24 more hours in the year. No shopping. No card writing. No travelling. Plus, real life stresses me out enough; I'm old enough (and wise enough) not to add this kind of artificial stress. I got deracinated of Christmas slowly over the years. Part of it was estrangement from my parents (so going home was not an unalloyed joy) and much of it was poverty. Once you decide that you can't keep up with the Jones' -- could barely keep up with myself -- some of us just let go. If that doesn't work move into an orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Christmas, what Christmas?
4. Still enjoying my work enormously. Complex, diverse, challenging and creative. This upcoming semester will be a test of whether I can manage it and another math course. In preparation I made sure I have a very very short haircut so that when my hair starts to fall out from stress alopecia the contrast won't be so severe. You can't say I don't plan ahead!
5. Don't mistake the absence of any remarks about Mike Brown or Eric Garner or Tamir Rice for a lack of interest. (After all, I started this blog because I was incandescently angry about the controversy over the "Ground Zero" mosque.) But, for now I work on the margins of resistance to violence, and if ever I can say something comprehensive about it, I will. This I will say: It's the first sixth of the 21st century and here in the US of A we have to articulate that Black Lives Matter. For me, and many of those my age, that reveals a stunning loss of ground.
When I first envisioned writing this post, it was a lot more interesting and free-rangy. But not wanting to make the perfect the enemy of the good, I said to myself, get something out because you never know when you'll be back here. (This blog is like a seldom visited room in my house. I scarcely know what's in here.)
Ciao, bella. See you when I see you.
Anyway, here's what I find interesting:
1. It would be a good idea, at least in these United States, to put a moratorium on receiving gifts by the age of 40. That way, you have (hopefully) a couple of decades and change to give them away and you don't have to rush. I've owned (and lost) more than I either need or want for a long, long time. Lately I walk around with a mental Post-It tagging who should get what. The sentimental items are the hardest. I don't want my family to be asking each other why I saved one pecan in my mementos box. (A love story.) They can understand the Jesse Jackson for President 1988 button, and I expect them to get a good price for it on e-Bay. But, some of the other stuff, all they'll say before they throw things in the dumpster is: what was she thinking? So, to spare my feelings after death and to spare my family work they won't want to do anyway, I often wish that I had fewer things to decide what to do with. In our family we've gone the quick and dirty route before (see Annals of Marriage, 2009: Cuthbert Burns Down the House Because He Didn't Want to Clean the Bathrooms). But, you can't do that too often. Anyway, file this under First World Problems.
2. Ray and Janay Price. I finally get it, after reading about the longer version of the Killa-from-Manila tape. Those two met when what, they were 15? They complete each other; two halves who make a whole.
3. Today is quiet. Eventually my niece and her mother will come over to exchange gifts and eat. The grown kids are doing their thing(s). The brothers, theirs. We'll all see each other when we see each others. A few phone calls to friends and family far and wide. I wonder when time management self-help books are written if anyone thinks to advise one that if you just omit Christmas you probably gain about 24 more hours in the year. No shopping. No card writing. No travelling. Plus, real life stresses me out enough; I'm old enough (and wise enough) not to add this kind of artificial stress. I got deracinated of Christmas slowly over the years. Part of it was estrangement from my parents (so going home was not an unalloyed joy) and much of it was poverty. Once you decide that you can't keep up with the Jones' -- could barely keep up with myself -- some of us just let go. If that doesn't work move into an orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Christmas, what Christmas?
4. Still enjoying my work enormously. Complex, diverse, challenging and creative. This upcoming semester will be a test of whether I can manage it and another math course. In preparation I made sure I have a very very short haircut so that when my hair starts to fall out from stress alopecia the contrast won't be so severe. You can't say I don't plan ahead!
5. Don't mistake the absence of any remarks about Mike Brown or Eric Garner or Tamir Rice for a lack of interest. (After all, I started this blog because I was incandescently angry about the controversy over the "Ground Zero" mosque.) But, for now I work on the margins of resistance to violence, and if ever I can say something comprehensive about it, I will. This I will say: It's the first sixth of the 21st century and here in the US of A we have to articulate that Black Lives Matter. For me, and many of those my age, that reveals a stunning loss of ground.
When I first envisioned writing this post, it was a lot more interesting and free-rangy. But not wanting to make the perfect the enemy of the good, I said to myself, get something out because you never know when you'll be back here. (This blog is like a seldom visited room in my house. I scarcely know what's in here.)
Ciao, bella. See you when I see you.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
I've Been Across the River
It has been almost 6 weeks since I've been here. Even for me that's a surprising absence. This time I can't blame it on mathematics -- I'm in school, yes, but taking an educational foundations course, not a come-to-Jesus math course. So, that's not it. But what is, is that I am now working for somebody else (part-time) and I haven't figured out the line between impolitic and sometimes profane discourse (this blog) and my job responsibilities. This will be the first of many attempts in real time to do so.
As I said before, I turned 60 this year. It's been glorious and I may well celebrate it for the entire 365 days I'll be this age. Husband, son-in-law and daughter conspired to throw a party in Brooklyn that was Absolutely Fabulous™ what with friends long- and short-term, great food, dancing, my own personal 60 crown with feathers and glittery pipecleaners, and a kick-ass pair of false eyelashes which I'm conspiring to wear again.
I returned to Planet New Haven to resume a life of studying American education, and enjoying a wonderful job that is both a continuation and an extension of some of the public health work I've done here as a citizen-activist. Both in school and at work I am overwhelmed (in the best sense) by what I'm learning. I feel myself to be fortunate indeed.
Of course, in times like these, I barely write. So, once again I'me struggling with the paradox of being stimulated by so much that is new and being energy- and time-delimited from trying to turn it into fiction. At best, and as far as I'm concerned it's a nourishing best, I will write some for my course, "The Child in the American Culture". The title seems innocuous, and godknows, American education courses get dinged all the time for being content-lite, but I'm getting a lot out of this one. The professor is a kooky pro and students, as they will, mistake her kookiness for a tolerance of mediocrity. But she's sly: she'll let a student get as much or as little out of the class as they want. She asked us after a few classes how we wanted to conduct the remainder of the course. Currently, we have a dense chapter a week to read and then a student has to present on the assigned chapter; and we've been given a few independent research assignments. She wanted to know what else we wanted to do, and as she polled I kept hearing: I find the textbook (American Education by Joel Spring) hard to understand so I'd like to discuss it in class ...
