I was thinking about Christmas the other day. It’s the season, of course, but that’s not the reason. What started me off was the reporter who threw his shoes at George W. It made me think of the stories about bad little boys who got lumps of coal rather than toys in their stockings. Most of us at this point might consider throwing other things at him—like dead polar bears, shopping carts used by the homeless, cheating financial advisors (who probably ought to dropped onto him from, say, the top of the Empire State Building), and strips of mildewed and rat-chewed wall from the veteran’s hospitals. Most of us, also, might take more care with our aim. But I digress. As I said, I was thinking of Christmas.
It occurred to me that Christmas has changed a great deal over the years—over my years anyway, and I’m not sure that it’s been all for the best. Everyone says this and affects the proper degree of exasperation while rushing out to buy the stores out of anything remotely Christmassy. I, on the other hand, have retreated into a kind of cave from which I blink like a mole in daylight at the goings-on around me.
It wasn’t always this way.
My earliest memories of the season are actually among my happiest. There was just my mother and I and money was tight. I got one present. I knew what it was but that never stopped the anticipation. We always went up to London by train to see Father Christmas at Harrods or Marks and Spencer and the Regent Street lights, then we caught the train home. It was a splurge for us, always appreciated, and always cherished. Mum made a Christmas cake for us, a heavy dark fruit cake with marzipan and royal icing. She’d generally work an additional shift relieving other nursing staff so she could make a bit of extra money. I’d go along with her. Once I remember a slightly drunk doctor kissing all the nurses. I got kissed too. The first time anyone had ever kissed me on the lips.
When I married and had a family, I tried to duplicate some of the joy of my youth (sans inebriated doctors) for my son. The problem, however, was that my husband had family. My youthful enthusiasm for Christmas yielded to the expectations that came with the season. These became burdens as the volatile Italian family I had married into celebrated Christmas with fewer or more people, depending on who was talking to whom at the time. My sister-in-law held the record for non-arrival. When she actually appeared, it was like the second coming and the topic of conversation for months. We all endured and went back for more because it was Christmas, right?
Christmas took a sharp turn to the dark side when my husband died on December 16, 1997. I don’t know why I felt I had to proceed as if he was still with us. I think I was numb. It seemed pressingly important for me to have “a Christmas.” I think my mistake was forgetting that Christmas is not a stand-alone event. I should have understood that none of us had even begun the grieving process—least of all me—and that probably none of us was ready. My son and his wife and the children came to my house and proceeded to get into a disagreement. I sat watching things escalate until they packed up the kids and went home without even having dinner. I didn’t want to be alone, so I threw the uneaten dinner into the fridge and went out looking for some place to be. Nothing was open except a sports café with a small, tilted plastic Christmas tree on the bar. The place had a handful of regulars and I got the feeling they too had nowhere to go. I had a glass of white wine and a bucket of chicken wings and listened to canned Western music. I remember particularly the song, “All my exes live in Texas.” Then I went to see Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. I’ll always be grateful the movie house was open.
Since then, I don’t do much for Christmas. It seems pointless with my family thousands of miles away. On the other hand, I enjoy the opportunity to be in touch with friends who are spread across the country. Fortunately, the tradition of writing newsy accounts of the year is alive and well; otherwise, I might never hear of the good things that have happened. I also use the time to reflect and count my blessings for my relationship with Sid, for the health of the people I love, and the fact that I have a home and enough to eat. During this season, I share what I can with the charities serving the poor. Other than this, I retreat to my cave and remember how things used to be.
That’s why I find the case of the thrown shoes so interesting. The reporter must have reflected on what he owed our peerless leader at this holy season and felt that the great decider deserved only footwear, surely the presidential equivalent of a lump of coal. What a comment this is. The reporter will undoubtedly apologize. He will have to: punishment in that part of the world is swift and unpleasant. But I, for one, will long remember the image of the president ducking shoes; my bet is that it will appear in myriad history books in the future. Too bad it wasn’t a lump of coal given the mining he wanted in our shrinking wilderness, but—what the heck?—shoes are better than nothing.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
They
Now that Sarah has gone back to Alaska and back to making moose-meat chili, I’ve found time has lost some of its meaning. The election seems years ago and it's a shock to realize that George W. is still in possession of the White House. I feel only irritation over the mess the country’s been led into and somewhat hopeful that something can be done about it—but neither of them passionately enough for me to want to write about (just yet).
Clearly I need to move on and think about something else. So rather like the sherbert they serve between courses to clear the palate, I want to write about something from my childhood that set me on whatever crooked path my life has taken. I’ve shared this with only a few people because I don’t much like having to defend myself. It happened. I didn’t make it up. The memory has lasted a lifetime and forever changed the way I understand the world. But it’s one of those things when it happens to you, the memory is indelible. When it happens to someone else, people want to explain it away—that is, unless they already “know.” Things like what happened to me tend to upset the applecart of things that people have primary certitude about. If you are passionately fond of a particular variety of apple—you may want to skip this blog. If, on the other hand, you have curiosity and a sense of wonder about apples and trees and the universe--by all means read on.
It is about what I call “they.”
I was ten. I checked on my school records to be sure. The younger I was, the more enchanting it seems to me now. I was attending the Brighton and Hove High School, except it really wasn’t high school in the American sense. My mother was doing private nursing for a very rich old man who lived in the penthouse of an exclusive block of flats just down the hill from my school. Since Mum got on very well with the young wife and was always open to a bit of extra money to help with my school bills, she agreed to do a double—24 hours on, which required her to live in. I came along for the ride.
We settled in nicely and I rode my bike up the hill every day to school. The old man was in and out of it but I didn’t see much of him after my mother took me in to introduce this strange little urchin who was to share his flat, sleeping in the room directly across the hall from his. I think he noticed me. Mum sort of stage managed it. She introduced me and then whisked me out. Mum had seen that I’d been around death—even putting pennies on my grandmother’s dead eyes to set the lids down—because she never wanted me to be afraid of it. So from the brief experience of sort-of meeting him, I could tell from the slightly sweet smell of death that he was not too long for the world.
One night after about a week, I was awakened by noises that seemed to be coming from upstairs. It didn’t occur to me that this was a penthouse so there couldn’t be any upstairs, but no matter, to my childish mind that’s where the sounds came from. There were footsteps and doors opening and shutting, all distinct and noisy enough to have woken me up. I was annoyed. It sounded like a party and it was far too late—didn’t they know I had school the next day?
I opened my door to cross the hallway, which to my surprise was silent. I had expected the noises to intensify. I remember feeling perplexed as I crossed the hall to open the door to the old man’s room. I saw my mother get up quickly from her chair. She looked concerned and I got the sense I shouldn’t have bothered her. I whispered in my high-pitched little English voice, “Mummy, those people upstairs are making a terrible racket.” She didn’t seem angry after all but put her arm around me and guided me quickly back to my bedroom. “Lock the door, darling,” she told me, “and go back to sleep.” I heard no more noises until she knocked on the door next morning to wake me for school.
I learned then the old man had died in the night. No one explained anything and that might have been the end of the story except for some reason the memories refused to die. Years later I asked my mother why she had told me to lock the door.
By then, I guess, I was old enough to be admitted into the circle. It seemed I was not the only one hearing them. But the old man was not only hearing them, he was seeing them. Mum said that the footsteps came to the door and even though he was in deep coma and giving the death rattle, he spoke to whoever had come. He saw his parents. He saw his brother. He saw his dog, and my mother heard the sound of claws on a wood floor. She said she couldn’t be frightened because there was so much joy in his voice as he spoke to them. Well—maybe she hadn’t been frightened until I opened the door: God knows what she must have thought as she watched it open. The sounds ended, she said, the moment he died.
But the story doesn’t end there. It wasn’t just my mother and I. The young wife, who had not been the most faithful of brides, heard them and locked herself in her room with a bottle of whiskey, saying they were going to get her too.
Three of us heard them, one of us a child. The old man saw them, even calling his dog by name. They came for him. I cannot believe anything else.
Since then, I do not believe anyone who purports to tell me about death unless they have somehow looked into that place beyond life. All the fire and brimstone in the world cannot supplant for me being told of the joy of an old man who was seeing once more the things he had loved and believed he had lost.
For many, many years I did not speak of this. Those I told sometimes looked at me with sympathy and shook their heads. They offered all manner of explanations that best fitted with what they had been taught. From their doubting, I learned to be silent because it was easier.
Then one day, I went to the Spiritualist Society of Great Britain. I wanted to know—I had to know—were we all just delusional on the night that the old man died? No, I was told. When death is shared, as this old man shared his with us, there is always a reason. It was not my imagination, nor that of my mother and the young wife. What was unusual and very special was the fact that he shared it. There was a purpose--and in fact, I had betrayed it by letting fear prevent me from talking about it. Your purpose and your duty, the spiritualist minister told me, is to talk about this without fear of consequence or reprisal. Whatever communication we are given from beyond--whether in dreams or imagination or in more conscious contact--is a gift to guide us to become whom we are meant be.
My mother said that in fifty years of nursing, she never before or after experienced anything comparable. Hospice nurses tell me that it happens from time to time and that the transition to the other side is always easier when it does. The nurses tell me it always a privilege to share it when it happens.
This blog is the first time I am openly acknowledging my experience as a child. I wish that everyone could have direct experience to dispell the doubts. It has given me the knowledge that guides my life. I know that “they” come for you because I have heard it. I know that what waits beyond is hopeful and joyful. I know that we each have a purpose and that sometimes it is difficult to find and sometimes scarey in the demands that it makes of us. I find the sense of a community around us, waiting to welcome us back—to be profoundly comforting.
I just hope by speaking out at last, I am finally worthy of that night when an old man shared with us one of the most private things we will ever experience.
Clearly I need to move on and think about something else. So rather like the sherbert they serve between courses to clear the palate, I want to write about something from my childhood that set me on whatever crooked path my life has taken. I’ve shared this with only a few people because I don’t much like having to defend myself. It happened. I didn’t make it up. The memory has lasted a lifetime and forever changed the way I understand the world. But it’s one of those things when it happens to you, the memory is indelible. When it happens to someone else, people want to explain it away—that is, unless they already “know.” Things like what happened to me tend to upset the applecart of things that people have primary certitude about. If you are passionately fond of a particular variety of apple—you may want to skip this blog. If, on the other hand, you have curiosity and a sense of wonder about apples and trees and the universe--by all means read on.
It is about what I call “they.”
I was ten. I checked on my school records to be sure. The younger I was, the more enchanting it seems to me now. I was attending the Brighton and Hove High School, except it really wasn’t high school in the American sense. My mother was doing private nursing for a very rich old man who lived in the penthouse of an exclusive block of flats just down the hill from my school. Since Mum got on very well with the young wife and was always open to a bit of extra money to help with my school bills, she agreed to do a double—24 hours on, which required her to live in. I came along for the ride.
We settled in nicely and I rode my bike up the hill every day to school. The old man was in and out of it but I didn’t see much of him after my mother took me in to introduce this strange little urchin who was to share his flat, sleeping in the room directly across the hall from his. I think he noticed me. Mum sort of stage managed it. She introduced me and then whisked me out. Mum had seen that I’d been around death—even putting pennies on my grandmother’s dead eyes to set the lids down—because she never wanted me to be afraid of it. So from the brief experience of sort-of meeting him, I could tell from the slightly sweet smell of death that he was not too long for the world.
One night after about a week, I was awakened by noises that seemed to be coming from upstairs. It didn’t occur to me that this was a penthouse so there couldn’t be any upstairs, but no matter, to my childish mind that’s where the sounds came from. There were footsteps and doors opening and shutting, all distinct and noisy enough to have woken me up. I was annoyed. It sounded like a party and it was far too late—didn’t they know I had school the next day?
I opened my door to cross the hallway, which to my surprise was silent. I had expected the noises to intensify. I remember feeling perplexed as I crossed the hall to open the door to the old man’s room. I saw my mother get up quickly from her chair. She looked concerned and I got the sense I shouldn’t have bothered her. I whispered in my high-pitched little English voice, “Mummy, those people upstairs are making a terrible racket.” She didn’t seem angry after all but put her arm around me and guided me quickly back to my bedroom. “Lock the door, darling,” she told me, “and go back to sleep.” I heard no more noises until she knocked on the door next morning to wake me for school.
