For my daughter's first high school fancy-go-with-a-date dance, she went to homecoming. She was a freshman. He was a sophomore. I had bought a custom couture off-white (winter white) sleeveless shift at a garage sale next door. It was a very classy, Princess-Grace dress that was fancy even though it was simple clean lines. And it fit her like it had been made for her, emphasizing her emerging hips and bosom. She looked smoking hot. And I had only paid one dollar for the dress and none of the kids at her prep school ever knew it was not a hot, expensive dress.
The dress, as I wrote, was couture. It had the designer's label sewn on. I forget the designer's name but it was a name designer. I want to say it was John Galliano; it was most definitely 'couture'. Someone had gone to a very high end designer and ordered a customized dress for herself. It was gorgeous, inside and outside. All the seams had been covered in stretchy lace,as if to make the inside of the dress just as perfect appearing as the inside. The fabric was a bit puffy, with little 'bubbles' of lacey-like fabric. It was a lacey texture that appeared delicate but it was a sturdy, thick fabric. This was a solid, winter-white, post-Labor Day cocktail dress for fall or winter. There was one tiny spot where a few shreds in one of the little bubbles had come unwoven but not noticeable. I am still amazed she agreed to wear it because it was imperfect.Since she was not with me when I bought it, I did not know it would fit her as if it had been made for her. Rosie resisted touching used things. She hated to use library books, for example, because she did not know who had touched them. Yeah, she's got OCD issues.
I had the also good idea to buy, if we could find them, over-the-sleeve, off-white gloves. It was hard to find those gloves. We scored them at one of those cheap accessory stores. The fabric gave her a rash but she wore them anyway. It looked so Audrey Hepburn at Tiffany's. For cheap gloves, they still cost something but the dress bargain emboldened me to spend.
And then there was the matter of shoes. In October in Minnesota, you don't find a lot of shoes that match a winter- white fancy-dress. We went shopping for shoes for that dance, without exaggerating, at least eight times. And when my kid went shoe shopping, I discovered, one trip could take up an entire day and involve trying on a dozen pairs of heels. She could spend an hour with one pair even when it was instantly obvious to me and the sales person that the shoe wouldn't work. I remember feeling a lot of frustration over how long she took shopping for the perfect shoe. I had the impression she thought if we looked long enough, we'd find a pair of shoes that were also winter white. I had the good idea of asking shoe clerks if they thought we could find winter white shoes. After many shoe clerks told us "No way", Rosie e opened up to other possibilities.
Very shiny silver shoes would not have fit the look. We did find a nearly perfect pair so if looking perfect matters, all those hours shopping paid off. Sometimes I think of those shoes and the endless shopping to find them and I think that for that reason alone, Rosie should never have left me. I don't think many moms I have ever known would have been so doggedly patient or shopped so long for just a pair of shoes for a not very important dance. Love drove me.
She bought a pair of shoes the salesperson called 'pewter' but they weren't pewter. They were not gray, not gold, not silver but they had a shimmer, a muted shimmery tone. They were muted enough that you didn't really notice them, which, we decided, was as close as we were going to find to go with that dress. Note that the dress had probably been made in the fifties when pointed off-white heels would have been routinely sold after Labor Day each year and it would have been easy to find a perfect match. Altho the shoes were called pewter, I thought they were almost no color with some shimmer, a hint of glitz. Perfect for a h.s. dance. I remember that those shoes cost $60. A $1 garage sale dress, sixty dollar shoes which, in 1996, was a lot more money then than now, right?
I guess her OCD came out on that shoe expedition. For awhile, I felt like I had entered a rabbity hell-hole of endless shoe shopping in the Mall of America. If we couldn't find the right pair at the Mall of America, with Nordstrom's, Bloomingdale's, Dayton's (now Macy's but then, still Dayton's), plus the endless shoe stores in the endless mall, we would not find any. We covered shoes stores in the Uptown area, also downtown. Shoes.
I never questioned investing all that time on a quest for something that held virtually no personal value for me I recall a few moments of inner despair that I hid from her. In those moments, I felt like we were never going to find a pair of shoes she would accept. Rosie mattered to me. Dresses and shoes have never mattered to me. As a teen, I imitated my friends' interest in clothes but not since then. As a mother, however, I combed through every sale rack looking for bargains to please my fashion conscious child.
She went with a shimmering, metallic pair that weren't really any color. A neutral shimmer with a glitzy buckle on the closed toe. The shoes cost sixty bucks in 1996, which sounds cheap now but it was a lot to pay for shoes she was going to wear once. By the time she settled on this pair -- and we visited that pair several times before the decision was made -- she had tried them at least five times.
And we talked about this purchase ad nauseum during these weeks of shoe shop hell. It started out as fun mom-daughter shopping but by the end, it was hell. For me. I think she loved all that shopping. Looking back, I feel sorry that I treated myself as I did. And her. I should have set more limits. I should have told her that if she wanted to shop endlessly for shoes, she could but she would have to do it alone, or with girlfriends. The shoe search became nauseating for me and yet I did not let on, not wishing to make the shoe search even more stressful.
An easy part of the shop was buying a cheap pair of long, above the elbows, off-white satin-like gloves. The gloves were my idea and it really set off the whole look. At later dances, some of her girlfriends wore gloves in imitation, as teens imitate one another. But when other girls added gloves, they didn't pull it off. Long, above-the-elbow gloves at a spring dance with a floor-length ballgown just doesn't look the same as a light mini dress with very lightweight, satin-appearing over-the-elblow gloves. Plus the other girls did not have Rosie's elegant, Princess Grace lightness. The gloves were super cheap, at one of those super cheap accessory shops. The gloves gave her hives on her arms but she kept them on, the look irresistible even to her itching self. As soon as she said good bye to her date and stepped into our home, she pulled them off. Her arms where the gloves had been were covered in allergy hives. She said it was worth the itching. That everyone at the dance had noticed her and her date had said he was with the hottest girl in the school. She liked me then. She didn't even know formal gloves existed until I suggested them. As I grew up, it was common for girls to wear white gloves for going to church and especially for fancy events, like weddings. When I suggested gloves to Rosie, she had never heard of dress gloves as a fancy-dress accessory.
When I first met her dad, he was newly graduated from law school, with a lawyer job. He bought several business suits and we went shopping together. Men's suit pants are custom hemmed for each men. You can choose (at least back then) a plain hem or a cuff. If you go with a cuff, you choose the height of the cuff. One and three quarter inch cuff? Two inch cuff? And where did you want the slacks to break, at the knee, just below the knee and how did the cuff fall on his shoes. I was just dating the guy but being a good girlfriend, I helped him shop. Shopping with him was nearly identical to shopping with Rosie. He would takes ages to choose a suit, then ages to agonize over the length of the pants, the break at the knee, the height of the cuff or even whether there should be a cuff. And shirts to match. Ties to match. What is wrong with me that I went along on what were, for me, such stresfully boring outings, spending my weekends shopping obsessively for perfection when I never really cared much about clothes. I am an idiot. I did all that endless shopping because I loved them. I am a chump.
He would call me about the cuffs. For his first suit, and I don't think I am exaggerating, I think he called me fifty times about 'to-cuff-or-not-to-cuff' and 'one and three quarter inch versus two inches'. He would call at 12:04 a.m. and ask 'cuff or not cuff, tell me what you really think'. At first, I could debate the pros and cons of the choices he presented. He would call at 12:22 a.m., then at 12:25, then at 12:42 and 12:51. Et ce tera. Etcetera. Etcetera.
After awhile, I would beg him to stop asking me. And eventually I had to unplug the phone if I wanted to end the calls for the day. And then they started up. We actually had a joint session with his therapist about the cuff calls. The therapist said it was okay for me to refuse to take a dozen calls a day about the same damned pair of cuffs. The therapist suggested I say "It is only one pair of pants, one set of cuffs, the height doesn't matter. One and three quarter inch or two inch. It doesn't matter. I'm hanging up now."And I did say those things and the cuff calls stopped. But there were other situations just like that. Endlessly.
And I married him.
I don't remember if he respected the agreement.
But when our daughter obsessed about finding the perfect pair of shoes for that dance, and I went along with her crazy obsessive shoe search, I felt very much as I had felt with the cuff debate. And I always assumed her OCD stuff came from him.
I went along with the behavior. Does that mean I was also OCD, just OCD about different things?
What should I have done? People tell you not to indulge the obsessions of your obsessive child but for the child, it is a very painful, real struggle. It wasn't really her 'fault' that she got snagged by the shoe shop. Was I supposed to amp up the stress by arbitrarily refusing to shop or just buying any old pair of shoes?
I probably made all wrong choices. But I spent a whole lot of my real life shopping for those shoes. And she still abandoned me once she got into the Ivy League. She waived around that campus and said "Now that I am here, I don't want anything to do with you" and I have not seen her since.
One time, I sat in one dressing room at a downtown Minneapolis Dayton's dressing room in the junior jeans section for 6 hours. It was a Sunday. We got there when the store opened at noon. We were there until the store closed at six p.m. She tried on many dozens of pairs of jeans. And I went on other crazy jean shops. Buying jeans brought out lots of stress.
I think she should still love me, for the shoes and the jean shopping and all the love I poured.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Friday, April 08, 2011
beggars, panhandlers and me, oh my
I wonder what kind of money beggars in downtown Berkeley receive. I am wondering, in particular, about the regulars. I don't think the regulars in my neighborhood are homeless. I think there are a couple beggars in my neighborhood who beg as their hobby, it is how they hang out.
There is one woman who begs throughout the day most days near the intersection of Kittredge and Shattuck, which is where the downtown public library is. I am curious: why has she chosen this intersection? She moves from bench to bench and I don't know where she is when she isn't at this intersection but I think this is her begging corner.
Once I got on a bus, in another part of Berkeley, and she was already seated on the bus, near the front. She asked every single person that got on the bus and then passed her "Can you spare some change?" I was startled. For some reason, I thought asking every single person that passes was limited to the street. It seems more invasive to do this on the bus. Esp. this woman, who has a shrill, whining voice that is comparable to listening to cats fighting in your back ally in the middle of the night. Meow, shriek, whine. She was whining and shrieking just as loudly on the bus, in the exact same tone. She never changes what she says, except gender. "Mister, can you spare some change?" or "Miss, can you spare some change?"
When she first appeared -- she was not here when I first moved here -- she asked me each time I passed. I cross her intersection several times every day so I pass her a lot. Now she just hits me once a day. I have never given her money and I never will. I am absolutely sure she is not homeless. On the bus, she had a purse and a destination and she was coming from somewhere. Since her 'work' is begging at Kittredge and Shattuck and she was coming from somewhere and going somewhere,
There is one woman who begs throughout the day most days near the intersection of Kittredge and Shattuck, which is where the downtown public library is. I am curious: why has she chosen this intersection? She moves from bench to bench and I don't know where she is when she isn't at this intersection but I think this is her begging corner.
Once I got on a bus, in another part of Berkeley, and she was already seated on the bus, near the front. She asked every single person that got on the bus and then passed her "Can you spare some change?" I was startled. For some reason, I thought asking every single person that passes was limited to the street. It seems more invasive to do this on the bus. Esp. this woman, who has a shrill, whining voice that is comparable to listening to cats fighting in your back ally in the middle of the night. Meow, shriek, whine. She was whining and shrieking just as loudly on the bus, in the exact same tone. She never changes what she says, except gender. "Mister, can you spare some change?" or "Miss, can you spare some change?"
When she first appeared -- she was not here when I first moved here -- she asked me each time I passed. I cross her intersection several times every day so I pass her a lot. Now she just hits me once a day. I have never given her money and I never will. I am absolutely sure she is not homeless. On the bus, she had a purse and a destination and she was coming from somewhere. Since her 'work' is begging at Kittredge and Shattuck and she was coming from somewhere and going somewhere,
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
flahoolick, seanahai, Gaelic, Traeloch
There is a story in the San Francisco Chronicle today about Irish coffee, which SF, I just learned, considers a San Francisco treat. The article references the word flahoolick as an Irish word. I have always thought the language spoken by fewer and fewer Irishmen was Gaelic, although the words Irish and Gaelic might be interchangeable.
A few years ago, I had some dental surgery done by an hot young Irish dentist who was training in America to do implants. There was no place in Ireland to learn implants and Traeloch, the first name of my cute studmuffin dentist, said that the future was implants. I kept hearing the businessman in the movie 'The Graduate' telling the Dustin Hoffman character that the future was in plastics.
Traeloch went to dental school straight out of high school. That's how it goes there. Kids choose professions around age 18. Then he worked in his dad's dental practice a few years until he bit the bullet and came to America to learn implants. His ma was worried that an American gal would scoop him up and he would not return home but he loved Ireland, he told me, in his lilting, sexy broque, and how could he be living his life anywhere else? American girls were fine lasses, but he would not allow himself to fall in love until he had returned home. I didn't say what I was thinking, that love can sometimes come upon us without our planning or choice.
Traeloch told me that his first language was Gaelic. And he very graciously accepted me into the tribe of being Irish.
My point: Traeloch was adamant: his first language was not Irish. It was Gaelic.
I just read, maybe on Wikipedia, that only 72,000 Irish folks speak Gaelic in their daily langauge transactions. Traeloch must be one of them. He told me he speaks Gaelic at home, always had but, of course, he spoke English with me.
The Chron informs us that flahoolick is Gaelic for generous. My da was flahoolick. I received my gifts from my dad. I think his generosity was one of his finest. One of my favorite stories about my da is what he said when I told him had become engaged. He said "I learned a long time ago that you can't tell your kids what to do, they are going to do what they want, and I have tried not to talk about any of the people my kids have dated, but this guy, Tree, are you sure about him? The one thing I'll say against him is that he is cheap. I could say more but let's just leave it at cheap. I'd hate to see you going through life with a guy who is going to make you pinch every nickel before you spend it."
That's the only time I have ever heard someone characterize the trait of being cheap by saying the cheap person pinches every nickel. I still hear my father's Irish milieu as a young man, when he would have interacted almost exclusively with other first generation Irish American men. If they were me dad's pals, they were gamblers, too. Gamblers aren't cheap, not my dad's kind. And my ex-husband was cheap. He never made me pinch a nickel but he did seem to hate spending every cent he ever spent and he was sure that whatever he spent could have bought more.
Contrast this story about my ex with the above story about my long gone father, who was very flawed and abused me in many ways, but, like all humans, he has lots of good streams in him. My dad's finest stream was his love for his children.
The ex-husband story. Once, when we were still dating, not yet engaged, the ex and I met at a restaurant downtown, during happy hour, of course, for the cheap drinks. We got there at the beginning of happy hour, we drank a lot cause he always drank a lot. And he was sure to order a last round during the last minute of happy hour for that last extra bargain. And then we ordered food. We sat at that table for at least three hours. He paid the bill. This was the seventies, what can I say. The guy paid on dates, esp. my guy. Even if I covered my part of the bill, or even if I paid the whole thing, he insisted on making a show of paying, being the guy paying. So he pays the bill and we leave. This was a very early date. This also tells you something about me cause I kept on dating him. As we walked to our car, nearly a block from the restaurant, the waiter caught up with us, his face red with anger, but, I sensed, his anger warming him in the winter cold. He waived his fist as he spoke. He said "I can't believe you completely stiffed me. You sat at my table for three hours and you don't leave me anything?" My ex, dressed in his first-lawyer-job suit was probably embarassed but I didn't know him well then and did not yet know that when he became embarrassed, he got angry and then abusive. Not that knowing this would make it more acceptable. I just observe how naive I was. He shook his fist back at the waiter and said "I venture to guess that your manager will be disappointed to hear that you have come out here to yell at his customers. You are out of place. I am going to report you."