Now. I gotta tell you that 1) even state school tuition's expensive and I am always conscious of paying for this 3 hours, once per week course that starts at 7:30 in the evening and 2) the textbook is hard to get through because in a typical chapter the author can cover decades of Supreme Court decisions that altered American education, educational theory and contemporary movements in education, and an analysis of the impact of No Child Left Behind on say, bilingual education. In all fairness to the other students, a majority of whom are in their early to mid-20's, the book's not easy and the hour is late. But, goddamn. The people in this room are, for better or worse, going to shape generations of American minds, and if there's one thing I know about learning it is if you can't demonstrate that you've learned something, you can't teach it.
So, when she rolled around to me, I was bloody, but I was quick. I simply said that I was about 25 - 30 years older than most of the other students in this class and frankly, I don't know how much value I'll get out of classroom discussion (although I did say that I could be surprised), and that some of what Spring writes about I've lived, that many of the Court's decisions I read as contemporaneous accounts, I've raised kids, I'm a writer and I'm used to writing and so, in addition to in-class discussion, I vote for having to do a research paper. Or, as I put it to friends: Oh hell no I'm not paying to show up for 3 hours at night to hear some 20 year old talk about their feelings (largely because they're so incurious and ahistorical that although they are probably going to teach in public school they've never heard about Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, or Dred Scott, or how Loudon County Virginia closed it's public schools for years as opposed to desegregate, or the genesis of charter schools and magnet schools in Connecticut).
And so the course is a hybrid of class discussion as before, and a research paper where the first draft is to be shared with a partner to critique (a suggestion of yours truly) before the final version is written. People, a little rigor here, please?
One friend said to me that the others will appreciate what I did later. Don't know; don't care. This is the minimum I demand of myself.
Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans (pronounced Nawlins) for a national meeting. I haven't been there in 35 years since I graduated from college. Loathed the place back then -- much of what I learned about the enduring trauma of racial oppression I learned in Louisiana -- and will probably see very little of it this time what with being consumed by presentations and meetings. Didn't gloat when Katrina happened, it made a profoundly unjust culture exponentially worse, but am not sentimental about the place or its cultural roots or its food. But, as in the case of my 20 something classmates, I may be surprised. One can hope.
So, until the next intermittent dispatch, au revoir.
As I said before, I turned 60 this year. It's been glorious and I may well celebrate it for the entire 365 days I'll be this age. Husband, son-in-law and daughter conspired to throw a party in Brooklyn that was Absolutely Fabulous™ what with friends long- and short-term, great food, dancing, my own personal 60 crown with feathers and glittery pipecleaners, and a kick-ass pair of false eyelashes which I'm conspiring to wear again.
I returned to Planet New Haven to resume a life of studying American education, and enjoying a wonderful job that is both a continuation and an extension of some of the public health work I've done here as a citizen-activist. Both in school and at work I am overwhelmed (in the best sense) by what I'm learning. I feel myself to be fortunate indeed.
Of course, in times like these, I barely write. So, once again I'me struggling with the paradox of being stimulated by so much that is new and being energy- and time-delimited from trying to turn it into fiction. At best, and as far as I'm concerned it's a nourishing best, I will write some for my course, "The Child in the American Culture". The title seems innocuous, and godknows, American education courses get dinged all the time for being content-lite, but I'm getting a lot out of this one. The professor is a kooky pro and students, as they will, mistake her kookiness for a tolerance of mediocrity. But she's sly: she'll let a student get as much or as little out of the class as they want. She asked us after a few classes how we wanted to conduct the remainder of the course. Currently, we have a dense chapter a week to read and then a student has to present on the assigned chapter; and we've been given a few independent research assignments. She wanted to know what else we wanted to do, and as she polled I kept hearing: I find the textbook (American Education by Joel Spring) hard to understand so I'd like to discuss it in class ...
Now. I gotta tell you that 1) even state school tuition's expensive and I am always conscious of paying for this 3 hours, once per week course that starts at 7:30 in the evening and 2) the textbook is hard to get through because in a typical chapter the author can cover decades of Supreme Court decisions that altered American education, educational theory and contemporary movements in education, and an analysis of the impact of No Child Left Behind on say, bilingual education. In all fairness to the other students, a majority of whom are in their early to mid-20's, the book's not easy and the hour is late. But, goddamn. The people in this room are, for better or worse, going to shape generations of American minds, and if there's one thing I know about learning it is if you can't demonstrate that you've learned something, you can't teach it.
So, when she rolled around to me, I was bloody, but I was quick. I simply said that I was about 25 - 30 years older than most of the other students in this class and frankly, I don't know how much value I'll get out of classroom discussion (although I did say that I could be surprised), and that some of what Spring writes about I've lived, that many of the Court's decisions I read as contemporaneous accounts, I've raised kids, I'm a writer and I'm used to writing and so, in addition to in-class discussion, I vote for having to do a research paper. Or, as I put it to friends: Oh hell no I'm not paying to show up for 3 hours at night to hear some 20 year old talk about their feelings (largely because they're so incurious and ahistorical that although they are probably going to teach in public school they've never heard about Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, or Dred Scott, or how Loudon County Virginia closed it's public schools for years as opposed to desegregate, or the genesis of charter schools and magnet schools in Connecticut).
And so the course is a hybrid of class discussion as before, and a research paper where the first draft is to be shared with a partner to critique (a suggestion of yours truly) before the final version is written. People, a little rigor here, please?
One friend said to me that the others will appreciate what I did later. Don't know; don't care. This is the minimum I demand of myself.
Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans (pronounced Nawlins) for a national meeting. I haven't been there in 35 years since I graduated from college. Loathed the place back then -- much of what I learned about the enduring trauma of racial oppression I learned in Louisiana -- and will probably see very little of it this time what with being consumed by presentations and meetings. Didn't gloat when Katrina happened, it made a profoundly unjust culture exponentially worse, but am not sentimental about the place or its cultural roots or its food. But, as in the case of my 20 something classmates, I may be surprised. One can hope.
So, until the next intermittent dispatch, au revoir.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Saturday Poetry: Upon Seeing Fred in Bronze
It
was the spring of year four
By
then Fred was out of the luxury digs of Mt. Sinai.
We
were back on Lorimer St.
He
reclining
Me,
as I was often during those years
Leaning
in leaning over listening for news
From
his body.
Aah,
Fred, I said, as I counted the stitches down his torso
And
brushed the medallion of skin made by his port.