I learned then the old man had died in the night. No one explained anything and that might have been the end of the story except for some reason the memories refused to die. Years later I asked my mother why she had told me to lock the door.
By then, I guess, I was old enough to be admitted into the circle. It seemed I was not the only one hearing them. But the old man was not only hearing them, he was seeing them. Mum said that the footsteps came to the door and even though he was in deep coma and giving the death rattle, he spoke to whoever had come. He saw his parents. He saw his brother. He saw his dog, and my mother heard the sound of claws on a wood floor. She said she couldn’t be frightened because there was so much joy in his voice as he spoke to them. Well—maybe she hadn’t been frightened until I opened the door: God knows what she must have thought as she watched it open. The sounds ended, she said, the moment he died.
But the story doesn’t end there. It wasn’t just my mother and I. The young wife, who had not been the most faithful of brides, heard them and locked herself in her room with a bottle of whiskey, saying they were going to get her too.
Three of us heard them, one of us a child. The old man saw them, even calling his dog by name. They came for him. I cannot believe anything else.
Since then, I do not believe anyone who purports to tell me about death unless they have somehow looked into that place beyond life. All the fire and brimstone in the world cannot supplant for me being told of the joy of an old man who was seeing once more the things he had loved and believed he had lost.
For many, many years I did not speak of this. Those I told sometimes looked at me with sympathy and shook their heads. They offered all manner of explanations that best fitted with what they had been taught. From their doubting, I learned to be silent because it was easier.
Then one day, I went to the Spiritualist Society of Great Britain. I wanted to know—I had to know—were we all just delusional on the night that the old man died? No, I was told. When death is shared, as this old man shared his with us, there is always a reason. It was not my imagination, nor that of my mother and the young wife. What was unusual and very special was the fact that he shared it. There was a purpose--and in fact, I had betrayed it by letting fear prevent me from talking about it. Your purpose and your duty, the spiritualist minister told me, is to talk about this without fear of consequence or reprisal. Whatever communication we are given from beyond--whether in dreams or imagination or in more conscious contact--is a gift to guide us to become whom we are meant be.
My mother said that in fifty years of nursing, she never before or after experienced anything comparable. Hospice nurses tell me that it happens from time to time and that the transition to the other side is always easier when it does. The nurses tell me it always a privilege to share it when it happens.
This blog is the first time I am openly acknowledging my experience as a child. I wish that everyone could have direct experience to dispell the doubts. It has given me the knowledge that guides my life. I know that “they” come for you because I have heard it. I know that what waits beyond is hopeful and joyful. I know that we each have a purpose and that sometimes it is difficult to find and sometimes scarey in the demands that it makes of us. I find the sense of a community around us, waiting to welcome us back—to be profoundly comforting.
I just hope by speaking out at last, I am finally worthy of that night when an old man shared with us one of the most private things we will ever experience.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Early December
Sid and I exchanged our presents early this year—it was hardly even December but this seemed to be an appropriate moment, perhaps because we needed to cheer one another up. There are simply times when it doesn’t seem good to be alive and with the economic meltdown and the violence in India, I’d say this is one of them.
I don’t want to over exaggerate the difficulties—after all, it’s hard to find people who lived in a time that wasn’t desperate. The various groups who spread across Europe—Celts, Gauls, Norse, Germanic, Romans among them—didn’t occupy the land without inflicting harm on the previous inhabitants. Even when the various tribes had settled into their areas, there were continuing disputes over boundaries, trade, religion, and power. Asia and the Steppes have had an unquiet history as have the various regions of Africa.
More recently, our parents and grandparents lived through two world wars, a major depression, a police action in Korea, whatever it was in Viet Nam, followed by two gulf wars, and this doesn’t even begin to include various hot spots. Fact is that the human species occupying the planet is as restless as the planet itself.
Even given all that, though, I find the current upheavals profoundly depressing. In WWII, at least, there was a relatively clear purpose and everyone was involved in one way or another, if only collecting scrap at home. Korea was further removed, but by the time of Viet Nam (when I first started teaching college English) things were murky indeed. Afghanistan seems more clear to me, but our decision to go into Iraq seems to have been based on whatever justification someone thought might work: Hey—if you don’t like the reason for this war, wait five minutes and I’ll come up with another one.
What sets this age apart, I think, is the understanding that much of it has descended into mindless and random violence. Consider the confusion about knowing who’s responsible for the explosions and rockets and bombs that fill our newspapers. Strange new hybrid groups spring up, detonate something (often themselves), and then disappear into the crowd. In Mumbai, the gunmen sought people with US and British passports (I would have been shot twice), but for what reason since most of the people they killed were Indian? It seems someone believes the greater the number of people killed, the more serious the purpose behind it, except that the purpose is sometimes not even clear either.
When I was in college some eons ago, I had an assigned reading on relativism. It disturbed me. It wasn’t that I minded different cultures and different beliefs (no—I don’t justify cannibalism just because it’s practiced in New Guinea--that, after all is not good manners to the person being subject to it). I objected to the lazy, intellectually bereft offshoot that claimed that something was right if it felt right at the time. I could accept different viewpoints as long as they were based on self-analysis and a modicum of respect and compassion. In today’s violence, I’m not seeing anything beyond the raw expression of passion and misogyny masquerading as purpose, perpetrated by a group of people who have raised personal vendetta to political philosophy. Don't they realize this is how Sicily managed to depopulate itself?
What scares the hell out of me, though, is not the violence, terrible as that is—but what will follow it. Even if all the perceived injustices in the world were to be removed: the kashmirs, the Palestinian state, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka among them—I am afraid that our species will just find other reasons to justify violence. Once this chain was begun, I truly see no end. I hope I am wrong, and I hope that someone will come forward with a magic way to end this cycle while we still have a planet left.
I don’t want to over exaggerate the difficulties—after all, it’s hard to find people who lived in a time that wasn’t desperate. The various groups who spread across Europe—Celts, Gauls, Norse, Germanic, Romans among them—didn’t occupy the land without inflicting harm on the previous inhabitants. Even when the various tribes had settled into their areas, there were continuing disputes over boundaries, trade, religion, and power. Asia and the Steppes have had an unquiet history as have the various regions of Africa.
More recently, our parents and grandparents lived through two world wars, a major depression, a police action in Korea, whatever it was in Viet Nam, followed by two gulf wars, and this doesn’t even begin to include various hot spots. Fact is that the human species occupying the planet is as restless as the planet itself.
Even given all that, though, I find the current upheavals profoundly depressing. In WWII, at least, there was a relatively clear purpose and everyone was involved in one way or another, if only collecting scrap at home. Korea was further removed, but by the time of Viet Nam (when I first started teaching college English) things were murky indeed. Afghanistan seems more clear to me, but our decision to go into Iraq seems to have been based on whatever justification someone thought might work: Hey—if you don’t like the reason for this war, wait five minutes and I’ll come up with another one.
What sets this age apart, I think, is the understanding that much of it has descended into mindless and random violence. Consider the confusion about knowing who’s responsible for the explosions and rockets and bombs that fill our newspapers. Strange new hybrid groups spring up, detonate something (often themselves), and then disappear into the crowd. In Mumbai, the gunmen sought people with US and British passports (I would have been shot twice), but for what reason since most of the people they killed were Indian? It seems someone believes the greater the number of people killed, the more serious the purpose behind it, except that the purpose is sometimes not even clear either.
When I was in college some eons ago, I had an assigned reading on relativism. It disturbed me. It wasn’t that I minded different cultures and different beliefs (no—I don’t justify cannibalism just because it’s practiced in New Guinea--that, after all is not good manners to the person being subject to it). I objected to the lazy, intellectually bereft offshoot that claimed that something was right if it felt right at the time. I could accept different viewpoints as long as they were based on self-analysis and a modicum of respect and compassion. In today’s violence, I’m not seeing anything beyond the raw expression of passion and misogyny masquerading as purpose, perpetrated by a group of people who have raised personal vendetta to political philosophy. Don't they realize this is how Sicily managed to depopulate itself?
What scares the hell out of me, though, is not the violence, terrible as that is—but what will follow it. Even if all the perceived injustices in the world were to be removed: the kashmirs, the Palestinian state, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka among them—I am afraid that our species will just find other reasons to justify violence. Once this chain was begun, I truly see no end. I hope I am wrong, and I hope that someone will come forward with a magic way to end this cycle while we still have a planet left.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Meltdowns and Indian Summer
The two may be related if one assumes that the economy market has had something to do with global warming: an overheated financial world of profit at any cost producing an overheated planet busily choking itself with careless consumption. Or at least until recently.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Silly Me
Silly me indeed! I thought that once the election was over that we’d have a patch of peace. Apparently not. If anything, the diatribes against Obama and the Democrats have notched up to a level of hatred that scares me. Obama has not yet been sworn in and not yet faced down the horrendous economic problems he has taken on, and yet we already have Republicans offering themselves as candidates for 2012. This doesn’t make me believe anything they have to say about bipartisanship.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
November 5
And now it starts—the taking back of America from what someone has called “the monster of the Republican Party.” Obama has won in a landslide. It was time.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I Just Want it Over
Anyone else as sick of this election as I am? I can't even remember when this all started. I just remember an array of people in both parties putting each other down. Then the ridiculous sight of candidates behind a row of desks on stage trying to answer stupid questions intelligently (anyone else think of the Miss America pageant?). Then the barbs sent from one front runner to whoever appeared to be the competition. Now the last ditch efforts at name-calling and trying to dredge up scandal to convince the "undecided." Undecided?? Pullease--are these people just waking up from comas?
Come on. Enough already. Most of us have known for weeks if not months whom we're voting for. I want this thing over. I'm worn out with hanging up on recordings and muting the political ads. I've voted already. I just want some peace.
But even as I say that I realize that peace may be elusive. I read the other day that Ms. Palin is thinking about announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 2012should John McCain not make it. Does that strike fear into anyone else's heart besides mine? If she starts running the day after the election, we can look forward not only to an election season that never ends--bad enough--but to four more years of the wink and the smug anti-intellectualism.
The anti-intellectualism really troubles me because it seems to make a triumph of not thinking just at the time that we need to think harder than ever. The Puritans brought anti-intellectualism to American life. Thinking was counter to God, the pulpits thundered, and if you want to know the wages of thinking, just look at the lost Eden. It shows up now and then usually promoted by authoritarians, people who don't want others to think. Intellectuals are often the bad guys (for the religionists, it's the humanists)because they think, want proof, and aren't docile. They generally speak out when someone is just blowing smoke.
I'm an intellectual (if I don't sound too arrogant) and a pragmatist. I measure success by outcome and not by whether it makes me feel good that I am forcing someone else to conform to my personal set of beliefs.
I voted for Obama (early voting) because I want someone calm at the wheel and not the continuing bunch of carpetbaggers who have destroyed the economy. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief as I listen to people. Can't they get beyond abortion and "palling with terrorists" to look with cool eyes on where this country is headed? Can't they get beyond emotion to see the policies that have led to the economic melt down? Can't they become informed partners in running the country and not rely on politicians who promise anything to get elected? This race shouldn't even be close.
When I taught writing to college freshmen, I used to warn them about "primary certitude." This is when you believe you have the absolute truth on something and refuse to listen to any other arguments. When you raise your voice and yell vehemently that you are right, you are generally falling into it.
There's been a whole lot of primary certitude--too much for my books--of it this election. I just want it over.
Come on. Enough already. Most of us have known for weeks if not months whom we're voting for. I want this thing over. I'm worn out with hanging up on recordings and muting the political ads. I've voted already. I just want some peace.
But even as I say that I realize that peace may be elusive. I read the other day that Ms. Palin is thinking about announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 2012should John McCain not make it. Does that strike fear into anyone else's heart besides mine? If she starts running the day after the election, we can look forward not only to an election season that never ends--bad enough--but to four more years of the wink and the smug anti-intellectualism.