All these years later, I still remember that phrase, 'I venture to guess'. He used that phrase whenever he was feeling pompous. And dang if the asshole didn't march up to the payphone at the parking lot entrance (pre-cell phone life!) and call the restaurant to complain. And, I am sorry to say, the manager made the waiter call the ex later to apologize.
I longed to go back to that restaurant and leave the guy some money and apologize. I remember considering doing that. And a part of me wants to turn that longing into the memory of having actuall done that, having actually made some amends.
After that, I always hung back after the bill was paid when I was out with my ex and snuck tips on the table.
Not long after, maybe at his graduation weekend (he had graduated a semester early so he didn't walk n his gown until he had been working six months as a lawyer), we went out with his mom and sister. They chose one of those food buffets, all you can eat. At one point when my ex had gone to the men's room, I told them the story about the waiter angry with no tip. Get this. While I recounted the story, my ex-mother-in-law and ex-sister-in-law, who was a surgery resident and is now, of course, a surgeon who owns several clinics and makes millions annually, they were stuffing their purses with fried chicken so my ex could eat off the all-you-can-eat-buffet after they had gone home to Hicksville. I should have put the purloined chicken together with the no tip. My ex-mother-in-law, who was just my boyfriend's mother at the time, said, in her bad grammar English that still makes me winces when I just hear it in memories, said "I tell you what, hon, I say anyone stupid enough to work for a dollar an hour deserves a dollar an hour. If the best job they can get is waiter, they must be no good. They don't deserve more. I aint gonna pay someone to do their job. That's their problem, not mine." I actually pointed out that prices in restaurants were based on the fact that the restaurant's overhead did not include the full salary of the waitstaff, that the price of restaurant meals should always be assumed to include a freely given payment for the service. Those women laughed at me. They also concluded that I was not a good match for their boy. They were right, of course, but I did not admit that defeat for several years and one baby later.
Fast forward a couple years to the birth of our daughter. My dad came to visit, go to the races at Aksarben Race Track and see the College World Series. He insisted on taking us all out for a fancy Sunday brunch at a fancy downtown hotel but then my husband, Mr. Bigshot, insisted on paying, which was okay with my dad. He would have been happy to pay and he was also happy to accept my husband's gift. My dad was always generous when he had any ready, and always ashamed when he didn't. Dad didn't mind being broke. He minded being unable to be generous. . He also knew that my husband had an overdeveloped self-conscious pride in what defined his manhood and he knew that my husband needed to pay that brunch bill to show off. A little bit of a manly pissing match only my husband didn't realize he was the only one competing.
So dad let him pay. Then, as usual, I excused myself to go to the restroom but my real agenda was to sneak back to the table to leave a tip. My dad also excused himself to use the restroom. The womans room was around one side, the men's room around the other and behind them both was the dining room. So my dad and I saw one another as we both approached the table with our tip. We laughed and left both our tips, leaving the waiter a lot of tip money cause me and dad were both always big tippers. My best brother is a waiter and my dad had always been very insistent on tipping well. Sometimes he would just get coffee in a shop but leave several dollars in tips when coffee cost a quarter cause he knew his time at the counter cost the waitress other men's tips. I loved my dad so much for leaving that tip. And I loved us both for leaving that double tip. How much did you leave, I asked him, laughing, as we walked back to the husband. How much did you leave, he laughed, as we realized we had both overcompensated a lot. Then we settled down, hiding our laugh so the husband wouldn't demand to know what we were laughing about.
My dad had a hole in him. He didn't get something he needed as a child, I think, and that wound drifted with him through life. The only real happiness he ever had was loving his kids. And my mom. He lived twenty years after she left him. He never got over it. My mom loved my dad. I think she left him because she wanted to leave the life she was living, with too many kids, not enough money. She chose just as wrongly as I did. She never really wanted to have kids but in nineteen fifties small town South Dakota, especially if you were Catholic, about all you could do was get married and have kids. She wanted to be an artist but this culture discourages most young people with such an impractical ambition. Artists starve. Writers starve.
Now I am feeling sad again. It was more fun thinking about Traeloch and Gaelic coffee.
Oh, I almost forgot. Senahai is Gaelic for storyteller. I am a seanahai. I am not sure how to spell it.
A few years ago, I had some dental surgery done by an hot young Irish dentist who was training in America to do implants. There was no place in Ireland to learn implants and Traeloch, the first name of my cute studmuffin dentist, said that the future was implants. I kept hearing the businessman in the movie 'The Graduate' telling the Dustin Hoffman character that the future was in plastics.
Traeloch went to dental school straight out of high school. That's how it goes there. Kids choose professions around age 18. Then he worked in his dad's dental practice a few years until he bit the bullet and came to America to learn implants. His ma was worried that an American gal would scoop him up and he would not return home but he loved Ireland, he told me, in his lilting, sexy broque, and how could he be living his life anywhere else? American girls were fine lasses, but he would not allow himself to fall in love until he had returned home. I didn't say what I was thinking, that love can sometimes come upon us without our planning or choice.
Traeloch told me that his first language was Gaelic. And he very graciously accepted me into the tribe of being Irish.
My point: Traeloch was adamant: his first language was not Irish. It was Gaelic.
I just read, maybe on Wikipedia, that only 72,000 Irish folks speak Gaelic in their daily langauge transactions. Traeloch must be one of them. He told me he speaks Gaelic at home, always had but, of course, he spoke English with me.
The Chron informs us that flahoolick is Gaelic for generous. My da was flahoolick. I received my gifts from my dad. I think his generosity was one of his finest. One of my favorite stories about my da is what he said when I told him had become engaged. He said "I learned a long time ago that you can't tell your kids what to do, they are going to do what they want, and I have tried not to talk about any of the people my kids have dated, but this guy, Tree, are you sure about him? The one thing I'll say against him is that he is cheap. I could say more but let's just leave it at cheap. I'd hate to see you going through life with a guy who is going to make you pinch every nickel before you spend it."
That's the only time I have ever heard someone characterize the trait of being cheap by saying the cheap person pinches every nickel. I still hear my father's Irish milieu as a young man, when he would have interacted almost exclusively with other first generation Irish American men. If they were me dad's pals, they were gamblers, too. Gamblers aren't cheap, not my dad's kind. And my ex-husband was cheap. He never made me pinch a nickel but he did seem to hate spending every cent he ever spent and he was sure that whatever he spent could have bought more.
Contrast this story about my ex with the above story about my long gone father, who was very flawed and abused me in many ways, but, like all humans, he has lots of good streams in him. My dad's finest stream was his love for his children.
The ex-husband story. Once, when we were still dating, not yet engaged, the ex and I met at a restaurant downtown, during happy hour, of course, for the cheap drinks. We got there at the beginning of happy hour, we drank a lot cause he always drank a lot. And he was sure to order a last round during the last minute of happy hour for that last extra bargain. And then we ordered food. We sat at that table for at least three hours. He paid the bill. This was the seventies, what can I say. The guy paid on dates, esp. my guy. Even if I covered my part of the bill, or even if I paid the whole thing, he insisted on making a show of paying, being the guy paying. So he pays the bill and we leave. This was a very early date. This also tells you something about me cause I kept on dating him. As we walked to our car, nearly a block from the restaurant, the waiter caught up with us, his face red with anger, but, I sensed, his anger warming him in the winter cold. He waived his fist as he spoke. He said "I can't believe you completely stiffed me. You sat at my table for three hours and you don't leave me anything?" My ex, dressed in his first-lawyer-job suit was probably embarassed but I didn't know him well then and did not yet know that when he became embarrassed, he got angry and then abusive. Not that knowing this would make it more acceptable. I just observe how naive I was. He shook his fist back at the waiter and said "I venture to guess that your manager will be disappointed to hear that you have come out here to yell at his customers. You are out of place. I am going to report you."
All these years later, I still remember that phrase, 'I venture to guess'. He used that phrase whenever he was feeling pompous. And dang if the asshole didn't march up to the payphone at the parking lot entrance (pre-cell phone life!) and call the restaurant to complain. And, I am sorry to say, the manager made the waiter call the ex later to apologize.
I longed to go back to that restaurant and leave the guy some money and apologize. I remember considering doing that. And a part of me wants to turn that longing into the memory of having actuall done that, having actually made some amends.
After that, I always hung back after the bill was paid when I was out with my ex and snuck tips on the table.
Not long after, maybe at his graduation weekend (he had graduated a semester early so he didn't walk n his gown until he had been working six months as a lawyer), we went out with his mom and sister. They chose one of those food buffets, all you can eat. At one point when my ex had gone to the men's room, I told them the story about the waiter angry with no tip. Get this. While I recounted the story, my ex-mother-in-law and ex-sister-in-law, who was a surgery resident and is now, of course, a surgeon who owns several clinics and makes millions annually, they were stuffing their purses with fried chicken so my ex could eat off the all-you-can-eat-buffet after they had gone home to Hicksville. I should have put the purloined chicken together with the no tip. My ex-mother-in-law, who was just my boyfriend's mother at the time, said, in her bad grammar English that still makes me winces when I just hear it in memories, said "I tell you what, hon, I say anyone stupid enough to work for a dollar an hour deserves a dollar an hour. If the best job they can get is waiter, they must be no good. They don't deserve more. I aint gonna pay someone to do their job. That's their problem, not mine." I actually pointed out that prices in restaurants were based on the fact that the restaurant's overhead did not include the full salary of the waitstaff, that the price of restaurant meals should always be assumed to include a freely given payment for the service. Those women laughed at me. They also concluded that I was not a good match for their boy. They were right, of course, but I did not admit that defeat for several years and one baby later.
Fast forward a couple years to the birth of our daughter. My dad came to visit, go to the races at Aksarben Race Track and see the College World Series. He insisted on taking us all out for a fancy Sunday brunch at a fancy downtown hotel but then my husband, Mr. Bigshot, insisted on paying, which was okay with my dad. He would have been happy to pay and he was also happy to accept my husband's gift. My dad was always generous when he had any ready, and always ashamed when he didn't. Dad didn't mind being broke. He minded being unable to be generous. . He also knew that my husband had an overdeveloped self-conscious pride in what defined his manhood and he knew that my husband needed to pay that brunch bill to show off. A little bit of a manly pissing match only my husband didn't realize he was the only one competing.
So dad let him pay. Then, as usual, I excused myself to go to the restroom but my real agenda was to sneak back to the table to leave a tip. My dad also excused himself to use the restroom. The womans room was around one side, the men's room around the other and behind them both was the dining room. So my dad and I saw one another as we both approached the table with our tip. We laughed and left both our tips, leaving the waiter a lot of tip money cause me and dad were both always big tippers. My best brother is a waiter and my dad had always been very insistent on tipping well. Sometimes he would just get coffee in a shop but leave several dollars in tips when coffee cost a quarter cause he knew his time at the counter cost the waitress other men's tips. I loved my dad so much for leaving that tip. And I loved us both for leaving that double tip. How much did you leave, I asked him, laughing, as we walked back to the husband. How much did you leave, he laughed, as we realized we had both overcompensated a lot. Then we settled down, hiding our laugh so the husband wouldn't demand to know what we were laughing about.
My dad had a hole in him. He didn't get something he needed as a child, I think, and that wound drifted with him through life. The only real happiness he ever had was loving his kids. And my mom. He lived twenty years after she left him. He never got over it. My mom loved my dad. I think she left him because she wanted to leave the life she was living, with too many kids, not enough money. She chose just as wrongly as I did. She never really wanted to have kids but in nineteen fifties small town South Dakota, especially if you were Catholic, about all you could do was get married and have kids. She wanted to be an artist but this culture discourages most young people with such an impractical ambition. Artists starve. Writers starve.
Now I am feeling sad again. It was more fun thinking about Traeloch and Gaelic coffee.
Oh, I almost forgot. Senahai is Gaelic for storyteller. I am a seanahai. I am not sure how to spell it.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Katie: I love you
Katie, after almost ten years of refusing to see me, yes, it would be hard to reconnect. But worth it. I love you. You love me. Yes, it will be hard. Come back. You can give me contact info in the comments on my blog. Kiss kiss. Life can be hard. You suck it up and get over it and then life is happy again. Come back.
geek but not in a good way
I sometimes fantasize that I would like to be a tech geek, and when I say 'tech geek' I mean someone that knows about software coding, like maybe a software engineer or someone would could be involved in creating very cool online games, not so much the visual coding but the strategy coding, which, for all I know, might be the same kind of thinking.
But I have to settle for feeling like a savant when I do something like I did today: I set up my Airport Express wifi connection in my apartment. And then, in the same time frame in which I was tinkering with the wifi toy, I got another delivery from apple: a new battery for the laptop.
Basically, you plug in the wifi gizmo, pop in the CD with the software, hit install, then continue continue continue until the wifi is turned on in your laptop. For the battery, you open the laptop, pop out the old, slide in the new, walk around the corner to FedEx to send the old one back so apple doesn't gouge me $129. My old battery under warranty but they will charge me if I don't turn it around fast enough. Technically I had ten days from the day it shipped but the turnaround mailer said I had one day so I got all obsessive compulsive and I had to march down to FedEx asap (as soon as possible). I kinda hate it when I get obsessive like that about a very teeny tiny unimportant thing. If I had waited a few hours, or a few days Apple would not have cheated me. But, whew, it's over. I sent it back.
I bought a refurbished laptop. I wonder what happened to my machine before it came to live with me. The battery never worked right. The big buzz with macbook pro lithium batteries was six to eight hours of battery life but I never got more than an hour or so. It didn't matter much cause I haven't been traveling and I always take my plug. But it matters. It was defective. I called about the battery once, when the machine was new, and the service guy cajoled me into giving it time. As if the battery would what, fix itself? I get it time. I gave it a year and a half and lately the battery life was, no kidding, about ten minutes. Unacceptable, even in a 1.5 year old battery.
So I talked to apple a few times. A guy told me how to recalibrate the battery. Basically, you charge it to the max, then you let it go to sleep on its own once you unplug the power cord and then you let it sleep at least five hours. In other words, I had recalibrated that frakking battery daily for months cause I charge it daily, snuff it out daily, and then let it recharge overnight. But the guy promised me that if I did it one more time and the battery still didn't work, I'd get a new one. So I obeyed him. Then I called, using the work order reference number Apple gave me, and the new guy starts analyzing the problem all over. The new guy didn't even bother to check the old work order. The new guy had me turning the machine off and on, holding down many buttons, opening and shutting. Pissing me off. He even made me repeate my home phone. I said "If you have the work order from the last time I spent an hour on the phone with an apple service tech, why do you need to ask for my phone number again? It has not changed since two days ago?" And I said "The last guy said if the recalibration didn't work, apple would send me a new battery. How long do I have to play with you to get you to do what the last guy promised? Do we have to do all the same stuff again first?" And then amazingly, tech guy #2 said "Okay, I'll send you a battery." And he did.
This battery has always been hinky. I hope the new one works. But if it doesn't, then it is the machine.
This machine must have had some initial malfunction, something to cause it to be refurbished. I have already gotten a new motherboard, which is like a whole new computer, right? And then the dvd/cd drive had to be replaced. It would not play music. So maybe something is wrong with the on-off-power something. So far, the new battery acting strange. When I first plugged it in, my computer indicated it would take 1.17 hours to recharge it. Now, two hours later, the computer indicates it will take 1.25 hours to fully recharge. What is wrong with that picture?
Anyway. I feel like a tech smartie just cause I hooked up the airport express and popped in the new battery. Woo-whee, look at me. Geek grandma. I should be a grandma. I covered that the other day.
