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Hello all:

Now that the California fires are (hopefully) dying down
and we (maybe) haven't bombed Iran, despite Cheney's
macho bellowings, writing this blog has settled into something
I do once a week. Please keep checking back or sign up to be
notified when a new entry appears. But there's absolutely no
reason why we can't all use this to express ideas and maybe
challenge one another a bit. I'll be happy to post something of
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you can offer your thoughts right away. You'll need a G-mail
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know which evil empire will win--Google or Microsoft. I plan
to do the smart thing and play both sides.

The Fang

When I was a child, one of the most vicious looking tools in my mother’s kitchen was the can opener. It had a pointed end that looked like a fang attached to the end of a wooden handle. My mother’s was very well used, as I remember, as the red paint on the handle was flaking.

I remember her driving that point into the top of a can with a powerful downward blow as if she were stabbing an ice pick. Opening the can that way left an ugly, jagged can as well as a jagged lip. Washing out a can was a hazard as was putting out the garbage.

As I grew up, the technology changed. A new type of opener appeared with a pair of handles. You clipped the sharp edge over the lid, clamped the handles together, and then turned a key that—providing you had caught the lip properly—created a clean curved cut along the top. This version removed the jagged edges, although the tops were still very sharp, but substituted another hazard. If you had not properly caught the lip edge and you applied too much force, you tipped over the can with predictable results. A child was particularly liable to do that. I can remember sending a can of soup like a missile across the kitchen.

I’d forgotten all this until I saw a fang in a shop specializing in antique kitchen tools. There it was among the old cookie cutters with handles on them and the butter scrapers that no one uses anymore. “Do you know what that’s for?” the owner asked me. I looked at him blankly. It hadn’t occurred to me that anyone wouldn’t. He took my look to mean he should demonstrate it. I watched him go through the motion of that downward swing and the sawing that followed. It was all very familiar. I could see my mother doing it all those years ago. I bought the can opener. I had to.

On my way home I felt a little strange that something I remembered and had actually used was now considered “vintage” if not antique. But then I suppose my life is also vintage if not antique. Until I saw the fang, I hadn’t thought of myself as aging. It seems just yesterday that I was young--when I could rely on my mother to take care of the little unpleasant things of life, like opening cans. I suppose that my grandson feels the same way about relying on his parents and me. And that’s as it should be despite the conflicting messages our society gives us about “growing up” and “taking responsibility” while also fighting every wrinkle and sag. We do grow up. Our technologies change. The whole world becomes something very different from what we grew up in. But we don’t always notice until we see something like a fang on the pile of things that are now outdated and worthy only of curiosity. How we deal with that insight, I suppose, is a measure of who we have grown into.

I’m glad that my proud mother didn’t live to see her can opener for sale in an antique shop. The pulse of the universe beat in her veins and she hated letting go of life. I think she would have taken the fang very personally. She would have tossed her head in defiance and said she still had lots of life left. As I have grown older, I respect her more and more. So in her honor I did something to tell her that I now understand as I could not as a child. I went home and opened a can with the fang.

Victoria's Secret

Every year, Victoria’s Secret models sway down the runway, wearing the next-to-nothings frothed up by this year’s designers. I usually wince for them, imagining all the waxing and not-eating that has gone into the making the shine and smoothness of their bodies. But I also have to admire the way the stuff actually skims over their bodies and the feral expression on their faces.

I used to think about these models whenever I went into a department store to buy my undies. I was usually taken over to what I call the prosthetic department. This is where they sell bras that have one hundred different ways of stretched elastic to hold things up and hold things in. They look like nursing bras. Or panties that look more like the gym knickers I wore in school, designed to camouflage and be—that very British word—comfy. I couldn’t imagine the VS models in anything like these aircraft carriers of underclothes. Of course, they wouldn’t need to be. But I also came to the conclusion that they wouldn’t put up with a choice of only white, beige, or black.