Aah
Fred, look at what the surgeons have gifted you
A
way out, a way forward.
But
not for his soul
for
his waste.
Aah
Fred and I leaned in closer
because
now it was my turn to come to terms
with
the positive and negative space of him.
Fred
I said
You
got you one hell of a crater.
And
we laughed as we crossed that bridge.
Years
later Bronze Fred stood before me:
I
know you I said, how I know you.
Of
course it made all the sense in the world to me that
Fred
was decked out in saxophone keys
With
good luck where the port used to be
Only
partially clothed in splendor
Which
was true during the days when wounds needed air.
The
professorial specs
The
eyes joined by his troublemaking grin.
I
looked at Bronze Fred.
He
looked at me.
We
laughed.
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Sixto
I'm 60 this month.
It is fall and I have the house to myself for a few weeks because Cuthbert is in Ireland. And judging from the reports of aches and pains he's experiencing, I think he's just realized he's not the Strapping Young Lad he used to be. (I tried ta tell 'em, but do he lissen to me?)
I am not taking a math class this semester so I will not be having my bi-annual Nervous Breakdown.
I have started a new job (part-time) which I will enjoy enormously. I now consider myself the poster child for 2nd chances. I work with people who have a sense of mission and are (com)passionate.
Instead of math this semester, I'm enrolled in a course called, "The Child in American Culture," which until I attended my first session I feared would be an egregious waste of my hard-earned tuition dollars. (When you're obtaining teaching credentials you have to take education courses. Derp.) Boy, was I wrong: We will look at the aforementioned child through the lenses of history, gender studies, political science, economics, psychology, sociology, education. (Have I left any discipline out?) I'm pretty sure I will have to have a zipper surgically embedded in my mouth; but try as I might I always wind up scaring the horses and children.
I'm 60, y'all. I. Don't. Care.
It is fall and I have the house to myself for a few weeks because Cuthbert is in Ireland. And judging from the reports of aches and pains he's experiencing, I think he's just realized he's not the Strapping Young Lad he used to be. (I tried ta tell 'em, but do he lissen to me?)
I am not taking a math class this semester so I will not be having my bi-annual Nervous Breakdown.
I have started a new job (part-time) which I will enjoy enormously. I now consider myself the poster child for 2nd chances. I work with people who have a sense of mission and are (com)passionate.
Instead of math this semester, I'm enrolled in a course called, "The Child in American Culture," which until I attended my first session I feared would be an egregious waste of my hard-earned tuition dollars. (When you're obtaining teaching credentials you have to take education courses. Derp.) Boy, was I wrong: We will look at the aforementioned child through the lenses of history, gender studies, political science, economics, psychology, sociology, education. (Have I left any discipline out?) I'm pretty sure I will have to have a zipper surgically embedded in my mouth; but try as I might I always wind up scaring the horses and children.
I'm 60, y'all. I. Don't. Care.
#YaddaYaddaYadda
Those who know me know I don't do Facebook. And they know the reasons why. So, it's no surprise to you that I don't tweet either. It seems the nouvelle cheap and easy way to express one's outrage or ardor. Like bumper stickers. And t-shirts. Advertisements that show I CARE™ and then we can move on having established our bona fides. Wrong and injustice take a long time, sometimes a lifetime or two, to remedy. They require courage, sacrifice, a tolerance for failure and being shunned, perservance, and the capacity to imagine a change you may not live to see.
Voicing online indignation about the precipitating event(s) that brings a wrong to our attention -- whether the murder of a black boy, the beheading of a journalist by fanatics, the war in Gaza or the humiliation and degradation of a wife -- and slapping a pound sign in front of it demands none of that.
Voicing online indignation about the precipitating event(s) that brings a wrong to our attention -- whether the murder of a black boy, the beheading of a journalist by fanatics, the war in Gaza or the humiliation and degradation of a wife -- and slapping a pound sign in front of it demands none of that.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
America, America, God Shed His Grace on Thee ...
When Kim and I decided to go on vacation we had every intention of heading northwards. She from Indiana, me from Connecticut. First it was Montreal, a precursor to Paris; then Northern Michigan, Great Lakes country to rendezvous with another Brooklynite, eventually making our way to Chicago, then home. That being decided I flew out to Chicago, she picked me up the following day and we returned to Indiana for her medical appointments before taking off. In no time we were in Louisville, KY. You know how these things go: we are going to get There from Here.
So, I have been in Middle America, and now South for a few days. When you've spent most of your adult life in the cloistered, crowded, and urban Northeast, you forget (or I do) how huge, how vastly beautiful this country is. Despite our expansive in geography we seem so miserly in spirit. We as a collective are unbelievably endowed with resources, space, security and wealth. But, as a nation we are collectively selfish, mean, greedy, callous towards and inordinately fearful of each other. Perhaps I'm writing this because I've spent days in places where people of color, and I don't mean it as a euphemism, but literally, are few and far between. I am back in places where I turn heads, and not for flattering reasons, where if there is a greeting exchanged I'm often the first to speak. Also, my friend and I are an odd pair -- one white, one black, both middle-aged, both short-haired. It's hard to know what we are, which disturbs people, but we are pros at being incandescently non-threatening. And still I often sense a wariness that isn't specific to me (or us) but that seems to come from the social isolation we Americans suffer from. Too many of us only know the other through television and movies, through sensationalized crises and the accompanying superficial and portentous analysis that is on-air news reporting. It gives us a false knowledge -- "those white people do ...", "black people always ..." and other iterations that lead to illogical, and incorrect conclusions about others' behavior. And reinforce prejudices, the ones we need to keep to justify how we live as a divided nation.
Others have written well and extensively about the decimation of the American landscape as the interstate system grew and micro-cultures and towns either vanished or were absorbed by consolidating industrialization and retail. That's so apparent to me on this trip, too. In the cities we've made a fetish of authenticity, historical preservation and artisanal living in a Hans Brinkerish attempt to stave off rapacious ecologically destructive modernity. We pick and choose what parts of our lives will be lived in the 19th century as opposed to the 21st. In other places that don't value or cultivate creative tension (which brings uncertainty and the threat of upsetting order) there is less dissonance. It seems as if the denaturing of American's beauty and distinctiveness meets little or no objection. And when there are attempts to revive places there is an air of contrivance (cf. the restored downtowns of many small cities).