But I have to settle for feeling like a savant when I do something like I did today: I set up my Airport Express wifi connection in my apartment. And then, in the same time frame in which I was tinkering with the wifi toy, I got another delivery from apple: a new battery for the laptop.
Basically, you plug in the wifi gizmo, pop in the CD with the software, hit install, then continue continue continue until the wifi is turned on in your laptop. For the battery, you open the laptop, pop out the old, slide in the new, walk around the corner to FedEx to send the old one back so apple doesn't gouge me $129. My old battery under warranty but they will charge me if I don't turn it around fast enough. Technically I had ten days from the day it shipped but the turnaround mailer said I had one day so I got all obsessive compulsive and I had to march down to FedEx asap (as soon as possible). I kinda hate it when I get obsessive like that about a very teeny tiny unimportant thing. If I had waited a few hours, or a few days Apple would not have cheated me. But, whew, it's over. I sent it back.
I bought a refurbished laptop. I wonder what happened to my machine before it came to live with me. The battery never worked right. The big buzz with macbook pro lithium batteries was six to eight hours of battery life but I never got more than an hour or so. It didn't matter much cause I haven't been traveling and I always take my plug. But it matters. It was defective. I called about the battery once, when the machine was new, and the service guy cajoled me into giving it time. As if the battery would what, fix itself? I get it time. I gave it a year and a half and lately the battery life was, no kidding, about ten minutes. Unacceptable, even in a 1.5 year old battery.
So I talked to apple a few times. A guy told me how to recalibrate the battery. Basically, you charge it to the max, then you let it go to sleep on its own once you unplug the power cord and then you let it sleep at least five hours. In other words, I had recalibrated that frakking battery daily for months cause I charge it daily, snuff it out daily, and then let it recharge overnight. But the guy promised me that if I did it one more time and the battery still didn't work, I'd get a new one. So I obeyed him. Then I called, using the work order reference number Apple gave me, and the new guy starts analyzing the problem all over. The new guy didn't even bother to check the old work order. The new guy had me turning the machine off and on, holding down many buttons, opening and shutting. Pissing me off. He even made me repeate my home phone. I said "If you have the work order from the last time I spent an hour on the phone with an apple service tech, why do you need to ask for my phone number again? It has not changed since two days ago?" And I said "The last guy said if the recalibration didn't work, apple would send me a new battery. How long do I have to play with you to get you to do what the last guy promised? Do we have to do all the same stuff again first?" And then amazingly, tech guy #2 said "Okay, I'll send you a battery." And he did.
This battery has always been hinky. I hope the new one works. But if it doesn't, then it is the machine.
This machine must have had some initial malfunction, something to cause it to be refurbished. I have already gotten a new motherboard, which is like a whole new computer, right? And then the dvd/cd drive had to be replaced. It would not play music. So maybe something is wrong with the on-off-power something. So far, the new battery acting strange. When I first plugged it in, my computer indicated it would take 1.17 hours to recharge it. Now, two hours later, the computer indicates it will take 1.25 hours to fully recharge. What is wrong with that picture?
Anyway. I feel like a tech smartie just cause I hooked up the airport express and popped in the new battery. Woo-whee, look at me. Geek grandma. I should be a grandma. I covered that the other day.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
I should be a grandma
In a way, me being a mother was all about being a grandma. I was born to be a grandma. I bring many qualifications to the table, of course, but I think I would make a super stellar long-distance grandma. I totally rock the whole concept of gift boxes.
If I had a grandbaby right now, for example, I would be sending the Rosemary Wells boxed-set of stories called "Voyage to the Bunny Planet". This was originally a set of three tiny books about bunnies, which came in a box. It has since been published as one book, with three stories, but the tiny box with three tiny books is best. Clearly, Wells is riffing off the Peter Rabbit stories, which also have a history of being published in teeny, tiny books with beautiful illustrations. Bunnies are adorable. The Peter Rabbit tales do other adorable animals, like Jemima Puddleduck. And cats are involved. But bunnies are probably the cutest of cute animals. And bunnies are all about Easter, although sure, chicks are also cute.
Bunnies. Spring time cometh. Easter is next month. It is time to be reading about bunnies to children you love.
But I aint got any babies or bunnies, no anywhere there. Come to think of it, this would be a perfectly good time to get into Winnie the Pooh. A.A. Milne did a couple books of children's poems that rocked my childhood. One of Milne's kid poetry books was "When We Were Very Young" and the other one "Now We Are Six". Both books are awesome. At the end of one of those books, the kid in the poem wants a rabbit but there weren't rabbits anywhere. So, moping, he goes for a walk to the end of the town and there are rabbits everywhere.
Blah blah blah.
Rosemary Wells does a contemporary spin. Her bunnies are just as adorable as Beatrix Potter's rabbits but the stories are more contemporary. Potter started out, I think, as a nature illustrator. Wells is also a gifted illustrator but her stories have more lightness for me.
And when you have a dumpling toddler you love sitting on your lap and you read First Tomato, life is perfect. And you might as well talk to the plumpling about growing tomatoes and talk about the garden. It is time to be planting tomatoes, at least where I live. Where I raised my dumpling, it is too soon to plant tomatoes but not too soon to begin imagining the garden for the year.
There are many fun aspects to growing tomatoes. What is the most important? Hard to choose, but in this moment, I wish I had a toddler on my lap. I would talk to him about the magic of planting a microscopic seed (maybe explain that word: it is so much fun to explain everything to a smart child), put it under the top of the ground, cover it, water it. And then ask the child to imagine what the seed will do. Does it get wet? How does the seed respond to the wet, to the soil, the dark? Does the seed feel itself changing? What would change first?
At some point, we know, a tomato seed responds to its environment. It changes. How do such changes begin? What happens first? And then what happens next? How does a seed grow? How does a seed change from being a seed to being a tiny plant, to rising up in the soil into the sun? Does the plant long to feel the sunlight, is that what makes it grow out of the dirt? How does the urge to feel sunlight get put in the seed? Magic? Love? Spirit? Think about it honey, for this is the story of life.
These are the kinds of things I would natter about to any grandbabies on my lap.
I am not lonely for grown ups. I am lonely for children. I have a lot to tell some lucky kids. Kids would be lucky to know me. And if we found ourselves talking tomatoes early enough in the day, we might go out and buy some and make something with tomatoes. I am thinking I'd like to make tomato soup from scratch and have grilled cheese sandwiches. What would we have to buy? The child (or children) and I would work this out.
What a great day that would be.
An old friend just visited. She has two granddaughters, age two and four. I am not exactly jealous. I am glad my friend has those girls in her life. Where am I going to get a grandbaby? I'd even take a boy.
If I had a grandbaby right now, for example, I would be sending the Rosemary Wells boxed-set of stories called "Voyage to the Bunny Planet". This was originally a set of three tiny books about bunnies, which came in a box. It has since been published as one book, with three stories, but the tiny box with three tiny books is best. Clearly, Wells is riffing off the Peter Rabbit stories, which also have a history of being published in teeny, tiny books with beautiful illustrations. Bunnies are adorable. The Peter Rabbit tales do other adorable animals, like Jemima Puddleduck. And cats are involved. But bunnies are probably the cutest of cute animals. And bunnies are all about Easter, although sure, chicks are also cute.
Bunnies. Spring time cometh. Easter is next month. It is time to be reading about bunnies to children you love.
But I aint got any babies or bunnies, no anywhere there. Come to think of it, this would be a perfectly good time to get into Winnie the Pooh. A.A. Milne did a couple books of children's poems that rocked my childhood. One of Milne's kid poetry books was "When We Were Very Young" and the other one "Now We Are Six". Both books are awesome. At the end of one of those books, the kid in the poem wants a rabbit but there weren't rabbits anywhere. So, moping, he goes for a walk to the end of the town and there are rabbits everywhere.
Blah blah blah.
Rosemary Wells does a contemporary spin. Her bunnies are just as adorable as Beatrix Potter's rabbits but the stories are more contemporary. Potter started out, I think, as a nature illustrator. Wells is also a gifted illustrator but her stories have more lightness for me.
And when you have a dumpling toddler you love sitting on your lap and you read First Tomato, life is perfect. And you might as well talk to the plumpling about growing tomatoes and talk about the garden. It is time to be planting tomatoes, at least where I live. Where I raised my dumpling, it is too soon to plant tomatoes but not too soon to begin imagining the garden for the year.
There are many fun aspects to growing tomatoes. What is the most important? Hard to choose, but in this moment, I wish I had a toddler on my lap. I would talk to him about the magic of planting a microscopic seed (maybe explain that word: it is so much fun to explain everything to a smart child), put it under the top of the ground, cover it, water it. And then ask the child to imagine what the seed will do. Does it get wet? How does the seed respond to the wet, to the soil, the dark? Does the seed feel itself changing? What would change first?
At some point, we know, a tomato seed responds to its environment. It changes. How do such changes begin? What happens first? And then what happens next? How does a seed grow? How does a seed change from being a seed to being a tiny plant, to rising up in the soil into the sun? Does the plant long to feel the sunlight, is that what makes it grow out of the dirt? How does the urge to feel sunlight get put in the seed? Magic? Love? Spirit? Think about it honey, for this is the story of life.
These are the kinds of things I would natter about to any grandbabies on my lap.
I am not lonely for grown ups. I am lonely for children. I have a lot to tell some lucky kids. Kids would be lucky to know me. And if we found ourselves talking tomatoes early enough in the day, we might go out and buy some and make something with tomatoes. I am thinking I'd like to make tomato soup from scratch and have grilled cheese sandwiches. What would we have to buy? The child (or children) and I would work this out.
What a great day that would be.
An old friend just visited. She has two granddaughters, age two and four. I am not exactly jealous. I am glad my friend has those girls in her life. Where am I going to get a grandbaby? I'd even take a boy.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
leftovers
I had some leftover spinach paneer, some yummily creamy spinach with yellow lentils, from a takeout order. And I had some not-bad frozen falafel from Trader Joe's. Neither was enough for dinner but together, wow. I just had one of the most satisfying leftover dinners of my life. Was I unusually hungry? Is my body signaling to me that she craves more vegies? I placed it all in one large shallow bowl, positioned falafel patties all around the spinach goop and lightly zapped. Then I mashed the falafel. Yeah, boring blog post but oh my gosh this was tasty. The spinach thing was very spicy. The falafel was a little dry and more texture than flavor. Mush them together and you had a frakking great casserole-y thing. Upper Midwest Lutheran potluck with Indian and Middle East seasoning.
I want more but it's all gone and it is two a.m. I do have some frozen spinach stuff, also TJ, but I'm not hungry.
I am boring but, trust me, this was a very tasty meal. I want more right now.
I want more but it's all gone and it is two a.m. I do have some frozen spinach stuff, also TJ, but I'm not hungry.
I am boring but, trust me, this was a very tasty meal. I want more right now.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Chuck-the-fuck
I have a brother that I reference as Chuck-the-fuck. Chuck was (and, I am sure, still is) a bully when we were kids. The oldest child of what eventually became six siblings (with two preemie babies that did not survive infancy so those little girls never experienced Chuck's bullying), my parents seemed to feel helpless to do anything about Chuck. Boys will be boys.
I have four brothers. I was the second kid after Chuck-the-fuck. I didn't start calling him Chuck-the-fuck back in my childhood. I don't think I ever said the word fuck out loud until I had left home and even then, never at home. Good Catholic girls don't use profanity and I was a good one. Except for profanity, I still score as a good Catholic girl, in the sense that I actually follow all the rules. Well, I don't go to church or confession, those are still mortal sins, I guess. Never mind. If I edited myself, I'd delete this paragraph because I have digressed. This essay is about Chuck-the-fuck.
In our grammar school, an 8th grade rite of passage required every 8th grader to give a speech about the person they most admired in history. I graduated the 8th grade in 1967. Chuck in 1966. I suppose it was a sign of the times, pre-feminist consciousness in my life, because it never occurred to me to choose a woman. I can remember reflecting on what seemed, at the time, to be a portentous, meaningful choice. Which figure in history would I pick?! I never considered that there were any meaningful female history figures. That's sad, eh? And later, at my all girls' high school from 1967 to 1971, I don't remember any introductions from the nuns to the possibility that women had ever done anything important. The contemporary female issues that roiled our school was the new birth control pill, which the nuns seemed determined to keep all of us Catholic girls from using. Ever. We also debated the Vietnam War. I confess, with chagrin, that I happily advocated for the war. I remember talking, in my history class debate my sophomore year, about how we had some kind of commitment to support the French in Vietnam, so we had to fight there. I never gave a thought to the slaughter. I only analyzed the war in terms of the treaties my history book presented. I don't remember doing any other research, other than Encyclopedia Britannica. And EB talked about our treaty with the French.
When my kid was in high school and had to write papers, I took her to the library. Gosh, I worked in a library all through high school. I knew how to do research. I always loved libraries. But I have always had a black and white tendency to do things in rigid form. If my teacher had assigned us to do research at the library, I would have, but that was not assigned. I don't remember being encouraged, ever, to think independently. As a black and white thinker, I needed someone to tell me to be flexible. Maybe? Maybe I am manufacturing retroactive justification for what I readily concede was my considerable naivete in my teen years. I also acknowledge that I went to a mediocre high school. I don't think my school expected its graduates to go to college. I know that most of my friends only saw college as something to do until they married. None of my closest friends expected to finish college. My best friend and I had a bet, as we graduated, about who would drop out first. I can honestly report that I bet twenty bucks that I would graduate in four years and would not consider marriage until beyond college. My best friend bet against herself, at least I thought she did. She bet that she would drop out after one year, having landed her man. She and I lost touch. I don't know if she graduated. I remember her declared major, that she chose as soon as she got on campus. She announced that she was majoring in something related to fashion design. I don't remember how I might have responded to her announcement to her but I remember being appalled. First, she had never voiced any interest in fashion or design in four years of being best friends in high school. Where did she come up with that? I asked her that, I think. She said her advisor had asked her to talk about what she liked to do and then the advisor had suggested fashion design as a major and that sounded right to her. I hope I didn't say to her, but maybe I did, maybe this is why we lost touch with one another, but I remember being shocked. I was at a liberal arts college, looking forward to studying art, philosophy, literature, culture and history. I gave no thought whatsoever to tying my studies to a job. Such an approached offended something in my beliefs about a college education. What was she going to do with a year of fashion design? Remember, she expected to drop out of college after no more than two years to marry and have babies. I have dreamt about this friend countless times. I have a recurring dream about her. In this dream, I learn that her parents were secretly very wealthy and she never had to earn money and that was why she didn't care about finishing college. In this dream, she leads a mysteriously prosperous life, traveling a lot, free of all financial cares. Over and over, she and I, in these dreams, try to reconnect but we never do.
Gosh. I digress.
So. When my brother Chuck-the-fuck was in the 8th grade, he chose Adolf Hitler as the man he most admired in history. I found out about this because one of my girlfriends who lived next door was in the 8th grade. Ellen. I was buddies with both Ellen and her sister Nancy who was my age. Ellen told her mother about Chuck's speech choice when I was in their kitchen. I was instantly mortified, but tried to hide my uneasiness. I mentioned it to my folks, but if they ever discussed it with my brother, I never heard about it. Which means they probably didn't because Chuck would have punished me for interfering in his life. So I concluded that my folks ignored that choice. And Chuck gave that speech.