One day, I mutinied. I crossed the mall from where I had been shopping and went into Victoria’s Secret. When I first heard the name of the store, I’d thought it must stock things like lavender sachets and lace-trimmed petticoats like Queen Victoria might have used to tempt her Albert. I was soon disabused of the idea.

Here was everything I had been lusting for. Shiny panties in kaleidoscopic colours that came in three sizes: small, smaller, and did I forget to put them on today? Their bras came with one angle of thrust: out and up. Size was optional and an asset. I fell in love.

That first day, though, I decided that my initial self-consciousness in this unapologetic celebration of the body would only allow me to look at nighties, with the prepared excuse that I was shopping for my non-existent daughter. I found frilly baby-doll confections, some even in sizes that I might hope to get over my head. But I didn’t need my pretense. The saleswoman didn’t seem to turn a hair and showed me to the changing rooms.

The first one I tried on was full of straps and I had trouble finding where my arms were supposed to go. Back to the hanger. The next one was virginal white with silver satin bands. Very pretty but made me look as if a mound of cotton candy was trying to sneak into a slumber party. The third was soft layers, with a strawberry pink cover over taupe under. I could get in it. True, I looked a bit like a dumpy fairy, but I decided to take it and promised myself to lose weight. Then I tried on the last one: a lacy black confection with little ribbons and an intoxicating sway about the hips. I posed in front of the mirror, putting on the Victoria Secret’s pout. I looked bloody ridiculous, but it wasn’t the outfit’s fault. Where was all this when I was young?

“Are you doing all right?” the saleswoman called over the swinging door.

“Just fine,” I called back. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Reality had intruded. Quickly, I took off the black nightie and hung it back on the hanger. I had a momentary horror that someone might have been watching on a surveillance camera. What a story that person would have to tell tonight. But as I put on my street clothes, I noticed that the room seemed empty and very quiet. I fingered the black nightie again and heard again the distant jungle roar.

When I went over to pay, I bought them both. I had a smile on my face. I could wear the pink one. I could dream about the black one. I’d have to keep the black one secret though, so no one would laugh. That’s when I knew why they chose the name Victoria’s Secret.

In a confidential mood, I leaned into the cashier and whispered to her. “Not all your customers look like your models, you know.”

She leaned back to me and whispered. “Neither do the salespeople.”

I like Victoria’s Secret. I will be back.

Manolo and Me

Hi Everyone. I'm having great fun doing this blog and thanks for reading this. If you want to follow my further misadventures, you can click below and sign up to be notified whenever I post another bit of nonsense! Diana


I went into Nordstrom the other day to look at shoes. Under the best of conditions, this experience is—to use the British word—fraught. For one thing, most of the shoes they stock are what my mother used to tell me to shun.

“Think about your feet,” she’d say as I longingly eyed shoes with toes that belonged on the top of umbrellas. “You’re going to be very sorry.”

Of course, I didn’t and I am. I have what I insist on calling a genetic defect. I absolutely refuse to call it a bunion. I wear orthotics to balance my foot from tipping inwards and aggravating it.

Last time I bought a pair of shoes, I went to an athletic shop. I really had to have an everyday pair for comfort. In my youth, we used to laugh at descriptions of little old ladies in tennis shoes. These were the ladies who hit politicians on the head with signs.
Although that’s not a bad idea, the idea of being a little old lady in tennis shoes didn’t appeal. I planned on buying a super-duper, bells and whistles, naturally breathing athletic shoe. No tennies for me, thank you very much.

First thing the saleswoman did was tell me I’d lost my arches. I had visions of some thief in the night making off with them. “Your foot has spread because you’ve lost your arches,” she told me.

I looked in horror at my inadequate feet. When I held them out in front of me and pointed my toes I could see the foot I remembered. Double AA, cut for a very high arch. When I stood on them, they turned into the paws of a Great Dane. They splatted beyond even what I could call luau feet from going barefoot in Hawaii. I slunk out of the store with a sensible New Balance shoe cut for comfort and people with fallen arches.