The anti-intellectualism really troubles me because it seems to make a triumph of not thinking just at the time that we need to think harder than ever. The Puritans brought anti-intellectualism to American life. Thinking was counter to God, the pulpits thundered, and if you want to know the wages of thinking, just look at the lost Eden. It shows up now and then usually promoted by authoritarians, people who don't want others to think. Intellectuals are often the bad guys (for the religionists, it's the humanists)because they think, want proof, and aren't docile. They generally speak out when someone is just blowing smoke.
I'm an intellectual (if I don't sound too arrogant) and a pragmatist. I measure success by outcome and not by whether it makes me feel good that I am forcing someone else to conform to my personal set of beliefs.
I voted for Obama (early voting) because I want someone calm at the wheel and not the continuing bunch of carpetbaggers who have destroyed the economy. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief as I listen to people. Can't they get beyond abortion and "palling with terrorists" to look with cool eyes on where this country is headed? Can't they get beyond emotion to see the policies that have led to the economic melt down? Can't they become informed partners in running the country and not rely on politicians who promise anything to get elected? This race shouldn't even be close.
When I taught writing to college freshmen, I used to warn them about "primary certitude." This is when you believe you have the absolute truth on something and refuse to listen to any other arguments. When you raise your voice and yell vehemently that you are right, you are generally falling into it.
There's been a whole lot of primary certitude--too much for my books--of it this election. I just want it over.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Who Benefits?
Cassandra was a Trojan princess given the gift of foresight by Apollo who, since she rejected him, accompanied it with the curse of not being believed. I don’t claim Cassandra’s flawless pre-knowledge but at this point in my life and America’s history, I think I understand how she must have felt.
Let me picture her for a moment. She has offered the prophecy that Troy is going to fall to the besieging Greeks. She pleads with the Trojans to listen. They don’t of course—that’s her curse after all. Troy falls and she is doomed to live the rest of her short life as a Greek prisoner, trapped in the guilt that if perhaps if she had only been more persuasive, if she had only couched things in better terms, if she had only chosen different words, that perhaps she might have been heard and might have saved her city and family. Apollo indeed had his revenge.
We all live with what-ifs. When you’ve lived as long as I have and have been around power, as I was—on the sidelines admittedly but I could see there from where I was—most people develop a wise and seemly skepticism—or at least ought to.
One of the things you learn is that the ways things are spun are seldom the way they are. The wise person approaches every proposal with the question “Who benefits?” So often otherwise altruistic leaders succumb to the loudest voices among their constituents. Nothing then can get done unless somebody benefits and it is not always the people in whose name some contract or program is funded.
This principle applies as much to contracts to build schools and roads as it does to wars and nuclear-non-proliferation treaties. It particularly applies to groups wanting approval of constitutional amendments. Someone is benefiting. Is it whom you believe it to be? Find out and you find out what really is happening.
Eight years ago, I found myself faced with a presidential candidate appealing to patriotism and the “American Way.” My bull meter turned on. Who’s benefiting? The candidate wanted to lift all “interference” on business. He said removing all restraint would enhance competition and would create jobs. He promoted the ideal of a world in which business unimpeded by government would raise all boats.
I didn’t have to be Cassandra to predict what was likely to happen given the reality of human and corporate greed. He may have been wedded to the idea of a free economy but his supporters were committed to profit. Who benefited was every corporation and entity that could afford a lobbyist and wanted to feed at the public trough. I was perplexed and still am: how could anyone not understand the greed and public damage such a policy would inevitably arouse?
Through the years, I’ve learned to be skeptical. I’ve watched money change hands supposedly for some noble purpose but actually for personal ego and future favor. I’ve watched people not in the know think they have “won” some benefit without understanding how they have been pawns in some process far larger than they. Sometimes it’s been so obvious that I’ve had to conclude that people were being willfully ignorant.
Above all, I’ve learned that human nature doesn’t change. It was just as greedy and willful in Greece and Troy as it is today. Even the Church has had to reign in unruly human beings: the Ten Commandments are basic rules for people who have to live together.
As of October 2008, what frightens me most, though, is the possibility that the lessons of controlling human greed have apparently not been learned.
Cassandra today might tell us to move beyond phony idealism and old, comforting “truths” and accept that we are just as prone to error as the Trojans. She might challenge us to grow as a nation by allowing ourselves to recognize that pride is blinding us to those who cynically profit from it. We ought collectively to be able to look into the mirror and shudder at how we tolerate personal attacks, name-calling, appeals to emotion and prejudice, flag-waving, half-truths, and the artificial us-versus-them. On the contrary, we need to be clearheaded to recognize where the power really is and what it’s being used for.
Power is hard-edged, silent, and unemotional. I’ve seen it. It’s a coiled snake waiting for opportunity. It uses patriotism and vanity as the venom to remove its opponents. It never believes in intangibles like patriotism. It hisses with pleasure when people waste their time squabbling over lapel pins because they never ask the real questions. It shakes the rattle in its tail to panic us into feeding it. And until we as a nation are mature enough to confront and control this power, it will continue to distract us from our responsibility of determining and taking responsibility for our future.
Let me picture her for a moment. She has offered the prophecy that Troy is going to fall to the besieging Greeks. She pleads with the Trojans to listen. They don’t of course—that’s her curse after all. Troy falls and she is doomed to live the rest of her short life as a Greek prisoner, trapped in the guilt that if perhaps if she had only been more persuasive, if she had only couched things in better terms, if she had only chosen different words, that perhaps she might have been heard and might have saved her city and family. Apollo indeed had his revenge.
We all live with what-ifs. When you’ve lived as long as I have and have been around power, as I was—on the sidelines admittedly but I could see there from where I was—most people develop a wise and seemly skepticism—or at least ought to.
One of the things you learn is that the ways things are spun are seldom the way they are. The wise person approaches every proposal with the question “Who benefits?” So often otherwise altruistic leaders succumb to the loudest voices among their constituents. Nothing then can get done unless somebody benefits and it is not always the people in whose name some contract or program is funded.
This principle applies as much to contracts to build schools and roads as it does to wars and nuclear-non-proliferation treaties. It particularly applies to groups wanting approval of constitutional amendments. Someone is benefiting. Is it whom you believe it to be? Find out and you find out what really is happening.
Eight years ago, I found myself faced with a presidential candidate appealing to patriotism and the “American Way.” My bull meter turned on. Who’s benefiting? The candidate wanted to lift all “interference” on business. He said removing all restraint would enhance competition and would create jobs. He promoted the ideal of a world in which business unimpeded by government would raise all boats.
I didn’t have to be Cassandra to predict what was likely to happen given the reality of human and corporate greed. He may have been wedded to the idea of a free economy but his supporters were committed to profit. Who benefited was every corporation and entity that could afford a lobbyist and wanted to feed at the public trough. I was perplexed and still am: how could anyone not understand the greed and public damage such a policy would inevitably arouse?
Through the years, I’ve learned to be skeptical. I’ve watched money change hands supposedly for some noble purpose but actually for personal ego and future favor. I’ve watched people not in the know think they have “won” some benefit without understanding how they have been pawns in some process far larger than they. Sometimes it’s been so obvious that I’ve had to conclude that people were being willfully ignorant.
Above all, I’ve learned that human nature doesn’t change. It was just as greedy and willful in Greece and Troy as it is today. Even the Church has had to reign in unruly human beings: the Ten Commandments are basic rules for people who have to live together.
As of October 2008, what frightens me most, though, is the possibility that the lessons of controlling human greed have apparently not been learned.
Cassandra today might tell us to move beyond phony idealism and old, comforting “truths” and accept that we are just as prone to error as the Trojans. She might challenge us to grow as a nation by allowing ourselves to recognize that pride is blinding us to those who cynically profit from it. We ought collectively to be able to look into the mirror and shudder at how we tolerate personal attacks, name-calling, appeals to emotion and prejudice, flag-waving, half-truths, and the artificial us-versus-them. On the contrary, we need to be clearheaded to recognize where the power really is and what it’s being used for.
Power is hard-edged, silent, and unemotional. I’ve seen it. It’s a coiled snake waiting for opportunity. It uses patriotism and vanity as the venom to remove its opponents. It never believes in intangibles like patriotism. It hisses with pleasure when people waste their time squabbling over lapel pins because they never ask the real questions. It shakes the rattle in its tail to panic us into feeding it. And until we as a nation are mature enough to confront and control this power, it will continue to distract us from our responsibility of determining and taking responsibility for our future.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
America's Political Super Bowl
With the Wall Street bailout debacle going on, I feel like a failed lemming who doesn’t know which cliff to jump off. I have no idea who to believe: the group that is predicting that we will all lose our jobs through lack of available credit, or the one that says this is just another rip off. I’m not invested in the stock market precisely because I don’t pretend to understand it. All I know is that someone—make that a whole lot of someones—failed in their jobs.
The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.
This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.
The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”
On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.
On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.
Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.
What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.
Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?
I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.
I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.
I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.
I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.
My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”
The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.
This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.
The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”
On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.
On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.
Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.
What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.
Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?
I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.
I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.
I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.
I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.
My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Writing to be Read
Hello to my loyal readers: all dozen of you! If you are enjoying this blog, how about forwarding it to your friends? I'm human and just as egoncentric as everyone else. I'd love to be read. You can reach me at dianamdeluca@aol.com if you want to comment or argue. But there is also a place at the end of each entry for you to comment more publicly. Thanks for reading this! Diana
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Me for Vice President
The wisest political commentary I’ve received lately comes from my hair stylist. She’s a single woman, earning her living the hard way, paying her taxes and not seeing that she’s getting much in return. “Calm down,” she told me as she cut my hair. “Now that the Wall Street thing has happened, people are reminded of what’s important. They’ll see through the cute stuff with Palin. We’re smarter than they think.”
Her calm confidence made me wonder why I am so personally offended by the selection of John McCain’s Mini-Me, the trophy Vice President, Sarah Palin. I think part of it may be because many other women—including me—appear better qualified to be a heartbeat away other than just being women, handy, and agreeing with John McCain.
Wow--you may be thinking. She thinks she's qualified to run for such high office? Well--if Ms. Palin is the yardstick, I think I am. And why not? I've been in public life for a lot longer than she has and I'll stack my university experience against her state experience. The budget and infrastructure of most big public universities are larger than Alaska's and I'm willing to bet that our students and faculty are just as independent and unruly as her citizens. So please bear with me and allow me to provide you with the following checklist of our qualifcations.
People Skills: In my younger days, I went out on the picket line for women’s issues. We didn’t get it all (the Equal Rights Amendment) and women still earn less than men but we got some of it. In fact, it was quite exciting to think that the FBI might have files on us all—alas, when I applied to see my file, the FBI claimed not have one. I bet Ms. Palin doesn’t even think about what we went through to make sure she could have a career. Score: one point for me for social activism.
Overcoming Adversity: My doctorate got earned the hard way—even though I was a good student the scholarships went to the men (they had families to support, don’t you know?) so the burden of graduate school fell on me and my family. Score: one point for me for proven determination.
Administrative Experience: My most salient experience, of course, is that I have been a cabinet member on the staff of the president of the University of Hawaii. I was, in fact, listed as one of three most powerfully placed women on the president’s staff. We worked with a budget about $1 billion (fifteen years ago), so it probably compares well with Alaska’s state budget today which is around $8 billion. Administering a university system has to be equivalent of being the mayor of a small town. Score: Let’s be generous: one point for each of us.
Dealing with Difficult People: The president sent me out as a trouble shooter to wherever trouble appeared. This included dealing with fraternities (who liked to send their pledges on a nude run round the campus after dark--the Honolulu Police Department loved that), the Athletics Department and the NCAA, which I am sure Ms. Palin has never been faced with. Score: One point for me although anyone who has dealt the NCAA might say this was worth two.
Federal Policy: Then there were the legal problems. I worked with the state attorney general to manage the university’s unending law suits (usually with the university as a defendant)—everything from people cutting their feet on sprinklers to equal opportunity and sexual harassment complaints. Ms. Palin probably knows about the employment policies given the brouhaha with her ex-brother-in-law, but I doubt she has dealt with a student complaining about being stalked by a professor. Score: One point for me.