Chuck was that he admired Hitler because Hitler favored the Aryan race and our Celtic ancestry made us Aryan. Chuck's teacher must have known, in advance, that Chuck was going to talk about Hitler. This was not long after WWII. We, obviously, didn't have any Jews in our Catholic grammar school. But we had lots of refugees from Eastern Europe in our neighborhood, like Poles. Lots of Poles and immigrants from Slavic countries. Not many of them came to our school. I assumed, at the time, that the waves of immigrants that moved into our neighborhood weren't Catholic, because even poor kids could go to our school. This was in a heydey of Catholic schools in Chicago. Our school was stuffed to the fills with post-war baby boomers. Every grade had three classes and each class had, no kidding, fifty or sixty kids. Virtually all the kids in our neighborhood that were Catholic, even the poorest ones living in then-quite-rare single mother households, divorce being very rare, esp. for Catholics in the fifties and even the early sixties, went to Catholic school. Only one family on our block, and nearly every house on the block had kids, went to public school. That mom was a widow with 10 kids. They were very poor, that family, but that's not why they didn't go to Catholic school. The reason they didn't go to Catholic school was much, much odder than poverty: they weren't Catholic! They were the only non-Catholics I personally knew in my grammar school era. Now I am wondering if the Polish kids on nearby blocks might have been Jewish? I don't know anything about Polish history emigrating to America. I have a vague understanding that Hitler slaughtered a lot of Jews in Poland. Or did he just slaughter Poles in general? I don't know.
I don't remember hearing anti-semitism in my household growing up. I heard plenty of casual racist talk about blacks. Gosh, in those days, most white people referred to blacks as niggers and it was not really seen, in my white world, as a racist way to refer to African Americans. That was the vocabulary. But in my household, my mother forbid us to say nigger and she constantly complained when my dad used the word. My dad was an average civil-service (equivalent, in Chicago, to being a good union man) precinct captain whose livelihood was dependent on the Chicago political machine: dad delivered Democratic votes on election days and dad got his kids pleasant summer jobs at public libraries and dad got maximum promotions in his civil service career. He also had to pass exams to advance but once you made the list, your connects greatly influenced the jobs you scored. There were good locations for his work and bad ones. Dad got the good gigs. A very long battle with my parents revolved around dad's civil service politicking. Dad's connects were only good in certain strata of the city. My dad deliberately failed some civil service exams to avoid a promotion because there were no jobs at the higher grade where he already worked. My dad loved where he already worked. That first place was filled with guys from his old neighborhood, like his home town. If he got promoted, he would have to move to a facility with all unfamiliar co-workers, including more black civil engineers. My dad was a civil engineer for Chicago. He had the same job, I think, that Michelle Obama's dad had with the city, actually. I actually bet that my dad new her dad, because when mom won this fight and dad passed the test and got promoted, I am pretty sure he was transferred to the same plant where Obama's dad worked. Gosh, the things I remember. If I were to tell this stuff to my sister, who was born the week I graduated from the 8th grade, she would say "How come you remember all this family history and I don't?" Um gee, maybe cause you weren't born for some of it. We actually moved away from that parish the year my sister was born. My dad resisted that move, too. He loved our old neighborhood. But my mom prevailed. And then we all found out, part of mom's motivation had been to engineer her escape from the marriage. She knew she wanted out. She anticipated only taking the three youngest lids with her into her new life. She bought a house that she thought would be easier for her to take care of when she got it in the divorce. Our old house was a gigantic barn, with a rental apartment.
I am way off course. I was writing about Chuck the fuck.
Chuck worshipped Hitler. And I don't think he was faking to be outlandish, although at the time, I remember trying to convince myself that he had chosen Hitler just to be obnoxious. I didn't know much about Hitler. My Catholic grammar school and high school never discussed the Holocaust. Ever. I got lots of Holocaust at college. My undergraduate program had a much-touted Freshman Humanities requirement: all freshman took these classes and studied the same books, heard the same lectures and then met in small groups for discussion and paper writing. And the Holocaust was a big part of that. We watched the films showing what American soldiers found when they got to the death camps, seeing endless mounds of human skeletons, seeing the ovens, seeing the endless hovels that housed endless streams of innocently slaughtered humans just because they were Jewish.
My dad fought in WWII. My parents both followed the course of the war along with the rest of America. They had to have known that Hitler slaughtered millions of Jews. How could they let Chuck give a speech about Hitler as the man he most admired in history? I guess in 1966 Catholic world, there was not much empathy for genocide. And, of course, the Catholic Church enabled Hitler in some meaningful ways that the church long refused to acknowledge. Maybe my parents were blind and clueless.
But Chuck wasn't.
Later, after my parents divorced, Chuck lived at his college campus during the school year but with my dad in the summers, as I did. In those long summers (long living with Chuck), he would pace up and down the length of our house talking manically about Hitler, the superiority of the Aryan race, the superiority of Chuck's ethnic background. I never really listened to him so I can't explain his position but Chuck seemed to take much comfort in endlessly assuring the rest of us that, according to Hitler, we would have been considered Aryan and safe from genocide. And this proved, in Chuck's rationale, that we were superior. Because, he said, people just didn't understand what Hitler was trying to do. He didn't want to erase Jews. He just wanted to ensure the human future by only allowing superior people to live in the future. It was basic jungle law. Survival of the fittest.
Then, as Chuck moved through law school, and I moved through law school and I went home to Chicago less and less and less, mostly to avoid him, he married and moved his wife into dad's house. And he still would pace up and down the house, talking endlessly and subjecting everyone in the house to his rants. It was crazy behavior. Manic. Definitely manic.
I tried to get my dad to forbid Chuck from unloading his ranting on the rest of us. Couldn't dad make Chuck stay in his room when he felt a need to rant? Dad did allow me the privacy of my bedroom but he couldn't stop Chuck from pacing and ranting.
I have four brothers. I was the second kid after Chuck-the-fuck. I didn't start calling him Chuck-the-fuck back in my childhood. I don't think I ever said the word fuck out loud until I had left home and even then, never at home. Good Catholic girls don't use profanity and I was a good one. Except for profanity, I still score as a good Catholic girl, in the sense that I actually follow all the rules. Well, I don't go to church or confession, those are still mortal sins, I guess. Never mind. If I edited myself, I'd delete this paragraph because I have digressed. This essay is about Chuck-the-fuck.
In our grammar school, an 8th grade rite of passage required every 8th grader to give a speech about the person they most admired in history. I graduated the 8th grade in 1967. Chuck in 1966. I suppose it was a sign of the times, pre-feminist consciousness in my life, because it never occurred to me to choose a woman. I can remember reflecting on what seemed, at the time, to be a portentous, meaningful choice. Which figure in history would I pick?! I never considered that there were any meaningful female history figures. That's sad, eh? And later, at my all girls' high school from 1967 to 1971, I don't remember any introductions from the nuns to the possibility that women had ever done anything important. The contemporary female issues that roiled our school was the new birth control pill, which the nuns seemed determined to keep all of us Catholic girls from using. Ever. We also debated the Vietnam War. I confess, with chagrin, that I happily advocated for the war. I remember talking, in my history class debate my sophomore year, about how we had some kind of commitment to support the French in Vietnam, so we had to fight there. I never gave a thought to the slaughter. I only analyzed the war in terms of the treaties my history book presented. I don't remember doing any other research, other than Encyclopedia Britannica. And EB talked about our treaty with the French.
When my kid was in high school and had to write papers, I took her to the library. Gosh, I worked in a library all through high school. I knew how to do research. I always loved libraries. But I have always had a black and white tendency to do things in rigid form. If my teacher had assigned us to do research at the library, I would have, but that was not assigned. I don't remember being encouraged, ever, to think independently. As a black and white thinker, I needed someone to tell me to be flexible. Maybe? Maybe I am manufacturing retroactive justification for what I readily concede was my considerable naivete in my teen years. I also acknowledge that I went to a mediocre high school. I don't think my school expected its graduates to go to college. I know that most of my friends only saw college as something to do until they married. None of my closest friends expected to finish college. My best friend and I had a bet, as we graduated, about who would drop out first. I can honestly report that I bet twenty bucks that I would graduate in four years and would not consider marriage until beyond college. My best friend bet against herself, at least I thought she did. She bet that she would drop out after one year, having landed her man. She and I lost touch. I don't know if she graduated. I remember her declared major, that she chose as soon as she got on campus. She announced that she was majoring in something related to fashion design. I don't remember how I might have responded to her announcement to her but I remember being appalled. First, she had never voiced any interest in fashion or design in four years of being best friends in high school. Where did she come up with that? I asked her that, I think. She said her advisor had asked her to talk about what she liked to do and then the advisor had suggested fashion design as a major and that sounded right to her. I hope I didn't say to her, but maybe I did, maybe this is why we lost touch with one another, but I remember being shocked. I was at a liberal arts college, looking forward to studying art, philosophy, literature, culture and history. I gave no thought whatsoever to tying my studies to a job. Such an approached offended something in my beliefs about a college education. What was she going to do with a year of fashion design? Remember, she expected to drop out of college after no more than two years to marry and have babies. I have dreamt about this friend countless times. I have a recurring dream about her. In this dream, I learn that her parents were secretly very wealthy and she never had to earn money and that was why she didn't care about finishing college. In this dream, she leads a mysteriously prosperous life, traveling a lot, free of all financial cares. Over and over, she and I, in these dreams, try to reconnect but we never do.
Gosh. I digress.
So. When my brother Chuck-the-fuck was in the 8th grade, he chose Adolf Hitler as the man he most admired in history. I found out about this because one of my girlfriends who lived next door was in the 8th grade. Ellen. I was buddies with both Ellen and her sister Nancy who was my age. Ellen told her mother about Chuck's speech choice when I was in their kitchen. I was instantly mortified, but tried to hide my uneasiness. I mentioned it to my folks, but if they ever discussed it with my brother, I never heard about it. Which means they probably didn't because Chuck would have punished me for interfering in his life. So I concluded that my folks ignored that choice. And Chuck gave that speech.
Chuck was that he admired Hitler because Hitler favored the Aryan race and our Celtic ancestry made us Aryan. Chuck's teacher must have known, in advance, that Chuck was going to talk about Hitler. This was not long after WWII. We, obviously, didn't have any Jews in our Catholic grammar school. But we had lots of refugees from Eastern Europe in our neighborhood, like Poles. Lots of Poles and immigrants from Slavic countries. Not many of them came to our school. I assumed, at the time, that the waves of immigrants that moved into our neighborhood weren't Catholic, because even poor kids could go to our school. This was in a heydey of Catholic schools in Chicago. Our school was stuffed to the fills with post-war baby boomers. Every grade had three classes and each class had, no kidding, fifty or sixty kids. Virtually all the kids in our neighborhood that were Catholic, even the poorest ones living in then-quite-rare single mother households, divorce being very rare, esp. for Catholics in the fifties and even the early sixties, went to Catholic school. Only one family on our block, and nearly every house on the block had kids, went to public school. That mom was a widow with 10 kids. They were very poor, that family, but that's not why they didn't go to Catholic school. The reason they didn't go to Catholic school was much, much odder than poverty: they weren't Catholic! They were the only non-Catholics I personally knew in my grammar school era. Now I am wondering if the Polish kids on nearby blocks might have been Jewish? I don't know anything about Polish history emigrating to America. I have a vague understanding that Hitler slaughtered a lot of Jews in Poland. Or did he just slaughter Poles in general? I don't know.
I don't remember hearing anti-semitism in my household growing up. I heard plenty of casual racist talk about blacks. Gosh, in those days, most white people referred to blacks as niggers and it was not really seen, in my white world, as a racist way to refer to African Americans. That was the vocabulary. But in my household, my mother forbid us to say nigger and she constantly complained when my dad used the word. My dad was an average civil-service (equivalent, in Chicago, to being a good union man) precinct captain whose livelihood was dependent on the Chicago political machine: dad delivered Democratic votes on election days and dad got his kids pleasant summer jobs at public libraries and dad got maximum promotions in his civil service career. He also had to pass exams to advance but once you made the list, your connects greatly influenced the jobs you scored. There were good locations for his work and bad ones. Dad got the good gigs. A very long battle with my parents revolved around dad's civil service politicking. Dad's connects were only good in certain strata of the city. My dad deliberately failed some civil service exams to avoid a promotion because there were no jobs at the higher grade where he already worked. My dad loved where he already worked. That first place was filled with guys from his old neighborhood, like his home town. If he got promoted, he would have to move to a facility with all unfamiliar co-workers, including more black civil engineers. My dad was a civil engineer for Chicago. He had the same job, I think, that Michelle Obama's dad had with the city, actually. I actually bet that my dad new her dad, because when mom won this fight and dad passed the test and got promoted, I am pretty sure he was transferred to the same plant where Obama's dad worked. Gosh, the things I remember. If I were to tell this stuff to my sister, who was born the week I graduated from the 8th grade, she would say "How come you remember all this family history and I don't?" Um gee, maybe cause you weren't born for some of it. We actually moved away from that parish the year my sister was born. My dad resisted that move, too. He loved our old neighborhood. But my mom prevailed. And then we all found out, part of mom's motivation had been to engineer her escape from the marriage. She knew she wanted out. She anticipated only taking the three youngest lids with her into her new life. She bought a house that she thought would be easier for her to take care of when she got it in the divorce. Our old house was a gigantic barn, with a rental apartment.
I am way off course. I was writing about Chuck the fuck.
Chuck worshipped Hitler. And I don't think he was faking to be outlandish, although at the time, I remember trying to convince myself that he had chosen Hitler just to be obnoxious. I didn't know much about Hitler. My Catholic grammar school and high school never discussed the Holocaust. Ever. I got lots of Holocaust at college. My undergraduate program had a much-touted Freshman Humanities requirement: all freshman took these classes and studied the same books, heard the same lectures and then met in small groups for discussion and paper writing. And the Holocaust was a big part of that. We watched the films showing what American soldiers found when they got to the death camps, seeing endless mounds of human skeletons, seeing the ovens, seeing the endless hovels that housed endless streams of innocently slaughtered humans just because they were Jewish.
My dad fought in WWII. My parents both followed the course of the war along with the rest of America. They had to have known that Hitler slaughtered millions of Jews. How could they let Chuck give a speech about Hitler as the man he most admired in history? I guess in 1966 Catholic world, there was not much empathy for genocide. And, of course, the Catholic Church enabled Hitler in some meaningful ways that the church long refused to acknowledge. Maybe my parents were blind and clueless.
But Chuck wasn't.
Later, after my parents divorced, Chuck lived at his college campus during the school year but with my dad in the summers, as I did. In those long summers (long living with Chuck), he would pace up and down the length of our house talking manically about Hitler, the superiority of the Aryan race, the superiority of Chuck's ethnic background. I never really listened to him so I can't explain his position but Chuck seemed to take much comfort in endlessly assuring the rest of us that, according to Hitler, we would have been considered Aryan and safe from genocide. And this proved, in Chuck's rationale, that we were superior. Because, he said, people just didn't understand what Hitler was trying to do. He didn't want to erase Jews. He just wanted to ensure the human future by only allowing superior people to live in the future. It was basic jungle law. Survival of the fittest.
Then, as Chuck moved through law school, and I moved through law school and I went home to Chicago less and less and less, mostly to avoid him, he married and moved his wife into dad's house. And he still would pace up and down the house, talking endlessly and subjecting everyone in the house to his rants. It was crazy behavior. Manic. Definitely manic.