Then I had a moment of mutiny. I went through my shoes at home, trying them on. If they fit, she was a lying traitor to my sex and age. But she was right. Something had happened to my feet that even spraying the shoes with leather relaxer couldn’t solve. Hence my need for new shoes and my visit to the fabulous shoe floor at Nordstrom.

Anyone who hasn’t been to a shoe floor lately probably doesn’t realize that there has been a profound shift in the theory of shoe design. Maybe it’s Sex and the City that did it, but shoes now have four inch heels and prices to match. They are what Sid would call (rhymes with duck)-me pumps. The only experience I’ve ever had with anything like them were the old platform shoes that we fell off and twisted our ankles. I could envision putting on a pair and promptly breaking the heel.

“Do you have anything stylish in soft leather with a middle heel?” I asked the sales person.

She took me to a row of leopard-patterned knee boots and then, seeing my face, to a station with absolutely flat ballerina slippers.

“Nothing in between?” I asked.

She shook her head sadly. “They just don’t sell.”

I surveyed the counters and stands displaying glittering, strappy shoes, with glittering strappy names and prices. I found myself wondering when we elevated our foot ware into symbols of virility and attraction. I suppose shoes have always had this power or there wouldn’t be shoe fetishes. Still, somewhere along the way something happened and I just didn’t notice it. Finally, I resigned myself to trying to spray my favorite Bally shoes again, the ones with the worn leather that I can’t bring myself to part with. Ah, my dears, those were the days.

But then the assistant had a brain storm and took me to a special display by a new designer who is a ballroom dancer. The shoes had a very wide toe box and were so supple the sole bent in half.

I’m still thinking about them. I’d have bought a pair but they look something like the Mary Jane black patent shoes I wore when I took tap dancing. I like the idea, though. I can say that my genetic problem with my feet was caused by all those years of ballroom dancing in those glamorous skimpy outfits.

I wonder if anyone will believe me.

Of Lug Nuts and Wheels

My doctor once told me with far too much glee that the wheels started coming off the car at fifty. I don’t dispute the inevitable need for extra tuning and servicing, but I do want to protest that it’s much later than fifty.

Claiming to be aged at fifty it self-indulgent. It’s the rather smug assurance that at fifty the wheels are most definitely not coming off the car. Consider whether there’s any joke in the statement that the wheels start coming off the car at seventy.

In fact, a great deal of talk about the aging process tends to be the vain ruminations of people who don’t think they qualify as seniors. The person who gets upset when the first AARP bulletin arrives in the mailbox is really wondering what list they are on rather than whether they are really “old enough.” They don’t think they are seniors or they wouldn’t be offended. They think of themselves as still being with it. Still active and alive while all those “seniors” are sitting around reflecting on their lives and probably peeing themselves.

What they haven’t realized yet is that being offered a senior discount or an AARP membership is only stage one of the aging process. It is far different from having a senior discount automatically deducted. The offer implies that there is a question. The deduction is a slam dunk. It is also a moral dilemma.

What do you do when you are at the counter and the young thing offers a discount to you and you have more than enough resources to not need any favors from local merchants? “Oh no, I’m not that old yet,” you can say proudly if you aren’t, as if it mattered to the young thing who is actually trying to be kind. But what do you say to the automatic deduction? You can hardly say “Oh please, I’m not that old, I can easily afford this, please add on more money to the bill.” You can’t without making a fuss and a fool of yourself. So you slink away with your ten percent discount. Society, in fact, has just loosened one of the lug nuts on your wheel without even asking you.

But you’re just getting started in the process. Stage two happens when everything that goes wrong with you, from the common cold on through everything more serious somehow becomes tied to the number of years you have been alive. It’s almost a convenient excuse. You broke your leg skateboarding? Obviously, your bones have become weaker through age. You need a tooth crowned? Must be age is weakening your tooth enamel. You need a skin cancer removed? Must be all those years of sun exposure and not the fact that you haven’t used sun block at 11,000 feet at the ski runs. Quite apart from the fact that these things may be true, it’s discouraging to think that age has to be eliminated before other reasons are even considered.