State Legislature: When I left the university, I had two commendations from the State of Hawaii Legislature and a personal commendation from the governor. Now, I admit that I did not run for office but my office supervised the university’s lobbyists and I was named by the governor to commissions and task forces. I was part of the hands-on, direct process for establishing international agreements with Viet Nam (prior to normalization of relations), Russia, and Thailand. I figure my international experience (got her there) makes up for at least some of her public experience. Score: I’ll give myself a point here, but I’ll concede her three points.
The grand total then is six points for me and four for Ms. Palin. The only real advantage I see that she has over me (besides getting herself elected) is her hobby of shooting wolves from aircraft. But since I feel that even a wolf deserves a fair chance, I will concede that one to her. Forgive me if I don’t award any points.
Wal-Mart Mom: I’ve been told that Palin’s strength is with Wal-Mart Moms—apparently these are votes that McCain can’t get by himself. Now, I don’t know who they mean by Wal-Mart Moms— Cindy McCain may not shop at Wal-Mart, but I do. My step-granddaughter works there and if the economy keeps sliding, I might be glad of a job there myself. I therefore believe I can counter Ms. Palin’s advantage by arguing that I too am a mother and that I do indeed shop at Wal-Mart.
Therefore, given my obvious advantage, may I ask for your support of my nomination for Vice President of the United States? As I hope I have demonstrated, I have the requisite experience and will stand by my pledges to you (as long as they are useful). But I do make one promise that I intend to keep. I promise faithfully that I will not go out and buy new eyeglasses no matter how cute they look on my opponent.
Her calm confidence made me wonder why I am so personally offended by the selection of John McCain’s Mini-Me, the trophy Vice President, Sarah Palin. I think part of it may be because many other women—including me—appear better qualified to be a heartbeat away other than just being women, handy, and agreeing with John McCain.
Wow--you may be thinking. She thinks she's qualified to run for such high office? Well--if Ms. Palin is the yardstick, I think I am. And why not? I've been in public life for a lot longer than she has and I'll stack my university experience against her state experience. The budget and infrastructure of most big public universities are larger than Alaska's and I'm willing to bet that our students and faculty are just as independent and unruly as her citizens. So please bear with me and allow me to provide you with the following checklist of our qualifcations.
People Skills: In my younger days, I went out on the picket line for women’s issues. We didn’t get it all (the Equal Rights Amendment) and women still earn less than men but we got some of it. In fact, it was quite exciting to think that the FBI might have files on us all—alas, when I applied to see my file, the FBI claimed not have one. I bet Ms. Palin doesn’t even think about what we went through to make sure she could have a career. Score: one point for me for social activism.
Overcoming Adversity: My doctorate got earned the hard way—even though I was a good student the scholarships went to the men (they had families to support, don’t you know?) so the burden of graduate school fell on me and my family. Score: one point for me for proven determination.
Administrative Experience: My most salient experience, of course, is that I have been a cabinet member on the staff of the president of the University of Hawaii. I was, in fact, listed as one of three most powerfully placed women on the president’s staff. We worked with a budget about $1 billion (fifteen years ago), so it probably compares well with Alaska’s state budget today which is around $8 billion. Administering a university system has to be equivalent of being the mayor of a small town. Score: Let’s be generous: one point for each of us.
Dealing with Difficult People: The president sent me out as a trouble shooter to wherever trouble appeared. This included dealing with fraternities (who liked to send their pledges on a nude run round the campus after dark--the Honolulu Police Department loved that), the Athletics Department and the NCAA, which I am sure Ms. Palin has never been faced with. Score: One point for me although anyone who has dealt the NCAA might say this was worth two.
Federal Policy: Then there were the legal problems. I worked with the state attorney general to manage the university’s unending law suits (usually with the university as a defendant)—everything from people cutting their feet on sprinklers to equal opportunity and sexual harassment complaints. Ms. Palin probably knows about the employment policies given the brouhaha with her ex-brother-in-law, but I doubt she has dealt with a student complaining about being stalked by a professor. Score: One point for me.
State Legislature: When I left the university, I had two commendations from the State of Hawaii Legislature and a personal commendation from the governor. Now, I admit that I did not run for office but my office supervised the university’s lobbyists and I was named by the governor to commissions and task forces. I was part of the hands-on, direct process for establishing international agreements with Viet Nam (prior to normalization of relations), Russia, and Thailand. I figure my international experience (got her there) makes up for at least some of her public experience. Score: I’ll give myself a point here, but I’ll concede her three points.
The grand total then is six points for me and four for Ms. Palin. The only real advantage I see that she has over me (besides getting herself elected) is her hobby of shooting wolves from aircraft. But since I feel that even a wolf deserves a fair chance, I will concede that one to her. Forgive me if I don’t award any points.
Wal-Mart Mom: I’ve been told that Palin’s strength is with Wal-Mart Moms—apparently these are votes that McCain can’t get by himself. Now, I don’t know who they mean by Wal-Mart Moms— Cindy McCain may not shop at Wal-Mart, but I do. My step-granddaughter works there and if the economy keeps sliding, I might be glad of a job there myself. I therefore believe I can counter Ms. Palin’s advantage by arguing that I too am a mother and that I do indeed shop at Wal-Mart.
Therefore, given my obvious advantage, may I ask for your support of my nomination for Vice President of the United States? As I hope I have demonstrated, I have the requisite experience and will stand by my pledges to you (as long as they are useful). But I do make one promise that I intend to keep. I promise faithfully that I will not go out and buy new eyeglasses no matter how cute they look on my opponent.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Los Alamos Mon Amour
When I was an undergrad at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus back in the early sixties, there was a tavern called The Blue Goose in Mo’ili’ili, the small town below the campus. I had a husband and child at home so I didn’t get to spend much time there, but I did have lunch now and then. I remember it mostly as dark and somewhat noisy, but one thing remains vivid. On one wall, there was a large poster about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack on the Hawaiian Islands. There was a list of what sounded like fairly prudent precautions (stay away from windows, don’t look at the blast etc.) but it ended with the advice to get under a table, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.
The question of surviving a nuclear attack was intensely interesting to us in Hawaii because of the many military targets in the chain. We knew that if the main island of Oahu came under attack, very few would be left to kiss anything goodbye. This realization was underlined by the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened less that twenty years before, there was a mad scramble among nations to amass as many weapons as possible, and even our own government was occupied blowing up empty land somewhere in the deserts of Nevada and New Mexico. I know every generation loses its innocence at some point, but I also have to believe the new power to blow up the world made our angst uniquely poignant.
All during the time I was in college, we lived under threat. It was the 1960s version of today’s terrorism and just as real. We watched the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold and held our breaths. Even when that passed, the threat didn’t. With time, we developed a cynical ability to laugh at what we feared—a point of view brilliantly reflected in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” in 1964. Some of us became activists against all wars, others tried not to think too much about it, yet others—like me—became morbidly curious. I found myself wondering why this monster had been developed, how it came about, and where it had all happened. This is what took me recently to Los Alamos—a city on a plateau high above Santa Fe, the site of the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb and still home to the Los Alamos National Lab.
I think I went to Los Alamos looking for a piece of the youthful joy that we of my generation lost. But as Sid and I drove down the main street of modern research facilities—still secure but not surrounded as they once were by barbed wire designed to both enclose and exclude—I realized I was seeking the wrong thing. All of a sudden it was 1942. The war could still be lost. The Axis allies were said to be working on a new weapon of catastrophic power and if this nation were to survive, the Axis had to be beaten to it. The most brilliant scientific brains were gathered on this muddy mesa with no less a mission than to develop a weapon that would end the war. Among those who literally “disappeared” from civilian life, there was a real sense of mission and excitement. The Los Alamos historical museum housed in one of the few surviving buildings used by the original project shows just how uncomfortable the setting was and what little reward there was except for contributing to the national effort. And yet that was enough. The scientists and the graduate students stayed and did the job.
I am quite sure the scientists didn’t think at first about the consequences of what they were achieving. Their focus was on solving the various technical issues associated with fission and implosion—a chain reaction that they weren’t even sure would work. They certainly weren’t thinking about students at The Blue Goose twenty years in the future. The awareness of the bomb’s potential came after the Trinity test and as the implications of nuclear weapons became more obvious and the post World War II world began to take shape. There were to be protests around the world. There were to be recriminations. There were to be the true horror stories of what happened at Ground Zero. There were to be accusations of disloyalty made against some of the scientists who wanted to harness the power of the atom for peaceful purposes and discourage its use as a military weapon. There was, in other words, to be the luxury of hindsight.
Los Alamos reminds me of the controversy surrounding WWII Bomber Command. At a time when Britain stood alone and at one point had only two-weeks’ worth of food for the island, the niceties of bombing only military targets seemed beside the point. No one wanted deliberately to bomb civilians, but in the struggle for survival they died on both sides. When the RAF and then the RCAF and the USAF took the war to Germany, the point was to win. Looking back on the bombing and the incredible loss of life both among the aircrews and those on the ground, some revisionist historians have tried to rewrite history to the intense annoyance of the surviving aircrews who risked their lives and watched their comrades—my father among them—drop to a fiery death. But nothing is clear-cut during wartime. I remember bomb craters in the roads in my hometown of Brighton on England’s south coast. I heard how adults still talked about the Blitz in London and how they said bombing Germany was getting a bit of our own back. It’s only natural that perspectives change with time and victory.
Much the same has happened at Los Alamos. When it comes to how we view the Manhattan Project and the scientists working on it, it seems to me that we have a choice. We can look only at the devastation caused by the splitting of the atom and decry the waste of the arms race that ensued. Many have done that and I can recall protesters in London waving placards saying ‘Ban the Bomb.’ Or we can marvel at the fact that the work was achieved at all, let alone under conditions of extreme security and haste, and understand that it was part and parcel of the time that spawned it. Perhaps we need to do a bit of both. But however we choose to view the work conducted at Los Alamos, we need to acknowledge that it changed our world forever.
The question of surviving a nuclear attack was intensely interesting to us in Hawaii because of the many military targets in the chain. We knew that if the main island of Oahu came under attack, very few would be left to kiss anything goodbye. This realization was underlined by the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened less that twenty years before, there was a mad scramble among nations to amass as many weapons as possible, and even our own government was occupied blowing up empty land somewhere in the deserts of Nevada and New Mexico. I know every generation loses its innocence at some point, but I also have to believe the new power to blow up the world made our angst uniquely poignant.
All during the time I was in college, we lived under threat. It was the 1960s version of today’s terrorism and just as real. We watched the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold and held our breaths. Even when that passed, the threat didn’t. With time, we developed a cynical ability to laugh at what we feared—a point of view brilliantly reflected in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” in 1964. Some of us became activists against all wars, others tried not to think too much about it, yet others—like me—became morbidly curious. I found myself wondering why this monster had been developed, how it came about, and where it had all happened. This is what took me recently to Los Alamos—a city on a plateau high above Santa Fe, the site of the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb and still home to the Los Alamos National Lab.
I think I went to Los Alamos looking for a piece of the youthful joy that we of my generation lost. But as Sid and I drove down the main street of modern research facilities—still secure but not surrounded as they once were by barbed wire designed to both enclose and exclude—I realized I was seeking the wrong thing. All of a sudden it was 1942. The war could still be lost. The Axis allies were said to be working on a new weapon of catastrophic power and if this nation were to survive, the Axis had to be beaten to it. The most brilliant scientific brains were gathered on this muddy mesa with no less a mission than to develop a weapon that would end the war. Among those who literally “disappeared” from civilian life, there was a real sense of mission and excitement. The Los Alamos historical museum housed in one of the few surviving buildings used by the original project shows just how uncomfortable the setting was and what little reward there was except for contributing to the national effort. And yet that was enough. The scientists and the graduate students stayed and did the job.
I am quite sure the scientists didn’t think at first about the consequences of what they were achieving. Their focus was on solving the various technical issues associated with fission and implosion—a chain reaction that they weren’t even sure would work. They certainly weren’t thinking about students at The Blue Goose twenty years in the future. The awareness of the bomb’s potential came after the Trinity test and as the implications of nuclear weapons became more obvious and the post World War II world began to take shape. There were to be protests around the world. There were to be recriminations. There were to be the true horror stories of what happened at Ground Zero. There were to be accusations of disloyalty made against some of the scientists who wanted to harness the power of the atom for peaceful purposes and discourage its use as a military weapon. There was, in other words, to be the luxury of hindsight.