I brought reading with me, the kind that I never seem to have enough time to do while at home. I finally started Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge, the last of his magnificent trilogy of "America in the King Years". No accident bringing this, although at the time I pulled it from my shelf I really didn't know we've travelling south, and it is a fantastic counterpoint to being in places like Louisville, Nashville, Memphis. I am as intrigued reading modern American history as I am in how it is depicted. I'm always looking to see how a matter like segregation is presented on the placards that explain the significance of a once-grand hotel, or movie house or a prominent business. The elisions, the absence of photographic evidence, the galloping prose that brings us to the present.
Our present: the shooting and police response in Ferguson, MO and the Tea Party and the 21st century strain of anti-immigrant nativism that manifests itself as callousness towards the fate of children and youth coming from Latin America and the delegitimization of the Obama Presidency with talk of impeachment and the shit sandwich that goes for cultural and political discourse on the media and a civic culture so fragile that a committment to universal, public education is imperiled and the siphoning upwards of political power and wealth.
So, I have been in Middle America, and now South for a few days. When you've spent most of your adult life in the cloistered, crowded, and urban Northeast, you forget (or I do) how huge, how vastly beautiful this country is. Despite our expansive in geography we seem so miserly in spirit. We as a collective are unbelievably endowed with resources, space, security and wealth. But, as a nation we are collectively selfish, mean, greedy, callous towards and inordinately fearful of each other. Perhaps I'm writing this because I've spent days in places where people of color, and I don't mean it as a euphemism, but literally, are few and far between. I am back in places where I turn heads, and not for flattering reasons, where if there is a greeting exchanged I'm often the first to speak. Also, my friend and I are an odd pair -- one white, one black, both middle-aged, both short-haired. It's hard to know what we are, which disturbs people, but we are pros at being incandescently non-threatening. And still I often sense a wariness that isn't specific to me (or us) but that seems to come from the social isolation we Americans suffer from. Too many of us only know the other through television and movies, through sensationalized crises and the accompanying superficial and portentous analysis that is on-air news reporting. It gives us a false knowledge -- "those white people do ...", "black people always ..." and other iterations that lead to illogical, and incorrect conclusions about others' behavior. And reinforce prejudices, the ones we need to keep to justify how we live as a divided nation.
Others have written well and extensively about the decimation of the American landscape as the interstate system grew and micro-cultures and towns either vanished or were absorbed by consolidating industrialization and retail. That's so apparent to me on this trip, too. In the cities we've made a fetish of authenticity, historical preservation and artisanal living in a Hans Brinkerish attempt to stave off rapacious ecologically destructive modernity. We pick and choose what parts of our lives will be lived in the 19th century as opposed to the 21st. In other places that don't value or cultivate creative tension (which brings uncertainty and the threat of upsetting order) there is less dissonance. It seems as if the denaturing of American's beauty and distinctiveness meets little or no objection. And when there are attempts to revive places there is an air of contrivance (cf. the restored downtowns of many small cities).
I brought reading with me, the kind that I never seem to have enough time to do while at home. I finally started Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge, the last of his magnificent trilogy of "America in the King Years". No accident bringing this, although at the time I pulled it from my shelf I really didn't know we've travelling south, and it is a fantastic counterpoint to being in places like Louisville, Nashville, Memphis. I am as intrigued reading modern American history as I am in how it is depicted. I'm always looking to see how a matter like segregation is presented on the placards that explain the significance of a once-grand hotel, or movie house or a prominent business. The elisions, the absence of photographic evidence, the galloping prose that brings us to the present.
Our present: the shooting and police response in Ferguson, MO and the Tea Party and the 21st century strain of anti-immigrant nativism that manifests itself as callousness towards the fate of children and youth coming from Latin America and the delegitimization of the Obama Presidency with talk of impeachment and the shit sandwich that goes for cultural and political discourse on the media and a civic culture so fragile that a committment to universal, public education is imperiled and the siphoning upwards of political power and wealth.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Gone to the store ...
... to get cigarettes. Will be back in approximately 14 days.
I'm off for a vacation where there is no fixed destination, no reservations, no sure itinerary, and no guaranteed return date.
One reason I don't care for vacations is that you have to plan them. I don't care enough about frequent flyer miles, or hotel and auto discounts to be that organized about it. All I want to know is where I can get my morning coffee.
Flying to Chicago on Tuesday. All the rest is TBD.
I'm off for a vacation where there is no fixed destination, no reservations, no sure itinerary, and no guaranteed return date.
One reason I don't care for vacations is that you have to plan them. I don't care enough about frequent flyer miles, or hotel and auto discounts to be that organized about it. All I want to know is where I can get my morning coffee.
Flying to Chicago on Tuesday. All the rest is TBD.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
Lately I've been getting e-mails from Michelle Obama asking me, beseeching me, really, to sign Barack's birthday card. I've been thinking about it. Ordinarily, if this was an office situation and I'd been asked to sign a card for an executive who was way way above my paygrade, I'd decline. Chances are I wouldn't know him or her, and to sign the card would be to insinuate myself into their personal life for no other reason than I wanted to score points or just get-along-to-go-along. But I admire the man, and might make an exception to my own rule. Perhaps more than any president in my lifetime I wish Barack Obama as many birthdays (happy or otherwise) as he can have. There is such derangement in this country that every day seems to offer up a fresh opportunity for some aggrieved and put upon fin de siecle white guy to imagine himself the hero assassin of the President. Can't cut more food stamps for the poor? Shoot him. Can't win the war in Iraq? Shoot him. Can't stop the tide of brown children from Central America who are coming here to take our jobs, and, as soon as they grow up, rape our women? Shoot. Him. All of that to say that birthdays are not preordained for that man; so I hope he'll have his next one.
But Michelle's request notwithstanding, coming as it does in the midst of a slaughter in Gaza, I can't sign the card. Because really, I've been so over Israel for decades. Back in the 1980's, June Jordan and other leftist academics (who are so fashionably lampooned by smug libertarians and the unctuous assholes who love them) were publishing works about Israel as an apartheid state. And Israel's support of its sister regime in South Africa. This is Israel: they spy on us, they have such power in the halls of Congress that both the Senate and House passed unanimous resolutions in support of this phase of the war. (Now, I ask you, where else in the history of the Obama's presidency have House and Senate Republicans unanimously agreed with him on Anything? Makes you wonder how that's even possible.) They are the recipient of billions of US tax dollars that purchases weaponry (and no doubt intelligence) that advantages them to wage asymmetrical, brutalizing war based on any rationale that suits Israel at the time. (See Gulf of Tonkin attack, Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, the kidnapping and murder of 3 Israeli teenagers.)