I tried to get my dad to forbid Chuck from unloading his ranting on the rest of us. Couldn't dad make Chuck stay in his room when he felt a need to rant? Dad did allow me the privacy of my bedroom but he couldn't stop Chuck from pacing and ranting.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
my brudha da judge
I have a brother who was a judge for almost thirty years. He retired recently. Knowing my brudda, his pension must have vested. Or else he did something that the local political machine would not forgive. He retired. Someone else was appointed and his replacement quickly moved up. My brother never advanced. He was a magistrate. His job was always part time. He settled for that part time gig. It was with the county. It had great benefits. His pension vested with lifetime health care after a certain point. Most people who take the job want to become a full district court judge, full time, not a low level 'magistrate'. If someone settles for part time magistrate, they also maintain a private practice. Not my brother. He rented a law office for one year but he never got any business. He is plenty smart. He could do good legal work, I bet. But my brother is neurotic, shy and crazy. He cringed at the thought of needing customers. He was born to a public sector job mentality. His wife also worked for the public sector. She worked for one agency of government for twenty years, until her first pension vested and then she switched over. He always intended to get full time work, maybe move up as a judge to full time or into a law firm. But he never did. My brudha da judge is a Nazi fuck loonie.
Oh, and my brother the judge used to worship Rush Limbaugh. I haven't talked to this brother in fifteen or more years. More, I think. But back when I did still run into him once awhile, which was basically when I visited our mother, he liked to rant on and on with his beliefs about politics. He is one of the puzzling middle class voters who vote for the Karl Rove political agenda that has used abortion, gay marriage and eliminating big governent to incite middle class voters to vote against their own wellbeing. Back when I still talked to my brother once in a great while, he still believed that sooner or later he would rise into a higher economic bracket and benefit from the lower-our-taxes mentality. This brother had lots of theories about the superiority of the white race, esp. Aryans.
In the 8th grade in our grammar school, every student had to give a speech about a historical figure they admired. I gave mine about Abraham Lincoln. This was before I was infected with any feminist thought. My brother, in the 8th grade a year ahead of me, talked about Adolf Hitler. I am not making that up. It caused a bit of a scandal in our little world but my folks never seemed to notice. My folks never noticed anything this brother did, like when he beat me up. Once, when I was in the 5th grade and this brother in the 6th, my class had left the school before his. I waited for his class to exit to walk home with a girlfriend in his class. Brother bounded out the school door, seeming to gather power as he rushed up to me and then he smashed my left eye with his right fist and kept on going. I had a seriously black eye from it. But when my brother told my parents that he had accidentally run into me because I had been standing in his path, they believed him. He was not punished. I was blamed for standing in the wrong spot because I should have known by then what he was like. That's how my parents handled him. And this brother did not just beat on me. He beat on all us kids. And my folks let him. The nuns warned my folks not to waste money on Catholic h.s. for this brother cause he was destined to drop out and land in prison. So the nuns were wrong. He did become a judge.
It's funny how even losers can become judges. It seems that
Oh, and my brother the judge used to worship Rush Limbaugh. I haven't talked to this brother in fifteen or more years. More, I think. But back when I did still run into him once awhile, which was basically when I visited our mother, he liked to rant on and on with his beliefs about politics. He is one of the puzzling middle class voters who vote for the Karl Rove political agenda that has used abortion, gay marriage and eliminating big governent to incite middle class voters to vote against their own wellbeing. Back when I still talked to my brother once in a great while, he still believed that sooner or later he would rise into a higher economic bracket and benefit from the lower-our-taxes mentality. This brother had lots of theories about the superiority of the white race, esp. Aryans.
In the 8th grade in our grammar school, every student had to give a speech about a historical figure they admired. I gave mine about Abraham Lincoln. This was before I was infected with any feminist thought. My brother, in the 8th grade a year ahead of me, talked about Adolf Hitler. I am not making that up. It caused a bit of a scandal in our little world but my folks never seemed to notice. My folks never noticed anything this brother did, like when he beat me up. Once, when I was in the 5th grade and this brother in the 6th, my class had left the school before his. I waited for his class to exit to walk home with a girlfriend in his class. Brother bounded out the school door, seeming to gather power as he rushed up to me and then he smashed my left eye with his right fist and kept on going. I had a seriously black eye from it. But when my brother told my parents that he had accidentally run into me because I had been standing in his path, they believed him. He was not punished. I was blamed for standing in the wrong spot because I should have known by then what he was like. That's how my parents handled him. And this brother did not just beat on me. He beat on all us kids. And my folks let him. The nuns warned my folks not to waste money on Catholic h.s. for this brother cause he was destined to drop out and land in prison. So the nuns were wrong. He did become a judge.
It's funny how even losers can become judges. It seems that
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Tizzielish
Tizzie Lish was the name of a character in an old radio drama. In, I think, the forties.
I was born in the fifties. My mom called me Tizzielish as an affectionate pet name. I loved having a special name. Until I was thirteen, I only had brothers and my pet name was too feminine for boys.
Then my sister Margaret was born when I was thirteen. My mom started out calling her Tizzielish. I objected, in my awkward, gangly, teenage self. My mom capitulated a bit. She shifted to calling my sister Ms. Lish, but I objected to that. I told my mom it was just plain wrong.
My mom liked to ignore me. It seemed to empower her to defy me. And it seemed to me that the more reasonable my requests were, the more connected my requests to mom were about my own self care, the more she liked to defy me. It seemed to me, and it still does, that my mom liked to put me down, that it made her feeling better about herself to look down at her daughter.
I guess I kinda hate my mom.
She persisted in calling my sister Ms. Lish, but only infrequently. It never really caught on as the kid's nickname. And my sister didn't like being Ms. Lish. She wanted to be first in mom's heart and she wanted, I think, to be Tizzie Lish. But she wasn't. I was.
Sibling rivalry.
I was born in the fifties. My mom called me Tizzielish as an affectionate pet name. I loved having a special name. Until I was thirteen, I only had brothers and my pet name was too feminine for boys.
Then my sister Margaret was born when I was thirteen. My mom started out calling her Tizzielish. I objected, in my awkward, gangly, teenage self. My mom capitulated a bit. She shifted to calling my sister Ms. Lish, but I objected to that. I told my mom it was just plain wrong.
My mom liked to ignore me. It seemed to empower her to defy me. And it seemed to me that the more reasonable my requests were, the more connected my requests to mom were about my own self care, the more she liked to defy me. It seemed to me, and it still does, that my mom liked to put me down, that it made her feeling better about herself to look down at her daughter.
I guess I kinda hate my mom.
She persisted in calling my sister Ms. Lish, but only infrequently. It never really caught on as the kid's nickname. And my sister didn't like being Ms. Lish. She wanted to be first in mom's heart and she wanted, I think, to be Tizzie Lish. But she wasn't. I was.
Sibling rivalry.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
on wisconsin: be strong, fight the coup d'etat
Robert Reich says, at robertreich.org, what I'm thinking:
"If most citizens of Wisconsin are now convinced that Walker and his cohorts are extremists willing to go to any lengths for their big-business patrons (including the billionaire Koch brothers), those citizens will recall enough Republican senators to right this wrong.
But it’s critically important at this stage that Walker’s opponents maintain the self-discipline they have shown until this critical point. Walker would like nothing better than disorder to break out in Madison. Like the leader of any coup d’etat, he wants to show the public his strong-arm methods are made necessary by adversaries whose behavior can be characterized on the media as even more extreme.
Be measured. Stay cool. Know that we are a nation of laws, and those laws will prevail. The People’s Party is growing across America — and the actions of Scott Walker and his Republican colleagues are giving it even greater momentum. So are the actions of congressional Republicans who are using the threat of a government shutdown to strong-arm their way in Washington.
The American public may be divided over many things but we stand united behind our democratic process and the rule of law. And we reject coups in whatever form they occur."
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
The People's Party
The Repugnant Republicans in WI just gave up on the rule of law and went rogue, passing laws without complying with little legal niceties such as legal procedure. They just passed a law without giving legal notice of heretofore legally required public hearings on new legislation. And Scott Fitzgerald, the knuckleheaded leader of the WI Repubican Senators (his brother heads the state house of reps and their father just got annoited head of the WI State patrol by the governor . . . cosy family politics!!) . Scottie says he talks to lawyers who said the state senate could disregard state law this time.
So then, the boys can call their father, head of the state patrol, and, what, legally force the whole state to do what Scotti wants? Sounds like things are getting a little testy in Wi and the Republican governor and head of the Republican House and Senate are behaving like toddlers who need their naps. I totally understand that they are frustrated with the senate democrats who decamped to IL to prevent a quorum but, geez, that doesn't give Scottie the right to do whatever he wants.
Outrageous.
anyway, Robert Reich just posted the idea of an alternative to the Tea Party: The People's Party. I like it. Here's a link
http://robertreich.org/post/3752615196
So then, the boys can call their father, head of the state patrol, and, what, legally force the whole state to do what Scotti wants? Sounds like things are getting a little testy in Wi and the Republican governor and head of the Republican House and Senate are behaving like toddlers who need their naps. I totally understand that they are frustrated with the senate democrats who decamped to IL to prevent a quorum but, geez, that doesn't give Scottie the right to do whatever he wants.
Outrageous.
anyway, Robert Reich just posted the idea of an alternative to the Tea Party: The People's Party. I like it. Here's a link
http://robertreich.org/post/3752615196
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
water in Jane Austen's time
How did clean drinking water arrive in the various kinds of households Jane Austen wrote about? We see rich people's homes in her novels and economically stressed but still middle class homes such as parsonages with a few servants. We get glimpses of poor tenant farmers and even fewer glimpses of the lives of servants of Austen's main characters. I think it fair to conclude that Austen was not much interested in classism except how class status affected her single female characters and their pursuit of husbands. I'm not criticizing her. She wrote about what she was inspired to write about. It's just that I have learned what little I know about what day-to-day human life
water in Jane Austen's time
I have relied on literature to inform me about human culture. I am not a history buff but I have read quite a lot of ficiton, set in all kinds of eras. But novels don't usually tell the reader about societal infrastructure.
Does Charles Dickens discuss how the London of his day dealt with human piss and feces? How London got drinking water to its inhabitants?
And how come I have never wondered about such things.
Now I am wondering. When Marianne falls in love with Willoughby, she and her family are newly coping with their severely reduced financial circumstances. The father died and a half brother from an early marriage has inherited, leaving three daughters and a widow almost penniless. A rich, kind relative rents them a cottage for a nominal amount and they settle into severely reduced circumstances. Austen tells us about some of their domestic struggles. Once Willoughby gives Marianne a horse which she thoughtlessly accepts without considering that they have no barn to keep the horse and the family cannot afford to feed it, much less hire a groomsmen. And we read about the mother, who was rich all her life and never had to worry about frugality before, wanting to do things she can't afford. And we read about their gratitude when the kindly relative sends over baskets of food, a leg of an animal.
And there was no electricity.
I don't think Austen wrote much about the physical surroundings. When her young women socialized in their endless pursuit of a husband who could support them, they are always gathering for dinners, dances, balls and parties. Did humans of Austen's time go to balls in January, when it gets dark in late afternoon, that were lit only by candlelight? In my mind's eye, as I have read Jane Austen's work, the ball scenes and the evenings of ladies and gentlemen talking to one another after dinner are lit like such a scene would be lit in 2011. But when Elizabeth Bennet verbally jousted with Mr. Darcy, before she realized she was in love with him, if they were in a drawing room with a piano, a half dozen sofas, lots of single chairs, lots of little side tables to put down tea cups and room for roving servants and maybe a fire in the fireplace, the room must have been a little dark.
I don't think Austen has any of her characters excuse themselves to pee.
I'm just wondering: how would Austen's stories be different if Austen had described the lighting for her readers? I'd like to read what Austen had to say about how differently a young beauty might be seen at 10 p.m. in a large salon in a rich person's mansion versus 10 p.m. in the tiny sitting room of the parsonage. Surely rich people had more candles and oil lamps? Surely lighting made a difference.
And then we come to water. I am aware, vaguely, that clear, clean water that I have always taken for granted was not univerally available to all humans in history. In the Masterpiece Theater series Upstairs Downstairs, set in London in a time before cars and, at least in the beginning, predating electricity in houses, was water for the rich Upstairs crowd clean and clear? How did it get to people? Was the servant class able to partake of the same water as the rich people? Where did the water come from, how did it get distributed in a city and then in a house? I know that humans, mostly servants, carried water within houses, but how did clean drinking water get to rich people's houses in Dicken's London?
I assume rich people used chamber pots to pee and poop and then servants emptied the chamber pots. Did the London of Upstairs Downstairs have a raw sewage system before there was such a thing as indoor plumbing?
I just watched Downton Abbey, a great new Masterpiece series set in England just before the beginning of WWI. Downtown Abbey gets a phone installed during the first season of the show and one of the characters mentions how accepting electricity makes her feel like she is living in an H.G. Wells novel, which was a funny, well-written line, wasn't it? I never would have expected the dowager Duchess who says the H.G. Wells line to have ever read something like H.G. Wells. In fact, I wonder if the writers made a mistake with that very clever line. This particular character can be very fuddy-duddy, seeming to cling to tradition at all costs. There was a time when some in that upper class would have looked down upon ladies reading H. G. Wells.
I'd like to heat the dowager duchess character say something about drinking water. I guess houses had water pumps? and houses that didn't have water pumps hauled water.
thinking.
Does Charles Dickens discuss how the London of his day dealt with human piss and feces? How London got drinking water to its inhabitants?
And how come I have never wondered about such things.
Now I am wondering. When Marianne falls in love with Willoughby, she and her family are newly coping with their severely reduced financial circumstances. The father died and a half brother from an early marriage has inherited, leaving three daughters and a widow almost penniless. A rich, kind relative rents them a cottage for a nominal amount and they settle into severely reduced circumstances. Austen tells us about some of their domestic struggles. Once Willoughby gives Marianne a horse which she thoughtlessly accepts without considering that they have no barn to keep the horse and the family cannot afford to feed it, much less hire a groomsmen. And we read about the mother, who was rich all her life and never had to worry about frugality before, wanting to do things she can't afford. And we read about their gratitude when the kindly relative sends over baskets of food, a leg of an animal.
And there was no electricity.
I don't think Austen wrote much about the physical surroundings. When her young women socialized in their endless pursuit of a husband who could support them, they are always gathering for dinners, dances, balls and parties. Did humans of Austen's time go to balls in January, when it gets dark in late afternoon, that were lit only by candlelight? In my mind's eye, as I have read Jane Austen's work, the ball scenes and the evenings of ladies and gentlemen talking to one another after dinner are lit like such a scene would be lit in 2011. But when Elizabeth Bennet verbally jousted with Mr. Darcy, before she realized she was in love with him, if they were in a drawing room with a piano, a half dozen sofas, lots of single chairs, lots of little side tables to put down tea cups and room for roving servants and maybe a fire in the fireplace, the room must have been a little dark.
I don't think Austen has any of her characters excuse themselves to pee.
I'm just wondering: how would Austen's stories be different if Austen had described the lighting for her readers? I'd like to read what Austen had to say about how differently a young beauty might be seen at 10 p.m. in a large salon in a rich person's mansion versus 10 p.m. in the tiny sitting room of the parsonage. Surely rich people had more candles and oil lamps? Surely lighting made a difference.
And then we come to water. I am aware, vaguely, that clear, clean water that I have always taken for granted was not univerally available to all humans in history. In the Masterpiece Theater series Upstairs Downstairs, set in London in a time before cars and, at least in the beginning, predating electricity in houses, was water for the rich Upstairs crowd clean and clear? How did it get to people? Was the servant class able to partake of the same water as the rich people? Where did the water come from, how did it get distributed in a city and then in a house? I know that humans, mostly servants, carried water within houses, but how did clean drinking water get to rich people's houses in Dicken's London?
I assume rich people used chamber pots to pee and poop and then servants emptied the chamber pots. Did the London of Upstairs Downstairs have a raw sewage system before there was such a thing as indoor plumbing?