But it’s stage three in the process that you have to look out for. That’s when advertising shows pictures of people your age and suggests strongly that spending thousands of dollars for botox and plastic surgery is justified so that no one needs to look like you. You have now become the bad example. That’s why they show men in the Viagara commercials who look far too young to need any help. They don’t show the countless real seniors who use it. Perhaps they think that no one would believe that seniors are still interested in sex.

What a surprise is waiting for these people.

Bette Davis once said that growing old was not for sissies. True enough. But things look different from the other side of the “senior” divide. Certainly there are seniors who are incapacitated, but so too are some “younger” folk. Not every eighty-year-old is a candidate for a nursing home, although news reports suggest that. Being a senior is a relative term even if my fiftiesh cousin once commented that it was too bad that I had all this experience that nobody wanted. To him and everyone else, I want to say that while the lug nuts may loosen on my car, the wheels aren’t going to come off that easily.

Suicide on the slopes

Last season, I used my season pass at Copper only twice. I was taken down by a boarder. It could have been a skier, I know that. But it wasn’t. And all the other times I have felt lucky to escape with my life, it has been a boarder.

My boarder didn’t stop, which made me wonder how many encounters on the slopes go unreported. How does one identify a fleeing back?

My enforced vacation away from skiing last season with a torn tendon did have some benefit, however, as it gave me time to think about these matters.

I have to admit that my mental image of boarders is that they are schuss warriors, usually younger, who want to be in the X games.

They are the ones who ski jump over bumps and scream things such as “Cool” and “Sweet” as they thump down. On the highway, they speed up to the slopes as if the snow will melt before they get there. They tend to believe in their own immortality.

I, by contrast, am long-in-tooth. Lift attendants take one look at me and slow the chair. I can ski the blue slopes, but I try to look graceful in order to hide the fact that I ski slowly (I prefer to say “in control”). I associate adrenaline with terror and I don’t like it.

Inevitably there is a culture clash between the boarders and me. Yet I am wise enough to recognize that we must share the slopes both graciously and safely. We all want the same things, to enjoy Colorado’s blue skies and sunshine and the powder snow beneath us.

Given that, I realize the importance of détente. Consequently, exercising the privilege of relative age, I have drawn up a contract for boarders who wish to avoid the nuisance of knocking me down.

Please, boarders, do not target the five feet between me and my skiing partner as the passageway to your nirvana.

If you decide to pass me, please do not make a sharp turn that sprays me with snow and then make a contemptuous sway as you move on.

Please do not run (or slide) up to the lift chair when we’re already at the loading line. That time you got on between us when we didn’t know you were there until we sat down was certainly spine tingling, but not as much as when your board caught my ski getting off and I landed on my back.

Please notice that I steadily weave down the slope. I am not going to suddenly start heading down toward the bottom in a straight line like you tend to do. If you come very close, like your board is in contact with my skis, you are going to scare at least the heck out of me.

If you do a 360 over a bump, yelling “Geronimo” is not sufficient warning. Please let me pass unscathed before you jump.

Finally, please do not sit down in lodge later with a beer and talk about stupid skiers. I may feel tempted to bean with you with my ski pole.

In return, I promise you the following.

I will work on my understanding that many boarders are now in middle age and that boarding is here to stay.

I will stop complaining about the ironed out stretches of snow where you came screeching to a stop.

I will not ski close to your terrain park jumps, as much for your safety as my own.

If you are lined up like birds on a telephone wire thinking about taking off down the hill, I will either wait for you to go or I will stay well off to the side by the trees and try not to weave into your path.

Above all, I will understand that we share the mountain and that for all our sakes as well as that of the ski industry that makes it possible, we want to end the day by counting the number of runs rather than doing a body count.