And now -- what? almost 30 years later -- we have to listen to the likes of Barack Obama, a man who certainly knows better, trot out all that hum-de-hum-hum about Israel's right to defend itself. Our stalwart friend in the Middle East, yada yada yada. (If I paid a man to have sex with me on a regular basis and laugh at my jokes do I also have to stand in front of mikes and call him my friend?) It would be insincere of me, Mr. President, to sign your card. I wish I could say the same for your support of Israel's actions; but I can't.
But Michelle's request notwithstanding, coming as it does in the midst of a slaughter in Gaza, I can't sign the card. Because really, I've been so over Israel for decades. Back in the 1980's, June Jordan and other leftist academics (who are so fashionably lampooned by smug libertarians and the unctuous assholes who love them) were publishing works about Israel as an apartheid state. And Israel's support of its sister regime in South Africa. This is Israel: they spy on us, they have such power in the halls of Congress that both the Senate and House passed unanimous resolutions in support of this phase of the war. (Now, I ask you, where else in the history of the Obama's presidency have House and Senate Republicans unanimously agreed with him on Anything? Makes you wonder how that's even possible.) They are the recipient of billions of US tax dollars that purchases weaponry (and no doubt intelligence) that advantages them to wage asymmetrical, brutalizing war based on any rationale that suits Israel at the time. (See Gulf of Tonkin attack, Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, the kidnapping and murder of 3 Israeli teenagers.)
And now -- what? almost 30 years later -- we have to listen to the likes of Barack Obama, a man who certainly knows better, trot out all that hum-de-hum-hum about Israel's right to defend itself. Our stalwart friend in the Middle East, yada yada yada. (If I paid a man to have sex with me on a regular basis and laugh at my jokes do I also have to stand in front of mikes and call him my friend?) It would be insincere of me, Mr. President, to sign your card. I wish I could say the same for your support of Israel's actions; but I can't.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
A Cure for Everything But Death
Although I will never write a memoir -- buried bodies will remain buried bodies -- I do tend to think of my life in narrative. What is the story? I've been home since mid-April and were you to draw a picture of my life it would be typified by sitting at this desk in this office working with various mounds of papers -- the taxes, the medical bills, the scripts, the insurance, and so on and so forth. For more than a year I've meant to re-write my will. Since the last one was signed we've moved states, I haven't stabbed my spouse, my proxy grandchild has been born, and I've inherited money and intellectual property rights from a friend. In other words, things have changed. A lot.
I've been giving a lot of thought to who gets what and why. I have my own literary estate that matters enough to me that I'd like someone to take care of it. And I want to provide for the generations after me. So now I realize that this chapter, this spring and summer, is about organizing my life in the inevitable event of my death. For someone like me doing this (although much of this work is tedious, if not downright boring) it is a "prophylactic", a cure for everything but Death. I like order, a sense of control, a certainty that things are in place. I don't consider what I'm doing death-defying behavior; this is death-acknowledging behavior. I die and my physical and intellectual property is left behind.
Part of reconstructing the life of the dead is a treasure hunt. My husband, and the rest of my family will finally have answers to questions they dare not ask me. They will be capable of seeing who I was before they knew me, before I belonged to them. That is, if they wish. My intention (if I'm able) is to leave much of it behind -- the flash drives of files, the hard copies of correspondence, the souvenirs and letters from friends and family, the mementos. Even my unfinished fiction and poetry. (Although I suspect that I'll burn all that if time and circumstance permits.)
B'lievemewhenItellyou that I'm not at all morose, just realistic.
I've been giving a lot of thought to who gets what and why. I have my own literary estate that matters enough to me that I'd like someone to take care of it. And I want to provide for the generations after me. So now I realize that this chapter, this spring and summer, is about organizing my life in the inevitable event of my death. For someone like me doing this (although much of this work is tedious, if not downright boring) it is a "prophylactic", a cure for everything but Death. I like order, a sense of control, a certainty that things are in place. I don't consider what I'm doing death-defying behavior; this is death-acknowledging behavior. I die and my physical and intellectual property is left behind.
Part of reconstructing the life of the dead is a treasure hunt. My husband, and the rest of my family will finally have answers to questions they dare not ask me. They will be capable of seeing who I was before they knew me, before I belonged to them. That is, if they wish. My intention (if I'm able) is to leave much of it behind -- the flash drives of files, the hard copies of correspondence, the souvenirs and letters from friends and family, the mementos. Even my unfinished fiction and poetry. (Although I suspect that I'll burn all that if time and circumstance permits.)
B'lievemewhenItellyou that I'm not at all morose, just realistic.
I Hate Summer, 2014 edition
It's not that it's been a particularly bad summer. In my role as Stoic Eco-Queen I try not to run the A/C too much and so far I've succeeded. The worst thing that has happened is the Allergy Malady and I continue to remain in denial that my front and back yards have become a menace. I am growing all kinds of flora in the front; some of it I recognize, others are "migrants". (True gardeners call them "volunteers" which I've never understood because if you were a seed and the wind blew you into my yard, or a cat shat (thank you! Dr. Seuss) you into my soil would you say that you had volunteered to grow there? I mean, if you were a seed.) Some of my migrants are undoubtedly weeds and drive the people who walk around with spray cans full of Round-Up mad. I keep them because I'm curious, wondering what they will become.
One such plant with large lozenge-shaped leaves produced aureoles of delicate pale white flowers. Now that those have died it's producing pods the size of a Christmas ornament. And this is where the Annie Dillard in me stops and girl who watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers one time too many takes over. I am actually expecting them to develop into pod people. I fully expect to come downstairs in mid-August, make my espresso, sit in the dining room window and only to find that Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter have metastasized right before my very eyes.
One such plant with large lozenge-shaped leaves produced aureoles of delicate pale white flowers. Now that those have died it's producing pods the size of a Christmas ornament. And this is where the Annie Dillard in me stops and girl who watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers one time too many takes over. I am actually expecting them to develop into pod people. I fully expect to come downstairs in mid-August, make my espresso, sit in the dining room window and only to find that Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter have metastasized right before my very eyes.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Meanwhile Back at the Ranch ....
Believe me when I tell you that I had all good intentions to check in last Saturday -- the holiday be damned -- now that I am posting again. But, as we all know what the Road to Hell is paved with, yes?