I just watched Downton Abbey, a great new Masterpiece series set in England just before the beginning of WWI. Downtown Abbey gets a phone installed during the first season of the show and one of the characters mentions how accepting electricity makes her feel like she is living in an H.G. Wells novel, which was a funny, well-written line, wasn't it? I never would have expected the dowager Duchess who says the H.G. Wells line to have ever read something like H.G. Wells. In fact, I wonder if the writers made a mistake with that very clever line. This particular character can be very fuddy-duddy, seeming to cling to tradition at all costs. There was a time when some in that upper class would have looked down upon ladies reading H. G. Wells.
I'd like to heat the dowager duchess character say something about drinking water. I guess houses had water pumps? and houses that didn't have water pumps hauled water.
thinking.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
snow in san francisco
'They' say it might snow in San Francisco tomorrow. It has not snowed in SF since 1976. In 1976, there was enough snow to give kids back then a chance to make a few snow balls, to see the ground covered in snow for a few hours. That is so different than snow in Minneapolis.
In Minneapolis, it snows quite a lot. Most people know this, I think. But everyone doesn't realize that the snow tends to stay, and just keep piling up throughout the winter.
I grew up in Chicago, where it snows every year, sometimes a foot or more. But no matter how much it snows in Chicago, most of the snow melts away within a few days. It remains a few weeks at the most, and even when it remains a few weeks, it is only on the grass, and not very high. Snow barely has a chance to get dirty and form a hard crust and, poof, it's melted away. It's still freezing, but the snow does not hang out and pile up.
Whereas in Minneapolis (and other cities in MN, of course), the snow rarely melts away completely during the winter. Sure, there is typically a January thaw, enough warmer days to get everything a little goopy. The January thaw tends to mess up the outdoor ice rinks and the cities don't usually regroom the ice rinks so after the January thaw they are lumpy. But folks still ice skate.
In Minnesota cities, the snow piles and piles. And after it is shoveled and stacked up, the piles get pretty high. A week or two of January thaw is not enough to melt these piles away. And the city grit tends to make them gray. Fresh snow gives everything a fresh look.
I had a garden when I owned a house in Minneapolis, a three-story Victorian surrounded by closely-packed three-story Victorians. I lived in a rare patch of Minneapolis that is actually on the National Historic Register because the original developers got a zoning variance to build houses much more densely than is typical in the Midwest. In most of Minneapolis, there would be two rows of houses on a block, with a street surrounding the double rows, and an ally down the middle, 'behind' the houses, whose front doors would face the street. But my littleilw
In Minneapolis, it snows quite a lot. Most people know this, I think. But everyone doesn't realize that the snow tends to stay, and just keep piling up throughout the winter.
I grew up in Chicago, where it snows every year, sometimes a foot or more. But no matter how much it snows in Chicago, most of the snow melts away within a few days. It remains a few weeks at the most, and even when it remains a few weeks, it is only on the grass, and not very high. Snow barely has a chance to get dirty and form a hard crust and, poof, it's melted away. It's still freezing, but the snow does not hang out and pile up.
Whereas in Minneapolis (and other cities in MN, of course), the snow rarely melts away completely during the winter. Sure, there is typically a January thaw, enough warmer days to get everything a little goopy. The January thaw tends to mess up the outdoor ice rinks and the cities don't usually regroom the ice rinks so after the January thaw they are lumpy. But folks still ice skate.
In Minnesota cities, the snow piles and piles. And after it is shoveled and stacked up, the piles get pretty high. A week or two of January thaw is not enough to melt these piles away. And the city grit tends to make them gray. Fresh snow gives everything a fresh look.
I had a garden when I owned a house in Minneapolis, a three-story Victorian surrounded by closely-packed three-story Victorians. I lived in a rare patch of Minneapolis that is actually on the National Historic Register because the original developers got a zoning variance to build houses much more densely than is typical in the Midwest. In most of Minneapolis, there would be two rows of houses on a block, with a street surrounding the double rows, and an ally down the middle, 'behind' the houses, whose front doors would face the street. But my littleilw
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
another tragedy of the commons
http://www.baycitizen.org/food/story/oakland-homesteading-school-caught/#comments
This link will take you to a tragic story.
I have been hearing about urban homesteading for a long time, decades. And for at least ten years, I've been reading about chickens in backyards in Brooklyn and urban farms in San Francisco. And all my lifelong life, I have felt a sense of ownership in the common language of American English. Surely if one thing belongs to us 'in common' it is language? In the mid-nineties, I remember hanging out with a woman participating in a program I was in who was launching urban homesteading in Detroit. Her focus was teens growing food on urban homesteads.
Some clowns in Southern California have trademarked the phrases 'urban homestead' and 'urban homesteading'. How is it possible for someone to assert ownership of ordinary language that belongs to the commons?
I have heard of urban homesteading for a long time. I never heard of the business that owns the trademark to the phrase until I read this story in baycitizen.org.
Take back the commons.
This link will take you to a tragic story.
I have been hearing about urban homesteading for a long time, decades. And for at least ten years, I've been reading about chickens in backyards in Brooklyn and urban farms in San Francisco. And all my lifelong life, I have felt a sense of ownership in the common language of American English. Surely if one thing belongs to us 'in common' it is language? In the mid-nineties, I remember hanging out with a woman participating in a program I was in who was launching urban homesteading in Detroit. Her focus was teens growing food on urban homesteads.
Some clowns in Southern California have trademarked the phrases 'urban homestead' and 'urban homesteading'. How is it possible for someone to assert ownership of ordinary language that belongs to the commons?
I have heard of urban homesteading for a long time. I never heard of the business that owns the trademark to the phrase until I read this story in baycitizen.org.
Take back the commons.
Monday, February 21, 2011
bus stops smoking
There might be a few square feet where this is not true but mostly you can't smoke in public in Berkeley.
I don't own a car. I walk a lot but I ride buses when I grocery shop. My main bus stop is outside a Peets coffee that has two comfortable park benches, facing one another, that makes for a nice mini-commons in the hood. Many gather there. And there are almost always smokers smoking. It's a battle ground. There are 'do not smoke signs' on every possible pole and there are lots of poles. Plus there is a bus shelter and, see above, you can't smoke within 25 feet of a bus shelter.
Whenever, and I mean whenever, I am waiting for a bus and a smoker's smoke drifts into my nostrils and, thus, my lungs, I ask the person to move twenty five feet away.15 minutes ago ·
I always do this. I smoked for a few years when I was young and stupid, so maybe that is why I am so repulsed by cig smoke. It makes me feel unwell to inhale it. Plus, it is illegal.
If you can spot a cop and get their attention, unless they are rushing to a crime-in-action, Berkeley cops will stop and ticket smokers. Well, if Berkeley cops pull over, the smokers disperse. I don't want anyone to get a ticket. I just want to stand at the bus stop smoke free.
And that's the law.
I don't use profanity. I don't speak abusively. I simply ask smokers to move.
Once in a great while, a smoker simply moves. It seems to me that the younger the smoker, the more civil they are when I ask them to move their smoke away from my lungs. And that's how I put it: I say "It is against the law in Berkeley for you to smoke here and your smoke is getting in my lungs. That's why we have the law. Will you please move?"
But quite a lot of smokers become angry and verbally abusive. I know what I am about to write will sound like a racist stereotype but the only smokers who have ever become angry and verbally abusive with me when I have asked smokers to stop smoking have been African American males.
There is a cute, middle-aged French guy who buys coffee at Peets and then steps outside to have a smoke with his coffee most days. When I ask him to put out his smokes, he ignores me and keeps on smoking. He's white. He does not say anything. He just ignores me and goes on smoking. Sometimes I will sit down next to him and start singing the most annoying song I can think of, like the national anthem. This cute Frenchman has asked me 'are you crazy? sitting here singing?' and I say "Why is my behavior more crazy than yours? You are sitting here invading my lungs, ignoring the law, ignoring my polite request for you to stop smoking. I want to make this space uncomfortable for you. It is not illegal for me to sit next to you and sing so that's what I am doing. I am supposed to care about you when you disreregard me? No. I won't cede this public space to you."
Once a woman with Frenchie held her lit cigarette out towards me, getting within an inch of my face, making a gesture that seemed to threaten to burn me with her cigarette. I threw some of my coffee on her cigarette to put out the light that she was threatening to burn me with.
Yeah. I know. Stupid fights. I don't know why I keep taking this stand.
If you don't know Berkeley, it might be completely mystifying. And my behavior is probably a little reckless. But I have noticed this: since Frenchie and his girlfriend threatened to burn me, which was a couple months ago, they have completely stopped smoking at this spot on my corner. This is my block. This is where I live. If everyone cedes the public space to people who disregard the rights of others, we have no public space.
But the African American middle-aged to elderly smoking males are the hardest. They tell me to mind my own business. Then I say 'your smoke in my lungs is my business'. And they say "No it is not your business." I have had African American male smokers tell me to mind my business after I have asked young white homeless kids to stop smoking near the bus stop. The kids move away. And, in the instance I am thinking of, the AA guy wasn't smoking at the time. But he kept yelling at me. And after a few exchanges, he began to demand that I shut up since it was none of my business. But I kept saying "how is this any of your business? And who are you to tell me to shut up? HOw is my talking your business?" and this guy kept yelling at me as the bus came and we boarded and he kept yelling at me after he followed me on the bus.
The bus driver pulled over at the next stop and ordered the guy off the bus. Man, that guy was spitting nickels, so angry that I had 'won'. Keep in mind: I had asked a young street kid with a backpack and a sleeping bag, sitting on the sidewalk in front of a business, smoking in the no-smoke zone to move. I had not asked the abusive, angry black man to do anything. I just had refused to yield to his demand that I 'mind my business'.
After she threw him off, the bus driver asked me what it was about and I told her a little. I said "He wasn't even smoking so how was it his business?" and she told me he is a smoker and that she has told him, many times, that he can't smoke at bus stops.
I know this smoking at bus stops things is small and stupid. I could ask the wrong guy to stop smoking and the guy could flip out and hurt me. I know we have to pick our battles. I know this is a stupid battle. But as long as non smokers put up with smoking in places where there are many 'no smoking' signs. .. . well, I won't do it.
I have campaigned in my building since moving here two years ago
Saturday, February 19, 2011
last night
A line of music from a song that was around, I think, when I was in h.s. is floating in my thoughts: last night, I didn't get to sleep at all. She goes on to sing about love and her foolish pride. Well, I have lots of foolish pride but none related to my failure to sleep well last night.
As soon as I snuggled in for the night, around 4 a.m. (I don't sleep regular hours), I swear that the very instant I burrowed into my down, a beeper went off. At first, I told myself it was my imagination. Then I heard it again and reasoned it came from another apartment. But it kept beeping.
One of my smoke alarms was beeping. Not because of smoke. Just an irritating beep.
I got up and found some ear plugs, the cheap kind you pick up at conferences, the kind that are uncomfortable in the ears but which do block lots of sound. I figured it was not a 'maintenance emergency', not a reason to awaken my building manager.
So when I arose around 11 a.m. I called in. After four hours, and another call to prod his appearance, the janitor came. It is surprisingly draining to listen to an unrelenting beep. It is a good noise. It is supposed to get your attention. It does. The janitor first put in an old battery. He had a bunch of 9 volt batteries and put in another dead one. So he had to come back. The second time, he put in three or four more duds before one worked. He did not separate out the dead batteries from good ones. He put them all back in the same pouch. He said the problem was he had not put the battery in exactly right but that was not the problem. He had used dead batteries. Duh?
Anyway. Life has a way of making your happy in unexpected ways. I am so happy not to hear the beep anymore. My home feels much homier now.
As soon as I snuggled in for the night, around 4 a.m. (I don't sleep regular hours), I swear that the very instant I burrowed into my down, a beeper went off. At first, I told myself it was my imagination. Then I heard it again and reasoned it came from another apartment. But it kept beeping.
One of my smoke alarms was beeping. Not because of smoke. Just an irritating beep.
I got up and found some ear plugs, the cheap kind you pick up at conferences, the kind that are uncomfortable in the ears but which do block lots of sound. I figured it was not a 'maintenance emergency', not a reason to awaken my building manager.
So when I arose around 11 a.m. I called in. After four hours, and another call to prod his appearance, the janitor came. It is surprisingly draining to listen to an unrelenting beep. It is a good noise. It is supposed to get your attention. It does. The janitor first put in an old battery. He had a bunch of 9 volt batteries and put in another dead one. So he had to come back. The second time, he put in three or four more duds before one worked. He did not separate out the dead batteries from good ones. He put them all back in the same pouch. He said the problem was he had not put the battery in exactly right but that was not the problem. He had used dead batteries. Duh?
Anyway. Life has a way of making your happy in unexpected ways. I am so happy not to hear the beep anymore. My home feels much homier now.
why unions?
speech from GM union strike in the thirties
First there is a commercial, sorry about that. Then you hear Marisa Tomei read the words of a union worker who was there. This is why we need unions. It's not just about the folks with public service union jobs. It's about all of us.
First there is a commercial, sorry about that. Then you hear Marisa Tomei read the words of a union worker who was there. This is why we need unions. It's not just about the folks with public service union jobs. It's about all of us.
Friday, February 18, 2011
self responsibility versus the commons
Is self responsibility an absolute? If each person is fully, solely and completely responsible for their own experience, when does responsibility arise for any kind of commons? In my view, every relationship has a commons, the shared space where two friends come together to relate, to mutually support one another's evolution, to mutually care one for the other.
Is all love self love? or is there something about love that includes (requires?) an other? Can one person in isolation lead a life of being loving without having any orientation to beings beyond one's self?
No. Of course not. The human commons is not just about sharing physical resources to live, such as food, water, shelter and clothing. The human commons is also about sharing ourselves with others. It is all about the shared space where relationships happen.
There can be no human commons without mutuality, without mutual caring, mutual support and mutual trust. Self responsibility is not an absolute. Like all aspects of nature, which is to say all aspects of the living system we each belong to, we are always interdependent. We are all dependent on the air we breath, trusting that it has enough oxygen to meet our need for oxygen. And we are all dependent on other people to be whole and independent. Maybe this is the paradox of self responsibility: yes, each of us is fully responsible for the self but we have a simultaneous, neverending responsibility to the commons, where human lives intersect.
Is all love self love? or is there something about love that includes (requires?) an other? Can one person in isolation lead a life of being loving without having any orientation to beings beyond one's self?
No. Of course not. The human commons is not just about sharing physical resources to live, such as food, water, shelter and clothing. The human commons is also about sharing ourselves with others. It is all about the shared space where relationships happen.
There can be no human commons without mutuality, without mutual caring, mutual support and mutual trust. Self responsibility is not an absolute. Like all aspects of nature, which is to say all aspects of the living system we each belong to, we are always interdependent. We are all dependent on the air we breath, trusting that it has enough oxygen to meet our need for oxygen. And we are all dependent on other people to be whole and independent. Maybe this is the paradox of self responsibility: yes, each of us is fully responsible for the self but we have a simultaneous, neverending responsibility to the commons, where human lives intersect.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
corporations
I bet law schools have changed some since I graduated in 1979. I wonder how corporations are addressed. Corporations are a big part of legal education. Pretty much everyone takes a basic course called 'Corporations' and such a course outlines general legal principals to have a corporation. But, if you think about it, quite a lot of what lawyers study to be able to pass the bar revolves around corporations. All first year law students take a two-semester course in 'Contracts', 'Torts' "Civil Procedure'. The education is not only about business law but most of it is about property rights.
They come right out and just tell you that the only purpose of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders. They come right out and declare that anything that is not related to making a profit is irrelevant to analyzing corporations.