Los Alamos reminds me of the controversy surrounding WWII Bomber Command. At a time when Britain stood alone and at one point had only two-weeks’ worth of food for the island, the niceties of bombing only military targets seemed beside the point. No one wanted deliberately to bomb civilians, but in the struggle for survival they died on both sides. When the RAF and then the RCAF and the USAF took the war to Germany, the point was to win. Looking back on the bombing and the incredible loss of life both among the aircrews and those on the ground, some revisionist historians have tried to rewrite history to the intense annoyance of the surviving aircrews who risked their lives and watched their comrades—my father among them—drop to a fiery death. But nothing is clear-cut during wartime. I remember bomb craters in the roads in my hometown of Brighton on England’s south coast. I heard how adults still talked about the Blitz in London and how they said bombing Germany was getting a bit of our own back. It’s only natural that perspectives change with time and victory.
Much the same has happened at Los Alamos. When it comes to how we view the Manhattan Project and the scientists working on it, it seems to me that we have a choice. We can look only at the devastation caused by the splitting of the atom and decry the waste of the arms race that ensued. Many have done that and I can recall protesters in London waving placards saying ‘Ban the Bomb.’ Or we can marvel at the fact that the work was achieved at all, let alone under conditions of extreme security and haste, and understand that it was part and parcel of the time that spawned it. Perhaps we need to do a bit of both. But however we choose to view the work conducted at Los Alamos, we need to acknowledge that it changed our world forever.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Hail to the Chief
One of the joys of Denver is the number of the trails close in to the city. Oh sure, there is great hiking all throughout the state, but Denver’s trails are special because they are both spectacular and within an hour or so of the city. It’s also possible never to hike the exact same one twice—a change of season means the trails can be vastly different—and there are plenty of them: a Forest Service map shows just how many.
We’ve done a lot around Golden and Evergreen, but yesterday we found a gem: Chief Mountain. Even though we were told it is well-loved, we’d never heard of it before, nor of the ski area, Echo Mountain, just across the road from the trailhead. But before I get to that, a little background.
A few weeks ago, finding myself grown a little tubby, I proposed to Sid that we start climbing again rather than just walking. He was happy to agree. He’d taken me up to the top of Loveland Pass on our second date (the first one was snow shoeing at Jones Pass—you can’t say I wasn’t warned), which was nearly our last date. But I survived and realized that Colorado is best seen from the top of things—high things like mountains.
The apex of my climbing career was getting to the top of Gray’s Peak and Mount Bierstadt, but then I encountered a snowboarder at Copper and hurt my knees, which promptly swelled up like little melons. I suggested that for a time at least we hike around the Denver foothills instead of sleeping in the truck and trying to bag fourteeners. That’s when we started hiking the Denver trails and I realized how differently Sid and I look at things.
Sid will do the same trail repeatedly if he likes the degree of challenge and if it fits into his training routine (be that what it may at the time). I, on the other hand, am fickle. I want new trails and new scenery. The challenge for us is to find a trail with enough pitch to keep him happy and his heart rate up and with enough scenery to keep me not thinking about my knees. The Chief Mountain trail is all uphill although it’s never to the point of bouldering (except at the very top and you don’t have to do that unless your pride demands it), so Sid had a nice workout and once we cleared timber line, I had all the scenery I could ever want. Sid is not given to superlatives. His “not bad” means “very good” (I think). He proclaimed the Chief Mountain trail, “very nice,” which is excellent, again I think.
I find it interesting that even after eight years together I still have to guess what Sid is feeling. I know he enjoyed the mountain as much as I did, but I also know that if I try to press him further to explain, he will look at me with exasperation and say something like “I just told you.”
We’ve done a lot around Golden and Evergreen, but yesterday we found a gem: Chief Mountain. Even though we were told it is well-loved, we’d never heard of it before, nor of the ski area, Echo Mountain, just across the road from the trailhead. But before I get to that, a little background.
A few weeks ago, finding myself grown a little tubby, I proposed to Sid that we start climbing again rather than just walking. He was happy to agree. He’d taken me up to the top of Loveland Pass on our second date (the first one was snow shoeing at Jones Pass—you can’t say I wasn’t warned), which was nearly our last date. But I survived and realized that Colorado is best seen from the top of things—high things like mountains.
The apex of my climbing career was getting to the top of Gray’s Peak and Mount Bierstadt, but then I encountered a snowboarder at Copper and hurt my knees, which promptly swelled up like little melons. I suggested that for a time at least we hike around the Denver foothills instead of sleeping in the truck and trying to bag fourteeners. That’s when we started hiking the Denver trails and I realized how differently Sid and I look at things.
Sid will do the same trail repeatedly if he likes the degree of challenge and if it fits into his training routine (be that what it may at the time). I, on the other hand, am fickle. I want new trails and new scenery. The challenge for us is to find a trail with enough pitch to keep him happy and his heart rate up and with enough scenery to keep me not thinking about my knees. The Chief Mountain trail is all uphill although it’s never to the point of bouldering (except at the very top and you don’t have to do that unless your pride demands it), so Sid had a nice workout and once we cleared timber line, I had all the scenery I could ever want. Sid is not given to superlatives. His “not bad” means “very good” (I think). He proclaimed the Chief Mountain trail, “very nice,” which is excellent, again I think.
I find it interesting that even after eight years together I still have to guess what Sid is feeling. I know he enjoyed the mountain as much as I did, but I also know that if I try to press him further to explain, he will look at me with exasperation and say something like “I just told you.”
I suspect this has to be a guy and maybe a generational thing. The men I've been around seem to have a shorthand that they intuitively understand when they talk with one another, and if they don’t understand one another completely—well, they seem able to live with it. Women on the other hand, speaking for myself, seem to have the need to communicate something purposeful, even if it is just gossip. Men gossip too—oh lord can they—but not for the same reason. They don't seem to be bonding or trying to see if everyone is on board or trying to find some hidden motive for why people behave as they do (as if anyone can ever know).
I wonder if there is a new proposition here: that men not only think vertically but also communicate that way (if this doesn’t make sense to you, check out my previous blog on vertical and horizontal). Abraham Lincoln once said something like it's better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it. I look back on the number of times that I have done just that. But I gave other people the chance to shine and I learned something in the process. I guess I would rewrite the president a little: sometimes it is generous to open your mouth even if you do look foolish--but I wouldn't make a practice of it.
When we got back, I had delusions of grandeur since I’d done so well on the trail and suggested that we try for another fourteener. We slept on it. Today I am gloriously stiff and even Sid admitted that he took an advil. Mais, ou sont les neiges d’antan?
When we got back, I had delusions of grandeur since I’d done so well on the trail and suggested that we try for another fourteener. We slept on it. Today I am gloriously stiff and even Sid admitted that he took an advil. Mais, ou sont les neiges d’antan?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Into the Fun House
I’ve just woken up from eleven hours of sleep preceded by two day-naps and am finally feeling more or less alive—that means I’ve just come back from Las Vegas. The Strip these days is a marathon survival course: 105 degrees in the day and non-stop temptation at night. I overheard the cabin attendant on the plane back to Denver saying that she had spent four days leave in Vegas and had slept only eight hours during that whole time. That’s not surprising because the hotels have nothing in the rooms to encourage you to stay out of the casinos. There wasn’t even a coffee maker in our otherwise luxurious room in the Bellagio—just tons of booze in the room fridge.After a couple of drinks, though, it didn’t really seem to matter where you were. Hotels began to look alike—one large casino room in the middle of a theme park. You had to look for the lions to know it was the MGM or the Italianate marble floors and elaborate garden for the Bellagio, the Egyptian frieze to know it was Ceasar’s, the close-up of a woman’s behind in a thong to know it was Bally’s, or the New York shop fronts or the French stores etc. etc. Otherwise the machines were the same, the card tables were the same, the mini-dressed cocktail servers were the same, the important-looking people in a hurry with their with walkie-talkies were the same, and the gigantic statuary (griffins, lions, athletes etc) were the same.
But if Las Vegas itself has a sameness once the novelty wears off, that can’t be said for the people. English was definitely only one language among many. This wasn’t the Manolo shoes or Dior and Armani crowd. These were people happy to wear t-shirts spelling out the words Las Vegas in rhinestones. Children were few and far between and even those were misbehaving as if they knew they were where they shouldn’t be. When we checked in, three little Asian girls were playing chase around the fountains in the extremely crowded lobby. No one said a thing. What plays in Vegas stays in Vegas, after all.
The Bellagio’s casino floor was actually fairly quiet except for the din of atonal chimes and the occasional loud music announcing some bonus spin. Husbands and wives occupied side by side slot machines, playing what looked like traditional diamond games. Single women went more for the theme machines: hoot loot, wheel of fortune, Texas Tea which made a mooing sound if you won, Cleopatra, Blue Coyote which howled etc. Single men tended to either play the card tables or sit seriously at the slots, dragging on their cigarettes or cigars and taking a long time before pushing the spin button or pulling the arm—as if willing the machines to produce the solid payline. Some spent hours at the same machine. They probably broke even with the free drinks though, which was about the only free thing in the entire city.
The casino floor at the Wynn did come alive at 1:30 am—which is why I was short on sleep. A group of young women on a girls’ night out took up station in front of the Oz machine. They cheered everything. They cheered the wicked witch, they cheered Judy when she said they didn’t seem to be in Kansas any more, they cheered Glenda, they even cheered winning two quarters when they were playing five. Only the action from the men over at the dice table rivaled them. A roar would go up when the dice fell out the right way. There’s nothing like doing something physical, it seems, when you’re out for a night on the town and just want fun.
In the end having fun—or trying to—is really what Las Vegas is about. I’ve found that after the initial novelty wears off, gambling can be rather boring unless you’re serious about it and unless you are winning. It’s always amazing to me how everyone says they win. Maybe losing is not something you want to admit. I will. I won and lost several fortunes in my two days: up $40, down $40, up $30, down $30, finally ending down $30 again. Like everyone else I hate losing money, but I look on it as a money raffle. Just maybe one day I’ll be lucky.
What I really do appreciate are the fabulous food, the amazing opulence, and the glorious over-the-top excess of casinos trying to out do one another. It’s something like Oz—over the rainbow, a yellow brick road through the casinos, confusion about how to get out of the place, no sleep unless you lie down in the poppies—and, like the wizard, not real at all.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Fantasy and Unreality
I’m off to Las Vegas on Sunday to spend two luxurious days with Kimi at the Bellaggio Hotel, where she’s got us very good mid-week rates. We try to get together on our birthdays which are close together in August except that she is one year younger—something she reminds me of now and then. She drives up from Los Angeles and I’ll be flying Frontier—I like their tail animals and they still let me check one bag free.
Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.
On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”
I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.
This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.
Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.
If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.
I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.
Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.
On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”
I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.
This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.
Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.
If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.
I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mount Evans and Ethics
A few days ago we drove up Mount Evans (14,264), which is one of Colorado's fourteeners 
(fifty plus peaks in the state above fourteen thousand feet). It's one of two peaks 
you can actually drive up to. The other is Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, but that's another matter: it not only hosts a well-known car race each year but also sports a very popular narrow-gauge train to the top. Mount Evans retains a little more mystery--you must drive about fourteen miles from I-70 to the entrance sta
tion and then fourteen miles after that on a oh-my-god road.
(fifty plus peaks in the state above fourteen thousand feet). It's one of two peaks 
you can actually drive up to. The other is Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, but that's another matter: it not only hosts a well-known car race each year but also sports a very popular narrow-gauge train to the top. Mount Evans retains a little more mystery--you must drive about fourteen miles from I-70 to the entrance sta
tion and then fourteen miles after that on a oh-my-god road. 