The truth is I was asleep. For like 20 hours a day. In the midst of a weekend visit by friends I got sick. It was, mirabile dictu, a virulent response to something that's blooming, sailing through the air,or being shat in my yard by birds or feral cats. Being the logical type I tried to figure out, with the help of Cuthbert who got his Ph.D. in the Science of Mind from the Matchbook University of the Greater Palo Alto Community School District, why this had happen a moi after a decade or more of being seasonal allergy free. Seasons come, seasons go, my sleep pattern alters a bit, and life goes on. I just thought Claritan commercials were weird, that's how much I paid attention.
So, we said, what has changed? Cuthbert grew a lawn in the back this year. Would new grass be any different than that knarly crab grass that we lived with (because it went to so well with this knarly house)? Don't think so. Our retired neighbor is single-handedly trying to raise homeowner's property values on our little block and is on a one-man weed whacker crusade. His rule of thumb is: if it's higher than 2" and closer to the curb than 3" it's coming down. So, many a morning while I'm watering the garden he's out there giving the block's weeds a haircut. I put that in the maybe column. What about the front yard, which now that it's beautiful with a profusion of flowering whatevahs my neighbors' opinion of me has gone from (in Spanish and English) "that weird woman with a white husband" to "that weird woman with a white husband who can grow some purty flowers", was it causing this malady? I didn't want to blame my yard which gives me no end of pleasure and since I'm already a member in good standing of the I'll-Suffer-For-My-Art Corp, if it turns out that my front yard is making me sick, well I'll go. It stays.
By the time we figured out that we didn't have it figured out I was quaffing a solution of sassafras and other herbs brewed by my friend who not only likes to cook but is a herbalist by avocation. I'd drink, blink and go back to bed. Everyone carried on very well without me, going ahead with the day after block picnic (which I joined for a while), cooking, sleeping, and putting a mirror to my lips to see if I was still breathing.
I didn't feel particularly bad -- no fever, not much phlegm, no nausea or vomiting -- I was just so very very tired and my brain had been replaced by a gigantic sinus cavity. I still can't smell; I can just barely taste. (It's probably sense memory and nothing more.) That's not necessarily a bad thing since it means I eat a lot less. I can't complete a sentence without coughing up a lung and since I am always on the verge of or well into a headache, when I'm out in public I looked like I'd just as soon kill you as talk to you. (This is often true even when I'm not sick.)
Cuthbert thinks I had, have a mild infection. Old Indestructible Moi thought that was nonsense until 2 days ago when he started to exhibit the same symptoms, too. Fatigue, empty-headedness, and in his case, skeletal aches and pains. Last night, feeling incrementally livelier than I had in days, I stayed up late ironing and watching the original Wallender (in Swedish). (When I'm in slo-mo reading subtitles is soothing.) I had already stood over him in the bedroom (well before dusk) and told him I was sleeping elsewhere. It was obvious he was sick and was probably going to wind up on both sides of the bed and what the hell?, if what we have are infections why would I return to the scene of the crime?
Although this house is small, it does have an extra room. (I've slept in a convent with larger sleeping quarters.) I didn't even bother to move the linen I'd been piling on the bed for weeks; I just weaseled my way under the covers with aspirin and water within reach and went to sleep. I woke up knowing I was getting better. Parts of my brain had re-occupied my skull and I could breath through 2 nostrils and my mouth! Not much, but I'll take it. My hope is to have enough energy and will to houseclean today. The place looks manky, and I can only imagine that it smells worse. We'll see ...
Thus ends this installment of How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
The truth is I was asleep. For like 20 hours a day. In the midst of a weekend visit by friends I got sick. It was, mirabile dictu, a virulent response to something that's blooming, sailing through the air,or being shat in my yard by birds or feral cats. Being the logical type I tried to figure out, with the help of Cuthbert who got his Ph.D. in the Science of Mind from the Matchbook University of the Greater Palo Alto Community School District, why this had happen a moi after a decade or more of being seasonal allergy free. Seasons come, seasons go, my sleep pattern alters a bit, and life goes on. I just thought Claritan commercials were weird, that's how much I paid attention.
So, we said, what has changed? Cuthbert grew a lawn in the back this year. Would new grass be any different than that knarly crab grass that we lived with (because it went to so well with this knarly house)? Don't think so. Our retired neighbor is single-handedly trying to raise homeowner's property values on our little block and is on a one-man weed whacker crusade. His rule of thumb is: if it's higher than 2" and closer to the curb than 3" it's coming down. So, many a morning while I'm watering the garden he's out there giving the block's weeds a haircut. I put that in the maybe column. What about the front yard, which now that it's beautiful with a profusion of flowering whatevahs my neighbors' opinion of me has gone from (in Spanish and English) "that weird woman with a white husband" to "that weird woman with a white husband who can grow some purty flowers", was it causing this malady? I didn't want to blame my yard which gives me no end of pleasure and since I'm already a member in good standing of the I'll-Suffer-For-My-Art Corp, if it turns out that my front yard is making me sick, well I'll go. It stays.
By the time we figured out that we didn't have it figured out I was quaffing a solution of sassafras and other herbs brewed by my friend who not only likes to cook but is a herbalist by avocation. I'd drink, blink and go back to bed. Everyone carried on very well without me, going ahead with the day after block picnic (which I joined for a while), cooking, sleeping, and putting a mirror to my lips to see if I was still breathing.
I didn't feel particularly bad -- no fever, not much phlegm, no nausea or vomiting -- I was just so very very tired and my brain had been replaced by a gigantic sinus cavity. I still can't smell; I can just barely taste. (It's probably sense memory and nothing more.) That's not necessarily a bad thing since it means I eat a lot less. I can't complete a sentence without coughing up a lung and since I am always on the verge of or well into a headache, when I'm out in public I looked like I'd just as soon kill you as talk to you. (This is often true even when I'm not sick.)
Cuthbert thinks I had, have a mild infection. Old Indestructible Moi thought that was nonsense until 2 days ago when he started to exhibit the same symptoms, too. Fatigue, empty-headedness, and in his case, skeletal aches and pains. Last night, feeling incrementally livelier than I had in days, I stayed up late ironing and watching the original Wallender (in Swedish). (When I'm in slo-mo reading subtitles is soothing.) I had already stood over him in the bedroom (well before dusk) and told him I was sleeping elsewhere. It was obvious he was sick and was probably going to wind up on both sides of the bed and what the hell?, if what we have are infections why would I return to the scene of the crime?