I wonder if it's still like that. I wonder if modern legal educations contain any implication of ambiguity about such assumptions. The field of environmental law has emerged mostly since I finished law school in the late seventies. There is some public advocacy in environmental law, of course, but, without knowing anything about any job for an 'environmental lawyer', I bet that most jobs involving environmental law involve fighting over property, over money, over competing interests and underneath whatever is going on the real energy is about money, property, ownership, greed.
If we are going to restore the commons, we have to restore the values we share. The values we 'all' share is a commons, right?
Thinking.
They come right out and just tell you that the only purpose of a corporation is to make money for its shareholders. They come right out and declare that anything that is not related to making a profit is irrelevant to analyzing corporations.
I wonder if it's still like that. I wonder if modern legal educations contain any implication of ambiguity about such assumptions. The field of environmental law has emerged mostly since I finished law school in the late seventies. There is some public advocacy in environmental law, of course, but, without knowing anything about any job for an 'environmental lawyer', I bet that most jobs involving environmental law involve fighting over property, over money, over competing interests and underneath whatever is going on the real energy is about money, property, ownership, greed.
If we are going to restore the commons, we have to restore the values we share. The values we 'all' share is a commons, right?
Thinking.
the weather outside is frightful
A fire would be delightful.
It's raining cats and dogs in Berkeley today. And it's freezing. If I were sitting in my old house in Minneapolis, freezing in that bleak midwinter, I would still be imagining that it is always toasty in Berkeley compared to that climate. Back then, I did not realize how the human body adjusts to climate. When I lived in Minnesota, I could not have imagined freezing in fifty degree weather.
I think I am colder in Northern California than I ever was in the twenty years I lived in the frozen Northland.
Dry, sunny winters in Minneapolis.
When it is damp, the damp seeps into my whole being and I freeze.
Man, it's cold today. And the rain seems to come from all directions. My feet were soaking wet before I had walked one block.
On the upside, I left my building at 10:30, rode a bus to my doctor's, saw the doc and rode back home and was at my machine by 11:40. Efficiency.
I stripped off all my wet things and dove back under my down. I'm here for the day.
It's raining cats and dogs in Berkeley today. And it's freezing. If I were sitting in my old house in Minneapolis, freezing in that bleak midwinter, I would still be imagining that it is always toasty in Berkeley compared to that climate. Back then, I did not realize how the human body adjusts to climate. When I lived in Minnesota, I could not have imagined freezing in fifty degree weather.
I think I am colder in Northern California than I ever was in the twenty years I lived in the frozen Northland.
Dry, sunny winters in Minneapolis.
When it is damp, the damp seeps into my whole being and I freeze.
Man, it's cold today. And the rain seems to come from all directions. My feet were soaking wet before I had walked one block.
On the upside, I left my building at 10:30, rode a bus to my doctor's, saw the doc and rode back home and was at my machine by 11:40. Efficiency.
I stripped off all my wet things and dove back under my down. I'm here for the day.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
perfect thread scissors
For a few years, I owned a great little pair of tiny scissors, the kind you use to pull out a seam. They are about the same size as manicure scissors but the blades are different. They were very handy and wonderful. I don't remember why I had them but for awhile, I used them a lot. I don't remember doing much sewing so I don't understand why I valued these scissors. I was living in Amherst, MA during my happy times with these scissors, which means my daughter was in College at Simon's Rock.
She came home from college, probably because the campus closed down, because otherwise she did not like to visit me. And she asked to use my scissors. I resisted. I said "I have a feeling that if you use them, you will lose them. You tend to lose my things."
A passive aggressive thing? or was she stealing? which is not very passive aggression. At the time, I thought she lost my things because of thoughtlessness, not intention. But who knows?
I gave in. She used the scissors. And they disappeared. I never found them and I combed my home.
Life is full of mysteries.
She told me, during the same years I lived in Amherst, which was only two years, that she used to steal money from me when we still lived in Minneapolis. I always emptied my pockets on the counter by the phone on the main floor. I did vaguely note, back then, that I seemed to run out of money. I gave her spending money. It never occurred to me that she stole. I wonder why she confessed? Did she want to hurt me by telling me she was untrustworthy? Was she warning me?
When she first came to Amherst from college, she helped herself to things around my home that she needed, like my hair dryer. Then I would go to use whatever she had taken and only find out that it was gone when I needed it. So I sternly forbid her from taking my stuff.
Then she actually needed a hairdryer and I told her to take mine and she said 'But you told me not to take your stuff" and I said "I meant don't take my stuff without asking, without telling, ask. I am telling you you can take my hairdryer."
It seems so easy to get a new hairdryer, right? I don't remember why but I ended up replacing the hair dryer I gave Rosie on that visit from a shop in the Port Authority in New York City. Amherst is not a retail mecca. NYC was only a few hours away. I went into the city from Amherst frequently, to soak up the art museums. All my life, I had read reviews of art in NY City museums. And I visited NYC before I lived in Amherst, of course. I have visited NYC many times. But having those museus right there was wonderful.
Once, on my first Thanksgiving in Amherst, someone at dinner mentioned the Rothko show was closing that weekend. I took the train to NYC the next day, and returned to Amherst on the same day, just to see the Rothko. It was worth spending the day on that train. And I think that is the trip I bought the hairdryer. I remember working through the Port Authority and scanning the stores, remembering I needed a hair dryer. It seemed like my best shot to get a hair dryer, even though, I imagined, I was going to pay a little more. By the time I spent some gas to drive somewehre in Amherst or, more likely, Connecticut where there was a mall and a Target, I might just as well spend the extra bucks for the prices in the Port Authority. I would pay for convenience, I reasoned.
I still have that hairdryer, actually. My kid has not entered my home in almost ten years so she hasn't stolen anything since then but my heart and mind.
She came home from college, probably because the campus closed down, because otherwise she did not like to visit me. And she asked to use my scissors. I resisted. I said "I have a feeling that if you use them, you will lose them. You tend to lose my things."
A passive aggressive thing? or was she stealing? which is not very passive aggression. At the time, I thought she lost my things because of thoughtlessness, not intention. But who knows?
I gave in. She used the scissors. And they disappeared. I never found them and I combed my home.
Life is full of mysteries.
She told me, during the same years I lived in Amherst, which was only two years, that she used to steal money from me when we still lived in Minneapolis. I always emptied my pockets on the counter by the phone on the main floor. I did vaguely note, back then, that I seemed to run out of money. I gave her spending money. It never occurred to me that she stole. I wonder why she confessed? Did she want to hurt me by telling me she was untrustworthy? Was she warning me?
When she first came to Amherst from college, she helped herself to things around my home that she needed, like my hair dryer. Then I would go to use whatever she had taken and only find out that it was gone when I needed it. So I sternly forbid her from taking my stuff.
Then she actually needed a hairdryer and I told her to take mine and she said 'But you told me not to take your stuff" and I said "I meant don't take my stuff without asking, without telling, ask. I am telling you you can take my hairdryer."
It seems so easy to get a new hairdryer, right? I don't remember why but I ended up replacing the hair dryer I gave Rosie on that visit from a shop in the Port Authority in New York City. Amherst is not a retail mecca. NYC was only a few hours away. I went into the city from Amherst frequently, to soak up the art museums. All my life, I had read reviews of art in NY City museums. And I visited NYC before I lived in Amherst, of course. I have visited NYC many times. But having those museus right there was wonderful.
Once, on my first Thanksgiving in Amherst, someone at dinner mentioned the Rothko show was closing that weekend. I took the train to NYC the next day, and returned to Amherst on the same day, just to see the Rothko. It was worth spending the day on that train. And I think that is the trip I bought the hairdryer. I remember working through the Port Authority and scanning the stores, remembering I needed a hair dryer. It seemed like my best shot to get a hair dryer, even though, I imagined, I was going to pay a little more. By the time I spent some gas to drive somewehre in Amherst or, more likely, Connecticut where there was a mall and a Target, I might just as well spend the extra bucks for the prices in the Port Authority. I would pay for convenience, I reasoned.
I still have that hairdryer, actually. My kid has not entered my home in almost ten years so she hasn't stolen anything since then but my heart and mind.
duh! doh!
So I bought a burger at Oscar's, a long-time local burger joint in Berkeley. And cheap, although they don't advertise that their meat is grass-fed and/or free-ranch, which is probably why they are cheaper. They are tasty.
So I bought a burger and hung around at the register waiting for the burger and waiting to cash in my two buck Megamillions winner. Usually I order, then pay, then sit and wait but last night, no one took my money. The cashier guy took forever to take the money of people being served ahead of me. And then when the next burger was ready, the cashier guy was confused about who it was for. He seemed to have forgotten that Oscar's has a drive-up window. It's not a modern computerized window with an intercom. The customer pulls up to a window and waits for the cashier to notice and then the window is opened manually.
So the cashier figured out the burger wasn't for me. He hands over the food, takes in a twenty, rings it up but then the grill guy cleared the register to take my money. But the cashier guy stopped him, so cashier guy could finish.
Cashier guy could not count the change. He got out pencil and paper, wrote down $20.00, then wrote down $7.82 and subtracted. Repeatedly. Also repeatedly, he started counting out the change, seemed to think the change was supposed to be $7.82 and when he realized he was mistaken, he started all over. And by starting all over, I mean, he too a new sheet of paper and started calculating. I saw, instantly, that the change was $12.18. Or else the cashier was subtracting the wrong number. I didn't see the bills and coins he was taking out of the register, counting laboriously and in obvious confusion.
So the grill guy finishes my burger and gestures for me to give him my money. But this rattled the cashier guy. When I brought up the issue of my two dollar lottery win, they both waved me off. My behavior distracted them, I think.
I don't think I was behaving inappropriately. I think the cashier guy couldn't count. The grill guy was Hispanic and English was not his first langauge, which says nothing about his ability to read and write, especially his ability to read and write numbers.
It was strange. Those two twenty-something (maybe the grill guy was thirty-something, but not by much) got rattled or something. Or else maybe the were high. But I don't think they were. I think the cashier guy couldn't add.
And my point? I have not had much interaction with people who struggle with basic literacy. Being able to make change is basic literacy, right?
A few years ago, my sister the high school English teacher, at least at that time, had lessons in her English class about food stamps. I asked her why food stamps in English class. She said the kids could learn English grammar, vocabulary and writing skills addressing any subject and many of the students were on welfare and food stamps and few of her students had much awareness of what things cost or how to budget. She said she had the impression that until she talked to them about food stamps, they had not really thought of how food stamps added lots of food to their households, had not equated dollar values to the food stamps. I'm not sure if this was true.
Back in the eighties, I ran a training business with a business partner who had dropped out of high school. She was plenty smart. She had completed most of the coursework for a masters degree somewhere, even though she had no college degree. She had a lot of training in the work we did and she was gifted and smart. Once I remarked to her about IQ's and my biz partner said she thought that the average IQ was much higher than commonly believed. She said she thought everyone had IQ's near hers, which was in the one fifties or one sixties. She said.
I remember wanting to believe her. She taught me a lot about process work. She knew a lot more about the work we did than I did, at least when we started working together. I am sure she was as smart as she said she was. But education is not about being smart. It really is, at least in part, about knowing things. You can have a scary high IQ but be unable to count change for a twenty dollar bill.
I had a summer job in college at a movie theater. I sold candy, sodas and popcorn. There was no cash register and sales tax was built into the pricing so I did not have to calculate sales tax. Within one day behind the candy counter, I instantly calculated change for any purchase and any proferred payment. I wasn't able to do this cause I am smart. All candy counter workers performed the same calculations. There was no cash register or adding machine. There was only a metal box to hold money.
I have not had much interaction with people who can't make change. It was weird.
So I bought a burger and hung around at the register waiting for the burger and waiting to cash in my two buck Megamillions winner. Usually I order, then pay, then sit and wait but last night, no one took my money. The cashier guy took forever to take the money of people being served ahead of me. And then when the next burger was ready, the cashier guy was confused about who it was for. He seemed to have forgotten that Oscar's has a drive-up window. It's not a modern computerized window with an intercom. The customer pulls up to a window and waits for the cashier to notice and then the window is opened manually.
So the cashier figured out the burger wasn't for me. He hands over the food, takes in a twenty, rings it up but then the grill guy cleared the register to take my money. But the cashier guy stopped him, so cashier guy could finish.
Cashier guy could not count the change. He got out pencil and paper, wrote down $20.00, then wrote down $7.82 and subtracted. Repeatedly. Also repeatedly, he started counting out the change, seemed to think the change was supposed to be $7.82 and when he realized he was mistaken, he started all over. And by starting all over, I mean, he too a new sheet of paper and started calculating. I saw, instantly, that the change was $12.18. Or else the cashier was subtracting the wrong number. I didn't see the bills and coins he was taking out of the register, counting laboriously and in obvious confusion.
So the grill guy finishes my burger and gestures for me to give him my money. But this rattled the cashier guy. When I brought up the issue of my two dollar lottery win, they both waved me off. My behavior distracted them, I think.
I don't think I was behaving inappropriately. I think the cashier guy couldn't count. The grill guy was Hispanic and English was not his first langauge, which says nothing about his ability to read and write, especially his ability to read and write numbers.
It was strange. Those two twenty-something (maybe the grill guy was thirty-something, but not by much) got rattled or something. Or else maybe the were high. But I don't think they were. I think the cashier guy couldn't add.
And my point? I have not had much interaction with people who struggle with basic literacy. Being able to make change is basic literacy, right?
A few years ago, my sister the high school English teacher, at least at that time, had lessons in her English class about food stamps. I asked her why food stamps in English class. She said the kids could learn English grammar, vocabulary and writing skills addressing any subject and many of the students were on welfare and food stamps and few of her students had much awareness of what things cost or how to budget. She said she had the impression that until she talked to them about food stamps, they had not really thought of how food stamps added lots of food to their households, had not equated dollar values to the food stamps. I'm not sure if this was true.
Back in the eighties, I ran a training business with a business partner who had dropped out of high school. She was plenty smart. She had completed most of the coursework for a masters degree somewhere, even though she had no college degree. She had a lot of training in the work we did and she was gifted and smart. Once I remarked to her about IQ's and my biz partner said she thought that the average IQ was much higher than commonly believed. She said she thought everyone had IQ's near hers, which was in the one fifties or one sixties. She said.
I remember wanting to believe her. She taught me a lot about process work. She knew a lot more about the work we did than I did, at least when we started working together. I am sure she was as smart as she said she was. But education is not about being smart. It really is, at least in part, about knowing things. You can have a scary high IQ but be unable to count change for a twenty dollar bill.
I had a summer job in college at a movie theater. I sold candy, sodas and popcorn. There was no cash register and sales tax was built into the pricing so I did not have to calculate sales tax. Within one day behind the candy counter, I instantly calculated change for any purchase and any proferred payment. I wasn't able to do this cause I am smart. All candy counter workers performed the same calculations. There was no cash register or adding machine. There was only a metal box to hold money.
I have not had much interaction with people who can't make change. It was weird.
weird line I heard on the street
Tuesday evening, walking through downtown in the rain, I came to a storefront with an awning so I stepped under the awning, to avoid the rain. I changed my course just one step over. There was a man standing there. I did not touch him or, I don't think, get anywhere near to touching him. He was also under the awning, at the end of it, sheltering himself from the rain, I think. I stepped under the awning just past him and kept going. I was also feeling dizzy, with an unusual back ache that was causing me to struggle to stand upright and just keep walking. And, as I stepped 'over', under the awning, I cleared my throat. I was not coughing. But even if I were, it is not illegal to cough on the sidewalk. What else can a coughing person do who is walking? Are they supposed to beam themselves up?
So I stepped over and heard this guy say "Oh no you don't, you fat white blob of nothing, don't you come over here and cough on me."