Sid's climbed about thirty of the fourteeners in the state and, when we first met, wanted me to attempt some with him. I did two but it wasn't pretty. It took me three separate tries to get up Gray's Peak (14,270). I'd get to the last pitch, where the mountain goats were, and then some part of me would give out. Finally, I did it. Then I did Mount Bierstadt (14, 060) in one try. After that, it was literally down hill. We tried the highest peak in Colorado--Mount Elbert (14,433 ) twice. Each time, I got to the final pitch. The first time it snowed and the peak disappeared. The second time a thunderstorm drove us back. But by that point in the trail I'd had it anyway. My back hurt and I was panting for oxygen like a malamute in hundred degree weather. I knew the descent would throw out my knees and blacken my toe nails, so I was not a happy camper.
To encourage me, Sid gave me a statuette of Winged Victory with two gold plates on the base showing two mountain names and the date I got up them. There was room for two more plates. But I wasn't to be moved. I could live with a half-filled base.
Now, Mount Evans seemed to be another matter. You could drive up as far as you wanted and walk to the top. I had visions of an easy plate for my trophy. Of course it was craven and Sid wasn't encouraging when I suggested it. "It's cheating," he said. "You need to climb a couple of thousand feet to claim it." I suspected he just wanted to see me earn my plate the hard way. So matters stayed, but then for some reason he relented and said we'd go up. As we drove up the narrow road with its sharp drop-offs and eroded asphalt, Sid told me he’d never taken anyone else up there. It turned out that he used to climb up from Crater Lake, across a sawtooth ridge and on to Mount Bierstadt the back way. I looked at the ridges and secretly thought he was crazy, but he looked so wistful I couldn't say anything. He rwas remembering the Mount Evans area from long before it became a stop for visitors on their way into the mountains from Denver.
They’re powerful, these memories linked to places as we remember them as they no longer are. I remember seeing Waikiki when the pink lady, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, was the tallest building along the shore line. Now she is dwarfed by towering high rises that almost seem to be one piece. Not all change is progress, as Sid likes to say—and that applies just as much to the Colorado Rockies, which are being loved to death. Some trails are so popular that it’s possible never to be alone. We certainly weren’t alone at the end of the Mount Evans road, which has a sign saying that it is the highest in North America. Above us was a rock pile several hundred feet high marking the real top of the mountain. I was struck by summit fever and was prepared to climb over the boulders, but it turned out that there is a sedate set of mild switchbacks leading up to the top. The summit was packed with people from Oklahoma and Texas savoring the view of Denver and the Front Range of mountains. It was, as Sid said, a destination stop.
They’re powerful, these memories linked to places as we remember them as they no longer are. I remember seeing Waikiki when the pink lady, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, was the tallest building along the shore line. Now she is dwarfed by towering high rises that almost seem to be one piece. Not all change is progress, as Sid likes to say—and that applies just as much to the Colorado Rockies, which are being loved to death. Some trails are so popular that it’s possible never to be alone. We certainly weren’t alone at the end of the Mount Evans road, which has a sign saying that it is the highest in North America. Above us was a rock pile several hundred feet high marking the real top of the mountain. I was struck by summit fever and was prepared to climb over the boulders, but it turned out that there is a sedate set of mild switchbacks leading up to the top. The summit was packed with people from Oklahoma and Texas savoring the view of Denver and the Front Range of mountains. It was, as Sid said, a destination stop.
I suppose some of Sid’s ethics must have rubbed off on me because I have decided that I won’t claim Mount Evans on my statuette. I guess I have to live with myself. The first two plates represent mountains where I struggled and pushed myself on, plodding one foot down after the other. I can’t claim what was really just a walk in the park. I'd secretly like to bag Elbert and maybe Blanca in Alamosa, but I know they're beyond me now. I will, though, smile whenever I see Mount Evans looming above the Denver skyline and will definitely take visitors there the senior way--in my sure-footed all-wheel-drive Subaru as long as they don’t mind getting scared out of their wits on the undulating and crumbling road.
Friday, July 25, 2008
The Midnight Click
Well, with the midnight click less than one month away, I've decided might as well get on with it (collective sight of relief is OK, everyone). The midnight click is what I call the day I reach the dread sixty-five. Those of you patient enough to put up with my angst over this will recall that one minute before midnight I am (supposedly) competent--or as much as I have ever been--and one minute after I am on the slippery slope to final ash.
I've been thrashing about because I didn't feel any less competent as I approached the witching hour. I felt that this great threshhold was being forced on me by other people's perceptions. To that extent, it's still true. But now I've accepted that what's more important is what I think about myself. I've never felt more in control of my writing and my decisions and my life as I do now, even though I concede that may be relative. Someone told me once that people can't fall off the floor. Don't know about that. I think I may have started in the basement. But still, I don't have to buy into media perceptions of older people and I am now in a position to correct them rather than just resenting them. Laughter, I have decided, is the best remedy.
I have a t-shirt that says "In order to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid." Young people look blank when they read it; the older folk just laugh. We've all been there. I imagine the Generation X are going to relate once their extreme sport injuries turn arthritic. Ah youth. I've certainly been my share of young and stupid, but I don't really feel I can claim to be old and wise. Old, maybe. But wise? Hell no--I still make mistakes worthy of me in my thirties. I still say awkward things at inappropriate moments. I still jump to conclusions and make assumptions. I still have an optimistic squint that says I have forever ahead of me. I am still surprised when I am asked if I want a senior discount. I want to look around at the someone they must be talking to behind me. It can't be me. I dye my hair and hide the wattle on my neck--I can't look a day over 50.
But in honor of this birthday, I am going to cut myself some slack. All those clothes in my closet that I have been saying I will diet and get into again?--we all have them--they are now heading out of the door. At 65, I am no longer prepared to starve myself back into a size 10. All the mindless extra housecleaning that someone told me was my job? I no longer need to polish the silver--it can tarnish. We don't entertain as we did in our forties so I can send on the serving pieces to the younger members of the family who have appearances and expectations to maintain. All my friendships date back forty years and more (remember Varney Circle, Kimi?) and my friends will overlook the dust. I am not going to avoid things because someone thinks they are inappropriate for my age: I will wear shorts, I will eat candy floss, I will slide down a water tunnel, I will bash my grandson's bumper car, I will go to Disneyland. And even more important to me, I will no longer be defensive about being into New Age stuff--one of these blogs I'll write about the childhood experience with the supernatural that led me to write Every Purpose Under Heaven. I am going to allow myself to be.
I don't think I will wear a t-shirt that says "old and still stupid sometimes," but that's how I feel. I am still learning, still growing, and still making mistakes. Now--about all those assumptions about people in the seventies.
I've been thrashing about because I didn't feel any less competent as I approached the witching hour. I felt that this great threshhold was being forced on me by other people's perceptions. To that extent, it's still true. But now I've accepted that what's more important is what I think about myself. I've never felt more in control of my writing and my decisions and my life as I do now, even though I concede that may be relative. Someone told me once that people can't fall off the floor. Don't know about that. I think I may have started in the basement. But still, I don't have to buy into media perceptions of older people and I am now in a position to correct them rather than just resenting them. Laughter, I have decided, is the best remedy.
I have a t-shirt that says "In order to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid." Young people look blank when they read it; the older folk just laugh. We've all been there. I imagine the Generation X are going to relate once their extreme sport injuries turn arthritic. Ah youth. I've certainly been my share of young and stupid, but I don't really feel I can claim to be old and wise. Old, maybe. But wise? Hell no--I still make mistakes worthy of me in my thirties. I still say awkward things at inappropriate moments. I still jump to conclusions and make assumptions. I still have an optimistic squint that says I have forever ahead of me. I am still surprised when I am asked if I want a senior discount. I want to look around at the someone they must be talking to behind me. It can't be me. I dye my hair and hide the wattle on my neck--I can't look a day over 50.
But in honor of this birthday, I am going to cut myself some slack. All those clothes in my closet that I have been saying I will diet and get into again?--we all have them--they are now heading out of the door. At 65, I am no longer prepared to starve myself back into a size 10. All the mindless extra housecleaning that someone told me was my job? I no longer need to polish the silver--it can tarnish. We don't entertain as we did in our forties so I can send on the serving pieces to the younger members of the family who have appearances and expectations to maintain. All my friendships date back forty years and more (remember Varney Circle, Kimi?) and my friends will overlook the dust. I am not going to avoid things because someone thinks they are inappropriate for my age: I will wear shorts, I will eat candy floss, I will slide down a water tunnel, I will bash my grandson's bumper car, I will go to Disneyland. And even more important to me, I will no longer be defensive about being into New Age stuff--one of these blogs I'll write about the childhood experience with the supernatural that led me to write Every Purpose Under Heaven. I am going to allow myself to be.
I don't think I will wear a t-shirt that says "old and still stupid sometimes," but that's how I feel. I am still learning, still growing, and still making mistakes. Now--about all those assumptions about people in the seventies.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
God, Country, and Little Antibiotics
We’ve just come back from a foray into Oregon to see my family in Eugene. This is the second time we’ve made this trip except that this time we weren’t pulling an RV. In fact, neither was anyone else. Where last time, the RVs formed a long continuous line, this time the roads were empty except for local traffic and the usual trucks. Since gas on the coast hovered just beneath $4.50 a gallon, we figured that everyone was staying home to be able to afford the things the trucks were carrying. The welcome center as we entered Oregon confirmed our observation: last year nearly 500 people dropped in for information on July 4; this year there were barely over 200 on the busiest travel day of the year. No wonder people were glad to see us.
Welcome though we were, however, we have learned to be wary in Oregon because that’s where some of our better learning experiences have taken place. Last time, for example, we blew a tire on the RV on July 4 while somewhere outside Pendleton, Oregon. That’s when we learned that the AAA guarantee of 24/7 help has some maybes and only ifs. No one was (or wanted to be anyway) available to come help us. We might have spent a lonely (and dangerous) night parked beside the road if a Samaritan had not come by and helped Sid change the tire. Now we carry a four-ton hydraulic jack in the truck, which probably means that we won’t get stuck with a scissors jack again while parked on a slanted shoulder.
This year the learning continued. Just outside Pendleton, Oregon (again) Sid’s car showed a low tire warning light. It turned out that a rather large screw had worked itself into one of the rear tires. Fortunately, Sid was able to get the car safely to a service center that also sold gasoline. The proprietor was a cheerful man named Carlos whose English was clearly a later acquisition. Since Oregon does not permit self-service gasoline sales, he had to jump up each time someone drove up to a pump. He was already working on replacing a tire on one of the very few RVs we saw so we stood by to watch. The owner turned out to be a police officer from Carson City, Nevada. I was fascinated by the tattoos on the back of his leg. He showed them to me. One was a large St Michael, the patron saint of cops, along with the memorial flag for fallen officers and his own police shield and badge number. They were very artistic and very detailed. “Didn’t that hurt?” I asked him. He nodded and told me that it had taken 6 hours and had needed two sessions. “Were you drunk?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “but a valium helped.” I felt rather old and certainly out of step with the world.
My feeling of dislocation continued after Carlos got us back on the road and we drove into Pendleton. There we visited the Woollen Mills. These are justly famous for fine wool blankets and clothing—an American tradition since 1900, the billboard says—except that most of the garments were made in Thailand, China, and Mexico. The blankets at least said they were made in the US so that’s what I chose.
By then I was starting to think Pendleton to be something of a jinx. It’s just a quiet town with some railroad history, but you can’t tell that by me. The local café was recommended to us for lunch so we drove into Pendleton’s downtown and parked next to the donut shop in the parking area. The café had a certain charm, particularly all the message signs: “”Blessings” carved in a wood as we walked in, with “ASAP: Always Say a Prayer” and “Why Wish When You Can Pray” right next to the cash register. I must admit they went well with the local Travelodge sign which was not flashing vacancy messages but instead “President Bush for Strong Leadership.” That prepared me well for the sign we later saw in Montpelier, Oregon,” which said “Get Us Out of the UN.” I think it must be isolation and the rain.
The best one, though, was our hotel in Bend, Oregon. It’s a beautiful city renowned for outdoor activities and a lot like Boulder, Colorado. It also apparently attracts people born idiots who have worked on their talent. At 3:30 a.m., the fire alarm rang in every room and common area of the hotel. Despite clear warnings about smoking in the rooms, someone lit up. Consequently, we all got up. The offender was quickly identified by the Fire Department and was fined $250.