Although this house is small, it does have an extra room. (I've slept in a convent with larger sleeping quarters.) I didn't even bother to move the linen I'd been piling on the bed for weeks; I just weaseled my way under the covers with aspirin and water within reach and went to sleep. I woke up knowing I was getting better. Parts of my brain had re-occupied my skull and I could breath through 2 nostrils and my mouth! Not much, but I'll take it. My hope is to have enough energy and will to houseclean today. The place looks manky, and I can only imagine that it smells worse. We'll see ...
Thus ends this installment of How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
A Letter to My Faithful Readers
... and to the porn sites which account for 90% of my traffic. It has been 3 months and change since I last posted. I stopped blogging for practical reasons: my life was organized around the care of a dying friend. I had no desire to write about "it" then, and I am reluctant to write about it now. The irony is that many of us (in my generation) sculpted ourselves into fiction writers by confessing, mining the travails of our own lives and convincing ourselves that it represented the anxieties of the age. Had I that need still there would be plenty of entries here, but I don't so there aren't.
It's spring. Like many in the northeast I had my doubts that it would ever arrive. I've been awarded for my patience with a front yard that is filling out with strawberries, echinacea, hydrangeas, day lilies, ferns, daisies, oxalis, clover, mint, sage and more than a few spectacular flowering weeds. During the winter I would sit in my dining room willing the plants into existence, wondering if last year's volunteer squash would take over by late summer, imagining what color the hydrangea blossoms would be. Now I happily bury the stools of the feral cats that use our yard as their litter box, pull and slice the roots off of weeds so that they can be composted. And think.
I've been dreaming lately. A few nights ago I had one where I was practically stalking the Math department's advisor to figure out what my next class should be. (You don't have to go to far back into last fall's entries the discern the magnitude of my bitchin' and moanin' about how hard my coursework is.) Nobody in my family believes that I will or should return to school. (I didn't enroll the spring semester.) That, too, is an old story. But, I have spent a lot of time with people who have been delimited by physical illness, mental illness, addiction, and poverty. One of the enduring effects of any of those conditions is the the lowering of expectations. Of being defined by what one can't do as opposed to what one can. And once you've bought that definition of yourself, you've taken over the maintenance of your oppression. Then it's game, set, match for the oppressor. Math is my instrument; public school students and adult learners are my audience. To have the math to work with them I have to do more coursework. It's as simple as that.
And last night I dreamed that I was in prison, but mysteriously released on furlough. I spent it at a bar with a friend talking and drinking coffee, surrounded by totebags of paperwork and clothing. I knew that I had to return to prison. My friend, who had been imprisoned but was now paroled left to catch the subway. I packed my bags, and then at the last minute decided I wasn't going back. Fuck it, I said to myself, I'm an old lady. Whadda they going to do to me?
Which is the attitude I've been taking now that I'm bike riding again, occasionally without a helmet after a (clears throat) 40 year interregnum. Cuthbert and even strangers counsel me to do otherwise. Of course they're right. I know all too well what can happen and godknows this city has more than its share of reckless and unlicensed drivers. But, oh freedom, and all of that. It feels so good to fly down the street and split the air.
Perhaps these latest dreams about about the poles of Freedom and Obligation. And the dance between the two as I enter my 60th year. Don't know; may never know. The sun's up; weeds await me.
It's spring. Like many in the northeast I had my doubts that it would ever arrive. I've been awarded for my patience with a front yard that is filling out with strawberries, echinacea, hydrangeas, day lilies, ferns, daisies, oxalis, clover, mint, sage and more than a few spectacular flowering weeds. During the winter I would sit in my dining room willing the plants into existence, wondering if last year's volunteer squash would take over by late summer, imagining what color the hydrangea blossoms would be. Now I happily bury the stools of the feral cats that use our yard as their litter box, pull and slice the roots off of weeds so that they can be composted. And think.
I've been dreaming lately. A few nights ago I had one where I was practically stalking the Math department's advisor to figure out what my next class should be. (You don't have to go to far back into last fall's entries the discern the magnitude of my bitchin' and moanin' about how hard my coursework is.) Nobody in my family believes that I will or should return to school. (I didn't enroll the spring semester.) That, too, is an old story. But, I have spent a lot of time with people who have been delimited by physical illness, mental illness, addiction, and poverty. One of the enduring effects of any of those conditions is the the lowering of expectations. Of being defined by what one can't do as opposed to what one can. And once you've bought that definition of yourself, you've taken over the maintenance of your oppression. Then it's game, set, match for the oppressor. Math is my instrument; public school students and adult learners are my audience. To have the math to work with them I have to do more coursework. It's as simple as that.
And last night I dreamed that I was in prison, but mysteriously released on furlough. I spent it at a bar with a friend talking and drinking coffee, surrounded by totebags of paperwork and clothing. I knew that I had to return to prison. My friend, who had been imprisoned but was now paroled left to catch the subway. I packed my bags, and then at the last minute decided I wasn't going back. Fuck it, I said to myself, I'm an old lady. Whadda they going to do to me?
Which is the attitude I've been taking now that I'm bike riding again, occasionally without a helmet after a (clears throat) 40 year interregnum. Cuthbert and even strangers counsel me to do otherwise. Of course they're right. I know all too well what can happen and godknows this city has more than its share of reckless and unlicensed drivers. But, oh freedom, and all of that. It feels so good to fly down the street and split the air.
Perhaps these latest dreams about about the poles of Freedom and Obligation. And the dance between the two as I enter my 60th year. Don't know; may never know. The sun's up; weeds await me.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Who Needs an AR-15 When You've Got a Seasoned Cast Iron Skillet?
In the annals of adaptive re-use I propose that every home be equipped with cast iron skillets. You can (if you are of that ilk) cook anything from a roast to vegetables to cornbread in them, and when your husband gets on your last nerve (as mine has) you can employ them as a disciplinary tool. (I believe in corporal punishment for grown adults.) Plus, even a good skillet costs far less than a good gun with all the ammo and licenses and camo.
I live in a state that is home to hunters. All kinds of people hunt here. Enjoy it. Part of how they were raised. yadda yadda. I have no problem with any of that. But where and why did all that morph into these Army of One nuts who sleep with one eye open because the government (and it's just a matter of time) is gonna get them?