I'm pretty sure he was talking to me but his venom did not immediately register because I was rushing. The dizziness, the backache. Plus I was sweating profusely. I have an ongoing intense sweating thing that my doc says is related to menopause. It's been years. It comes and goes. I don't think its menopause. It comes over me in waves and I can go from being dry to soaking in a minute or two. Sometimes water drops literaly dream down my forehead and strangers will notice and ask me if I am okay. But it was dark, I was moving and no one saw my sweating, certainly not this guy. By the time he said that, my back was to him and I was a couple yards away and moving on.
Then I heard "Don't you spit that half gallon of your sour white milk on me". When he had voiced the first insult, I had heard it but told myself he couldn't have been talking to me. I hadn't done anything but I had cleared my throat. I considered looking back to see if he would have been looking at me just so I could be sure he was directing his unkind words to me. But I felt bad. I was worried about racing home before I fainted.
I did not turn back to see him. He sounded African American but maybe that conclusion is racist. I wanted to turn back just to see if he was black or if he looked homeless. I had not really registered him when I took the step under the awning. I had just registered a human standing still and I have measured my steps to avoid that human.
I think he must have been crazy.
When I heard that sour white milk line, I was a bit sickened. By the time he said that, I was at least ten yards away. I had not spoken to him, not exchanged looks with him. I had not done anything. His radar that had detected my movement 'towards' him was a crazy person's radar, I think.
He spoke in a flat tone, as if he were detached from the content but the content was smart, acidic and unkind.
I still kept moving, got to the corner and turned, got past being able to hear him. He had not raised his voice. He had spoken in a conversational tone. I am sure he was talking about me and to me.
And for a brief moment, I felt fear.
I even considered going back to the corner, stepping into the Starbucks and going over to where he was to see him from where it was 'safe', from inside the store where other people would be around me. But I still felt dizzy and ache-y, still wanted to get home to my bed.
I didn't do anything wrong but I felt like I had. I felt slimed.
So I stepped over and heard this guy say "Oh no you don't, you fat white blob of nothing, don't you come over here and cough on me."
I'm pretty sure he was talking to me but his venom did not immediately register because I was rushing. The dizziness, the backache. Plus I was sweating profusely. I have an ongoing intense sweating thing that my doc says is related to menopause. It's been years. It comes and goes. I don't think its menopause. It comes over me in waves and I can go from being dry to soaking in a minute or two. Sometimes water drops literaly dream down my forehead and strangers will notice and ask me if I am okay. But it was dark, I was moving and no one saw my sweating, certainly not this guy. By the time he said that, my back was to him and I was a couple yards away and moving on.
Then I heard "Don't you spit that half gallon of your sour white milk on me". When he had voiced the first insult, I had heard it but told myself he couldn't have been talking to me. I hadn't done anything but I had cleared my throat. I considered looking back to see if he would have been looking at me just so I could be sure he was directing his unkind words to me. But I felt bad. I was worried about racing home before I fainted.
I did not turn back to see him. He sounded African American but maybe that conclusion is racist. I wanted to turn back just to see if he was black or if he looked homeless. I had not really registered him when I took the step under the awning. I had just registered a human standing still and I have measured my steps to avoid that human.
I think he must have been crazy.
When I heard that sour white milk line, I was a bit sickened. By the time he said that, I was at least ten yards away. I had not spoken to him, not exchanged looks with him. I had not done anything. His radar that had detected my movement 'towards' him was a crazy person's radar, I think.
He spoke in a flat tone, as if he were detached from the content but the content was smart, acidic and unkind.
I still kept moving, got to the corner and turned, got past being able to hear him. He had not raised his voice. He had spoken in a conversational tone. I am sure he was talking about me and to me.
And for a brief moment, I felt fear.
I even considered going back to the corner, stepping into the Starbucks and going over to where he was to see him from where it was 'safe', from inside the store where other people would be around me. But I still felt dizzy and ache-y, still wanted to get home to my bed.
I didn't do anything wrong but I felt like I had. I felt slimed.
win the lottery
I'm playing win the lottery these days and I just won two dollars. I had walked down to the Gourmet Ghetto, thinking about a slice of Cheeseboard Pizza, which is too carb-y for my diabetes but sometimes I trick myself into the exercise. I walk down there, telling myself I can have pizza if I want. When I get there, I don't. I buy a teriyaki thigh at Poulet or is it Pollo? it's a store that sells great roasted chicken and lots of sides. One thigh was $1.87 at $8.50 a pound. Wow, huh?
Then I walked home, passing the temptation of Oscar's, which is a famous Berkeley burger joint that has been here forever. Their burgers are only okay and they don't brag about the meat so it much be corporate beef but they are pretty cheap. $4.50. I also try to resist Oscar's. The buns are a lot of carbs but if I have not eaten all day, which is often the case -- I have odd eating patterns these days -- I might indulge in an Oscar's burger.
Mostly, I go in to buy a lottery ticket. Today I checked my last lottery ticket. I won two bucks. Now I hope I win millions with the ticket I bought today with my winnings. That would be great.
I'd buy a house with some garden sun to grow vegetables. Maybe in New Mexico. I love California. I love the Bay Area but I don't want to live in far-far-remote suburbia and the city is too expensive, right? Well, if I win thirty million, I'll househunt in the city.
Or maybe something in New York?
When I first lost my daughter, and I thought she was living in New York, I started playing win the lottery. It was the only way I could imagine getting her back in my life: buying it. I would dream hunt for cool lofts in what I imagine as early-Soho but which is now super extremely expensive even for a major lottery win. I would endlessly debate: should I buy a cool place for her to live in and then present it to her or should I contact her, tell her I have millions and want to buy her love.
Then I realized I was 'dreaming' that the only way my kid would come back to my life was if I could magically afford to buy her love. Yuck, right?
Then I started dreaming of what I would do for myself. I guess I could dream that again. For a few years, I dreamed of buying a property that could be co-housing, like a really great apartment building or a row of townhouses or just a block of houses. It's a fun dream game. I have whiled away days and days planning my co-ho.
Now, I observe, I can't see myself in community. I see myself alone all the time. That sucks. I am sure I could buy friends.
I am unhappy if I am building a dream life around buying love, huh?
Then I walked home, passing the temptation of Oscar's, which is a famous Berkeley burger joint that has been here forever. Their burgers are only okay and they don't brag about the meat so it much be corporate beef but they are pretty cheap. $4.50. I also try to resist Oscar's. The buns are a lot of carbs but if I have not eaten all day, which is often the case -- I have odd eating patterns these days -- I might indulge in an Oscar's burger.
Mostly, I go in to buy a lottery ticket. Today I checked my last lottery ticket. I won two bucks. Now I hope I win millions with the ticket I bought today with my winnings. That would be great.
I'd buy a house with some garden sun to grow vegetables. Maybe in New Mexico. I love California. I love the Bay Area but I don't want to live in far-far-remote suburbia and the city is too expensive, right? Well, if I win thirty million, I'll househunt in the city.
Or maybe something in New York?
When I first lost my daughter, and I thought she was living in New York, I started playing win the lottery. It was the only way I could imagine getting her back in my life: buying it. I would dream hunt for cool lofts in what I imagine as early-Soho but which is now super extremely expensive even for a major lottery win. I would endlessly debate: should I buy a cool place for her to live in and then present it to her or should I contact her, tell her I have millions and want to buy her love.
Then I realized I was 'dreaming' that the only way my kid would come back to my life was if I could magically afford to buy her love. Yuck, right?
Then I started dreaming of what I would do for myself. I guess I could dream that again. For a few years, I dreamed of buying a property that could be co-housing, like a really great apartment building or a row of townhouses or just a block of houses. It's a fun dream game. I have whiled away days and days planning my co-ho.
Now, I observe, I can't see myself in community. I see myself alone all the time. That sucks. I am sure I could buy friends.
I am unhappy if I am building a dream life around buying love, huh?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
I don't understand drinking alcohol
I never drank much. I tend to feel sick hungover after just one or two drinks. When I was about fifty, I sat a ten-day Vipassana silent retreat and the teacher, S.N. Goenka talked about not drinking. Anthroposophists, which is the closest thing I have to a spiritual faith system, believe drinking alcohol burns holes in your etheric body. Your 'etheric' is your energetic sheath, a layer that holds a 'kind' of layer between your physical self and your spiritual self. I am popping off. Serious anthroposophists would probably be aghast to read what I just wrote. And I am not a student of Buddhism or Goenka-gi's take on Vipassana so I am probably off in whatever I say there.
I heard a Vipassana teacher say 'drinking alcohol affects your work, your real work of being' and I patched that with the 'burns a hole in your etheric, matched with a lifetime of memories of headaches and nausea after just one glass of wine and I thought 'I'm done drinking'.
I will, in theory, have a beer on a hot day, with a friend, for the conviviality. I enjoy the taste of a good beer. I also enjoy the taste of good wine. And I think that organic wines don't leave me feeling sick. I don't really feel hungover if I drink 'hard liquor' but I've never really done that. I never really liked the taste of gin, scotch, vodka, bourbon, whatever. Do they have tastes? I'm fuzzy on the deets. It's been a long, long time.
I love the glam of fancy cocktails in fancy glasses. I love fruity tastes and bitter blends in sweetness.
But I never really got why so many people like to alter their consciousness with drugs. Alcohol is a drug, right? I just don't get the appeal of the drug aspect of booze.
This might seem unusual. I have four brothers and I think all of them are alcoholics. They would probably all angrily denounce that statement. Lots of alcoholics never end up in the gutter so they think they aren't alkies.
I heard a Vipassana teacher say 'drinking alcohol affects your work, your real work of being' and I patched that with the 'burns a hole in your etheric, matched with a lifetime of memories of headaches and nausea after just one glass of wine and I thought 'I'm done drinking'.
I will, in theory, have a beer on a hot day, with a friend, for the conviviality. I enjoy the taste of a good beer. I also enjoy the taste of good wine. And I think that organic wines don't leave me feeling sick. I don't really feel hungover if I drink 'hard liquor' but I've never really done that. I never really liked the taste of gin, scotch, vodka, bourbon, whatever. Do they have tastes? I'm fuzzy on the deets. It's been a long, long time.
I love the glam of fancy cocktails in fancy glasses. I love fruity tastes and bitter blends in sweetness.
But I never really got why so many people like to alter their consciousness with drugs. Alcohol is a drug, right? I just don't get the appeal of the drug aspect of booze.
This might seem unusual. I have four brothers and I think all of them are alcoholics. They would probably all angrily denounce that statement. Lots of alcoholics never end up in the gutter so they think they aren't alkies.
camping
I haven't been tent camping in over ten years. When I did go camping, it was in Minnesota State Parks. Park rangers enforced the rules and no campers were allowed to get drunk and party late and loud with boom boxes. Families are out there camping. Drunk boom box dancing keeps kids awake.
But there are a lot of federal campsites in northern Minnesota, like up in the Boundary Waters, endless miles of nature with no rangers. Drunken louts who, apparently, love nature and boozing camp here. If you are unfortunate enough to get stuck next such a party, you are shit out of luck. The people who behave these way seemed very aware that there was nothing other campers could do. What? Were you going to get up and stuff your kids in a car and go driving looking, probably futilely, for a ranger to shut the party down?
But there is one thing you can do. You can get up about five a.m. and make noise.
But there are a lot of federal campsites in northern Minnesota, like up in the Boundary Waters, endless miles of nature with no rangers. Drunken louts who, apparently, love nature and boozing camp here. If you are unfortunate enough to get stuck next such a party, you are shit out of luck. The people who behave these way seemed very aware that there was nothing other campers could do. What? Were you going to get up and stuff your kids in a car and go driving looking, probably futilely, for a ranger to shut the party down?
But there is one thing you can do. You can get up about five a.m. and make noise.
It was actually pleasantly thrilling to experience nature in such high energy form. But I lived in the Upper Midwest (Minneapolis) most of my life, in a three story Victorian. My first floor was a rental unit and I became accustomed to living ‘up’ in my two-story home. I had a two-story atrium with windows all the way to the top, plus many skylights on the roof. All the windows were privacy windows, position so my near neighbors could not see into my home, nor I into theirs so I never covered the windows and I loved the feeling of being perched ‘up’ in the rain, snow, sun, shadow, and wind.
In the summer and fall, the house was densely shaded by the 110+ year old elm tree, which, alas, was declared dead by the city since I sold that home. That grand elm tree shaded three,three-story homes. It would feel like living in a bald spot to me now.
But with the elm tree wrapped over and around my windows, with or without leaves, depending on the time of year, I loved every minute I spent in that house during rain, snow, winds, and hail. I felt like I lived in that tree.
Up on the third story was another, completely different experience because up there, was was above much of the tree and my views of the weather were completely differently.
Ever since, I have longed to recreate a more direct experience of the weather than I got in my first California home. My first place in CA was in a second-story condo, nested around a very nicely landscaped courtyard but the only view was the top of shrubbery. I know there are some tall stately oaks in CA but there weren’t any tall trees in this mid-century-built complex. I was, as I said, a very nicely landscape space but there was little to see.
Now, perched in the sky, with views of the Berkeley hills peeking in my view, and endless sky, I don’t get the cosy feeling I used to get under my dear old elm tree. How I loved that tree. I am so glad I didn’t live there any longer when the city decided the tree had to come down. As it is, I mourn it but if I still lived there under the bald, unshaded sun, without the comfort of that cooling and embracing shade — I used to feel so embraced by that tree! — . . my weather/sky experience atop downtown Berkeley is different but I have come to love my view. When I moved in here, I resolved to love the view, for I expect to live here a long, long time.
When I awaken each morning, I try to calculate the time based on the sundial outside my window. This ‘sundial’ is simply the rounded tower of the other side of my building. Based on where the shadows fall on the wall, I can accurately tell the time. So I awaken, glance at the sundial and then check the clock to see if I am right. After two years, I have learned to adjust to the changing seasons, as the sun rises at different times and at different angles and I am right about the time each day. I have come to love my view, love what I learn about the changing sky conditions. Sometimes the fog dips down below the top of my building, even to the point where it covers my window. I love that. Mostly, it clear and sunny with overcast sky often, of course, but mostly it is always bright. And monotonous.
So last night, the light show was a thrill. I stopped what I was doing and just watched the sky for a long while. When the downpour began, it was another thrill. And then, by the time the hail was pounding down, all the high energy was happy excitement for me.
Wow. I live on the earth. Nature touches me, even in my very urban world.
This experience was very satisfying.
It was not so satisfying this morning when I trudged over to the farmers market in the cold rain. I have this one pair of shoes that I slip on most often to run neighborhood errands. I don’t understand why this one pair of shoes, a pair of ‘earth shoes’, as it happens, seem to catch the rainfall as I walk. It seems like my socks become wet after walking just one half a block. Slip-ons, I don’t quite understand where the rain falls so it is able to roll inside the shoe. But it does. I know other shoes I own keep my feet dry but I forget and seem to have on the wrong shoes every time it rains. I can’t stand it when my feet get wet because then they get cold.
So my trip to the farmers market became a shivered rush. I did my regular rounds, purchasing the same things I tend to buy each week, chatting with my regular vendors, which was much easier to do today because there were not many customers during the rain.
I felt assaulted, trudging through downtown, sloshing in the rain, the wind actually blowing back my Marmot hood, which is a rainjacket designed for windy and rain. I stopped at one point and secured the hood as snugly as possible, zipped everything as tightly as possible, pulled the rainhood so the visor left me almost blind as I walked and still the strong winds blew that hood back. It was a pain. I was cold. My feet felt like wet, icy chunks of chill. But, still and all, it was great. I was cold, icy, wet and alive alive alive.
All in all, a fine winter storm.