As we left Oregon this morning, Sid decided to try the radio. All we could find were stations promoting God, country music, and programming in Spanish. Somehow, after listening to a couple in the booth next to us at the cafe discussing the need to cut (castrate) pygmy goats to prevent them from being mean, and after hearing a radio commentator discussing white blood cells as being God’s little antibiotics, I thought that just about summed it up.
Welcome though we were, however, we have learned to be wary in Oregon because that’s where some of our better learning experiences have taken place. Last time, for example, we blew a tire on the RV on July 4 while somewhere outside Pendleton, Oregon. That’s when we learned that the AAA guarantee of 24/7 help has some maybes and only ifs. No one was (or wanted to be anyway) available to come help us. We might have spent a lonely (and dangerous) night parked beside the road if a Samaritan had not come by and helped Sid change the tire. Now we carry a four-ton hydraulic jack in the truck, which probably means that we won’t get stuck with a scissors jack again while parked on a slanted shoulder.
This year the learning continued. Just outside Pendleton, Oregon (again) Sid’s car showed a low tire warning light. It turned out that a rather large screw had worked itself into one of the rear tires. Fortunately, Sid was able to get the car safely to a service center that also sold gasoline. The proprietor was a cheerful man named Carlos whose English was clearly a later acquisition. Since Oregon does not permit self-service gasoline sales, he had to jump up each time someone drove up to a pump. He was already working on replacing a tire on one of the very few RVs we saw so we stood by to watch. The owner turned out to be a police officer from Carson City, Nevada. I was fascinated by the tattoos on the back of his leg. He showed them to me. One was a large St Michael, the patron saint of cops, along with the memorial flag for fallen officers and his own police shield and badge number. They were very artistic and very detailed. “Didn’t that hurt?” I asked him. He nodded and told me that it had taken 6 hours and had needed two sessions. “Were you drunk?” I asked. “No,” he replied, “but a valium helped.” I felt rather old and certainly out of step with the world.
My feeling of dislocation continued after Carlos got us back on the road and we drove into Pendleton. There we visited the Woollen Mills. These are justly famous for fine wool blankets and clothing—an American tradition since 1900, the billboard says—except that most of the garments were made in Thailand, China, and Mexico. The blankets at least said they were made in the US so that’s what I chose.
By then I was starting to think Pendleton to be something of a jinx. It’s just a quiet town with some railroad history, but you can’t tell that by me. The local café was recommended to us for lunch so we drove into Pendleton’s downtown and parked next to the donut shop in the parking area. The café had a certain charm, particularly all the message signs: “”Blessings” carved in a wood as we walked in, with “ASAP: Always Say a Prayer” and “Why Wish When You Can Pray” right next to the cash register. I must admit they went well with the local Travelodge sign which was not flashing vacancy messages but instead “President Bush for Strong Leadership.” That prepared me well for the sign we later saw in Montpelier, Oregon,” which said “Get Us Out of the UN.” I think it must be isolation and the rain.
The best one, though, was our hotel in Bend, Oregon. It’s a beautiful city renowned for outdoor activities and a lot like Boulder, Colorado. It also apparently attracts people born idiots who have worked on their talent. At 3:30 a.m., the fire alarm rang in every room and common area of the hotel. Despite clear warnings about smoking in the rooms, someone lit up. Consequently, we all got up. The offender was quickly identified by the Fire Department and was fined $250.
As we left Oregon this morning, Sid decided to try the radio. All we could find were stations promoting God, country music, and programming in Spanish. Somehow, after listening to a couple in the booth next to us at the cafe discussing the need to cut (castrate) pygmy goats to prevent them from being mean, and after hearing a radio commentator discussing white blood cells as being God’s little antibiotics, I thought that just about summed it up.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Red Rocks rocks
Last night we went to a Colorado Symphony concert at Red Rocks amphitheater. It was a lovely night and we sat high up so we could enjoy the famous sound clarity and the nighttime view of Denver lights once it got dark. The earlier thundershowers had passed on and all we got was a slight sprinkle that brought out an impressive array of rain gear all around us. It was soon taken down as the evening proved itself warm and gentle.
Such perfect nights are things to be remembered and they inevitably recall other magical nights and times. Sid was the only one of us whose memories had been at Red Rocks. He recalled seeing Sammy Davis Jr., Bette Midler and Leonard Bernstein in concert there. We listened raptly to his accounts. Nowadays, Bette Midler costs well over $200 for the nosebleed tickets in Las Vegas and the others, sadly, live on only in our memories.
Sitting on the tiered seats at Red Rocks made me realize that my memories of special places and people, the ones that made me feel that I was participating in history, have been like pearls strung on a necklace. I can count them and I can say of them that at that moment, I felt alive in ways I may not have appreciated at the time but do now. Perhaps because of who I am, those moments have invariably centered around a performing or creative artist.
Van Cliburn comes to mind immediately. I heard him play at the Shell in Hawaii shortly after he had won in Russia for his Tchaikovsky piano concerto. He played it for us. I remember watching this young man with the shock of red hair and hoping that he was not condemned forever to play this one piece—wonderful though it was—for the rest of his life because those of us in the audience needed to share it with him.
Then there was the conductor, Sir Malcom Sargent. My mother took me up to London to hear the Last Night of the Proms (promenades) in the Royal Albert Hall just before we emigrated to Canada. I remember what he played (Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov) and what he said when he addressed the audience. Years later I met him at the Hawaii British Consulate celebration of the Queen’s Birthday. I told him what he had said and he didn’t remember it. It had been my moment, not his.
The music of Prokoviev invokes the memory of watching Rudoloh Nuyerev dance Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. My mother was alive then. She had joined the Royal Ballet association to get first shot at the tickets. We were center stalls, about eight rows back. Just to hear that music makes me cry now for the beauty of the performace and the memories of both him and her.
Then there was my first real mentor at the University of Hawaii—Leon Edel, whose masterful biography of Henry James won the Pulitzer Prize. He signed my copy of his book as “sensei”—teacher—and told me that I had a major academic career ahead of me. That day I walked on air. Then, there was George Wald, who shared the Nobel Prize in science for his work on the chemistry of vision. He came to speak at a conference I was organizing. I had no idea what to expect of a scientist who had become so celebrated. But it turned out that he had become a mystic as well as a scientist and, later, a friend. All I remember of his speech is that I and the audience were mesmerized by his talk of a knowing universe that wishes to be known.
I suppose what makes these moments memorable is my interpretation of them. I went to them like George Wald's universe: a knowing member of the audience who wished to be transported. But I think there is a common thread. Those performances--and we can all point to things we have been privileged to participate in--represent the best we are capable of as human beings. For a moment, the beauty of music and dance and writing--among other things--overshadows what is merely acceptable, transporting us as observers and enabling us to see far beyond ourselves.
Such perfect nights are things to be remembered and they inevitably recall other magical nights and times. Sid was the only one of us whose memories had been at Red Rocks. He recalled seeing Sammy Davis Jr., Bette Midler and Leonard Bernstein in concert there. We listened raptly to his accounts. Nowadays, Bette Midler costs well over $200 for the nosebleed tickets in Las Vegas and the others, sadly, live on only in our memories.
Sitting on the tiered seats at Red Rocks made me realize that my memories of special places and people, the ones that made me feel that I was participating in history, have been like pearls strung on a necklace. I can count them and I can say of them that at that moment, I felt alive in ways I may not have appreciated at the time but do now. Perhaps because of who I am, those moments have invariably centered around a performing or creative artist.
Van Cliburn comes to mind immediately. I heard him play at the Shell in Hawaii shortly after he had won in Russia for his Tchaikovsky piano concerto. He played it for us. I remember watching this young man with the shock of red hair and hoping that he was not condemned forever to play this one piece—wonderful though it was—for the rest of his life because those of us in the audience needed to share it with him.
Then there was the conductor, Sir Malcom Sargent. My mother took me up to London to hear the Last Night of the Proms (promenades) in the Royal Albert Hall just before we emigrated to Canada. I remember what he played (Elgar and Rimsky-Korsakov) and what he said when he addressed the audience. Years later I met him at the Hawaii British Consulate celebration of the Queen’s Birthday. I told him what he had said and he didn’t remember it. It had been my moment, not his.
The music of Prokoviev invokes the memory of watching Rudoloh Nuyerev dance Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. My mother was alive then. She had joined the Royal Ballet association to get first shot at the tickets. We were center stalls, about eight rows back. Just to hear that music makes me cry now for the beauty of the performace and the memories of both him and her.
Then there was my first real mentor at the University of Hawaii—Leon Edel, whose masterful biography of Henry James won the Pulitzer Prize. He signed my copy of his book as “sensei”—teacher—and told me that I had a major academic career ahead of me. That day I walked on air. Then, there was George Wald, who shared the Nobel Prize in science for his work on the chemistry of vision. He came to speak at a conference I was organizing. I had no idea what to expect of a scientist who had become so celebrated. But it turned out that he had become a mystic as well as a scientist and, later, a friend. All I remember of his speech is that I and the audience were mesmerized by his talk of a knowing universe that wishes to be known.
I suppose what makes these moments memorable is my interpretation of them. I went to them like George Wald's universe: a knowing member of the audience who wished to be transported. But I think there is a common thread. Those performances--and we can all point to things we have been privileged to participate in--represent the best we are capable of as human beings. For a moment, the beauty of music and dance and writing--among other things--overshadows what is merely acceptable, transporting us as observers and enabling us to see far beyond ourselves.
It wasn't the symphony that transported me, though. Wonderful as the 1812 Overture is, it would not have worked without the setting. I know that Red Rocks itself affected me last night because it tied together the rocks, the sky, the music, and distant lights of Denver as no other place. As I count my pearls, I shall include Red Rocks among them.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Of Common Denominators
The other day, I learned that when I renew my driver’s license in Colorado (mercifully not until 2012), I can do it only for five years instead of the ten before that magic 65th birthday and that a letter from a licensed optometrist or opthamologist certifying that I have had an eye examination in the previous six months must accompany me. I guess that the Motor Vehicle Division no longer trusts their own tests to determine that I can see. Now they want corroboration.
This doesn’t really bother me—after all, it could be worse--I could have reached the age where I have to submit a doctor’s report that I am physically able and mentally alert enough to be trusted on the road—but it does make me reflect on how one day I am competent and to be trusted and then, come the magic 65th, next day everything has changed. It makes me understand the angst of the airline pilots who are suddenly grounded in their fifties. It also makes me understand what my late husband used to call the lowest common denominator, in this case the clear worse-case scenario that EVERYONE over a certain age is in the early stages of Alzheimers or about to stroke out and thus is a potential hazard on the road that must be removed before the damage can be done.
Now, I don’t deny the inevitable effects of aging. No one—least of all me—denies it or the physical problems it brings. I’ve blogged about some of them. Nor do I oppose extra requirements for older drivers any more than I oppose them for very young ones. What bothers me is the arbitrary line beyond which competence has to be proved based on the assumption that an aging population necessarily means an increasingly incompetent one. It’s a matter of pride and perhaps a little fear. If I can’t drive, given the way that American suburbs are dependent on the automobile, I would be a prisoner in my own home. Fortunately, I can’t see any reason that would happen, but the idea has been planted.
While I will follow whatever requirements I must to renew my license when the time comes, I hope I can do it with a slight smile and shake of the head as some bureaucrat reads the letter on my eye exam to see if it meets her standard. I hope my optometrist has the grace to smile and shake her head when she signs the letter for me. I want to believe that these requirements are silly when it comes to me, even if society is doing everything possible to make me part of a group of people aged in a spread between 65 and 100 all of whom have been classified as pretty much over the hill.
Over the hill? Last week I took my grandson white-water rafting. We signed a release about the inherent dangers of the activity—these included banging into rocks and falling out of the boat and drowning. Thank God, they didn’t have anything about the additional dangers of white-water rafting while being over 65. I was just another thrill-seeker with the upfront bucks to pay for it. I got the same instructions as everyone else. There were no special precautions, and everything was fine. It was a lovely day in the mountains, the river was running high, and while paddling madly, I was able to forget my age and everything else and just have fun.