In my limited experience, here's how the government of the US of A gets it's domestic enemies:
1. RICO (racketeering) prosecutions,
2. infiltration of organizations via wiretapping and informants thereby sowing the seeds of mistrust, e.g., COINTELPRO, and letting vanity, ego and paranoia do the rest,
3. persistent and relentless auditing by the IRS.
By the time the gov'mint whips out their guns, most of the damage is done.
So what if you haven't paid all your taxes? You just aren't that important, fella. Your hypervigilance about your own personal safety makes me wonder what you are so afraid of? But what is more worrisome to me than the kind of naivete that leads to thinking your door is the one getting kicked in at 4 am is the indifference of many of these folks to what we so quaintly used to call the common good. For them there are not even any arguable issues to be considered to balance the tension between individuals' possession (and use) of firearms and the safety of those who don't. And yeah, I've read the 2nd Amendment and could spend the rest of my life reading the judicial decisions that have flowed from it over the past 200+ years, but this has long since escaped being a jurisprudential argument and has become something else.
I live in a state that is home to hunters. All kinds of people hunt here. Enjoy it. Part of how they were raised. yadda yadda. I have no problem with any of that. But where and why did all that morph into these Army of One nuts who sleep with one eye open because the government (and it's just a matter of time) is gonna get them?
In my limited experience, here's how the government of the US of A gets it's domestic enemies:
1. RICO (racketeering) prosecutions,
2. infiltration of organizations via wiretapping and informants thereby sowing the seeds of mistrust, e.g., COINTELPRO, and letting vanity, ego and paranoia do the rest,
3. persistent and relentless auditing by the IRS.
By the time the gov'mint whips out their guns, most of the damage is done.
So what if you haven't paid all your taxes? You just aren't that important, fella. Your hypervigilance about your own personal safety makes me wonder what you are so afraid of? But what is more worrisome to me than the kind of naivete that leads to thinking your door is the one getting kicked in at 4 am is the indifference of many of these folks to what we so quaintly used to call the common good. For them there are not even any arguable issues to be considered to balance the tension between individuals' possession (and use) of firearms and the safety of those who don't. And yeah, I've read the 2nd Amendment and could spend the rest of my life reading the judicial decisions that have flowed from it over the past 200+ years, but this has long since escaped being a jurisprudential argument and has become something else.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
And the Winner Is ....
I don't care about the Oscars. I don't. And it's not sour grapes. I don't know if my indifference coalesced before I'd served on several award panels and saw up-close-and-personal how the sausage was made or if it happened because there were whole years of my adult life where I didn't see first-run films much less own a television or if it's just the fact that over the course of a life one loses interest in things whether it be Fashion Week, the novels of Jane Austen or bathing. Just don't know.
But, I am endlessly fascinated by by social psychology, group psychology, and the political science of cultural institutions and events. Here's what I think will happen -- either Steve McQueen will win Best Director and/or 12 Years A Slave will win Best Picture. Both deserve honor on merit alone, but to borrow from Mae West, merit has nothing to do with it. In this era where even a blind man can see that social inequality has broadened and hardened in this nation, why not make a grand and empty gesture to celebrate our American Redemption Story and Our Never-ending Struggle to Live Up to Our Ideals. With the added benefit that the film was an allegory set in the 19th century, and we are not like that now. Are we?
But, I am endlessly fascinated by by social psychology, group psychology, and the political science of cultural institutions and events. Here's what I think will happen -- either Steve McQueen will win Best Director and/or 12 Years A Slave will win Best Picture. Both deserve honor on merit alone, but to borrow from Mae West, merit has nothing to do with it. In this era where even a blind man can see that social inequality has broadened and hardened in this nation, why not make a grand and empty gesture to celebrate our American Redemption Story and Our Never-ending Struggle to Live Up to Our Ideals. With the added benefit that the film was an allegory set in the 19th century, and we are not like that now. Are we?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Wise Voices in CT About Education
I was teaching in NYC schools when No Child Left Behind avalanched into American education. For those of us who treasure creativity, novelty, self-teaching by exploration and an eclectic education the principles behind NCLB were alarming. Many teaching artists were both alarmed and wary of what it would mean for our work. The law and the school system's policies that followed from it fundamentally changed how and what we taught. And our revolutionary and transgressive roles in school were diminished.
It didn't take long before many of us turned our backs on the work. We would have left anyway. You can only work so long as an itinerant artist-educator. At some point you long for focussed commitment -- either to your art or the teaching. But even if I'd stayed longer, my analysis and critique of educational policy would have been disregarded. I had no juice. But the people I'm linking to do have juice. One is the legendary Dr. James Comer, whose work I'd known of since the 1980's and the other is the Superintendent of East Lyme, CT Schools, Dr. James Lombardo, interviewed yesterday on WNPR-FM's Where We Live. Lombardo wrote to Governor Malloy, Education Commissioner Pryor and others in state government enumerating just how wrong the "reform" initiatives the state is pursuing are and the false premises that led to them.
I hope these voices are part of a tide being turned. It may be too late for much of public education, but perhaps that's the point. I sometimes wonder if urban public education has become like early 20th settlement work. Upper class women, prior to their coming out balls that signified their ascension into society would work with The Poor. They performed charity work that by no means upended the systemic order of things. The status remained quo.
Anyway, the links:
New Haven Independent interview the Dr. Comer, and
WNPR.org story on Dr. Lombardo's letter to Malloy et al.
It didn't take long before many of us turned our backs on the work. We would have left anyway. You can only work so long as an itinerant artist-educator. At some point you long for focussed commitment -- either to your art or the teaching. But even if I'd stayed longer, my analysis and critique of educational policy would have been disregarded. I had no juice. But the people I'm linking to do have juice. One is the legendary Dr. James Comer, whose work I'd known of since the 1980's and the other is the Superintendent of East Lyme, CT Schools, Dr. James Lombardo, interviewed yesterday on WNPR-FM's Where We Live. Lombardo wrote to Governor Malloy, Education Commissioner Pryor and others in state government enumerating just how wrong the "reform" initiatives the state is pursuing are and the false premises that led to them.
I hope these voices are part of a tide being turned. It may be too late for much of public education, but perhaps that's the point. I sometimes wonder if urban public education has become like early 20th settlement work. Upper class women, prior to their coming out balls that signified their ascension into society would work with The Poor. They performed charity work that by no means upended the systemic order of things. The status remained quo.
Anyway, the links:
New Haven Independent interview the Dr. Comer, and
WNPR.org story on Dr. Lombardo's letter to Malloy et al.
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