This doesn’t really bother me—after all, it could be worse--I could have reached the age where I have to submit a doctor’s report that I am physically able and mentally alert enough to be trusted on the road—but it does make me reflect on how one day I am competent and to be trusted and then, come the magic 65th, next day everything has changed. It makes me understand the angst of the airline pilots who are suddenly grounded in their fifties. It also makes me understand what my late husband used to call the lowest common denominator, in this case the clear worse-case scenario that EVERYONE over a certain age is in the early stages of Alzheimers or about to stroke out and thus is a potential hazard on the road that must be removed before the damage can be done.
Now, I don’t deny the inevitable effects of aging. No one—least of all me—denies it or the physical problems it brings. I’ve blogged about some of them. Nor do I oppose extra requirements for older drivers any more than I oppose them for very young ones. What bothers me is the arbitrary line beyond which competence has to be proved based on the assumption that an aging population necessarily means an increasingly incompetent one. It’s a matter of pride and perhaps a little fear. If I can’t drive, given the way that American suburbs are dependent on the automobile, I would be a prisoner in my own home. Fortunately, I can’t see any reason that would happen, but the idea has been planted.
While I will follow whatever requirements I must to renew my license when the time comes, I hope I can do it with a slight smile and shake of the head as some bureaucrat reads the letter on my eye exam to see if it meets her standard. I hope my optometrist has the grace to smile and shake her head when she signs the letter for me. I want to believe that these requirements are silly when it comes to me, even if society is doing everything possible to make me part of a group of people aged in a spread between 65 and 100 all of whom have been classified as pretty much over the hill.
Over the hill? Last week I took my grandson white-water rafting. We signed a release about the inherent dangers of the activity—these included banging into rocks and falling out of the boat and drowning. Thank God, they didn’t have anything about the additional dangers of white-water rafting while being over 65. I was just another thrill-seeker with the upfront bucks to pay for it. I got the same instructions as everyone else. There were no special precautions, and everything was fine. It was a lovely day in the mountains, the river was running high, and while paddling madly, I was able to forget my age and everything else and just have fun.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Marketing 101
My book, Every Purpose Under Heaven, is nearing the point when my agent will be presenting it to a publisher. Beyond the fact that I am ecstatic that I won’t have to do that, my illusions about agents have been sorely put to the test.
I thought all I had to do was write an excellent book, get an agent interested, and then sit back. Wrong. Even though my first book, Extraordinary Things, was selected as a finalist for an award, I still can’t rest on my laurels. My agent requested that I work seriously on developing a marketing plan for Every Purpose.
At first, I convinced myself that I had no idea of how to develop a plan. I thought of marketing as a catchy slogan and massively repeating ads on TV—sort of like snake oil selling from the back of wagons (the kind that got you tarred and feathered), convincing the gullible that they couldn’t live without whatever you were selling.
It took me a while to understand that wasn’t quite going to work with selling a book unless the author is famous and tantalizes the reader with promises of secrets—usually sexual although massive fraud can also work—to be revealed only within the pages of the book. My book, needless to say, had neither of those, so I was left wondering what marvel of Madison Avenue mumbo-jumbo (remember the book title: “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor”?) would convince someone to part with the money to buy my book.
I had and have no doubt that Every Purpose Under Heaven is a good book—maybe even a great book. But when it came to convincing people to read it, I was out to sea.
Then it came to me that it wasn’t a problem of marketing that I was stuck on—it was a problem of how I thought about what marketing is. When I took a course from the Small Business Association some years ago, one of the things that the instructor impressed on us was the need to shout our services from the nearest rooftop. Having a great product was very nice, but not as nice as having people know about it. When I thought about that, I could see that I needed to redefine marketing—or more practically—refine how I thought about it. This necessitated my going back to basics of Marketing 101. Marketing, it turns out, is matching product with audience need. Of course, that need sometimes has to be created. It was only then that I adopted an entirely new definition of the field.
I now understand that marketing is when people apply makeup to appear years younger when applying for a job. Marketing is writing a solid and engaging resume to beat out others applying for the same position. Marketing is scenting a house with the smell of baking cookies when it is being shown to prospective buyers. Marketing is dressing in one’s best clothes when going to shop at the mall. Marketing, in other words, is putting one's best foot forward, understanding that the competition is vast and organized, and resolving to offer something that no one else can.
Once I saw this, I was able to write the marketing plan for my book. I rather wished I could use the words “searing,” “passionate,” “unforgettable,” and “seductive.” It’s a little hard to do that when you are writing about learning compassion at the point of death. I suppose I can try: “Every Purpose Under Heaven is a searing expose of what happens at the point of death. Experience the seductive passion of passing on with the help of morphine into the unforgettable experience of life after death.”
For those not quite convinced by my purple rhetoric: you might check out my website at http://www.dmdeluca.com/ in the weeks ahead and see what I did.
I thought all I had to do was write an excellent book, get an agent interested, and then sit back. Wrong. Even though my first book, Extraordinary Things, was selected as a finalist for an award, I still can’t rest on my laurels. My agent requested that I work seriously on developing a marketing plan for Every Purpose.
At first, I convinced myself that I had no idea of how to develop a plan. I thought of marketing as a catchy slogan and massively repeating ads on TV—sort of like snake oil selling from the back of wagons (the kind that got you tarred and feathered), convincing the gullible that they couldn’t live without whatever you were selling.
It took me a while to understand that wasn’t quite going to work with selling a book unless the author is famous and tantalizes the reader with promises of secrets—usually sexual although massive fraud can also work—to be revealed only within the pages of the book. My book, needless to say, had neither of those, so I was left wondering what marvel of Madison Avenue mumbo-jumbo (remember the book title: “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor”?) would convince someone to part with the money to buy my book.
I had and have no doubt that Every Purpose Under Heaven is a good book—maybe even a great book. But when it came to convincing people to read it, I was out to sea.
Then it came to me that it wasn’t a problem of marketing that I was stuck on—it was a problem of how I thought about what marketing is. When I took a course from the Small Business Association some years ago, one of the things that the instructor impressed on us was the need to shout our services from the nearest rooftop. Having a great product was very nice, but not as nice as having people know about it. When I thought about that, I could see that I needed to redefine marketing—or more practically—refine how I thought about it. This necessitated my going back to basics of Marketing 101. Marketing, it turns out, is matching product with audience need. Of course, that need sometimes has to be created. It was only then that I adopted an entirely new definition of the field.
I now understand that marketing is when people apply makeup to appear years younger when applying for a job. Marketing is writing a solid and engaging resume to beat out others applying for the same position. Marketing is scenting a house with the smell of baking cookies when it is being shown to prospective buyers. Marketing is dressing in one’s best clothes when going to shop at the mall. Marketing, in other words, is putting one's best foot forward, understanding that the competition is vast and organized, and resolving to offer something that no one else can.
Once I saw this, I was able to write the marketing plan for my book. I rather wished I could use the words “searing,” “passionate,” “unforgettable,” and “seductive.” It’s a little hard to do that when you are writing about learning compassion at the point of death. I suppose I can try: “Every Purpose Under Heaven is a searing expose of what happens at the point of death. Experience the seductive passion of passing on with the help of morphine into the unforgettable experience of life after death.”
For those not quite convinced by my purple rhetoric: you might check out my website at http://www.dmdeluca.com/ in the weeks ahead and see what I did.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Senior Take-Out
The other day, while I was waiting for my Thai food take-out, I picked up a free local newspaper called “The Prime Time for Seniors.” It is an earnest, thick paper (32 pages), that proclaims itself to be “Colorado’s Information Source for the 50-Plus Population Since 1986.” My pot stickers were taking a few moments, so I leafed through it. I was amazed by what I saw, particularly by their definition of market share. Quite apart from the fact that somebody thinks they can make money off over-fifty group, by their defintion, Hilary Clinton is a senior citizen and Barrack Obama, like john F. Kennedy among the youngest of presidential candidates, will be a senior in five years. I was forced to envision a giant vaccum cleaner sucking more and more people into a dust bag labeled “senior” so they can be sold things to.
Sid, ever the rational thinker, isn’t bothered much by this—he’s always gone his own way and done what he wants. He started climbing world-class mountains around the world in his sixties and only gave them up (reluctantly) when he injured himself back country skiing. I’m not so sanguine. I can’t help being bothered on a matter of principle. I hate being labeled and I hate even more having people make assumptions about the label they have applied to me—particularly when it is to make themselves money.
A look through the newspaper itself is fascinating: the kinds of activities singled out for praise include volunteering, foster grand parenting, something called “continued independence,” vision loss, respite care, keeping active, senior housing, adult day care, keeping active, diabetes, and arthritis. For fifty year olds?
I remember myself at fifty. I was assistant to the president of a $300 million a year university. I worked with the state governor’s office, with the media, with legislators, with the state attorney’s office, with faculty and community groups. I was a senior? I was interested in nursing homes? In hearing aids and motorized wheel chairs? Pulleeze, I was trying to keep my boss out of the newspapers, trying to placate the regents, and working with whatever new venture the president had come up with along with writing his speeches.
In recognition that I was just being my usual churlish self, I went back through the newspaper looking for something I could relate to. Where were the people like me who start getting published in their sixties? Who start new and successful businesses? Who run for office? Who hold full-time jobs? Who, like Senator Edward Kennedy, continue to serve their country? I couldn’t find them. I guess they just aren’t the people you can sell things to.
I delicately dumped the paper in the recycle bin, but the aftertaste lingers. I am still astounded at the way that everyone over fifty suddenly gets vaccuumed into that dust bag of decay that implies that those aged fifty are merely in the ante-room of Alzheimers and physical collapse. Maybe some of us are. But a lot of the pictures in that newspaper were of people who looked in their eighties or more, doing things like playing beanbag baseball.
I don’t know why I feel so annoyed over being lumped in with a group that has an age spread of forty years, from fifty to the further reaches of human survival. All I know is that it does annoy me. I have no control over what people think when they hear the word “senior.” But what’s worst to me is that I have no control over who gets labeled that way.
Excuse me while I imagine Senator Kennedy and Senator Clinton playing beanbag baseball in a league of retirement homes.
Sid, ever the rational thinker, isn’t bothered much by this—he’s always gone his own way and done what he wants. He started climbing world-class mountains around the world in his sixties and only gave them up (reluctantly) when he injured himself back country skiing. I’m not so sanguine. I can’t help being bothered on a matter of principle. I hate being labeled and I hate even more having people make assumptions about the label they have applied to me—particularly when it is to make themselves money.
A look through the newspaper itself is fascinating: the kinds of activities singled out for praise include volunteering, foster grand parenting, something called “continued independence,” vision loss, respite care, keeping active, senior housing, adult day care, keeping active, diabetes, and arthritis. For fifty year olds?
I remember myself at fifty. I was assistant to the president of a $300 million a year university. I worked with the state governor’s office, with the media, with legislators, with the state attorney’s office, with faculty and community groups. I was a senior? I was interested in nursing homes? In hearing aids and motorized wheel chairs? Pulleeze, I was trying to keep my boss out of the newspapers, trying to placate the regents, and working with whatever new venture the president had come up with along with writing his speeches.
In recognition that I was just being my usual churlish self, I went back through the newspaper looking for something I could relate to. Where were the people like me who start getting published in their sixties? Who start new and successful businesses? Who run for office? Who hold full-time jobs? Who, like Senator Edward Kennedy, continue to serve their country? I couldn’t find them. I guess they just aren’t the people you can sell things to.
I delicately dumped the paper in the recycle bin, but the aftertaste lingers. I am still astounded at the way that everyone over fifty suddenly gets vaccuumed into that dust bag of decay that implies that those aged fifty are merely in the ante-room of Alzheimers and physical collapse. Maybe some of us are. But a lot of the pictures in that newspaper were of people who looked in their eighties or more, doing things like playing beanbag baseball.
I don’t know why I feel so annoyed over being lumped in with a group that has an age spread of forty years, from fifty to the further reaches of human survival. All I know is that it does annoy me. I have no control over what people think when they hear the word “senior.” But what’s worst to me is that I have no control over who gets labeled that way.
Excuse me while I imagine Senator Kennedy and Senator Clinton playing beanbag baseball in a league of retirement homes.
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